Sophia Lecture by Professor Peter Anstey

Experimental Philosophy and the Origins of Empiricism

Abstract: In the 17th and 18th centuries many thinkers who studied nature called themselves experimental philosophers: they practised experimental philosophy, wrote books about experimental philosophy, and some universities, such as Cambridge, created chairs of experimental philosophy. There was even a Class of Experimental Philosophy in the Berlin Academy from the mid-1740s. Yet today, these very same thinkers are never called experimental philosophers; instead, they are classed as empiricists and are set against the so-called rationalists. This lecture tells the story of how this dramatic shift came about and why it is important to recover the historical category of experimental philosophy and to challenge, and even displace, the dominant historiography of early modern thought, namely the Rationalism and Empiricism distinction.

About the presenter

Peter Anstey is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. Before moving to Sydney, he was the inaugural Professor of Early Modern Philosophy at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He specialises in early modern philosophy with a focus on John Locke, Robert Boyle, Francis Bacon, and the French Philosophes of the Enlightenment period. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including John Locke and Natural Philosophy (Oxford, 2011) and Experimental Philosophy and the Origins of Empiricism (Cambridge, 2023, with Alberto Vanzo).