Regimens of the Mind

Contents

Acknowledgments

1 Francis Bacon and the Art of Direction

An art of tempering the mind

The distempered mind and the tree of knowledge

A comprehensive culture of the mind

The end of knowledge

The study of nature as regimen

2 Cultura and Medicina Animi: An Early Modern Tradition

The physician of the soul

Utility: practical versus speculative knowledge

Self-love and the fallen/uncultured mind

The office of reason

Passions, errors, and assent

The discipline, the virtues, and habituation

3 Virtuoso Discipline

The cure of the mind and Solomon’s House

Passions, errors, and method

Idols and diseases of the mind

Epistemic modesty

The way of inquiry

A “union of eyes and hands”: The community and objectivity revisited

4 Robert Boyle: Experience as Paideia

The limits and the “perfection” of reason

The weak mind and the virtues of a free inquiry

Reason and experience

The Christian philosopher

5 John Locke and the Education of the Mind

Limits of reason, useful knowledge, and the duty to search for truth

A natural history of the distempered mind

The regulation of assent: A perfecting exercise

The discourse with a friend

6 Studying Nature

Lived physics

The appropriateness of disproportion

Experience, history, and speculation

Affective cognition

7 Studying “God’s Contrivances”

The study of theology and the growth of the mind

Worlds and angels

Reading Scripture

List of Abbreviations