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Newton as Philosopher

New York: Cambridge University Press (2008)

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  1. Locke’s Metaphysics and Newtonian Metaphysics.Lisa Downing - 2014 - In Zvi Biener Eric Schliesser (ed.), Newton and Empiricism. New York: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 97-118.
    Locke’s metaphysical commitments are a matter of some controversy. Further controversy attends the issue of whether and how Locke adapts his views in order to accommodate the success of Newton’s Principia. The chapter lays out an interpretation of Locke’s commitments according to which Locke’s response to Newton on gravity does not require the positing of brute powers and is consistent with his core essentialism. The chapter raises the question of how the hypothesis concerning the creation of matter, alluded to at (...)
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  • Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation and Hume's Conception of Causality.Matias Slavov - 2013 - Philosophia Naturalis 50 (2):277-305.
    This article investigates the relationship between Hume’s causal philosophy and Newton ’s philosophy of nature. I claim that Newton ’s experimentalist methodology in gravity research is an important background for understanding Hume’s conception of causality: Hume sees the relation of cause and effect as not being founded on a priori reasoning, similar to the way that Newton criticized non - empirical hypotheses about the properties of gravity. However, according to Hume’s criteria of causal inference, the law of universal gravitation is (...)
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  • Newton's Principia.Chris Smeenk & Eric Schliesser - 2013 - In Jed Z. Buchwald & Robert Fox (eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of physics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 109-165.
    The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics brings together cutting-edge writing by more than twenty leading authorities on the history of physics from the seventeenth century to the present day. By presenting a wide diversity of studies in a single volume, it provides authoritative introductions to scholarly contributions that have tended to be dispersed in journals and books not easily accessible to the general reader. While the core thread remains the theories and experimental practices of physics, the Handbook contains (...)
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  • The Mechanical Philosophy and Newton’s Mechanical Force.Hylarie Kochiras - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (4):557-578.
    How does Newton approach the challenge of mechanizing gravity and, more broadly, natural philosophy? By adopting the simple machine tradition’s mathematical approach to a system’s co-varying parameters of change, he retains natural philosophy’s traditional goal while specifying it in a novel way as the search for impressed forces. He accordingly understands the physical world as a divinely created machine possessing intrinsically mathematical features, and mathematical methods as capable of identifying its real features. The gravitational force’s physical cause remains an outstanding (...)
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  • Causal Language and the Structure of Force in Newton’s System of the World.Hylarie Kochiras - 2013 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 3 (2):210-235.
    Although Newton carefully eschews questions about gravity’s causal basis in the published Principia, the original version of his masterwork’s third book contains some intriguing causal language. “These forces,” he writes, “arise from the universal nature of matter.” Such remarks seem to assert knowledge of gravity’s cause, even that matter is capable of robust and distant action. Some commentators defend that interpretation of the text—a text whose proper interpretation is important since Newton’s reasons for suppressing it strongly suggest that he continued (...)
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  • Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy in Descartes and Newton.Andrew Janiak - 2013 - Foundations of Science 18 (3):403-417.
    This paper compares Newton’s and Descartes’s conceptions of the complex relationship between physics and metaphysics.
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  • The mathematical form of measurement and the argument for Proposition I in Newton’s Principia.Katherine Dunlop - 2012 - Synthese 186 (1):191-229.
    Newton characterizes the reasoning of Principia Mathematica as geometrical. He emulates classical geometry by displaying, in diagrams, the objects of his reasoning and comparisons between them. Examination of Newton’s unpublished texts shows that Newton conceives geometry as the science of measurement. On this view, all measurement ultimately involves the literal juxtaposition—the putting-together in space—of the item to be measured with a measure, whose dimensions serve as the standard of reference, so that all quantity is ultimately related to spatial extension. I (...)
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  • Truth and Physics Education.Robert Keith Shaw - 2010 - Dissertation, University of Auckland
    This thesis develops a hermeneutic philosophy of science to provide insights into physics education. -/- Modernity cloaks the authentic character of modern physics whenever discoveries entertain us or we judge theory by its use. Those who justify physics education through an appeal to its utility, or who reject truth as an aspect of physics, relativists and constructivists, misunderstand the nature of physics. Demonstrations, not experiments, reveal the essence of physics as two characteristic engagements with truth. First, truth in its guise (...)
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  • Newton’s Neo-Platonic Ontology of Space.Edward Slowik - 2013 - Foundations of Science 18 (3):419-448.
