De Gravitatione Reconsidered: The Changing Significance of Empirical Evidence for Newton's Metaphysics of Space
Forthcoming in The Journal of the History of Philosophy. I argue that Isaac Newton's De Gravitatione should not be considered an authoritative expression of his thought about the metaphysics of space and its relation to physical inquiry. I establish the following narrative: In De Gravitatione (circa 1668--1684), Newton claimed he had direct experimental evidence for the work's central thesis: that space had ``its own manner of existing'' as an affection or emanative effect. In the 1710s, however, through the prodding of both Roger Cotes and G. W. Leibniz, he came to see that this evidence relied on assumptions that his own Principia rendered unjustifiable. Consequently, he (i) revised the conclusions he explicitly drew from the experimental evidence, (ii) rejected the idea that his spatial metaphysics was grounded in experimental evidence, and (iii) reassessed the epistemic status of key concepts in his metaphysics and natural philosophy. The narrative I explore shows not only that De Gravitatione did not constitute the metaphysical backdrop of the Principia as Newton ultimately understood it, but that it was the Principia itself that ultimately lead to the demise of key elements of De Gravitatione. I explore the implications of this narrative for Andrew Janiak's and Howards Stein's interpretations of Newton's metaphysics. |
From Kepler to Gibson
With Vicente Raja and Anthony Chemero. Forthcoming in Ecological Psychology. We argue that the idea of embodiment and certain strategies for carrying it out are interdisciplinary legacies of early modern science. The idea of embodiment is simple: to explain the behavior of bodies, we must understand them as unified wholes. Embodied approaches eschew explanations in terms of qualitative descriptions of the intrinsic properties and promote explanation in terms of interaction between bodies. This idea can be found in Kepler’s optics, Descartes’s physics, and Newton’s physico-mathematics. J.J. Gibson’s The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems is the culmination of this centuries-long embodiment movement. |
The Certainty, Modality, and Grounding of Newton's Laws
With Eric Schliesser. Forthcoming in The Monist. Special issue on "Laws of Nature," edited by Angela Breitenbach and Michela Massimi. Newton began his Principia with three Axiomata sive Leges Motus. We offer an interpretation of Newton’s dual label and investigate two tensions inherent in his account of laws. The first arises from the juxtaposition of Newton’s confidence in the certainty of his laws and his commitment to their variability and contingency. The second arises because Newton ascribes fundamental status both to the laws and to the bodies and forces they govern. We argue the first is resolvable, but the second is not. However, the second tension shows that Newton conceives laws as formal causes of bodies and forces. This neo-Aristotelian conception goes missing in Kantian accounts of laws, as well as accounts that stress laws’ grounding in powers and capacities. |
Newton's Regulae Philosophandi
Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Isaac Newton. Edited by Schliesser and Chris Smeenk. Oxford University Press. Newton’s Regulae philosophandi — the rules for reasoning in natural philosophy — are maxims of causal reasoning and induction. This chapter 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 only fallibly. Second, the rules make substantive ontological assumptions on which Newton’s argument in the Principia relies. Along the way, several standard interpretations of the rules are challenged. |
Newton and the Ideal of Exegetical Success
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A. 60 (2016): 82-87. Essay review of William Harper's Isaac Newton’s Scientific Method: Turning Data into Evidence about Gravity and Cosmology. William Harper’s excellent, difficult, and provocative book, winner of the 2014 Patrick Suppes Prize for Philosophy of Science, is by far the most detailed available account of Newton’s argument for universal gravitation in Book III of the Principia. It should be mandatory reading for philosophers interested in the relation of evidence to theory, as well as technically savvy historians of early modern physics. It should also be recommended to novices. Its chapters are mostly self-contained and its step-by-step approach make it a great companion for first time students of Newton’s System of the World. |
Hobbes on the Order of Sciences: A Partial Defense of the Mathematization Thesis
