ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a different perspective on the relation between experimental philosophy and corpuscularism by focusing on Domenico Guglielmini's Philosophical Reflections derived from the Figures of Salts. It shows that a corpuscularist doctrine of principles was widely accepted among late seventeenth-century Italian novatores, although most practitioners refrained from highlighting it or defending it explicitly. The chapter describes corpuscularism as a view on explanatory natural philosophical principles, namely the view that physical phenomena should be explained in terms of the shape, size, and spatial arrangement of the particles that make up physical bodies, along with the motion of such particles according to the laws of nature. It explains main corpuscularist claim of the Reflections and its methodological preface that explicitly endorses experimental philosophy. Guglielmini's Reflections shows that corpuscularist theories can be in line with the methodological prescriptions, epistemological strictures, and preferred argumentative styles of experimental philosophers.
