"What to Do with the Mechanical Philosophy ?", in The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution, dir. D. Jalobeanu et D. Miller, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2022, p. 75–95.
Considering the descriptive and evaluative challenges which the category of the mechanical philosophy has encoutered, taking it at face value would be historically inadequate and philosophically naïve. Hence the questions that are addressed in this chapter : What To Do with the Mechanical Philosophy ? Does it have to be completely dropped ? And, if not, how is it to be used ? My stand is that this category captures something of the transformations that we put under the umbrella of the Scientific Revolution, but that it is not possible to treat it as a naturally given category. Rather, it needs a conceptual clarification and a historical specification.
