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The Experience of Beauty: Seven Essays and a Dialogue
by Harry UnderwoodThe notion of beauty as a point of transit between the sensuous and the ideal is well-established in the history of Western philosophy. Describing this transition and seeking to rethink the ways in which humans understand the things they find beautiful in life, Harry Underwood’s The Experience of Beauty approaches the notion of beauty through the insights of major but distinctively individual philosophers and artists. In seven essays and a dialogue, Underwood considers the principal instances of beauty as it reveals itself in everyday experience, as a concept in the mind of the philosopher, as the artist’s vision, and as the shining image of the ideal. Considering the perspectives of many notable figures in the Western canon of philosophy and literature for whom beauty and the imagination have mattered, including Plato, Nietzsche, Auden, Coleridge, Proust, and Iris Murdoch, Underwood draws out a rounded sense of beauty. It is shown, on one view, to be inherent in a perceptible order and, on another, to be an expression of the will to confer meaning on a meaningless world. In art, beauty reveals itself to be both perceived and created, and a world-disclosing, truth-relaying force. As a final matter, Underwood asks what it means to embrace your own vision of beauty and apply it to your life’s work. A quietly provocative meditation on the mystery of beauty, this collection of essays contends that beauty serves life as an inspiration, not merely as an ornament.
The Experience of God
by David Bentley HartDespite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion--God--frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word "God" functions in the worlds great theistic faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanitys knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical "moments"--being, consciousness, and bliss--the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanitys experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine.
The Experience of Injustice: A Theory of Recognition (New Directions in Critical Theory #70)
by Emmanuel RenaultIn The Experience of Injustice, the French philosopher Emmanuel Renault opens an important new chapter in critical theory. He brings together political theory, critical social science, and a keen sense of the power of popular movements to offer a forceful vision of social justice. Questioning normative political philosophy’s conception of justice, Renault gives an account of injustice as the denial of recognition, placing the experience of social suffering at the heart of contemporary critical theory.Inspired by Axel Honneth, Renault argues that a radicalized version of Honneth’s ethics of recognition can provide a systematic alternative to the liberal-democratic projects of such thinkers as Rawls and Habermas. Renault reformulates Honneth’s theory as a framework founded on experiences of injustice. He develops a complex, psychoanalytically rich account of suffering, disaffiliation, and identity loss to explain these experiences as denials of recognition, linking everyday injustice to a robust defense of the politicization of identity in social struggles. Engaging contemporary French and German critical theory alongside interdisciplinary tools from sociology, psychoanalysis, socialist political theory, social-movement theory, and philosophy, Renault articulates the importance of a theory of recognition for the resurgence of social critique.
The Experience of Noise: Philosophical and Phenomenological Perspectives
by Basil Vassilicos Giuseppe Torre Fabio Tommy PellizzerThis volume&’s aim is to stimulate philosophical interest in the experience of noise. There are at least three important open questions about noise. First, how should the relationship between noise as a scientific phenomenon and as a type of experience be understood? Is the one to be understood in terms of the other, and what implications may be drawn from this? Second, are experiences of noise strictly limited to perceptual states or to one type of perceptual state – for instance, to acoustic experiences? E.g. is there noise that is visual or tactile? Is there noise that is cognitive, affective, or evaluative? Third, how can philosophy make sense of noise in the first place? Should noise simply be relegated to the hither side of the explananda of philosophy, as the mere leftover of whatever philosophy sets out to account for; meaning, being, totality, etc.? Or may noise be understood as a positive phenomenon in its own right, which has its own distinctive features and content, difficult though they might be to pin down? This volume will contribute to the burgeoning philosophy of noise by highlighting how contemporary philosophical perspectives with a phenomenological or experiential bent can make inroads to these questions about a fascinating yet little understood quarter of human experience.