The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 54 (3): 312–332 Accounts of Hobbes’s ‘system’ of sciences oscillate between two extremes. On one extreme, the system is portrayed as wholly axiomatic-deductive, with state- craft being deduced in an unbroken chain from the principles of logic and rst philosophy. On the other, it is portrayed as rife with conceptual cracks and ssures, with Hobbes’s statements about its deductive structure amounting to mere window- dressing. This paper argues that a middle way is found by conceiving of Hobbes’s Elements of Philosophy on the model of a mixed-mathematical science, not the model provided by Euclid’s Elements of Geometry. I suggest that Hobbes is a test case for understanding early-modern system-construction more generally, as inspired by the structure of the applied mathematical sciences. This approach has the additional virtue of bolstering, in a novel way, the thesis that the transformation of philosophy in the long seventeenth century was heavily indebted to mathematics, a thesis that has increasingly come under attack in recent years. |
Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727)
Entry in 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 engaged with the work of Rene Descartes and G. W. Leibniz, and showed sensitivity to the work of John Locke, Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, and Henry More, to name just a few. In his time, Newton was not perceived as a scientific outsider, but as an active and knowledgeable participant in philosophical debates... |
Cotes’s Queries: Newton’s Empiricism and Conceptions of Matter
With Chris Smeenk. Amazon. Preprint. We investigate the relation of Newton's natural philosophy to his method of inquiry, as it concerns Newton’s ideas about the nature and measure of matter. We argue that a conflict between two conceptions of “quantity of matter” employed in a corollary to proposition III.6 illustrates a deeper conflict between Newton’s view of the nature of extended bodies and the concept of mass appropriate for the Principia. It illustrates Newton's deep struggles with the concepts appropriate for his physics and their empirical justification. |
Galileo's First New Science: The Science of Matter
Perspectives on Science 12 (3): 262-287 Although Galileo's struggle to mathematize the study of nature is well known and oft discussed, less discussed is the form this struggle takes in relation to his first new science, the science of the second day of the Discorsi. I argue that Galileo's first science ought to be understood as the science of matter—not, as it is usually understood, the science of the strength of materials. This formulation sheds light on the convoluted structure of the Discorsi's first day. It suggests that the day's meandering discussions of the continuum, infinity, the vacuum, and condensation and rarefaction establish that a formal treatment of the “eternal and necessary” properties of matter is possible; i.e., that matter as such can be considered mathematically. This would have been a necessary, and indeed revolutionary, preliminary to the mathematical science of the second day because matter itself was thought in the Aristotelian tradition to be responsible for the departure of natural bodies from the unchanging and thus mathematizable character of abstract objects. In addition, the first day establishes that when considered physically, these properties account for matter's force of cohesion and resistance to fracture. This essay closes by showing that this dual style of reasoning accords with the conceptual structure of mixed mathematics. |
Pendulums, Pedagogy, and Matter: Lessons from the Editing of Newton's Principia
With Chris Smeenk. Amazon. Although Galileo's struggle to mathematize the study of nature is well known and oft discussed, less discussed is the form this struggle takes in relation to his first new science, the science of the second day of the Discorsi. I argue that Galileo's first science ought to be understood as the science of matter—not, as it is usually understood, the science of the strength of materials. This formulation sheds light on the convoluted structure of the Discorsi's first day. It suggests that the day's meandering discussions of the continuum, infinity, the vacuum, and condensation and rarefaction establish that a formal treatment of the “eternal and necessary” properties of matter is possible; i.e., that matter as such can be considered mathematically. This would have been a necessary, and indeed revolutionary, preliminary to the mathematical science of the second day because matter itself was thought in the Aristotelian tradition to be responsible for the departure of natural bodies from the unchanging and thus mathematizable character of abstract objects. In addition, the first day establishes that when considered physically, these properties account for matter's force of cohesion and resistance to fracture. This essay closes by showing that this dual style of reasoning accords with the conceptual structure of mixed mathematics. Original article appeared in: Science & Education 13 (4-5): 309-320 |
Shorter articles, book reviews, etc. are omitted.