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It is well known that during his pre-Critical period, Kant was a major proponent of Newtonian physics, for the project of the Universal Natural History explicitly uses “Newtonian principles” to explain the formation of the various bodies that constitute our solar system as well as those that lie beyond. What has not been widely noted, however, is that the early Kant also developed a major criticism of Newton, one that is based on subtle metaphysical issues pertaining to God, which are most at home in philosophical theology. Interestingly, this criticism is neither an inchoate precursor of his later criticisms of Newton’s account of absolute space, nor isolated to the abstract realm of metaphysics, but has a wide range of implications for the way in which a scientific account of the formation and constitution of the heavenly bodies ought to be developed, that is, for the kind of argument Newton offered in the Principia. That Kant remained interested in this set of issues later in his Critical period suggests that, alongside the revolutionary changes that comprise transcendental idealism, there are deep continuities not only in his Newtonian commitments, but in his anti-Newtonian tendencies as well.  相似文献   

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William Whiston was one of the first British converts to Newtonian physics and his 1696 New theory of the earth is the first full-length popularization of the natural philosophy of the Principia. Impressed with his young protégé, Newton paved the way for Whiston to succeed him as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1702. Already a leading Newtonian natural philosopher, Whiston also came to espouse Newton’s heretical antitrinitarianism in the middle of the first decade of the eighteenth century. In all, Whiston enjoyed twenty years of contact with Newton dating from 1694. Although they shared so much ideologically, the two men fell out when Whiston began to proclaim openly the heresy that Newton strove to conceal from the prying eyes of the public. This paper provides a full account of this crisis of publicity by outlining Whiston’s efforts to make both Newton’s natural philosophy and heterodox theology public through popular texts, broadsheets and coffee house lectures. Whiston’s attempts to draw Newton out through published hints and innuendos, combined with his very public religious crusade, rendered the erstwhile disciple a dangerous liability to the great man and helps explain Newton’s eventual break with him, along with his refusal to support Whiston’s nomination to the Royal Society. This study not only traces Whiston’s successes in preaching the gospel of Newton’s physics and theology, but demonstrates the ways in which Whiston, who resolutely refused to accept Newton’s epistemic distinction between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ forms of knowledge, transformed Newton’s grand programme into a singularly exoteric system and drove it into the public sphere.  相似文献   

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A striking feature of Newton’s thought is the very broad reach of his empiricism, potentially extending even to immaterial substances, including God, minds, and should one exist, a non-perceiving immaterial medium. Yet Newton is also drawn to certain metaphysical principles—most notably the principle that matter cannot act where it is not—and this second, rationalist feature of his thought is most pronounced in his struggle to discover ‘gravity’s cause’. The causal problem remains vexing, for he neither invokes primary causation, nor accepts action at a distance by locating active powers in matter. To the extent that he is drawn to metaphysical principles, then, the causal problem is that of discovering some non-perceiving immaterial medium. Yet Newton’s thought has a third striking feature, one with roots in the other two: he allows that substances of different kinds might simultaneously occupy the very same region of space. I elicit the implications of these three features. For Newton to insist upon all three would transform the causal question about gravity into an insoluble problem about apportioning active powers. More seriously, it would undermine his means of individuating substances, provoking what I call ‘Newton’s Substance Counting Problem’.  相似文献   

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In the 1720s the antiquary and Newtonian scholar Dr. William Stukeley (1687-1765) described his friend Isaac Newton as ‘the Great Restorer of True Philosophy’. Newton himself in his posthumously published Observations upon the prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733) predicted that the imminent fulfilment of Scripture prophecy would see ‘a recovery and re-establishment of the long-lost truth’. In this paper I examine the background to Newton’s interest in ancient philosophy and theology, and how it related to modern natural philosophical discovery. I look at the way in which the idea of a ‘long-lost truth’ interested others within Newton’s immediate circle, and in particular how it was carried forward by Stukeley’s researches into ancient British antiquities. I show how an interest in and respect for ancient philosophical knowledge remained strong within the first half of the eighteenth century.  相似文献   

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This paper is a critical response to Hylarie Kochiras’ “Gravity and Newton’s substance counting problem,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 40 (2009) 267-280. First, the paper argues that Kochiras conflates substances and beings; it proceeds to show that Newton is a substance monist. The paper argues that on methodological grounds Newton has adequate resources to respond to the metaphysical problems diagnosed by Kochiras. Second, the paper argues against the claim that Newton is committed to two speculative doctrines attributed to him by Kochiras and earlier Andrew Janiak: i) the passivity of matter and ii) the principle of local causation. Third, the paper argues that while Kochiras’ (and Janiak’s) arguments about Newton’s metaphysical commitments are mistaken, it qualifies the characterization of Newton as an extreme empiricist as defended by Howard Stein and Rob DiSalle. In particular, the paper shows that Newton’s empiricism was an intellectual and developmental achievement that built on non trivial speculative commitments about the nature of matter and space.  相似文献   

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Reid was a Newtonian and a Theist, but did he found his Theism on Newton’s physics? In opposition to commonplace assumptions about the role of Theism in Reid’s philosophy, my answer is no. Reid prefers to found his Theism on a priori reasons, rather than on physics. Reid’s understanding of physics as an empirical science stops it from contributing in any clear and efficient way to issues of natural theology. In addition, Reid is highly sceptical of our ability to discover the efficient and final causes of natural phenomena, knowledge of which is essential for natural theology. To bring out Reid’s differences with classical Newtonian Theists Richard Bentley and William Whiston, I examine their use of the law and force of general gravitation, and reconstruct what would be Reidian objections.  相似文献   

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This paper analyses the different ways in which Isaac Newton employed queries in his writings on natural philosophy. It is argued that queries were used in three different ways by Newton and that each of these uses is best understood against the background of the role that queries played in the Baconian method that was adopted by the leading experimenters of the early Royal Society. After a discussion of the role of queries in Francis Bacon’s natural historical method, Newton’s queries in his Trinity Notebook are shown to reveal the influence of his early reading in the new experimental philosophy. Then after a discussion of Robert Hooke’s view of the role of queries, the paper turns to an assessment of Newton’s correspondence and Opticks. It is argued that the queries in his correspondence with Oldenburg on his early optical experiments are closely tied to an experimental program, whereas the queries in the Opticks are more discursive and speculative, but that each of these uses of queries represents a significant Baconian legacy in his natural philosophical methodology.  相似文献   

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This paper examines the origin, range and meaning of the Principle of Action and Reaction in Kant’s mechanics. On the received view, it is a version of Newton’s Third Law. I argue that Kant meant his principle as foundation for a Leibnizian mechanics. To find a ‘Newtonian’ law of action and reaction, we must look to Kant’s ‘dynamics,’ or theory of matter.  相似文献   

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Kant’s transcendental method, as applied to natural philosophy, considers the laws of physics as conditions of the possibility of experience. A more modest transcendental project is to show how the laws of motion explicate the concepts of motion, force, and causal interaction, as conditions of the possibility of an objective account of nature. This paper argues that such a project is central to the natural philosophy of Newton, and explains some central aspects of the development of his thinking as he wrote the Principia. One guiding scientific aim was the dynamical analysis of any system of interacting bodies, and in particular our solar system; the transcendental question was, what are the conceptual prerequisites for such an analysis? More specifically, what are the conditions for determining “true motions” within such a system—for posing the question of “the frame of the system of the world” as an empirical question? A study of the development of Newton’s approach to these questions reveals surprising connections with his developing conceptions of force, causality, and the relativity of motion. It also illuminates the comparison between his use of the transcendental method and that of Euler and Kant.  相似文献   

