Katherine A. Brading
· Professor of PhilosophyVerifiedDuke University · Philosophy
Active 1999–2025
About
I am interested in theoretical physics read as a contribution to philosophy, and am currently working on a book project that re-tells history of philosophy from the late sixteenth century to the present day, with history of physics as an integral part of the story.
Research topics
- Computer Science
- Physics
- Mathematics
- Thermodynamics
- Engineering
- Mechanical engineering
- Philosophy
- Epistemology
- Sociology
- Meteorology
- Theoretical physics
- Quantum mechanics
- Geography
- Environmental science
- Geometry
Selected publications
Du Châtelet on the metaphysics and epistemology of time
British Journal for the History of Philosophy · 2025-10-13
article1st authorCorrespondingIn search of the historical Newton: on Part III of Dmitri Levitin’s <i>The Kingdom of Darkness</i>
History of European Ideas · 2025-02-03
article1st authorCorrespondingSearching for a new physics: Kant and Boscovich
2024-02-22
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract After 1750, Kant and Boscovich each offered a radically new way of constructing the spatially extended, impenetrable, mobile, and causally interacting bodies of a satisfactory philosophical physics. On the basis of their new accounts they sought to construct a philosophical mechanics that included a treatment of collisions. Chapter 6 assesses those efforts. It begins with the accounts of bodies offered by Kant and Boscovich, then turns to philosophical mechanics, in first Kant and then Boscovich. The authors conclude that their theories are transformative of the goals of physics in two specific respects, while simultaneously falling short when it comes to a philosophical mechanics of collisions.
Malebranche and the Cartesian foundations of natural philosophy
2024-02-22
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract The towering figure in early 18th century French philosophy is Malebranche. In Chapter 2, the authors investigate Malebranche’s struggles with Cartesian collision theory, and the debates that ensued. For Cartesian philosophers, the material world is a plenum and all change comes about through collisions. Malebranche rehabilitates and refurbishes the Cartesian program of combining impact mechanics and matter theory. Its tensions and explanatory difficulties caused long debates in France, which drew in key figures from abroad. By 1730, his program was thought to have failed at explaining descriptively how bodies act on each other. These findings are wholly new, and the authors explain their significance for philosophical mechanics.
2024-02-22
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract Bodies are everywhere, or so it seems: from pebbles to planets, tigers to tables, pine trees to people; animate and inanimate, natural and artificial, they populate the world, acting and interacting with one another. And they are the subject-matter of Newton’s laws of motion. At the beginning of the 18th century, physics was that branch of philosophy tasked with the study of body in general. In Chapter 1, the authors present the central theme of their book: the problem of bodies. They articulate the main analytical tools they use to address it, including “philosophical mechanics,” the framework within which they assess progress toward solving the problem of bodies. They give a chapter-by-chapter synopsis and preview their conclusion that the 18th century is fruitfully viewed as a golden era of philosophical mechanics.
Centaurus · 2024-01-01
articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding2024-02-22
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract Building on the preceding chapters, the authors widen their purview in Chapter 4 to introduce the central question of the book: the “problem of bodies.” They articulate it in its early 18th century philosophical context, and claim that its solution required philosophers to discharge four distinct tasks: Nature, Action, Evidence, and Principle. Success, they argue, requires a “philosophical mechanics.” They show the broader epistemological and metaphysical challenges at stake in the 1730s, and offer a first glimpse of an emerging tension between the two principal strands of research that comprise philosophical mechanics: physics (dominated by philosophers) and rational mechanics (dominated by mathematicians).
Building bodies: Euler and impressed force mechanics
2024-02-22
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract During the early decades of the 18th century, theorists working in rational mechanics came to terms with the insufficiency of Newton’s laws for treating the motions of extended bodies. After the 1730s, rational mechanics learned how to tackle the motion of extended bodies with internal constraints, such as rigidity and incompressibility. In Chapter 10, the authors investigate these developments in relation to the problem of bodies. The greatest advances were due to the Bernoullis, d’Alembert, and especially Euler. These figures relied on a dual idea: constraints are due to internal forces; and the balance laws for impressed external forces govern the actions of internal constraints as well. The upshot was a broad-scope mechanics in a specific formulation, due to Euler. The authors make clear the successes and limitations of Euler’s achievements, with respect to the problem of bodies.
2024-02-22
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingBeyond Newton and Leibniz: Bodies in collision
2024-02-22
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract In Chapter 3, the authors continue their investigation of early 18th century collision theory. Having studied the situation in France (in Chapter 2) they now turn their attention to Britain and Germany. The task of building a philosophical mechanics of collision was pursued in Britain after Newton by John Keill and Colin MacLaurin, among others. In Germany, in post-Leibnizian circles, it coalesced around collision theories devised by Jakob Hermann and Christian Wolff. Despite their differences, all ran into similar explanatory difficulties, as the authors show. The chapter demonstrates that, as of the 1730s, European natural philosophy regarded collision theory as the main locus for solving the problem of bodies, and no satisfactory solution was available.
Frequent coauthors
- 369 shared
Michela Massimi
- 369 shared
John Dupré
University of Exeter
- 366 shared
Chris Smeenk
University of Edinburgh
- 366 shared
Laura Ruetsche
- 365 shared
Gordon Belot
Cambridge University Press
- 365 shared
Michael Dickson
- 364 shared
Alan C. Love
- 364 shared
Thomas W. Polger
Awards & honors
- The Problem of Bodies from Newton to Kant Research Principal…
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