Locke's account of cohesion and its philosophical significance

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volumn 12, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 611-630

  Hill, James ^a  

^a CHARLES UNIVERSITY   (Czech Republic)

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EID: 62749139688     PISSN: 09608788     EISSN: 14693526     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0960878042000279297     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. E.II.xxiii.23-27.
2. Edwin McCann, 'Lockean Mechanism', in Locke: Oxford Readings in Philosophy, ed. Vere Chappell (Oxford University Press, 1998): 242-60, quoting 244.
3. Another commentator who takes this broad approach is Martha Brandt Bolton. In 'Locke, Leibniz, and the Logic of Mechanism', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 36:2 (April 1998): 189-213, she finds Locke to be saying 'it may not be unreasonable to think an explanation of the cohesion of the parts of matter, communication of motion, and gravitation might be possible in mechanistic terms' (ibid., p. 211).
4. All quoted in E.C. Millington, 'Theories of Cohesion in the Seventeenth Century', Annals of Science, 5 (1941-7): 253-69.
5. See especially Descartes's Principles of Philosophy, II section 55, but also sections 56-63. A selection from the Principles was included in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, ed. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch, vol. I. pp. 177-291. The complete translation, made by Valentine and Reese Miller, was published by Kluwer in 1991. I will refer, here and henceforth, to parts and sections, rather than page numbers, in order to avoid confusion.
6. Bernoulli took the explanation in terms of relative rest to be a tautology if ever there was one: see Dissertatio de Gravitate Aetheris (Amsterdam. 1683) 34-5.
7. See Principles, 11.37.
8. For Descartes's distinction between the opposition of rest and motion on the one hand and different directions of motion on the other see Principles, 11.44.
9. See Malebranche, The Search after Truth translated by T.M. Lennon and P.J. Olscamp (Cambridge University Press, 1997) VI, ii. 9, pp. 510-26.
10. Malebranche here drew on the explanation of rigidity that Descartes had offered at Principles, IV. 132.
11. Descartes explained why rigid bodies spring back when bent by arguing that the pores were compressed, causing the ether within them to 'push vigorously against the walls of these pores in order to restore them to their former figure'. Malebranche insisted that the cause of the rigidity of bodies must be the same as their resistance to breaking (which he associates with cohesion) since "in the end the force we use actually to break steel differs only insensibly from that by which it is bent to the point of almost breaking' (Malebranche, Recherche, p. 524).
12. Abrégé = ' Extrait d'un Livre Anglois...', Bibiiolheque Universelle et Hisforique, ed. J. Le Clerc (Amsterdam, 1688) vol. 8, pp. 49-142.
13. See p. 76. Locke owned a copy of De Gravitate Aetheris (see Harrison and Laslett, The Library of John Locke, Oxford University Press, 1971, entry 290) which he seems to have bought and studied during his stay in Holland.
14. The Vanity of Dogmatizing: Three Versions. Facsimiles, ed. Stephen Medcalf (Harvester, 1970). Locke read The Vanity soon after its publication (see Bodl. MSS Locke d.10, p. 99. and f.14, p. 90).
15. The Vanity, 16.
16. Principles, 11.54.
17. The link between the two sceptical themes is clear in Glanvill's dispute with Thomas White that ensued a few years after publication. White, in An Exclusion of Sceptieks (London. 1665), argues that the problem of infinite divisibility is not a real one since matter is a continuum 'whereof parts may be made, not wherein parts are' (ibid., 47), and without real parts there is also no need for any explanation of cohesion. Glanvill, in his response, agrees that the crux for both issues is the question of real parts, and attempts to show that such parts do indeed exist.
18. See Glanvill's Seire/i tuum nihil est (London. 1665) 41-7. Locke in the Essay would seem to be with Glanvill on this as he writes "tis altogether as intelligible to say. that a body is extended without parts, as that any thing thinks without being conscious of it...' (E.II.i.19).
