Silvia Manzo is Professor of Early Modern Philosophy at the National University of La Plata (UNLP, Argentina); Director of the Research Centre for Philosophy (CIeFi, UNLP); Research Scholar of the National Research Council (CONICET, Argentina); and Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (Germany). She is the author of books, journal articles, book chapters, and translations and has edited collective volumes, reference books sections, and journal issues on several topics and authors of European late-medieval, Renaissance, and early modern philosophy and science; historiography of philosophy; women philosophers; and 19th-century Argentinian and European philosophy.

• IntroductionBacon on nature and lawsMethodological considerationsSummary of the chaptersPart IChapter 1Background and Contexts of Bacon’s Natural Philosophy 1.1. The sources1.2. Natural philosophy and religion1.3. Natural philosophy and mythology1.4. Natural philosophy and law1.5. Active life and contemplative lifeChapter 2The History of Nature2.1. The stages of the history of nature2.2. The Holy Trinity in the history of nature2.3. Creation and God’s double emanation2.4. The tension between discord and concord2.5. The human species, fallen nature, and restorationChapter 3Necessity and Contingency in Nature and Human Life3.1. Determinism, divine providence, and fate3.2. Fate and causal necessity3.3. The ends of nature: particular and universal teleology3.4. God’s will and power and secondary causation3.5. Fortune in human life3.6. Chance, “epistemic chance”, and restorationChapter 4The Constitution of Matter: From Atoms to Latent Schematisms4.1. The constitution of matter and the principle of things4.2. Prime matter, prime form and secondary forms4.3. Atomic attributes4.4. The evolution of the stance towards atomism4.5. Latent schematisms4.6. Simple natures and latent schematismsChapter 5Motion5.1. Motion and change5.2. Motion and appetites5.3. Classifications of motion and rules of predominance5.4. Violent motion and the motion of liberty5.5. Place, rest and local motion5.6. The qualitative and quantitative approach of matter and motionChapter 6CosmologyPart IIChapter 7The Summary Law of Nature 7.1. The “highest generality of motion”7.2. The vertex of nature’s pyramid: unity and multiplicity7.3. The summary law of nature in the atomist writings7.4. The knowledge of the summary law of natureChapter 8The Maxims of Natural Philosophy, the Law of the Conservation of Matter and the Law of the Preservation of the Greater Whole 8.1. First philosophy8.2. Maxims of first philosophy and legal maxims8.3. Baconian induction, legal induction, and “anticipations”8.4. The law of the conservation of matter8.5. The law of the preservation of the greater whole8.6. Further maxims of natural philosophyChapter 9Forms9.1. The multiple meanings and the scope of Baconian forms9.2. Forms as essences and the question of convertibility9.3. “True difference”, “natura naturans”, and “source of emanation”9.4. Forms as laws of properties9.5. Forms as laws of science9.6. The theological background and normativity of formsChapter 10Customs of Nature10.1. Physical and metaphysical causes10.2. The epistemic critique of final causes10.3. Customs of nature and exceptions10.4. The legal background and the epistemological status of the customs of nature10.5. Artificial customs in human life10.6. Operative science: manipulating natural customsChapter 11Miracles from Nature to Art 11.1. Supernatural, natural, preternatural, and artificial11.2. Miracles of God: Are the laws of nature inviolable?11.3. Miracles of nature11.4. Two notions of preternatural and the exceptions to the customary paths of nature11.5. Miracles of art11.6. The limits and possibilities of artChapter 12The Nomological System and its Ontological, Epistemological and Historical Import12.1. A comparison of the nomological types12.2. The system12.3. Theology, jurisprudence and Bacon’s quasi-materialism12.4. The epistemological status of the laws, Bacon’s speculative philosophy and method12.5. The laws of nature in the seventeenth-century context12.6. The Baconian laws of nature in the seventeenth-century contextReference list