The Experience of Nothingness
by Michael NovakIn The Experience of Nothingness, Michael Novak has two objectives. First, he shows the paths by which the experience of nothingness is becoming common among all those who live in free societies. Second, he details the various experiences that lead to the nothingness point of view. Most discussions of these matters have been so implicated in the European experience that the term nihilism has a European ring. Novak, however, articulates this experience of formlessness in an American context.In his new introduction, the author lists four requirements that must be met by an individual in order for the experience of nothingness to emerge: a commitment to honesty, a commitment to courage, recognition of how widespread the experience of nothingness is, and a virtue of will. Novak writes that these principles are what guide self-described philosophical nihilists. But many people simply borrow the nihilistic conclusions without observing the moral commitments to them. For this reason Novak believes that nihilism is fraudulent as a theory intended to explain the experience of nothingness. Nihilism in practice, he maintains, often results in a form of intolerance. The Experience of Nothingness is a work that will cause many scholars to rethink their beliefs. It should be read by philosophers, theologians, sociologists, political theorists, and cultural historians.
The Experience of Truth (SUNY series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy)
by Gaetano ChiurazziWhat does it mean to say that something is true? In this book Gaetano Chiurazzi argues that when we say that something is true, we do not say something merely about a state of affairs, but also about ourselves. Truth is not just the fact of "what is out there," but a mode of existence that shapes and transforms human understanding. Supported by an original reading of Aristotle's theory of judgment and Heidegger's hermeneutical theory of truth, Chiurazzi also engages the work of Nietzsche, Gadamer, Putnam, and Rorty to challenge the rising tide of theories that dismiss the importance of human experience to the idea of truth.
Experienced Wholeness: Integrating Insights from Gestalt Theory, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Predictive Processing (The\mit Press Ser.)
by Wanja WieseAn interdisciplinary account of phenomenal unity, investigating how experiential wholes can be characterized and how such characterizations can be analyzed computationally.How can we account for phenomenal unity? That is, how can we characterize and explain our experience of objects and groups of objects, bodily experiences, successions of events, and the attentional structure of consciousness as wholes? In this book, Wanja Wiese develops an interdisciplinary account of phenomenal unity, investigating how experiential wholes can be characterized and how such characterization can be analyzed conceptually as well as computationally. Wiese first addresses how the unity of consciousness can be characterized phenomenologically, discussing what it is like to experience wholes and what is the experiential contribution of phenomenal unity. Considering the associated conceptual and empirical issues, he draws connections to phenomenological accounts and research on Gestalt theory. The results show how the attentional structure of experience, the experience of temporal flow, and different types of experiential wholes contribute to our sense of phenomenal unity. Moreover, characterizing phenomenal unity in terms of the existence of a single global phenomenal state is neither necessary nor sufficient to adequately address the problem of phenomenal unity. Wiese then suggests that the concepts and ideas of predictive processing can be used to analyze phenomenal unity computationally. The result is both a conceptual framework and an interdisciplinary account: the regularity account of phenomenal unity. According to this account, experienced wholes correspond to a hierarchy of connecting regularities. The brain tracks these regularities by hierarchical prediction error minimization, which approximates hierarchical Bayesian inference.
Experiences of Immigrant Professors: Challenges, Cross-Cultural Differences, and Lessons for Success (Routledge Research in Higher Education)
by Charles B. HutchisonEducational institutions all over the world continue to attract the services of foreign-born scholars. In addition to the culture shock that immigrants experience in unfamiliar countries, these scholars often undergo "pedagogical shock." Through autobiographical accounts of foreign-born professors from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the US, this volume examines the experiences of foreign-born professors around the world to provide insight on the curricular, school-systemic, and sociological differences and challenges that are encountered, and how to help resolve them. It will help administrators, institutions, and immigration and comparative education scholars understand the cross-cultural challenges and coping strategies that define the private and professional lives of foreign-born professors across the globe.
Experiencing Animal Minds: An Anthology of Animal-Human Encounters
by Robert W. Mitchell. Julie A. SmithIn these multidisciplinary essays, academic scholars and animal experts explore the nature of animal minds ad the methods humans conventionally and unconventionally use to understand them. The collection features chapters by scholars working in psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, literary studies, and art as well as chapters by or about people who live or work with animals, including the founder of a sanctuary for chickens, a fur trapper, a popular canine psychologist, a horse trainer, and an art photographer who captures everyday contact between humans and their animal companions.