19. This was included in Certain Physiological Essays (1661), which was read by Locke soon after publication
20. (see Milton, 'Locke at Oxford', in Locke's Philosophy: Content and Context, ed. G.A.J. Rogers (Oxford University Press. 1994) 29-47, p. 37). 'The History was a classic and widely read discussion that Bernoulli also referred to (see ibid., 57).
21. The Works of Robert Boyle, ed. Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis (Pickering and Chatto, 1999) II, p. 150.
22. Ibid
23. By Alexander in Meas, Qualities and Corpscles (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 76-7. He writes 'according to Boyle and most atomists, anything with dimensions is physically divisible only if there are empty spaces within it which can be penetrated by a dividing instrument. Anything without such spaces is physically indivisible or impenetrable' (ibid., p. 76). We should note that for Alexander cohesion and impenetrability come down to the same thing.
24. Locke, Drafts for the Essay, vol. 1, ed. Peter Nidditch and G.A. J. Rogers (Oxford University Press, 1990), Draft A. §15. p, 31. The same passage, with minor alterations, appeared in Draft B, §137, p. 256.
25. The discussions of solidity and cohesion are both contained in the chapter on solidity in Draft C, a chapter which comes considerably later than in the Essay. Instead of appearing as the fourth chapter of the second book (as it docs in the Essay) It appears as the twenty-first chapter, taking a place among the chapters on simple modes. Part of the discussion of cohesion, the criticism of Malebranche's ethereal solution to the problem, is also found in the chapter on substance (C.ll.xxvii.22).
26. Locke repeatedly draws a parallel with the question of how the soul thinks - see for example E.II.xxiii.24, where he writes 'tis as easie for him to have a clear Idea, how the Soul thinks, as how Body is extended.
27. Michael Avers has made this point - see his "Locke versus Aristotle on Natural Kinds', Journal of Philosophy (1981): 247-72.
28. Dcscartes's view that extension is 'a primitive notion' finds particularly explicit expression in his letter to Princess Elizabeth of 21 May 1643. Here extension is treated as the only primitive notion of body, entailing the notions of shape and motion. Primitive notions, Descartes writes, 'are as it were the patterns on the basis of which we form all our other conceptions': see The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, ed. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch and A. Kenny (Cambridge University Press, 1991), Vol. III: 218.
29. This is reflected in the index in the fourth edition of the Essay, where Locke referred to the discussion of cohesion in sections 23 and following as 'EXTENSION, Of Body incomprehensible' (Essay, p. 728).
30. One contemporary who recognized the kind of problem Locke was discussing was John Sergeant. Though Sergeant's own solution - involving a return to Aristotelian formal causes - was singularly unimpressive in Locke's eyes, Sergeant did understand that the problem involves 'a Difficulty of Knowing Extension' and he also saw the futility of searching for a non-circular physical, or mechanistic, cause since 'all those Qualities and Operations [of body] are subsequent to the Notion of Extension, and Grounded on it...' (See Solid Philosophy Asserted (London, 1697): 247-9, quoting p. 247). For Locke's response to Sergeant's 'solution' of the problem see Yolton, 'Locke's Unpublished Marginal Replies to John Sergeant", Journal of the History of Ideas, 12:4 (1951): 528-59.
31. McCann is again a proponent of this popular view as is clear from his enumeration of three theses he takes to constitute mechanism. His discussion of the second thesis implies that cohesion is the question of what 'glues' physically indivisible atoms together (see 'Locke's Philosophy of Body", in The Cambridge Companion to Locke ed. V. Chappell (Cambridge University Press. 1994): 56-88, p. 56)
32. Another classic statement of this understanding is found in James Gibson's Locke's Theory of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 1917): 99-100.
33. John Yolton also sees the problem of cohesion as an inter-paniculate one, writing that it is not just the observation of the particles that we lack, but understanding of 'that which ties' the insensible particles together: Yolton, 'The Science of Nature', in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. J. Yolton (Cambridge University Press, 1969): 183-93, see p. 189.