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This paper explores the scientific sources behind Kant’s early dynamical theory of matter in 1755, with a focus on two main Kant’s writings: Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens and On Fire. The year 1755 has often been portrayed by Kantian scholars as a turning point in the intellectual career of the young Kant, with his much debated conversion to Newton. Via a careful analysis of some salient themes in the two aforementioned works, and a reconstruction of the scientific sources behind them, this paper shows Kant’s debt to an often overlooked scientific tradition, i.e. speculative Newtonian experimentalism. The paper argues that more than the Principia, it was the speculative experimentalism that goes from Newton’s Opticks to Herman Boerhaave’s Elementa chemiae via Stephen Hales’ Vegetable Staticks that played a central role in the elaboration of Kant’s early dynamical theory of matter in 1755.  相似文献   

13.
This paper considers Newton’s position on gravity’s cause, both conceptually and historically. With respect to the historical question, I argue that while Newton entertained various hypotheses about gravity’s cause, he never endorsed any of them, and in particular, his lack of confidence in the hypothesis of robust and unmediated distant action by matter is explained by an inclination toward certain metaphysical principles. The conceptual problem about gravity’s cause, which I identified earlier along with a deeper problem about individuating substances, is that a decisive conclusion is impossible unless certain speculative aspects of his empiricism are abandoned. In this paper, I situate those conceptual problems in Newton’s natural philosophy. They arise from ideas that push empiricism to potentially self-defeating limits, revealing the danger of allowing immaterial spirits any place in natural philosophy, especially spatially extended spirits supposed capable of co-occupying place with material bodies. Yet because their source ideas are speculative, Newton’s method ensures that these problems pose no threat to his rational mechanics or the profitable core of his empiricism. They are easily avoided by avoiding their source ideas, and when science emerges from natural philosophy, it does so with an ontology unencumbered by immaterial spirits.  相似文献   

14.
In this paper, I argue that recent debates about Newton’s attitude toward action at a distance have been hampered by a lack of conceptual clarity. To clarify the metaphysical background of the debates, I distinguish three kinds of causes within Newton’s work: mechanical, dynamical, and substantial causes. This threefold distinction enables us to recognize that although Newton clearly regards gravity as an impressed force that operates across vast distances, he denies that this commitment requires him to think that some substance acts at a distance on another substance. (Dynamical causation is distinct from substantial causation.) Newton’s denial of substantial action at a distance may strike his interpreters as questionable, so I provide an argument to show that it is in fact acceptable.  相似文献   

15.
Recently, some Newton scholars have argued that Newton is an empiricist about metaphysics—that ideally, he wants to let advances in physical theory resolve either some or all metaphysical issues. But while proponents of this interpretation are using ‘metaphysics’ in a very broad sense, to include the ‘principles that enable our knowledge of natural phenomena’, attention has thus far been focused on Newton’s approach to ontological, not epistemological or methodological, issues. In this essay, I therefore consider whether Newton wants to let physical theory bear on the very ‘principles that enable our knowledge’. By examining two kinds of argument in the Principia, I contend that Newton can be considered a methodological empiricist in a substantial respect. I also argue, however, that he cannot be a ‘radical empiricist’—that he does not and cannot convert all methodological issues into empirical issues.  相似文献   

16.
This paper argues for three distinct, albeit mutually illuminating theses: first it explains why well informed eighteenth-century thinkers, e.g., the pre-critical Immanuel Kant and Richard Bentley would have identified important aspects of Newton’s natural philosophy with (a species of modern) Epicureanism. Second, it explores how some significant changes to Newton’s Principia between the first (1687) and second (1713) editions can be explained in terms of attempts to reframe the Principia so that the charge of “Epicureanism” can be deflected. In order to account for this, the paper discusses the political and theological changes in the wake of the Glorious Revolution (1688); Bentley plays a non-trivial role in these matters. Third, the paper argues that there is an argument in Kant’s (1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens that undermines a key claim of Newton’s General Scholium that was used to discredit Spinozism by Clarke in A demonstration of the being and attributes of God.  相似文献   

