Addresses the transformations of metaphysics as a discipline, the emergence of analytical mechanics, the diverging avenues of 18th-century Newtonianism, the body-mind problem, and philosophical principles of classification in the life sciences.

One. Seismic Vibrations in Metaphysics.- 1 Disciplinary Transformations in the Age of Newton: The Case of Metaphysics.- Two. Metaphysics and the Analytical Method.- 2 Leibniz’ Concept of Possible Worlds and the Analysis of Motion in Eighteenth-Century Physics.- 3 The Limits of Intelligibility: The Status of Physical Sciences in d’Alemberts Philosophy.- 4 Order of Nature and Orders of Science.- Three. Avenues of Newtonianism.- 5 Samuel Clarke’s Annotations in Jacques Rohault’s Traité de Physique, and How They Contributed to Popularising Newton’s Physics.- 6 Kant on Extension and Force: Critical Appropriations of Leibniz and Newton.- 7 Enlightenment Scotland’s Philosophico-Chemical Physics.- Four. Can Matter Think?.- 8 Materialistic Theories of Mind and Brain.- 9 Kant’s Second Paralogism in Context: The Critique of Pure Reason on Whether Matter Can Think.- Five. Metaphysics and Natural History.- 10 Natural or Artificial Systems? The Eighteenth-Century Controversy on Classification of Animals and Plants and its Philosophical Contexts.- Appendices.- 2 The Concepts of Immanuel Kant’s Natural Philosophy (1747–1780): A Database Rendering their Explicit and Implicit Networks.