Newton’s Modal Metaphysics and Polemics with Spinozism in the “General Scholium”

This chapter is devoted to explaining the nature and use of metaphysical necessity in Newton’s “General Scholium.” In particular, it focuses on Newton’s metaphysical commitments about (i) the nature of modality; (ii) the nature of formal causation; and (iii) God’s existence. In order to explain these, the chapter draws on Clarke and Clarke’s subsequent correspondence with Joseph Butler. In order to clarify some philosophical distinctions, I treat Toland’s Spinozism, in particular, as the target of some of Newton’s arguments. Along the way, I’ll provide suggestive evidence that Newton was in a decent position to distinguish the thought of Descartes from Spinozism

Postscript to Chapter 2

Despite grounding my views in a textual analysis of the Treatise, and an attempt to illuminate it in light of early criticism by Kochiras, my view has not generated consensus. In this postscript I engage with the most significant lines of criticism known to me in order to illuminate and improve upon my interpretation of Newton....

Newton’s Substance Monism, Distant Action, and the Nature of Newton’s Empiricism

This chapter is a critical response to Hylarie Kochiras’ (2009) “Gravity and Newton’s substance counting problem.” First, it argues that Kochiras conflates substances and beings; it proceeds to show that Newton is a substance monist. Second, it argues against the claim that Newton is committed to two speculative doctrines attributed to him by Kochiras and, earlier, Andrew Janiak—namely the passivity of matter and 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 nontrivial speculative commitments about the nature of matter and space.

The Posidonian Argument

*In this chapter I discuss the reception of a design argument by Cicero in the works of Holbach and Voltaire. This argument was directed against both the system of chance and the system of necessity. The chapter distinguishes three interpretations of this argument: (1) a prima facie interpretation; (2) a ‘neglected’ interpretation and (3) a ‘transcendental interpretation.’ It shows that in the early modern period Cicero’s argument was very widely discussed and its significance was not merely as a design argument; it connected scientific practice, even progress in science, to providential final causes. To show this I focus on Boyle and Locke before turning to Newton. In the final section, I return to Voltaire’s response to Holbach and show how Voltaire adapts the argument and uses Newton.

Without God

This chapter argues that when Newton drafted the first edition of the Principia in the mid-1680s, he thought that (at least a part of) the cause of gravity is the disposition inherent in any individual body, but that the force of gravity is the actualization of that disposition; a necessary condition for the actualization of the disposition is the actual obtaining of a relation between two bodies having the disposition. The cause of gravity is not essential to matter because God could have created matter without that disposition. Nevertheless, at least a part of the cause of gravity inheres in individual bodies and were there one body in the universe it would inhere in that body. The force of gravity is neither essential to matter nor inherent in matter, because it is the actualization of a shared disposition. We can distinguish among (i) accepting gravity as causally real, (ii) positing the cause(s) of the properties of gravity, (iii) making claims about the mechanism or medium by which gravity is transmitted.

Postscript to Chapter 7

Since chapter 7 first appeared, Katherine Brading has illuminated Newton’s philosophy of time in two important papers (Brading, 2017 and 2019). Readers may naturally wonder how I would respond to her criticism (Brading, 2017). Part of our disagreement is terminological and part is philosophical. Some of our differences are merely apparent, but a few are, perhaps, not. My interest here is to convey the significance of her approach and use it to develop my position; along the way I mark some of our possible disagreements over Newton’s metaphysics with the aim to make more precise how I understand Newton’s philosophy of time....

Newton’s Philosophy of Time

This chapter explains what Isaac Newton means with the phrase “absolute, true, and mathematical time” in order to discuss some of the philosophic issues that it gives rise to. It describes Newton’s thought in light of a number of scientific, technological, and metaphysical issues that arose in seventeenth‐century natural philosophy. The first section discusses some of the relevant context from the history of Galilean, mathematical natural philosophy, especially as exhibited by the work of Christiaan Huygens. The second section offers a close reading of what Newton says about time in the Principia’s Scholium to the definitions. It argues that Newton allows us to conceptually distinguish between “true” and “absolute” time from the vantage point of Newton’s dynamics. The third section, in the context of a brief account of Descartes’ views on time, discusses the material that Newton added to the second edition of the Principia in the General Scholium

Newton and Spinoza

This chapter investigates several arguments against Spinoza’s philosophy that were developed by Henry More, Samuel Clarke, and Colin Maclaurin. In the arguments More, Clarke, and Maclaurin aim to establish the existence of an immaterial and intelligent God precisely by showing that Spinoza does not have the resources to adequately explain the origin of motion. Attending to these criticisms grants us a deeper appreciation for how the authority derived from the empirical success of Newton's enterprise was used to settle debates within philosophy. The arguments by More and Clarke especially help to discern the anti‐Spinozism that can be detected in Newton's General Scholium (1713). Ultimately, the Newtonian criticisms of Spinoza offer us a more nuanced view of the problems that plague Spinoza's philosophy, and they also challenge the idea that Spinoza seamlessly fits into a progressive narrative about the scientific revolution.

On Reading Newton as an Epicurean

This chapter 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 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. Third, the chapter 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.

The Certainty, Modality, and Grounding of Newton’s Laws

Newton began his Principia with three Axiomata sive Leges Motu 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.