In his Medicina mentis (1686/87; 2nd ed. 1695), Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus claims to have found an ‘intermediary path’ between a priori and a posteriori methods in natural philosophy—a three-step method of introspection, deduction, and experimentation. In this paper, I offer a systematic reconstruction of this method, showing how it was developed in the context of Tschirnhaus’s complex exchanges with Spinoza and Leibniz during the mid-1670s and early 1680s concerning an originally Cartesian problem, namely what I call ‘the problem of causal equivocity’, according to which a single effect can be explained a priori by a multitude of possible causes. Contrary to both Leibniz and Spinoza, Tschirnhaus’s three-step method proposed a distinctly non-metaphysical solution to this problem, in conformity with his ambition to develop an epistemological foundation for the conduct of experimental natural science.
Mogens Laerke (Thu,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: