• DOI:10.1080/09608780801969100
Corpus ID: 170391487

Occasionalism and mechanism: Fontenelle's objections to malebranche

@article{Schmaltz2008OccasionalismAM,
  title={Occasionalism and mechanism: Fontenelle's objections to malebranche},
  author={Tad M. Schmaltz},
  journal={British Journal for the History of Philosophy},
  year={2008},
  volume={16},
  pages={293 - 313}
}

• Tad M. Schmaltz
• Published 2008
• Philosophy
• British Journal for the History of Philosophy

It is well known that the French Cartesian Nicolas Malebranche (1638– 1715) was both an occasionalist in metaphysics and a mechanist in physics. He consistently argued that God is the only true cause, and that all other putative causes serve merely as occasions for God to act. However, he also followed Descartes in ruling out any sort of action at a distance in the material world. For him, as for Descartes, all body–body interactions occur only by means of contact. In his Doutes sur le système… Expand

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