CFP: Theories of Mixture in the Early Modern Period

The Journal of Early Modern Studiesis seeking contributions for a special issue on   

Theories of Mixture in the Early Modern Period

JEMS Volume 4 Issue 1 (Spring 2015)   

Guest editor: Lucian Petrescu  

Deadline: 1st of October 2014 

Since Anneliese Maier’s study on the structure of material substance (1943), little has been done for the understanding of the ontology of mixture in historical context. Medieval authors have spent a large amount of effort trying to make sense of Aristotle’s theory of mixture and make it compatible with hylomorphism. Problems such as whether the elements are kept in the mixture or how is the form of the mixed body generated out of the four elements gave rise to extensive discussions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Maier thought that there was an irreducible incompatibility in Aristotelianism between the theory of mixture and hylomorphic theory and that this weakness of the system paved the way for the success of corpuscularianism in the seventeenth century. However, there are authors that successfully combined hylomorphism with corpuscularianism, while others rejected Aristotle’s theory of mixture without giving up hylomorphism and without adhering to corpuscularianism. We believe that a more careful historical picture should explore the many variations in the theories of mixture available in the early modern period in order to grasp the role that concepts of mixture played in the complex transition from hylomorphism to corpuscularianism.


For this special issue, we wish to extend Maier’s investigations into the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We seek papers on the theories of mixture developed in the early modern period and on their applications to the theory of elements, theories of matter and meteors or theories of living bodies. We especially welcome papers concerned with the reception of Aristotelian, stoic or medieval theories of mixture.

JEMS is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal of intellectual history, dedicated to the exploration of the interactions between philosophy, science and religion in Early Modern Europe. It aims to respond to the growing awareness within the scholarly community of an emerging new field of research that crosses the boundaries of the traditional disciplines and goes beyond received historiographical categories and concepts.

JEMS publishes high-quality articles reporting results of research in intellectual history, history of philosophy and history of early modern science, with a special interest in cross-disciplinary approaches. It furthermore aims to bring to the attention of the scholarly community as yet unexplored topics, which testify to the multiple intellectual exchanges and interactions between Eastern and Western Europe during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Please send your contribution by the 1st of October 2014 to [email protected].

JEMS is edited by the Research Centre “Foundations of Modern Thought”, University of Bucharest, and published and distributed by Zeta Books. The journal publishes papers in English or French. For further information on JEMS, please visit