Newton and the Mechanical Philosophy: Gravitation as the Balance of the Heavens

Abstract

We argue that Isaac Newton really is best understood as being in the tradition of the Mechanical Philosophy and, further, that Newton saw himself as being in this tradition. But the tradition as Newton understands it is not that of Robert Boyle and many others, for whom the Mechanical Philosophy was defined by contact action and a corpuscularean theory of matter. Instead, as we argue in this paper, Newton interpreted and extended the Mechanical Philosophy's slogan “matter and motion” in reference to the long and distinguished tradition of mixed mathematics and the study of simple machines.

Mechanical Philosophy: Science of Mechanics

“…And, apparently similar to Huygens, Newton saw no problem in extending this notion of a system to bodies that were not necessarily connected through material links. A "system" in this sense is what the "machine" from the science of mechanics had become by the end of the seventeenth century after successive steps of abstraction (first Torricelli introducing his principle as a more abstract characterization of the principle behind the operation of all mechanical machines; then Huygens showing how to use this principle to solve new problems by abstracting away the necessity of rigid connections between the weights; then Newton introducing his three laws as a still more abstract characterization of the underlying forces responsible for this behavior) (see also (Bertoloni Meli, 2010); see (Machamer, McGuire, & Kochiras, 2012) for a somewhat similar line of argument, but one that stresses continuity more than transformation). Formulated abstractly, Newton's notion of a physical system would not have been foreign to Huygens, but the latter strongly doubted whether there were good grounds to treat the solar system as such a system.…”

Mechanical Philosophy: Science of Mechanics

“…A "system" in this sense is what the "machine" from the science of mechanics had become by the end of the seventeenth century after successive steps of abstraction (first Torricelli introducing his principle as a more abstract characterization of the principle behind the operation of all mechanical machines; then Huygens showing how to use this principle to solve new problems by abstracting away the necessity of rigid connections between the weights; then Newton introducing his three laws as a still more abstract characterization of the underlying forces responsible for this behavior) (see also (Bertoloni Meli 2010); see (Machamer et al 2012) for a somewhat similar line of argument, but one that stresses continuity more than transformation).…”

Causal Language and the Structure of Force in Newton’sSystem of the World

“…Elsewhere, I suggest a broad conception of mechanical philosophies, one that allows Newton's natural philosophy to qualify, in virtue of taking something from the simple machine tradition, in his case, the mathematical approach, and using it toward natural philosophy's traditional goal of identifying causes-for Newton, forces. See Machamer et al (2012). constant. Some interpretive questions concern the implications of Descartes's technical concept of motion, which is a numerical quantity, the product of size and speed.…”