    This paper investigates Newton’s ontology of space in order to determine its commitment, if any, to both Cambridge neo-Platonism, which posits an incorporeal basis for space, and substantivalism, which regards space as a form of substance or entity. A non-substantivalist interpretation of Newton’s theory has been famously championed by Howard Stein and Robert DiSalle, among others, while both Stein and the early work of J. E. McGuire have downplayed the influence of Cambridge neo-Platonism on various aspects of Newton’s own spatial (...)
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  • La crítica de Berkeley al cálculo de Newton.Mauricio Algalan - 2019 - CDMX: UNAM.
    Se buscará mostrar que las críticas de Berkeley son pertinentes al mostrar que Newton utiliza una justificación que se bása en: 1) La experiecia sensible y 2)En una noción de Dios como poder activo. Con respecto a 1) si bien se puede justificar un método con la experiencia sensible, este no dejara este ámbito y no es posible pasar a las matemáticas con este metodo. Con respecto a 2) Dios es una fuente de justificación posbile para la época, sin embargo (...)
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  • Logic, mathematics, physics: from a loose thread to the close link: Or what gravity is for both logic and mathematics rather than only for physics.Vasil Penchev - 2023 - Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravitation Ejournal 2 (52):1-82.
    Gravitation is interpreted to be an “ontomathematical” force or interaction rather than an only physical one. That approach restores Newton’s original design of universal gravitation in the framework of “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”, which allows for Einstein’s special and general relativity to be also reinterpreted ontomathematically. The entanglement theory of quantum gravitation is inherently involved also ontomathematically by virtue of the consideration of the qubit Hilbert space after entanglement as the Fourier counterpart of pseudo-Riemannian space. Gravitation can be (...)
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  • Revaluing Laws of Nature in Secularized Science.Eli I. Lichtenstein - 2022 - In Yemima Ben-Menahem (ed.), Rethinking the Concept of Law of Nature: Natural Order in the Light of Contemporary Science. Springer. pp. 347-377.
    Discovering laws of nature was a way to worship a law-giving God, during the Scientific Revolution. So why should we consider it worthwhile now, in our own more secularized science? For historical perspective, I examine two competing early modern theological traditions that related laws of nature to different divine attributes, and their secular legacy in views ranging from Kant and Nietzsche to Humean and ‘governing’ accounts in recent analytic metaphysics. Tracing these branching offshoots of ethically charged God-concepts sheds light on (...)
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  • Isaac Newton despre acțiunea mediată.Nicolae Sfetcu - manuscript
    Interpretarea textelor lui Isaac Newton a suscitat numeroase controverse, până în zilele noastre. Una din cele mai aprinse dezbateri este legată de acțiunea între două corpuri aflate la distanță unul de celălalt (atracția gravitațională), și în ce măsură Newton a implicat pe Dumnezeu în acest caz. Practic, majoritatea lucrărilor discută patru tipuri de atracții gravitaționale în cazul corpurilor aflate la distanță: acțiunea la distanță directă ca proprietate intrinsecă a corpurilor în sens epicurian; acțiunea la distanță directă mediată divin, de Dumnezeu; (...)
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  • Isaac Newton on the action at a distance in gravity: With or without God?Nicolae Sfetcu - 2019 - Bucharest, Romania: MultiMedia Publishing.
    The interpretation of Isaac Newton's texts has sparked controversy to this day. One of the most heated debates relates to the action between two bodies distant from each other (the gravitational attraction), and to what extent Newton involved God in this case. Practically, most of the papers discuss four types of gravitational attractions in the case of remote bodies: direct distance action as intrinsic property of bodies in epicurean sense; direct remote action divinely mediated by God; remote action mediated by (...)
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  • Between Du Châtelet’s Leibniz Exegesis and Kant’s Early Philosophy: A Study of Their Responses to the vis viva Controversy.Huaping Lu-Adler - 2018 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 21 (1):177-94.
    This paper examines Du Châtelet’s and Kant’s responses to the famous vis viva controversy – Du Châtelet in her Institutions Physiques (1742) and Kant in his debut, the Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1746–49). The Institutions was not only a highly influential contribution to the vis viva controversy, but also a pioneering attempt to integrate Leibnizian metaphysics and Newtonian physics. The young Kant’s evident knowledge of this work has led some to speculate about his indebtedness to her (...)
