ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on technical contributions to the reform of philosophy. John Toland was committed to philosophy as a guide in life, and developed technical views in metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of science. Thomas Woolston was also sympathetic to philosophy in the sense of a rational view of the world, while Conyers Middleton, who identified himself as an Academic in the classical sense, was primarily interested in the philosophers of ancient Rome, although he had natural philosophy interests as well. Samuel Clarke overplayed the uses of Newton's natural philosophy for Christian apologetics in a way which yielded an implausible extensional immaterialism. Collins and Toland both grasped that Clarke's attempt to make natural philosophy serve Christian orthodoxy gave materialists an opportunity to advance their views. Herbert had been an advocate of Paracelsian medicine who defended a qualitative natural philosophy against the new science. Matthew Tindal also used natural philosophy in his theological disputes.
