Newton, the sensorium of God, and the cause of gravity (original) (raw)
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Isaac Newton on the action at a distance in gravity: With or without God?
The interpretation of Isaac Newton's texts has sparked controversy to this day. One of the most heated debates relates to the action between two bodies distant from each other (the gravitational attraction), and to what extent Newton involved God in this case. Practically, most of the papers discuss four types of gravitational attractions in the case of remote bodies: direct distance action as intrinsic property of bodies in epicurean sense; direct remote action divinely mediated by God; remote action mediated by a material ether; or remote action mediated by an immaterial ether. The purpose of this paper is to argue that Newton categorically rejected the types of direct action as the intrinsic property of bodies, and remote action mediated by a material ether. Concerning the other two types of action, direct through divine intervention and mediated through an immaterial environment, Newton has repeatedly stated that he does not know the exact cause of gravity, but in both cases, he has directly involved God, directly in the first case and as the primary cause (the environment/ether being the secondary cause) in immaterial mediated action. But since recognition of direct distance action could have given some credit to those who thought gravity could be essential to matter, and hence to atheism, Newton never openly acknowledged the possibility of such an idea. Keywords: Isaac Newton, action at a distance, God, gravity, gravity law, gravitation CONTENTS Abstract Introduction Principia Correspondence with Richard Bentley Queries in Opticks Conclusions Bibliography DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25823.92320
2012
Newton's development of an ontology of force, along with a mathematical treatment of natural phenomena, had vexed both historians and philosophers of science for decades. In dealing with such a dilemma, philosophers of science and Whig historians more often than not adopt a positivist stance which stresses Newton's agnosticism towards the causation of force, and highlight some sort of positivism in his natural philosophy, thus downplaying his ontological commitments to the conundrum of causation of force. On the other hand, contextualist historians tackle that puzzle by making use whether of Newton's alchemical studies or his metaphysics of nature founded upon a voluntaristic theology, in order to assert Newton's involvement in harmonizing his mathematical physics and natural philosophy within the framework of British natural philosophy. Notwithstanding this, Newton's philosophy of mathematics, and especially his ontology of mathematical entities, remains outside the sphere of interests for both historians and philosophers of science. The aim of this thesis is to rehearse an approach to the problem of Newton's ontology of force by analyzing his ontology of mathematical entities, as deployed in the Principia, within the framework of Newton's voluntarist theology. The purpose is that of showing that within Newton's own mathematical practice we are not required to mingle levels of his epistemological discourse with his ontological assumptions as it happens in the above-mentioned approaches. By means of this analysis, it is expected, additionally, to advance our understanding of Newton's acceptance of action at a distance based upon his notion of gravity force as a superadded quality.
Newton's Principia on God-mediated action
As John Henry states, Newton simply wants to reaffirm the truth of God's omnipresence without directly involving him in the physics of the world system. Newton simply wants to distance himself from a Cartesian concept of God and convince the atheists that God is a real presence extended in the world. God must exist in space for the space to exist, but God does not only act through contact. Henry believes that Andrew Janiak and Hylarie Kochiras give us a wrong picture of a Newton who believes in opportunism. Newton, Henry asserts, has always assumed that God acted through secondary causes: DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.35495.39846
Newton on God's Relation to Space and Time
Beginning with Berkeley and Leibniz, philosophers have been puzzled by the close yet ambivalent association in Newton's ontology between God and absolute space and time. The 1962 publication of Newton's highly philosophical manuscript De Gravitatione has enriched our understanding of his subtle, sometimes cryptic, remarks on the divine underpinnings of space and time in better-known published works. But it has certainly not produced a scholarly consensus about Newton's exact position. In fact, three distinct lines of interpretation have emerged: (1) Independence: space and time are not essentially related to God. (2) Causation: space and time are caused by God. (3) Assimilation: space and time are attributes of God. This paper defends the third interpretation against the first two by drawing out the under-appreciated influence of Descartes' metaphysics on Newton's 'physico-theology'.
Primary and Secondary Causation in Samuel Clarke's and Isaac Newton's Theories of Gravity
is best known to historians of science for presenting Isaac Newton's views to a wider audience, especially in his famous correspondence with G. W. Leibniz. Clarke's independent writings, however, reveal positions that do not derive from, and do not coincide with, Newton's. This essay compares Clarke's and Newton's ideas on the cause of gravity, with a view to clarifying our understanding of Newton's views. There is evidence to suggest that Newton believed God was directly responsible for gravity, and this interpretation has been promoted by a number of scholars. By comparing Newton's views with those of Clarke, however, it can be seen that Newton did not subscribe to the kind of occasionalist approach to gravity that Clarke developed. Clarke insisted that matter was categorically incapable of being endowed with powers or forces and that therefore what looks like gravitational attraction has to be performed directly by God or by angels. By comparing Clarke's pronouncements with Newton's, it becomes clear that Newton adopted the more standard line: that the first cause, God, operated in nature through secondary causes and that gravitational attraction was just such a secondary (albeit occult) cause.
About God in Newton's correspondence with Richard Bentley and Queries in Opticks
In Newton’s correspondence with Richard Bentley, Newton rejected the possibility of remote action, even though he accepted it in the Principia. Practically, Newton’s natural philosophy is indissolubly linked to his conception of God. The knowledge of God seems to be essentially immutable, unlike the laws of nature that can be subjected to refining, revision and rejection procedures. As Newton later states in Opticks, the cause of gravity is an active principle in matter, but this active principle is not an essential aspect of matter, but something that must have been added to matter by God, arguing in the same Query of Opticks even the need for divine intervention. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16732.44162
Without God: Gravity as a relational property of matter in Newton
2008
In this paper I interpret Newton's speculative treatment of gravity as a relational, accidental property of matter that arises through what Newton calls “the shared action” of two bodies of matter. In doing so, I expand and extend on a hint by Howard Stein. However, in developing the details of my interpretation I end up disagreeing with Stein's claim that for Newton a single body can generate a gravity/force field. I argue 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 ...
Isaac Newton, like many of his contemporaries, appears to have distinguished between the practice of divinity, founded on divine revelation, and philosophical considerations of God derived from the study of nature. This article evaluates these distinct modes of divine discourse through a close reading of the chymical content of Newton’s optical writings and his correspondence with Thomas Burnet regarding Genesis. Newton’s chymical exploration of divine activity in the natural world in Query 31 to the Opticks (1704) seems independent from Scripture in its physico-theological demonstration of God from natural phenomena and its divine metaphysical reliance on a priori concepts of God to establish principles of nature. Nonetheless, the sensorium analogy by which he explored divine agency in nature drew directly from the biblical doctrine of the imago Dei. Moreover, Newton used his chymical understanding of nature to access the natural philosophical realities behind the accommodated words of the Mosaic creation account.
By ye divine arm: God and substance in De gravitatione
Religious Studies
This article interprets Newton’s De gravitatione as presenting a reductive account of substance, on which divine and created substances are identified with their characteristic attributes, which are present in space. God is identical to the divine power to create, and mind to its characteristic power. Even bodies lack parts outside parts, for they are not constructed from regions of actual space, as some commentators suppose, but rather consist in powers alone, maintained in certain configurations by the divine will. This interpretation thus specifies Newton’s meaning when he writes that bodies subsist ‘through God alone’; yet bodies do qualify as substances, and divine providence does not extend so far as occasionalism.