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  • Isaac Newton (1642–1727).Zvi Biener - 2017 - Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Isaac Newton is best known as a mathematician and physicist. He invented the calculus, discovered universal gravitation and made significant advances in theoretical and experimental optics. His master-work on gravitation, the Principia, is often hailed as the crowning achievement of the scientific revolution. His significance for philosophers, however, extends beyond the philosophical implications of his scientific discoveries. Newton was an able and subtle philosopher, working at a time when science was not yet recognized as an activity distinct from philosophy. He (...)
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  • A Note on the Quantum Mechanical Measurement Process.Michael Drieschner - 2013 - Philosophia Naturalis 50 (2):201-213.
    Traditionally one main emphasis of the quantum mechanical measurement theory is on the question how the pure state of the compound system 'measured system + measuring apparatus' is transformed into the 'mixture' of all possible results of that measurement, weighted with their probability: the so-called “disappearance of the interference terms”. It is argued in this note that in reality there is no such transformation, so that there is no need to account for such a transformation theoretically. _German_ Gewöhnlich liegt ein (...)
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  • Newton and Wolff: The Leibnizian reaction to the Principia, 1716-1763.Marius Stan - 2012 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (3):459-481.
    Newton rested his theory of mechanics on distinct metaphysical and epistemological foundations. After Leibniz's death in 1716, the Principia ran into sharp philosophical opposition from Christian Wolff and his disciples, who sought to subvert Newton's foundations or replace them with Leibnizian ideas. In what follows, I chronicle some of the Wolffians' reactions to Newton's notion of absolute space, his dynamical laws of motion, and his general theory of gravitation. I also touch on arguments advanced by Newton's Continental followers, such as (...)
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  • Mechanical philosophy: science of mechanics.Maarten Van Dyck - 2020 - Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences.
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  • Understanding Physics: ‘What?’, ‘Why?’, and ‘How?’.Mario Hubert - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-36.
    I want to combine two hitherto largely independent research projects, scientific understanding and mechanistic explanations. Understanding is not only achieved by answering why-questions, that is, by providing scientific explanations, but also by answering what-questions, that is, by providing what I call scientific descriptions. Based on this distinction, I develop three forms of understanding: understanding-what, understanding-why, and understanding-how. I argue that understanding-how is a particularly deep form of understanding, because it is based on mechanistic explanations, which answer why something happens in (...)
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  • Newton’s action at a distance – Different views.Sfetcu Nicolae - manuscript
    Different authors have attempted to clarify the aspects of remote action and God's involvement on the basis of textual investigations, mainly from the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, (Newton, 1999b) Newton's correspondence with Richard Bentley (1692/93), (Bentley 1693) and Queries that Newton introduced at the end of the Opticks book in the first three editions (between 1704 and 1721). (Newton 1952) DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.12870.11844/1.
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  • How the Ethiopian Changed His Skin.D. Selden - 2013 - Classical Antiquity 32 (2):322-377.
    Aksumite elites electively identified themselves as “black” in relation to the paler integument of other Mediterranean peoples. Prior to the fourth century CE, the proper noun Aithiopía referred to the area of northern Sudan. Aksum, however, deliberately appropriated the Greek term for its own geopolitical purposes, partly as a way to write itself both into the grand narratives of Graeco-Roman history, where “Ethiopians” recurrently figure as morally “blameless,” as well as—with their conversion to Christianity—into Old and New Testamental eschatologies that (...)
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  • Universal Gravitation and the (Un)Intelligibility of Natural Philosophy.Matias Slavov - 2019 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (1):129-157.
    This article centers on Hume’s position on the intelligibility of natural philosophy. To that end, the controversy surrounding universal gravitation shall be scrutinized. It is very well-known that Hume sides with the Newtonian experimentalist approach rather than with the Leibnizian demand for intelligibility. However, what is not clear is Hume’s overall position on the intelligibility of natural philosophy. It shall be argued that Hume declines Leibniz’s principle of intelligibility. However, Hume does not eschew intelligibility altogether; his concept of causation itself (...)
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  • Understanding (in) Newton’s Argument for Universal Gravitation.Steffen Ducheyne - 2009 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 40 (2):227-258.
    In this essay, I attempt to assess Henk de Regt and Dennis Dieks recent pragmatic and contextual account of scientific understanding on the basis of an important historical case-study: understanding in Newton’s theory of universal gravitation and Huygens’ reception of universal gravitation. It will be shown that de Regt and Dieks’ Criterion for the Intelligibility of a Theory (CIT), which stipulates that the appropriate combination of scientists’ skills and intelligibility-enhancing theoretical virtues is a condition for scientific understanding, is too strong. (...)
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  • (1 other version)Newton versus Leibniz: intransparency versus inconsistency.Karin Verelst - 2014 - Synthese 191 (13):2907-2940.
