An ICS book analyzes the concept of nature according to English iusnaturalism and its impact on Economics, science and politics today.
ICS researcher Mónica García-Salmones has analyzed works by English philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, Robert Boyle and John Locke.
08 | 06 | 2023
The Necessity of Nature. God, Science and Money in 17th English Law of Nature is the new book from the Chair Álvaro D'Ors del Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, published by Cambridge University Press in February 2023. Its author, the researcher Mónica García-Salmones, rediscovers the impact of natural law in the economic, scientific and political development of Modern Europe through the works of the English philosophers Thomas Hobbes, Robert Boyle and John Locke.
This publication reformulates the current understanding of the political theory of these authors as a reaction to the radical skepticism, neoplatonism and commercial spirit of the time. For the expert, it is core topic to understand what the English naturalists understood by nature and the foundational role that this concept played in their ideas on public law and, also, how the incipient Scientific Revolution transformed modern natural law and public law.
According to García-Salmones, the ideas of these English philosophers were decisive for the constitution of public law and the 'new science' in 17th century England. He considers that the natural and political sciences inherited from this period "have constituted a world structure based on natural law which, in turn, has again influenced and shaped our understanding of moral law and the modern Economics ."
Through a review of the notion of nature according to the English authors, the researcher aims to facilitate the approach of current problems core topic , such as the protection of nature or 'global greed' in contemporary finance, which derive from previous transformations of natural law in modernity.
In an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of modern natural law and its impact, García-Salmones analyzes concepts such as 'nature', 'Philosophy of nature' and 'science' in the hope of "bringing the methods of scientific thought and the forms of legal reasoning closer together," he says.
