ABSTRACT
This chapter articulates and reconstructs some of the main reasons for and against, the various positions taken by seventeenth century philosophers on the question of the nature, location, and explanation of sensible qualities. It discusses the Aristotelian picture in opposition to which the new mechanists of the seventeenth century defined their theories of sensible qualities. The chapter explains how the new mechanists understood motion and rest, and how their views contrast with the corresponding Aristotelian picture. It also discusses the intellectual seeds of mechanism that lie in ancient Greek and Roman atomism. The chapter explores how some, but not all, of the new mechanists thought that primary qualities (motion, shape, size, position, texture) are ontologically distinct from secondary qualities. It outlines and evaluates the reasons for the primary-secondary quality distinction advanced by few of its influential proponents.
