Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant - Philosophy and Science in the Eighteenth Century

This addresses the transformations of metaphysics as a discipline, the emergence of analytical mechanics, the diverging avenues of 18th-century Newtonianism, the body-mind problem, and philosophical principles of classification in the life sciences. An appendix contains a critical edition and first translation into English of Newton's scholia from David Gregory's Estate on the Propositions IV through IX Book III of his Principia.


Wolfgang Lefèvre taught philosophy in connection with history of science at the Freie Universität Berlin. Since 1994 Senior Scholar and now Emeritus scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. His research is focused on the interrelations of technological and scientific knowledge in the early modern period. Recent publication: »Minerva meets Vulcan: Scientific and Technological Literature - 1450-1750 (2021).