CFP: Natural and Psychological Causality from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern World

Natural and Psychological Causality from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern World

Collected volume for the Routledge series Global Perspectives on the History of Natural Philosophy

Edited by Elena Baltuta and Yael Kedar

This collected volume explores how theories of causality were transmitted, transformed, and reinterpreted from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period, with particular attention to the interrelation between natural processes and the causal powers of the soul. It investigates how different scholarly traditions across the world understood, explained, and taught causal relationships in nature and how these accounts came into play in theories of the soul, its faculties, and its interaction with bodily and mental phenomena. The volume aims to shed light on the ways in which ideas about natural causation and psychological causation evolved through translation, commentary, and scholarly exchange. It examines how causal reasoning developed within natural philosophy, how central causal concepts were transferred and reinterpreted across cultural and linguistic contexts, and how intellectual traditions articulated the relation between natural causes and the soul’s efficacy. Particular attention is given to the methodological strategies employed to identify and explain causes in nature, in the soul, and in their interaction.

We welcome contributions that address these issues from a global and comparative perspective, including but not limited to studies of translations and commentaries on classical works, analyses of causal reasoning in natural philosophy and psychology, and investigations into cross-cultural debates about soul-body causation and the soul’s causal powers.

Contributions may engage with Greco-Roman, Arabic, Persian, Indian, Hebrew, Chinese, Spanish, and vernacular sources. Submissions that foreground interactions, influences, and dialogues between these traditions are especially welcome.

Submission guidelines and timeline


All contributions should be written in English and will undergo peer review. Authors are invited to submit an abstract of approximately 300 words by 31 May 2026, to the following email addresses: [email protected]; [email protected]. 
Full chapters should not exceed 9000 words, including notes and references, and are due by 31 July 2026.