Newton and the reality of force

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Volumn 45, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 127-147

  Janiak, Andrew ^a  

^a DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950340321     PISSN: 00225053     EISSN: 15384586     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2007.0010     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. See the classic accounts in Mary Hesse, Forces and Fields: The Concept, of Action at a Distance in the History of Physics (London: Nelson, 1961),
2. and Richard S. Westfell, Force in Newton's Physics (New York: Wiley, 1971).
3. See also the following works by Ernan McMullin: Newton on Matter and Activity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978);
4. "The Explanation of Distant Action: Historical Notes" ["Distant Action"], in Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theory, ed. James Cushing and Ernan McMullin (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989);
5. and "The Origins of the Field Concept in Physics" ["Field Concept"], Physics in Perspective 4 (2002), 26.
6. For discussions of this point, see Alan Gabbey, "Force and Inertia in the Seventeenth Century: Descartes and Newton," in Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics, ed. Stephen Gaukroger (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980), 239;
7. Dana Densmore, "Cause and Hypothesis: Newton's Speculation about the Cause of Universal Gravitation," St. John's Review 45 (1999): 94-111;
8. Ernan McMullin, "The Impact of Newton's Principia on the Philosophy of Science," Philosophy of Science 68 (2001), 281;
9. and George Smith, "Comment on Ernan McMullin's 'The Impact of Newton's Principia on the Philosophy of Science'" ["Impact"], Philosophy of Science 68 (2001): 327-38.
10. See H.W. Turnbull, et al., ed., The Correspondence of Isaac Newton [Correspondence] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959-), vol. 3, 253-54.
11. Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica [Philosophiae Naturalis], ed. Alexandre Koyré and I. Bernard Cohen with Anne Whitman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), vol. 2, 764.
12. Roger Cotes, the insightful editor of the second (1713) edition of the Principia, understood the significance of Newton's contention that gravity really exists, repeating it in his explication of Newton's conception of the force of gravity in his editor's preface. He writes of gravity that it revera existere (Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis, vol. 1, 27).
13. Newton, Principia, 805.
14. See, for instance, the discussion in Howard Stein, "On Philosophy and Natural Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 18 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 195.
15. and George Smith, "The Methodology of the Principia" ["Mediodology"], in The Cambridge Companion to Newton [Cambridge Companion], ed. I. Bernard Cohen and George Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). However, there is at least one aspect of Newton's discussion of universal gravitation in Book III that intersects with the issues in this paper-see note 41 below for details.
16. See also the discussion in McMullin, "Distant Action," and in McMullin, "Field Concept," 22.
17. See the extensive discussion in I. Bernard Cohen, The Newtonian Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980).
18. See sections 110-16 of Clarke's fifth letter in G. W. Leibniz, Die Philosophischen Schriften [Philosophischen Schriften], ed. C. Gerhardt (Berlin: Weidmann, 1890), vol. 7: 437-38.
19. See sections 118-23 of Clarke's fifth letter in Leibniz, Philosophischen Schriften, vol. 7: 439-40.
20. See McMullin, "Impact" and "Field Concept."
21. See, for instance, McMullin, "Field Concept," 23.
22. G. W. Leibniz, Mathematische Schriften [Mathematische Schriften], ed. C. Gerhardt (Berlin: A. Asher, 1849-), vol. 6, 157;
23. Leibniz, Mathematische Schriften, vol. 1, 169.
24. For discussion, see Bertoloni Meli, Equivalence and Priority, 38-50.
25. Leibniz, Mathematische Schriften, vol. 6, 149;
26. On Newton's acceptance of the first two premises in Leibniz's argument, see De Gandt, Force and Geometry, 269-70.
27. and cf. also the illuminating discussion in Howard Stein, "Newton's Metaphysics," in Cambridge Companion: 256-307.
28. The literature on Newton's attitude toward hypotheses is voluminous. See the classic account in I. Bernard Cohen, "Newton's Conception of Hypotheses." Physis, rivista internazionale di storia della scienza 8 (1966): 163-84;
29. On the role of hypotheses in Cartesian natural philosophy, which is obviously relevant for understanding Newton's attitude toward them, see Desmond Clarke, Occult Powers and Hypotheses: Cartesian Natural Philosophy under Louis XIV (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
30. Turnbull, ed., Correspondence, vol. 3, 287.
31. For both quotes from Newton's letter, see Turnbull, ed., Correspondence, vol. 5, 300.
32. See Newton, Opticks, 350-52.
33. (The Standard English translation is Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, trans. Michael Friedman, in Kant, Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, ed. Henry Allison and Peter Heath [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002], which gives the Academy Edition page numbers in its margins.) The Cotes/ Kant objection obviously raises numerous issues that cannot be discussed within the confines of this paper.
34. For an illuminating discussion of these issues, see Michael Friedman, "Kant and Newton: Why Gravity is Essential to Matter," in Philosophical Perspectives on Newtonian Science, ed. Phillip Bricker and R. I. G. Hughes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990).
35. For broad discussions of Cartesian vortices that include the views of Leibniz and Huygens, see Alexandre Koyré, Newtonian Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965);
36. Eric Aiton, The Vortex Theory of Planetary Motions [Vortex Theory] (London: Macdonald, 1972);
37. see also the discussion in Aiton, Vortex Theory, 55-56.