Experiencing Animal Minds: An Anthology of Animal-Human Encounters (Critical Perspectives on Animals: Theory, Culture, Science, and Law)
by Julie A. Smith Robert W. Mitchell. EdsIn these multidisciplinary essays, academic scholars and animal experts explore the nature of animal minds and the methods humans conventionally and unconventionally use to understand them. The collection features chapters by scholars working in psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, literary studies, and art, as well as chapters by and about people who live and work with animals, including the founder of a sanctuary for chickens, a fur trapper, a popular canine psychologist, a horse trainer, and an art photographer who captures everyday contact between humans and their animal companions.Divided into five sections, the collection first considers the ways that humans live with animals and the influence of cohabitation on their perceptions of animals' minds. It follows with an examination of anthropomorphism as both a guide and hindrance to mapping animal consciousness. Chapters next examine the effects of embodiment on animals' minds and the role of animal-human interembodiment on humans' understandings of animals' minds. Final sections identify historical representations of difference between human and animal consciousness and their relevance to pre-established cultural attitudes, as well as the ways that representations of animals' minds target particular audiences and sometimes produce problematic outcomes. The editors conclude with a discussion of the relationship between the book's chapters and two pressing themes: the connection between human beliefs about animals' minds and human ethical behavior, and the challenges and conditions for knowing the minds of animals. By inviting readers to compare and contrast multiple, uncommon points of view, this collection offers a unique encounter with the diverse perspectives and theories now shaping animal studies.
Experiencing Organised Sounds: The Listening Experience Across Diverse Sound-Based Works
by Leigh LandyExperiencing Organised Sounds investigates a wide horizon of sound-based works using a template consistently across its 16 studies. It has been written for both specialist and non-specialist readers aiming to address means of increasing appreciation and understanding related to the experience of sonic creativity (music involving any sounds, not just musical notes) across this repertoire, as well as to launch a discussion about how the reception of sonic creativity can be influenced by the circumstances of listening – in particular, regarding the qualitative difference between the in-situ as opposed to mediated experience. Although listening is the volume’s focus, complementary information from the musicians is offered to facilitate holistic work overviews. As the first composition presented was composed by a 15-year-old, the intention is to demonstrate that what might be considered a niche area of the contemporary arts is one in which both increased appreciation and participation could and should easily be achieved. The book’s work discussions are divided over three central chapters focused on fixed-medium compositions, performed and sound artworks. Experiencing Organised Sounds can be used as an undergraduate textbook, by experienced readers or those new to the area. All works discussed and related materials are available to readers online.
Experiencing Phenomenology: An Introduction
by Joel SmithPhenomenology is the general study of the structure of experience, from thought and perception, to self-consciousness, bodily-awareness, and emotion. It is both a fundamental area of philosophy and a major methodological approach within the human sciences. Experiencing Phenomenology is an outstanding introduction to phenomenology. Approaching fundamental phenomenological questions from a critical, systematic perspective whilst paying careful attention to classic phenomenological texts, the book possesses a clarity and breadth that will be welcomed by students coming to the subject for the first time. Accessibly written, each chapter relates classic phenomenological discussions to contemporary issues and debates in philosophy. The following key topics are introduced and explained: the methodological foundations of phenomenology intentionality as the ‘mark of the mental’ and the problem of non-existent objects perceptual experience, including our awareness of things, properties, and events the experience of body, self, and others imaginative and emotional experience detailed discussions of classical phenomenological texts, including: Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint Husserl's Logical Investigations, Cartesian Meditations, and On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time Heidegger’s History of The Concept of Time, and Being and Time Stein's On the Problem of Empathy Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, and The Imaginary Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. Also included is a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, making this book an ideal starting point for anyone new to the study of phenomenology, not only in Philosophy but related disciplines such as Psychology and Sociology.
Experiencing Sound: The Sensation of Being
by Lawrence KramerFrom the winds of Mars to a baby's first laugh, a prolific philosopher-composer reflects on the profound imperative of sound in everyday life. Experiencing Sound presents its subject as fundamental to all experience—sensation, perception, and understanding. Lawrence Kramer turns on its head the widespread notion that vision takes pride of place among the senses and demonstrates how paying attention to sound can transform how we make meaning out of experience. Through a series of brief, lyrical forays, Kramer shows that sound, whether heard or unheard, is the object of a primary need and an essential component in the sensation of being alive and the perception of time. It is something that we may suffer—or be made to suffer—as well as enjoy. Like its predecessor The Hum of the World, this book ranges widely across music, philosophy, literature, art, media, and history, from classical antiquity to the present, as it invites us to experience sound anew.
