Scholarlink

In Du Châtelet’s magnum opus, Foundations of Physics (Du Châtelet, É. (1740). Institutions de Physique. Paris. Translated by Brading et al. (2018). http://kbrading.org/translations and 1742), she dedicates an entire chapter to theorizing how we come to form our spatial ideas. The first idea she investigates is the idea of extensionExtension, exploring how we first arrive at it. According to her, this idea necessarily arises when we “represent to ourselves several different things as beingBeing one” through the imagination (§77). Furthermore, to represent things as “several,” “in our minds we place one external to the other” (§77). But what does it mean to place one object as external to another in our minds? Recent scholarship has seen the emergence of two competing interpretations of “external”: the spatial reading and the ontological reading. This chapter engages critically with the ontological reading and provides reasons for favoring the spatial one.

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

Du Châtelet on External-To and the Idea of Extension

  • 章节

  • 发表日期：

    2025年

查看全文
  • Qiu Lin

摘要

In Du Châtelet’s magnum opus, Foundations of Physics (Du Châtelet, É. (1740). Institutions de Physique. Paris. Translated by Brading et al. (2018). http://kbrading.org/translations and 1742), she dedicates an entire chapter to theorizing how we come to form our spatial ideas. The first idea she investigates is the idea of extensionExtension, exploring how we first arrive at it. According to her, this idea necessarily arises when we “represent to ourselves several different things as beingBeing one” through the imagination (§77). Furthermore, to represent things as “several,” “in our minds we place one external to the other” (§77). But what does it mean to place one object as external to another in our minds? Recent scholarship has seen the emergence of two competing interpretations of “external”: the spatial reading and the ontological reading. This chapter engages critically with the ontological reading and provides reasons for favoring the spatial one.