17.
The acceptance of Newton’s ideas and Newtonianism in the early German Enlightenment is usually described as hesitant and slow. Two reasons help to explain this phenomenon. One is that those who might have adopted Newtonian arguments were critics of Wolffianism. These critics, however, drew on indigenous currents of thought, pre-dating the reception of Newton in Germany and independent of Newtonian science. The other reason is that the controversies between Wolffians and their critics focused on metaphysics. Newton’s reputation, however, was that of a mathematician, and one point, on which Wolffians and their opponents agreed, was that mathematics was of no use in the solution of metaphysical questions. The appeal to Newton as an authority in metaphysics, it was argued, was the fault of Newton’s over-zealous disciples in Britain, who tried to transform him from a mathematician into the author of a general philosophical system. It is often argued that the Berlin Academy after 1743 included a Newtonian group, but even there the reception of Newtonianism was selective. Philosophers such as Leonhard Euler were also reluctant to be labelled ‘Newtonians’, because this implied a dogmatic belief in Newton’s ideas. Only after the mid-eighteenth century is ‘Newtonianism’ increasingly accepted in the sense of a philosophical system.  相似文献   

18.
Historians have long sought putative connections between different areas of Newton’s scientific work, while recently scholars have argued that there were causal links between even more disparate fields of his intellectual activity. In this paper I take an opposite approach, and attempt to account for certain tensions in Newton’s ‘scientific’ work by examining his great sensitivity to the disciplinary divisions that both conditioned and facilitated his early investigations in science and mathematics. These momentous undertakings, exemplified by research that he wrote up in two separate notebooks, obey strict distinctions between approaches appropriate to both new and old ‘natural philosophy’ and those appropriate to the mixed mathematical sciences. He retained a fairly rigid demarcation between them until the early eighteenth century. At the same time as Newton presented the ‘mathematical principles’ of natural philosophy in his magnum opus of 1687, he remained equally committed to a separate and more private world or ontology that he publicly denigrated as hypothetical or conjectural. This is to say nothing of the worlds implicit in his work on mathematics and alchemy. He did not lurch from one overarching ontological commitment to the next (for example, moving tout court from radical aetherial explanations to strictly vacuist accounts) but instead simultaneously—and often radically—developed generically distinct concepts and ontologies that were appropriate to specific settings and locations (for example, private, qualitative, causal natural philosophy versus public quantitative mixed mathematics) as well as to relevant styles of argument. Accordingly I argue that the concepts used by Newton throughout his career were intimately bound up with these appropriate generic or quasi-disciplinary ‘structures’. His later efforts to bring together active principles, aethers and voids in various works were not failures that resulted from his ‘confusion’ but were bold attempts to meld together concepts or ontologies that belonged to distinct enquiries. His analysis could not be ‘coherent’ because the structures in which they appeared were fundamentally incompatible.  相似文献   

19.
In Proposition 10, Book 2 of the Principia, Newton applied his geometrical calculus and power series expansion to calculate motion in a resistive medium under the action of gravity. In the first edition of the Principia, however, he made an error in his treatment which lead to a faulty solution that was noticed by Johann Bernoulli and communicated to him while the second edition was already at the printer. This episode has been discussed in the past, and the source of Newton’s initial error, which Bernoulli was unable to find, has been clarified by Lagrange and is reviewed here. But there are also problems in Newton’s corrected version in the second edition of the Principia that have been ignored in the past, which are discussed in detail here.  相似文献   

20.
In this paper I deal with a neglected topic with respect to unification in Newton’s Principia. I will clarify Newton’s notion (as can be found in Newton’s utterances on unification) and practice of unification (its actual occurrence in his scientific work). In order to do so, I will use the recent theories on unification as tools of analysis (Kitcher, Salmon and Schurz). I will argue, after showing that neither Kitcher’s nor Schurz’s account aptly capture Newton’s notion and practice of unification, that Salmon’s later work is a good starting point for analysing this notion and its practice in the Principia. Finally, I will supplement Salmon’s account in order to answer the question at stake.  相似文献   

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