Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 30, 2025

Virtual Hand with Ambiguous Movement between the Self and Other Origin: Sense of Ownership and 'Other-Produced' Agency
Published on: October 28, 2020
Animism and natural teleology from Avicenna to Boyle
1Box 216, Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany.
Abstract:
Historians have claimed that the two closely related concepts of animism and natural teleology were both decisively rejected in the Scientific Revolution. They tout Robert Boyle as an early modern warden against pre-modern animism. Discussing Avicenna, Aquinas, and Buridan, as well as Renaissance psychology, I instead suggest that teleology went through a slow and uneven process of rationalization. As Neoplatonic theology gained influence over Aristotelian natural philosophy, the meaning of animism likewise grew obscure. Boyle, as some historians have shown, exemplifies this uneven process. There is an unresolved tension between his religious convictions and the implicit animism of his empirical practice.
Related Concept Videos
Cognitivism
Previously dominated by behaviorism, which prioritized observable behaviors and largely ignored mental processes, psychology transformed in the 1950s. Cognitive psychologists argue that understanding how we think and process...
Natural and Artificial Concepts
Behaviorism
The core premise of behaviorism is its focus on observable behavior rather than internal thoughts or feelings. This approach argues that true scientific...
Reason and Intuition
Instinct Theory
Ethics and Bioethics