    In this paper I argue that inconsistencies in scientific theories may arise from the type of causality relation they—tacitly or explicitly—embody. All these seemingly different causality relations can be subsumed under a general strategy developed to defeat the paradoxes which inevitably occur in our experience of the real. With respect to this, scientific theories are just a subclass of the larger class of metaphysical theories, construed as theories that attempt to explain a (part of) the world consistently. All metaphysical theories (...)
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  • Newton on action at a distance and the cause of gravity.Steffen Ducheyne - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (1):154-159.
    In this discussion paper, I seek to challenge Hylarie Kochiras’ recent claims on Newton’s attitude towards action at a distance, which will be presented in Section 1. In doing so, I shall include the positions of Andrew Janiak and John Henry in my discussion and present my own tackle on the matter . Additionally, I seek to strengthen Kochiras’ argument that Newton sought to explain the cause of gravity in terms of secondary causation . I also provide some specification on (...)
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  • On usefulness of the useless: Philosophy as the consciousness of scientific knowledge.Carolina Laurenti, Carlos Eduardo Lopes & Jose Antonio Damasio Abib - 2020 - Behavior and Philosophy 48:91-108.
    This essay explores some possibilities brought by the question about philosophy’s utility for science. We point to some arguments in favor of the importance of philosophy for science in general and Behavior Analysis in particular. We argue that philosophy is the consciousness of science. Without philosophical consciousness, science incurs epistemological naiveties; it uncritically defends scientific neutrality; it risks turning into a mere technique in the service of ideologies that endangers science’s existence. As the philosophy of Behavior Analysis, Radical Behaviorism can (...)
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  • Newton's Regulae Philosophandi.Zvi Biener - 2018 - In Chris Smeenk & Eric Schliesser (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Isaac Newton. Oxford University Press.
    Newton’s Regulae philosophandi—the rules for reasoning in natural philosophy—are maxims of causal reasoning and induction. This essay reviews their significance for Newton’s method of inquiry, as well as their application to particular propositions within the Principia. Two main claims emerge. First, the rules are not only interrelated, they defend various facets of the same core idea: that nature is simple and orderly by divine decree, and that, consequently, human beings can be justified in inferring universal causes from limited phenomena, if (...)
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  • Isaac Newton despre acțiunea la distanță în gravitație - Cu sau fără Dumnezeu?Nicolae Sfetcu - 2018 - Bucharest, Romania: MultiMedia Publishing.
    Interpretarea textelor lui Isaac Newton a suscitat numeroase controverse, până în zilele noastre. Una din cele mai aprinse dezbateri este legată de acțiunea între două corpuri aflate la distanță unul de celălalt (atracția gravitațională), și în ce măsură Newton a implicat pe Dumnezeu în acest caz. Practic, majoritatea lucrărilor discută patru tipuri de atracții gravitaționale în cazul corpurilor aflate la distanță: acțiunea la distanță directă ca proprietate intrinsecă a corpurilor în sens epicurian; acțiunea la distanță directă mediată divin, de Dumnezeu; (...)
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  • EPR and the 'Passage' of Time.Friedel Weinert - 2013 - Philosophia Naturalis 50 (2):173-199.
    The essay revisits the puzzle of the ‘passage’ of time in relation to EPR-type measurements and asks what philosophical consequences can be drawn from them. Some argue that the lack of invariance of temporal order in the measurement of a space-like related EPR pair, under relativistic motion, casts serious doubts on the ‘reality’ of the lapse of time. Others argue thatcertain features of quantum mechanics establisha tensed theory of time – understood here as Possibilism or the growing block universe. The (...)
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  • Newton’s Empiricism and Metaphysics.Mary Domski - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (7):525-534.
    Commentators attempting to understand the empirical method that Isaac Newton applies in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687) are forced to grapple with the thorny issue of how to reconcile Newton's rejection of hypotheses with his appeal to absolute space. On the one hand, Newton claims that his experimental philosophy does not rely on claims that are assumed without empirical evidence, and on the other hand, Newton appeals to an absolute space that, by his own characterization, does not make (...)
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  • Clarke's Rejection of Superadded Gravity in the Clarke-Collins Correspondence.Lukas Wolf - 2019 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 36 (3):237-255.