34. nd ed.) (Favard, 1992) tome II, chapters IX and X.
35. Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana (1654), reprint with introduction by Robert Kargon (Johnson, 1966): 104.
36. See C.II.xxi.9 (the passage reappears at E.II.xxiii.26), where Locke asks for an explanation of the 'consolidation of the parts of those Bonds'.
37. E.II.xxiii.22.
38. See E.II.xxiii.23, where Locke introduces the discussion of cohesion. If someone 'says he knows not how he thinks', Locke answers, "Neither knows he how he is extended; how the solid parts of Body are united, or cohere together to make Extension'.
39. E.II.xxiii.25.
40. R.S. Woolhouse argues that there has been a simple change of mind between Drafts A and B and the Essay. Locke has come to reject the mechanistic model of the earlier discussion, he argues in his Locke (University of Minnesota Press, 1983): 169. 1 take this analysis to be too simple: Locke still sees the possibility of a mechanistic explanation of the cohesion of macroscopic physical things, as I think he indicates in E.II.xxiii.26 by talking of 'a great, and yet unknown secret' (in connection with the cohesion of ice), the discovery of which is not unthinkable. Now, however, he is acutely aware of the new, foundational, problem that cannot be solved by mechanism. It is not a change of mind, so much as the addition of a deeper worry.
41. The Works of John Locke (London, 1823), vol. III: 465-6 (emphasis added).
42. E.II.xxiii.23.
43. E.IV.x.10. p. 624.6-7.
44. Sec for example Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis (1758), bk. III, § 410.
45. See Wilson, 'Superadded Properties: The Limits of Mechanism in Locke', American Philosophical Quarterly. 16:2(1979): 143-50.
46. 'Locke on Superaddition and Mechanism', British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 6: 3 (1998): 351-79, see p. 371. Incidentally, this quote suggests that Stuart interprets Locke's problem to be limited to intcr-particulatc relations since it is hard to see how the internal cohesion of the atom or particle can be 'a species of action at a distance'.
47. See for example E.IV.iii.6, p. 541.1-5 where Locke writes: 'It being, in respect of our Notions, not much more remote from our Comprehension to conceive, that GOD can, if he pleases, superadd to Matter a Faculty of Thinking, than that he should superadd to it another Substance, with a Faculty of Thinking....' If the quote from the Stillingfleet controversy talks of God 'joining" the parts of matter, which cannot be meant literally, God is not called upon just to connect atoms. That the problem extends to all matter becomes clear from the reference to every body 'having some bulk' in the same sentence.
48. E.II.xxiii.26,
49. As frequently noted, 'primary' had already been employed by Boyle in the phrase 'primary affections'. See The Origin of Forms and Qualities (1666), in Works, vol. 5, p. 317. Of course the term was also used in the Aristotelian tradition where the primary qualities were the qualities - hot, cold, dry and wet - predicated of the four elements.
50. See Lisa Downing, "The Status of Mechanism in Locke's Essay', Philosophical Review, 107:3, (July 1998): 381-414, sec p. 403.
51. The most recent - albeit rather eccentric - statement of this interpretation can be found in Thomas Lennon's The Battle of the Gods and Giants (Princeton University Press, 1993) (see especially chapter 6). Lennon's inventive and, at times, illuminating reading of Locke as a Gasscndist takes a distinctly reckless turn when it comes to solidity and cohesion. If 1 understand him correctly, Lennon treats solidity as the quality of atoms that gives rise to the extension of body as well as its other modes. This leads him to claim that solid atoms themselves are unextended (The Battle, p. 295), a claim which is, to my mind, a reductio ad absurdum of the 'solidity-as-principal-attribute' view. After all, Locke wrote that solidity is 'the Idea [that] belongs to Body, whereby we conceive it to fill space (E.II.iv.2). My remarks here on the view that solidity is the essence of body in Locke are necessarily brief, but 1 mean to treat the question in greater detail in a forthcoming article.