Experiencing the Body in Yoga Practice: Meanings and Knowledge Transfer (Routledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society)
by Krzysztof T. Konecki Aleksandra Płaczek Dagmara TarasiukExperiencing the Body in Yoga Practice inspires more mindful and contemplative qualitative research on body and knowledge transfer in bodily practices in hatha yoga. The book explores the work of the mind, as well as the role of emotions and body sensations in perceiving reality and in reflecting on it. Procedures and research methods are an extension of our mind, which wants to reach into the social reality to describe it objectively. It usually refuses body and emotions. The techniques of sampling and representativeness are also tools of the mind. Using these tools, our contact with social reality produces emotions and feelings of the body. These phenomena surrounding the mind and body often go unnoticed during research and are only partially reported in the conclusions. Experiencing the Body in Yoga Practice examines this gap. It presents the application of a contemplative way of thinking and proceeding in qualitative social research and a first-person perspective, focusing on experiencing lived body and knowledge transfer in hatha yoga. It analyzes how the mind focuses and stops working, proceeds in the limited province of the meaning of yoga, how the body produces emotions and deals with them during yoga sessions, and how the knowledge is transferred by using the body in some linguistic and cultural context. The book will be of interest to sociologists and social scientists who want to concentrate on and analyze the experiences of the body from contemplative and phenomenological perspective. It is also key reading for all practitioners dealing with body and bodywork, such as in sports, recreational activities, physical education, rehabilitation, physical work, educational activities, etc.
Experiencing the Next World Now
by Michael GrossoFrom the scientific underground of psychic research comes a stunning report on the evidence for life after death. But all the proof in the world is nothing when compared to actual experience with the place beyond. This book takes the reader to the next level -- and offers a more personal kind of journey. If there is a "next world," it must be nearby, and the path leads through the gateways of our own minds. Philosopher Michael Grosso shows us how to open these passages -- or at least peek through a keyhole -- and glimpse what may lie beyond. This is the guidebook for an adventure that nobody can refuse.
Experiencing William James: Belief in a Pluralistic World
by James CampbellWilliam James has long been recognized as a central figure in the American philosophic tradition, and his ideas continue to play a significant role in contemporary thinking. Yet there has never been a comprehensive exploration of the thought of this seminal philosopher and psychologist. In Experiencing William James, renowned scholar James Campbell provides the fuller and more complete analysis that James scholarship has long needed.Commentators typically address only pieces of James’s thought or aspects of his vision, often in an attempt to make the task of understanding James seem easier than it is or else to dismiss him as a philosophically unprepared if well-meaning amateur. The isolated nature of these examinations, too often divorced from the original contexts, badly hinders and even distorts their conclusions. Focusing on James’s own ideas rather than his critiques of others, and drawing from a wealth of scholarship that includes the completed editions of his writings and correspondence, Experiencing William James provides an invaluable, comprehensive view of James as he participates in and advances the pragmatic spirit that is at the core of American philosophy. Taking the whole of the man’s thinking into account, this book offers the richest perspective so far on this great but not fully comprehended intellectual.
Experiential and Performative Anthropology in the Classroom: Engaging the Legacy of Edith and Victor Turner
by Pamela R. Frese Susan BrownellThe contributors gathered here revitalize “ethnographic performance”—the performed recreation of ethnographic subject matter pioneered by Victor and Edith Turner and Richard Schechner—as a progressive pedagogy for the 21st century. They draw on their experiences in utilizing performances in a classroom setting to facilitate learning about the diversity of culture and ways of being in the world. The editors, themselves both students of Turner at the University of Virginia, and Richard Schechner share recollections of the Turners’ vision and set forth a humanistic pedagogical agenda for the future. A detailed appendix provides an implementation plan for ethnographic performances in the classroom.