    In the past, experts have disagreed about whether Samuel Clarke accepted the idea that gravity is a power superadded to matter by God. Most scholars now agree that Clarke did not support superaddition. But the argumentation employed by Clarke to reject superaddition has not been studied before in detail. In this paper, I explicate Clarke's argumentation by relating it to an important discussion about the possibility of superadded gravity in the Clarke-Collins correspondence. I examine Clarke's responses to Collins and draw (...)
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  • Between Old and New Teleology. Kant on Maupertuis’ Principle of Least Action.Rudolf Meer - 2022 - Open Philosophy 5 (1):265-280.
    In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant formulates teleological principles, or rather ideas, and explicates them referring to concrete examples of natural science such as chemistry, astronomy, biology, empirical psychology, and physical geography. Despite the increasing interest in the systematic relevance of the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and its importance for Kant’s conception of natural science, the numerous historical sources for the regulative use of reason have not yet been investigated. One that is very central is Maupertuis’ principle (...)
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  • Philosophy and science in Adam Smith’s ‘History of Astronomy’: A metaphysico-scientific view.Kwangsu Kim - 2017 - History of the Human Sciences 30 (3):107-130.
    This article casts light on the intimate relationship between metaphysics and science in Adam Smith’s thought. Understanding this relationship can help in resolving an enduring dispute or misreading concerning the status and role of natural theology and the ‘invisible hand’ doctrine. In Smith’s scientific realism, ontological issues are necessary prerequisites for scientific inquiry, and metaphysical ideas thus play an organizing and regulatory role. Smith also recognized the importance of scientifically informed metaphysics in science’s historical development. In this sense, for Smith, (...)
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  • Descartes on the limited usefulness of mathematics.Alan Nelson - 2019 - Synthese 196 (9):3483-3504.
    Descartes held that practicing mathematics was important for developing the mental faculties necessary for science and a virtuous life. Otherwise, he maintained that the proper uses of mathematics were extremely limited. This article discusses his reasons which include a theory of education, the metaphysics of matter, and a psychologistic theory of deductive reasoning. It is argued that these reasons cohere with his system of philosophy.
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  • Kant’s dynamical theory of matter in 1755, and its debt to speculative Newtonian experimentalism.Michela Massimi - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (4):525-543.
    This paper explores the scientific sources behind Kant’s early dynamic 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 (...)
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  • Newton and the mechanical philosophy: Gravitation as the balance of the heavens.Peter Machamer, J. E. Mcguire & Hylarie Kochiras - 2012 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (3):370-388.
    We argue that Isaac Newton really is best understood as being in the tradition of the Mechanical Philosophy and, further, that Newton saw himself as being in this tradition. But the tradition as Newton understands it is not that of Robert Boyle and many others, for whom the Mechanical Philosophy was defined by contact action and a corpuscularean theory of matter. Instead, as we argue in this paper, Newton interpreted and extended the Mechanical Philosophy's slogan “matter and motion” in reference (...)
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  • Deduction Versus Discourse: Newton and the Cosmic Phenomena. [REVIEW]Pierre Kerszberg - 2013 - Foundations of Science 18 (3):529-544.
    Deduction Versus Discourse: Newton and the Cosmic Phenomena Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-16 DOI 10.1007/s10699-011-9283-2 Authors Pierre Kerszberg, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France Journal Foundations of Science Online ISSN 1572-8471 Print ISSN 1233-1821.
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  • How Newton Solved the Mind-Body Problem.Geoffrey A. Gorham - 2011 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 28 (1):21-44.
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  • Newton and Descartes: Theology and natural philosophy.Andrew Janiak - 2012 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (3):414-435.
    Scholars have long recognized that Newton regarded Descartes as his principal philosophical interlocutor when composing the first edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687. The arguments in the Scholium on space and time, for instance, can profitably be interpreted as focusing on the conception of space and motion in part two of Descartes's Principles of Philosophy (1644). What is less well known, however, is that this Cartesian conception, along with Descartes's attempt to avoid Galileo's fate in 1633, serves as (...)
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  • God and the natural world in the seventeenth century: Space, time, and causality.Geoffrey Gorham - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (5):859-872.
    The employment by seventeenth-century natural philosophers of stock theological notions like creation, immensity, and eternity in the articulation and justification of emerging physical programs disrupted a delicate but longstanding balance between transcendent and immanent conceptions of God. By playing a prominent (if not always leading) role in many of the major scientific developments of the period, God became more intimately involved with natural processes than at any time since antiquity. In this discussion, I am particularly concerned with the causal and (...)
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  • On the Origins of the Philosophy of Thought Experiments: The Forerun.Yiftach Fehige & Michael T. Stuart - 2014 - Perspectives on Science 22 (2):179-220.
