Matter, Imagination and Geometry: Ontology, Natural Philosophy and Mathematics in Plotinus, Proclus, and Descartes (Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy)

This book considers conditions of applicability of mathematics to the study of natural phenomena. The possibility of such an application is one of the fundamental assumptions underlying the enormous theoretical and practical success of modern science. Addressing problems of matter, substance, infinity, number, structure of cognitive faculties, imagination, and of construction of mathematical object, Dmitri Nikulin examines mathematical (geometrical) objects in their relation to geometrical or intelligible matter and to imagination. The author explores questions in the history of philosophy and science, particularly in late antiquity and early modernity. The focus is on key thinkers Plotinus and Descartes (with the occasional appearance of Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Proclus, Newton and others), in whom the fundamental presuppositions of ripe antiquity and of early modernity find their definite expression.Matter, Imagination and Geometry presents one of the first studies to compare the relation of mathematics to physics in ancient (especially Neoplatonic) and early modern science and philosophy.Dmitri V. Nikulin is the author of 'Matter, Imagination and Geometry: Ontology, Natural Philosophy and Mathematics in Plotinus, Proclus, and Descartes (Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy)' with ISBN 9780754615743 and ISBN 075461574X.