Experiential Learning and Outdoor Education: Traditions of practice and philosophical perspectives
by Jim Parry Pete AllisonThis book adds to the theoretical development of the emerging fields of experiential learning and outdoor education by examining the central concept, 'experience', and interrogating a central claim of experiential learning: whether, and if so how, a short-term singular experience can transform a participant’s life as a whole and in a permanent way. While such a possibility has been corroborated by the personal testimonies of participants, and the activities of instructors over many years, the book argues that we must go beyond this kind of ‘evidence’. In comparing Anglophone and continental approaches and drawing on the work of Dewey, Dilthey and Merleau-Ponty in the philosophy of experience, Experiential Learning and Outdoor Education presents the first detailed review of the concept of ‘experience’ in European philosophy, as applied to outdoor experiential learning. A vital insight into the field, this is important reading for students and researchers working in the philosophy of sport, and pedagogical theory, especially in areas relating to the outdoors, but also to experiential education more generally.
Experiential Learning Design: Theoretical Foundations and Effective Principles
by Colin BeardExperiential Learning Design comprehensively demonstrates the key theories and applications for the design of experiential approaches to learning and training. Learning is gradually moving away from management and delivery of content, and toward experiences that encourage learners to engage and take greater responsibility for their own progress. This book’s empirically sound, multi-disciplinary approach balances technical-rational and artistic-intuitive design elements to accommodate the complex, fluctuating capacities of human learning. In-depth chapters cover design principles, social and environmental factors in learning, the importance of senses and emotions, and links between body and brain. This bold, unique perspective shift will enrich the work of learning scientists, instructional designers, educational technologists, and beyond.
Experiential Learning in Philosophy: Philosophy Without Walls (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy)
by Julinna Oxley Ramona IleaIn this volume, Julinna Oxley and Ramona Ilea bring together essays that examine and defend the use of experiential learning activities to teach philosophical terms, concepts, arguments, and practices. Experiential learning emphasizes the importance of student engagement outside the traditional classroom structure. Service learning, studying abroad, engaging in large-scale collaborative projects such as creating blogs, websites and videos, and practically applying knowledge in a reflective, creative and rigorous way are all forms of experiential learning. Taken together, the contributions to Experiential Learning in Philosophy argue that teaching philosophy is about doing philosophy with others. The book is divided into two sections: essays that engage in the philosophical debate about defining and implementing experiential learning, and essays that describe how to integrate experiential learning into the teaching of philosophy. Experiential Learning in Philosophy provides a timely reflection on best practices for teaching philosophical ideals and theories, an examination of the evolution of the discipline of philosophy and its adoption (or reclamation) of active modes of learning, and an anticipation of the ways in which pedagogical practices will continue to evolve in the 21st century.
Experiential Realism (Routledge Revivals)
by A.H. JohnsonExperiential Realism (1973) is the outline of a new philosophical system. It is an attempt to discuss the major ingredients found in the context of comprehensive human experience. This approach to mankind and its environment is descriptive rather than speculative. Since it is based on all the major aspects of human experience, it avoids the restrictive (and sometimes doctrinaire) approach to a few specific problems – a fault which mars much contemporary philosophy. This book considers in detail words, meaning, mind, physical objects, concepts, knowledge and values. It makes use of the many sound insights reported by philosophers, ancient, modern and contemporary, and indeed there is considerable kinship with A.N. Whitehead’s insights. It also offers an evaluation of representative philosophers in the context of comprehensive experience – thus placing Experiential Realism in perspective.
The Experiential Turn in Eighteenth-Century German Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy)
by Karin de Boer, Tinca Prunea-BretonnetThis collection of essays challenges the prevailing assumption that eighteenth-century German philosophy prior to Kant was largely defined by post-Leibnizian rationalism and, accordingly, a low esteem of the cognitive function of the senses. It does so by highlighting the various ways in which eighteenth-century German philosophers reconceived the notion and role of experience in their efforts to identify, defend, and contest the contribution of sensibility to disciplines such as metaphysics, theology, the natural sciences, psychology, and aesthetics. Engaging in depth with Tschirnhaus, Wolff, the Wolffians, eclecticism, Popularphilosophie, the Berlin Academy, Tetens, and Kant, its thirteen chapters present a more nuanced understanding of the German reception of British and French ideas and dismiss the prevailing view that German philosophy was largely isolated from European debates. Moreover, the book introduces a number of relatively unknown, but highly relevant philosophers and developments to non-specialized scholars and contributes to a better understanding of the richness and complexity of the German Enlightenment.