    Philosophical debate about the nature and function of thought experiments would be impoverished without good historical sources. And while valuable work is being done on the history of thought experiments, a comprehensive discussion of the history of philosophical investigation into thought experiments is still absent in the literature (but see Kühne 2005; Moue et al. 2006). In what follows we take the first steps towards providing a more complete picture of the diverse attempts to shed light on thought experiments.The term (...)
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  • Newton and Proclus: Geometry, imagination, and knowing space.Mary Domski - 2012 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (3):389-413.
    I aim to clarify the argument for space that Newton presents in De Gravitatione (composed prior to 1687) by putting Newton's remarks into conversation with the account of geometrical knowledge found in Proclus's Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements (ca. 450). What I highlight is that both Newton and Proclus adopt an epistemic progression (or “order of knowing”) according to which geometrical knowledge necessarily precedes our knowledge of metaphysical truths concerning the ontological state of affairs. As I argue, (...)
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  • Newton for philosophers: Andrew Janiak and Eric Schliesser : Interpreting Newton: Critical essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 439pp, £70.00/$120.00 HB, £27.99/$49.99 pb.Tamás Demeter - 2013 - Metascience 23 (2):249-253.
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  • John Locke, ‘Hobbist’: of sleeping souls and thinking matter.Liam P. Dempsey - 2017 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47 (4):454-476.
    In this paper, I consider Isaac Newton’s fevered accusation that John Locke is a ‘Hobbist.’ I suggest a number of ways in which Locke’s account of the mind–body relation could plausibly be construed as Hobbesian. Whereas Newton conceives of the human mind as an immaterial substance and venerates it as a finite image of the Divine Mind, I argue that Locke utterly deflates the religious, ethical, and metaphysical significance of an immaterial soul. Even stronger, I contend that there is good (...)
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  • Before the Two Cultures: Merging the Canons of the History of Science and Philosophy.Tamás Demeter - 2015 - Metaphilosophy 46 (3):344-363.
    This article argues that early modern philosophy should be seen as an integrated enterprise of moral and natural philosophy. Consequently, early modern moral and natural philosophy should be taught as intellectual enterprises that developed hand in hand. Further, the article argues that the unity of these two fields can be best introduced through methodological ideas. It illustrates these theses through a case study on Scottish Newtonianism, starting with visions concerning the unity of philosophy and then turning to a discussion of (...)
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  • On Newtonian Induction.Ori Belkind - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (4):677-697.
    This article examines Newton’s method of induction and its connection to methodological atomism. The article argues that Newton’s Rule III for the Study of Natural Philosophy is a criterion for isolating the primary qualities of the atomic parts; in other words, it interprets Rule III as a transductive inference. It is shown that both the standard inductive and invariance interpretations of Rule III can be subsumed under the transductive view, although the invariance criterion is reinterpreted; by qualities “that cannot be (...)
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  • (1 other version)In defense of Newtonian induction: Hume’s problem of induction and the universalization of primary qualities.Ori Belkind - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (1):14.
    This paper aims to advance two claims. First, it aims to show that Hume's argument against the rationality of induction is sound. However, I claim that the conclusion does not follow merely from the self-defeating attempts to justify the rule of induction, unlike traditional readings of the argument. Rather, the skeptical conclusion must also take into account Hume's argument that the secret powers that are present in bodies and give rise to sensible qualities are unknowable. The paper's second aim is (...)
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  • Newton’s action at a distance.Nicolae Sfetcu - manuscript
    Different authors have attempted to clarify the aspects of remote action and God's involvement on the basis of textual investigations, mainly from the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, (Newton, 1999b) Newton's correspondence with Richard Bentley (1692/93), (Bentley 1693) and Queries that Newton introduced at the end of the Opticks book in the first three editions (between 1704 and 1721). (Newton 1952).
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  • De Volder’s Cartesian Physics and Experimental Pedagogy.Tammy Nyden - 2013 - In Mihnea Dobre Tammy Nyden (ed.), Cartesian Empiricisms. Dordrecht: Springer.
    In 1675, Burchard de Volder (1643–1709) was the first professor to introduce the demonstration of experiment into a university physics course and built the Leiden Physics Theatre to accommodate this new pedagogy. When he requested the funds from the university to build the facility, he claimed that the performance of experiments would demonstrate the “truth and certainty” of the postulates of theoretical physics. Such a claim is interesting given de Volder’s lifelong commitment to Cartesian scientia. This chapter will examine de (...)
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