Publications

My publications cover topics related to the emergence of the modern science. I publish mostly in international peer-reviewed journals or collected volumes. Topics include Descartes’s philosophy, Cartesianism, the relation between metaphysics and physics in the early modern period, cosmology, the study of demarcation-boundaries between early modern disciplines, the experimental philosophy, the history of the scientific revolution, digital humanities approaches to the early modern period, and intellectual history. For a complete list of my works, please visit the Publications section of the website (copyright notice: links below provide access to the published material and full-reference to the sources. For timely dissemination of research results, a direct download link is provided at the end of each title; the documents are intended exclusively for academic use).

Recent publications/ forthcoming:

“Jacques Rohault on Medicine.” In Descartes and Medicine: Problems, Responses and Survival of a Cartesian Discipline, edited by Fabrizio Baldassarri. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 361-376, 2023.

Dobre, Mihnea and Bujor, Ioana (eds.). “Antoine Le Grand and Jacques Rohault: Le Grand and his Annotations to Rohault’s Treatise on Natural Philosophy.” Society and Politics, vol. 16/1 (31), 2022. [Open Access]

Book review “Defending Descartes in Brandenburg-Prussia: The University of Frankfurt an Der Oder in the Seventeenth Century, Written by Pietro Daniel Omodeo.” Early Science and Medicine 28, no. 2 (July 10, 2023): 251–255.

“Rohault’s Private Lessons on Cosmology,” chapter in the edited volume Descartes in the Classroom: Teaching Cartesian Philosophy in the Early Modern Age, eds. Davide Cellamare and Mattia Mantovani, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, pp. 456-476, 2022. [download (references)]

Co-editor of the volume Recent Advances in Digital Humanities: Romance Language Applications, Eds. Anca Dinu, Mădălina Chitez, Liviu Dinu and Mihnea Dobre. Berlin, Germany: Peter Lang, 2022.

Dobre, Mihnea; Babeș, Ovidiu and Bujor, Ioana. “Cartesian Visual Cosmology: Ways Towards a Digital Platform.” In Recent Advances in Digital Humanities: Romance Language Applications, Eds. Anca Dinu, Mădălina Chitez, Liviu Dinu and Mihnea Dobre. Berlin, Germany: Peter Lang, 2022. [download (first page and references)]

Dobre, Mihnea; Babeș, Ovidiu; Bujor, Ioana and Vida, Grigore. (2022). “Cartesian and Newtonian authors: a database” [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6923317.

Dobre, Mihnea; Babeș, Ovidiu; Bujor, Ioana and Vida, Grigore (eds.). “Jacques Rohault, Preface to the Traité de Physique. [download (references)] A critical edition and commentary of four early modern versions of Rohault’s preface.” Society and Politics, vol. 15/1 (29), 2021. [Open Access]

Cosmologia carteziană [Cartesian Cosmology; in Romanian], București: Editura Universității din București, 2021. [download (Table of contents and the References)].

Selected published works:

“Cartesian Cosmological Illustrations”. Virtual Exhibition. Cartesian Cosmological Illustrations, April 2020.

“Jacques Rohault’s Mathematical Physics”. HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 10 (2): 414-439, 2020. [download (first page and references)]

“Jacques Rohault and Cartesian Experimentalism.” In Nadler, Steven and Delphine Antoine-Mahut and Tad Schmaltz (eds.), Oxford Handbook to Descartes and Cartesianism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 388-401. [download (first page and references)]

“Henry More and William Petty: Revisiting an Early Modern Polemic,” Early Science and Medicine 23 (3), 2018: 244-264. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15733823-00233P03. [download (first page)]

Descartes and Early French Cartesianism: between metaphysics and physics, Zeta Books, Foundations of Modern Thought series, 2017. 

“Experimental Cartesianism and the Problem of Space.” In Vermeir, Koen and Jonathan Regier (eds.), Boundaries, Extents and Circulations - Space and Spatiality in Early Modern Natural Philosophy.   Dordrecht: Springer, 2016, pp. 153-178. [download]

Cartesian Empiricisms. Co-edited volume with Tammy Nyden. Dordrecht: Springer. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 31, 2013. [download (the Table of contents and Index)]

“Rohault’s Cartesian Physics.” In Dobre, Mihnea and Tammy Nyden (eds.), Cartesian Empiricisms, Springer Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 31. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013, pp. 203-226. [download]

“On Glass-Drops: a Case Study of the Interplay Between Experimentation and Explanation in Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy.” Journal of Early Modern Studies 2, 2013: 105-124. [download]

“Knowledge and Certainty in the Foundation of Cartesian Natural Philosophy”, Revue Roumaine de philosophie 57 (1), 2013: 95-110. [download]

“Cartesianism and Chymistry.” In Disciplines and Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Thought (a special issue of the journal Society and Politics, vol. 5, no. 2 (10), 2011), pp. 121-136. Open Access [download]

“Early Cartesianism and the Journal des Sçavans, 1665-1671” Studium, vol. 4, no. 4 (2011): 228-240. Open Access [download]

“The Vanishing Nature of Body in Descartes’s Natural Philosophy.” In Anstey, Peter and Dana Jalobeanu (eds.), Vanishing Matter and the Laws of Nature: Descartes and Beyond. London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 11-30. [download]

For the entire list, visit the Publications section.