The Mechanical Philosophy and Newton’s Mechanical Force

Abstract

How does Newton approach the challenge of mechanizing gravity and, more broadly, natural philosophy? By adopting the simple machine tradition’s mathematical approach to a system’s covarying parameters of change, he retains natural philosophy’s traditional goal while specifying it in a novel way as the search for impressed forces. He accordingly understands the physical world as a divinely created machine possessing intrinsically mathematical features and mathematical methods as capable of identifying its real features. The gravitational force’s physical cause remains an outstanding problem, however, as evidenced by Newton’s onetime reference to active principles as the “genuine principles of the mechanical philosophy.”

Mechanisms in sociology—a critical intervention

“…While mechanisms are older than modern science, most contemporary mechanistic philosophers and social scientists who entertain an understanding of mechanisms similar to the one a outlined above, associate themselves with the foundational thinkers of the scientific revolution like Hobbes, Descartes, Galileo, Boyle, Newton or Laplace, all of which proposed different version of a mechanical philosophy (see, e.g., Boas, 1952 ; Kuhn, 1996 ; Cook, 2001 ; Kochiras, 2013 ; Brown, 2023 ). Newton’s Principica Mathematica , for example, was an attempt to describe the physical world in mechanistic terms (though his concept of the force challenged parts of Descartes mechanical philosophy), and his rational mechanics reaffirmed the belief in a deterministic and mathematizable universe that could be understood as a complex machine operating according to fixed principles, a belief that had also been entertained by the aforementioned leading figures of the scientific revolution.…”

The Certainty, Modality, and Grounding of Newton’s Laws

“…anonymous referee for stressing this point. For further discussion, see Gabbey (1992), Bertoloni Meli (2006), and Kochiras (2013). We use 'mechanics' here to broadly denote the field of investigation concerned with projectile and pendular motion, as well as the five simple machines.…”

Universal Gravitation and the (Un)Intelligibility of Natural Philosophy

“…Still and all, the proportionality of masses and distance as depicted in the formula is the result of Newton's argument for LUG. 4 See also Kochiras (2013) for the status of mechanism in Newton. 5 This relates to the earlier point about forces not remaining in bodies, as they are external actions that cease after the actions themselves cease.…”

“…This does not exclude the possibility of Newton changing the standards of intelligibility (see Kochiras', position). Also, my interpretation does not rule out any reason for gravity's actions (the ether hypothesis in the Opticks , if successful, would render LUG intelligible).…”