Modern Space and Epistemology. The Relationships between Natural Philosophy, Physics and Metaphysics during the 17th and 18th Centuries

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to address the problem of the articulation between Natural Philosophy, Physics, Metaphysics and Epistemology in the Seventeenth and Eighteen Centuries academic debate. Our main goal in this sense is to highlight the fundamental shift for the development of the Western thought which consists in the re-­‐‑articulation of the relationships between, on the one hand, Natural Philosophy and Metaphysics in Scholastic thought and, on the other hand, Natural Philosophy (or Physics) and Epistemology in the birth of Modern thought. Our proposal is to understand this process as a consequence of the criticism concerning the foundation of reality which occurs for the Scholastic thought on the problem of location, that is, the explanation field hinged on the articulation of place and space, considered as concepts in the Scholasticism, leading Modern thought to take location as a central element of its reflection. Within this process, the space ceases to be constructed as a concept in Metaphisics, to be constructed, in modern Physics, as a real entity, and, after that, in modern Philosophy, as a pre-­‐‑conceptual fundament of knowledge, i.e. in an epistemological perspective.