Experiment and Exploration: Forms of World-Disclosure
by Sönke AhrensThis book deals with contemporary epistemological questions, connecting Educational Philosophy with the field of Science- and Technology Studies. It can be understood as a draft of a general theory of world-disclosure, which is in its core a distinction between two forms of world-disclosure: experiment and exploration. These two forms have never been clearly distinguished before. The focus lies on the experimental form of world-disclosure, which is described in detail and in contrast to the explorational form along the line of twenty-one characteristics, which are mainly derived from empirical studies of experimental work in the field of natural sciences. It can also be understood as an attempt to integrate elements of the Anglo-Saxon Philosophy of Science with elements of the German tradition of Educational Philosophy. This is also reflected in the style of writing. In accordance to the content-level of the book, the argument for experimental forms of world-disclosure is written in an essayistic, readable style, which can be understood as an experimental form of writing. This book is a translation of the doctoral thesis 'Experiment und Exploration. Bildung als experimentelle Form der Welterschließung' (summa cum laude). The thesis was published in German in 2010 by Transcript (Bielefeld) in the series called 'Theorie Bilden', edited by Prof. Dr. Hannelore Faulstich-Wieland, Prof. Dr. Hans-Christoph Koller, Prof. Dr. Karl-Josef Pazzini and Prof. Dr. Michael Wimmer.
Experiment in Occupation: Witness to the Turnabout: Anti-Nazi War to Cold War, 1944–1946
by Arthur D. KahnAs a participant in many of the events he writes about in Experiment in Occupation, Arthur Kahn offers a richly detailed account of the process by which the fight against Nazism came to be transformed into the Cold War. His story reveals how those in the Military Government of Germany who were dedicated to carrying out the war aims promulgated by Roosevelt and Eisenhower for a thorough democratization of Germany were ultimately defeated in their confrontation with powerful elements in the Military Government and in Washington who were more intent upon launching a preemptive war against the Soviet Union than upon the eradication of Nazism and German militarism. A twenty-three-year-old OSS operative, Arthur Kahn was assigned after D-Day to a psychological warfare unit, where at first he supervised prisoner-of-war interrogations and then served as an editor of intelligence. Instructed to respond to requests from Supreme Headquarters, he drafted proposals for psychological warfare approaches to critical situations at the front only to discover that a SHAEF directive banned calls to the Germans to revolt. Subsequently Kahn served in liaison with the Soviets and during the Battle of the Bulge at Montgomery's British headquarters. For several months before and after VE Day he traveled through the American Zone as an intelligence investigator and wrote a report that led to the dismissal of General George S. Patton as Military Governor of Bavaria. Appointed Chief Editor of Intelligence of the Information Control Division, he produced the most influential intelligence weekly in the American Zone. Kahn's portrayal of events in postwar Germany provides warnings for current and future American experiments in foreign occupation.
Experiment, Speculation and Religion in Early Modern Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy)
by Alberto Vanzo Peter R. AnsteyExperimental philosophy was an exciting and extraordinarily successful development in the study of nature in the seventeenth century. Yet experimental philosophy was not without its critics and was far from the only natural philosophical method on the scene. In particular, experimental philosophy was contrasted with and set against speculative philosophy and, in some quarters, was accused of tending to irreligion. This volume brings together ten scholars of early modern philosophy, history and science in order to shed new light on the complex relations between experiment, speculation and religion in early modern Europe. The first six chapters of the book focus on the respective roles of experimental and speculative philosophy in individual seventeenth-century philosophers. They include Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Margaret Cavendish, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Isaac Newton. The next two chapters deal with the relation between experimental philosophy and religion with a special focus on hypotheses and natural religion. The penultimate chapter takes a broader European perspective and examines the paucity of concerns with religion among Italian natural philosophers of the period. Finally, the concluding chapter draws all these individuals and themes together to provide a critical appraisal of recent scholarship on experimental philosophy. This book is the first collection of essays on the subject of early modern experimental philosophy. It will appeal to scholars and students of early modern philosophy, science and religion.