Causation and laws of nature in early modern philosophy /

In this excellent book, Ott (Virginia Tech) covers a 100-year period ranging from Descartes' Meditations to Hume's Treatise, in which the scholastic conception of the natural world was supplanted by the mechanistic conception espoused by the new breed of scientists. Ott discusses the works of Descartes, Malebranche, Regis, Boyle, Locke, and Hume and highlights a running dispute between advocates of "bottom-up" and supporters of "top-down" accounts of causation and laws. The former, who attempt to preserve something of the scholastic notion of a substantial power, account for interactions between bodies in terms of their local properties. The latter, who co-opt the notion of a natural law at work in scholastic moral philosophy, account for interactions between bodies according to the laws of nature (which those objects are somehow or other constrained to obey). The book culminates in a novel interpretation of Hume, according to which his rejection of causal realism was a reaction to both positions. This book is written primarily for scholars interested in either modern natural philosophy or the historical roots of the contemporary controversies surrounding laws and causation. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and faculty/researchers. J. A. Waskan University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign