Was there an empirical movement in
mid-seventeenth century France?
Experiments in Jacques Rohaulťs Traité
de physique
Trevor McClaughlin (*)
A commonly held view of seventeenth century philosophy is that there emerged an identifiable English empirical (1) tradition, usually traced to Francis Bacon and John Locke, and a French
(*) School of History, Philosophy and Politics, Macquarie University, New South Wales 2109, Australie. (1) We shall define empiricism not as the doctrine which regards experience as the only source of knowledge but as the belief that experiments are one of the most important sources. For a provocative and stimulating account of English empiricism, see Steven Shapin & Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the air-pump (Princeton : Princeton Univ. Press, 1985). Rev. Hist. Sci., 1996, 49/4, 459-481
