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:

Dobre, Mihnea and Vida, Grigore. Cosmology and Mosaic Physics. A Critical Edition of Géraud de Cordemoy’s Lettre au R. P. Cossart. Turnhout: Brepols, 2025.

Co-editor of the volume Digital Humanities Synergies: Disciplines, Methods, and Applications. Eds. Anca Dinu, Madalina Chitez, Liviu Dinu  and Mihnea Dobre. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2025.

“Depicting Cartesian Cosmology in the Seventeenth Century.” In Cartesian Images. Depicting Natural Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century, eds. Mattia Mantovani and Davide Cellamare, Brill series Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy and Science, 2026.

“Digital Histories of Philosophy and Science: the Early Modern Period,” In Digital Humanities Synergies: Disciplines, Methods, and Applications. Eds. Anca Dinu, Madalina Chitez, Liviu Dinu  and Mihnea Dobre, pp. 207-217. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2025.

“Clerselier’s Programmatic Descartes.” Early Science and Medicine 30 (2–3): 273–281, 2025.

Selected published works:

“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]

“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)].

“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.