Locke on superaddition and mechanism

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volumn 6, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 351-379

  Stuart, Matthew ^a  

^a BOWDOIN COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949593590     PISSN: 09608788     EISSN: 14693526     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09608789808571002     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. 'Superadded Properties: The Limits of Mechanism in Locke', American Philosophical Quar- terly, April 1979. Wilson modifies some of the details of her interpretation in 'Superadded Properties: A Reply to M. R. Ayers', Philosophical Review, April 1982, and has recently made further changes in Ίn-Principle Intelligibility in Locke's Metaphysics', a paper read before the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, 1994
2. 'Mechanism, Superaddition, and the Proof of God's Existence in Locke's Essay', Philo- sophical Review, April 1981; Locke (London, Routledge, 1991, 2 vols.)
3. 'Lockean Mechanism', in A. J. Holland (ed.), Philosophy, Its History and Historiography (D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1985) pp. 209-31; 'Locke's Philosophy of Body', in V. Chappell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Locke (Cambridge University Press, 1994) pp. 56-88 (esp. §3)
4. Locke, vol. 2, pp. 153, 190
5. Locke, vol. 2, p. 153
6. 'Superadded Properties', p. 147
7. See my 'Locke's Geometrical Analogy', History of Philosophy Quarterly, October 1996, pp. 451-67
8. At IV.iii.24 (pp. 554-5), Locke describes ideas of the primary qualities of minute parts of matter as ideas we do not have, but which we are capable of having. For a discussion, see 'Locke's Geometrical Analogy', p. 456
9. In the General Scholium to the second edition of the Principia (1713), Newton forwards the view that God is literally spatially extended, and that the universe is the sensorium of God (though he says God perceives and understands in a manner completely incompre- hensible to us) (Newton's Principia, Cajori [ed.], (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1934, pp. 545-6). Immediately following this, Newton claims that the cause of gravity, what- ever it is, must be something which 'penetrates to the very centres of the sun and planets, without suffering the least diminution of its force', and which, 'operates not according to the quantity of the surfaces of the particles upon which it acts (as mechanical causes used to do), but according to the quantity of solid matter which they contain' (Newton, op. cit., pp. 546-7). God's substance penetrates the sun and planets, his omnipotence is undimin- ishable, and he is presumably capable of acting by non-mechanical means: clearly, the impli- cation is that God may be the 'active principle' responsible for gravitation. More support for the view that Newton was inclined to identify God as the immediate cause of gravita- tion can be found in the 'classical scholia' he wrote in the 1690's for a never-completed second Latin edition of the Principia (see J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, 'Newton and the Pipes of Pan', Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, December 1966, pp. 108-43), and in the following testimony from his friend and colleague, David Gregory: The plain truth is that he [Newton] believes God to be omnipresent in the literal sense; and that as we are sensible of objects when their images are brought home within the brain, so God must be sensible of everything... But if this way of proposing this his notion be too bold, he thinks of doing it thus: What cause did the Ancients assign of Gravity? He believes that they reckoned God the cause of it, nothing else, that is, no body being the cause, since every body is heavy [memorandum of 21 December, 1705, in W. Wiscock (ed.), David Gregory, Newton and Their Circle: Extracts from David Gregory's Memoranda 1677-1708 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 30]
10. James Axtell makes a strong case for Locke's authorship of the anonymous review, relying largely upon a set of Latin notes found among his papers. See his 'Locke's Review of the Principia', Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, December 1965, pp. 152-61, and 'Locke, Newton and the Two Cultures', in J Yolton (ed.), John Locke: Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 165-82
11. Edwards had attacked Locke's Reasonableness with the charge of Socinianism. The Socini- ans, or Unitarians, combined a commitment to biblicism with principles of rationalism and tolerance. This led them to reject the doctrines of the trinity and of Christ's divinity, and to draw a sharp distinction between the doctrines essential to Christianity and those over which disagreement was to be tolerated. Though he strenuously denied the epithet, Locke was inclined toward Socinianism at a time when it was illegal and widely viewed as an odious heresy. His keen interest in avoiding the charge of unorthodoxy is indicated by his apparent willingness to prevaricate in his defense: in the Second Vindication of the Rea- sonableness of Christianity (Works VII, p. 362), he claims never to have read a single page of Socinus or of the Socinian writer Schlichting, a claim which is highly dubious in light of the fact that at the time of his death his library contained 9 works by Socinus, 4 works by Schlichting, and a great many other Socinian and Unitarian tracts including The Racovian Catechism, Nye's Brief History of the Unitarians (1687), and works by John Bidle, the 'father of English Unitarianism' [see Harrison and Laslett (eds), The Library of John Locke, 2nd ed. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971)]. His commonplace books also contain notes and refer- ences to a number of Unitarian works [see H. J. MacLachlan's Socinianism in Seventeenth- Century England (Oxford University Press, 1951), pp. 325-7]
12. In the 1690's Burnet published three pamphlets criticizing the Essay's account of the foun- dations of morality, its defense of the possibility of thinking matter, and its repudiation of innate ideas. Locke made a public response to the first of these pamphlets (a brusque reply, noteworthy only for an egregious misprint: Locke writes of 'The Revelation of Life and Immorality [sic] by Jesus Christ'), but made none to the subsequent tracts. However, he did respond to Burnet's Third Remarks in the margins of his own copy. These marginalia were published by Noah Porter in the New Englander and Yale Review in 1887, when they were discovered in a collection purchased by Yale University. Porter's piece is reprinted in P. Shouls (ed.), Remarks Upon an Essay Concerning Humane Understanding: Five Tracts (New York, Garland, 1984)
13. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (hereafter CSM), vol. 1, trans, by Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985) pp. 240ff
14. 'Origin of Forms and Qualities' in Selected Philosophical Papers, p. 18
15. This is essentially the same as E. M. Curley's distinction between individual and sortal powers ('Locke, Boyle, and the Distinction Between Primary and Secondary Qualities', Philosophical Review, 1972, pp. 438-64), and Sydney Shoemaker's distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic powers ('Qualities and Qualia: What's in the Mind?' Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. L, Supplement, Fall 1990, p. 117)
16. 'Lockean Mechanism: A Comment', J. R. Milton, in A. J. Holland (ed.), Philosophy, Its History and Historiography (Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1985), p. 233
17. Locke's Works, vol. 10, p. 153
18. H. R. Fox Bourne, The Life of John Locke, 2 vols. (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1876), vol. 2, p. 499 n 2
19. The Correspondence of John Locke, E. S. de Beer (ed.) (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988), letter #3647