{"id":2181,"date":"2012-03-19T16:00:03","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T04:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/?p=2181"},"modified":"2012-03-19T12:19:23","modified_gmt":"2012-03-19T00:19:23","slug":"hypotheses-and-newtons-epistemic-triad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/hypotheses-and-newtons-epistemic-triad\/","title":{"rendered":"Hypotheses and Newton&#8217;s Epistemic Triad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Kirsten Walsh writes&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Over the weekend, I participated in a conference on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philosophy.ugent.be\/newton\/program\" target=\"_blank\">\u2018Newton and his Reception\u2019<\/a>, at Ghent University.\u00a0 I presented a paper based on my idea that Newton is working with an \u2018epistemic triad\u2019.\u00a0 I had an excellent audience in Ghent, and received some very helpful feedback, but I\u2019d like to hear what you think\u2026<\/p>\n<p>To begin, what is Newton\u2019s \u2018epistemic triad\u2019?<\/p>\n<p>In his published work, Newton often makes statements about his purported method in order to justify his scientific claims.\u00a0 In these methodological statements, he contrasts things that have strong epistemic credentials with things that lack those credentials.\u00a0 Consider, for example, these passages from his early papers on optics:<\/p>\n<ul> For what I shall tell concerning them is not an Hypothesis but most rigid consequence, not conjectured by barely inferring \u2019tis thus because not otherwise or because it satisfies all Ph\u00e6nomena \u2026 but evinced by ye mediation of experiments concluding directly &amp; wthout any suspicion of doubt. (6 February 1672)<\/ul>\n<ul>I shall not mingle conjectures with certainties\u2026 (6 February 1672)<\/ul>\n<ul>To determine by experiments these &amp; such like Queries wch involve the propounded Theory seems the most proper &amp; direct way to a conclusion. (3 April 1673)<\/ul>\n<p>What these passages tell us is that Newton is making a distinction between <em>theories<\/em>, which are certain and experimentally confirmed, <em>hypotheses<\/em>, which are uncertain and speculative, and <em>queries<\/em>, which are not certain, but provide the proper means to establish the certainty of theories.\u00a0 I call this three-way division Newton\u2019s \u2018epistemic triad\u2019, and argue that this triad provides the framework for Newton\u2019s methodology.<\/p>\n<p>To support this argument, I defended the following three theses:<\/p>\n<p><em>Endurance thesis<\/em>.\u00a0 There are some general features of Newton\u2019s methodology that don\u2019t change.\u00a0 These are characterised by the framework of the epistemic triad.<\/p>\n<p><em>Developmental thesis.<\/em> There are some particular features of Newton\u2019s methodology that change over time.\u00a0 These can be characterised as a development of the epistemic triad.<\/p>\n<p><em>Contextual thesis.<\/em> There are some particular features of Newton\u2019s methodology that vary with respect to context (namely, mechanics versus optics).\u00a0 These can be characterised as an adaptation of the epistemic triad to particular contexts.<\/p>\n<p>The developmental and contextual theses are not news to most Newton scholars.\u00a0 It is commonly accepted that Newton\u2019s methodology changed in important ways over the course of his life, and that there are methodological differences between <em>Principia<\/em> and <em>Opticks<\/em>.\u00a0 The endurance thesis is more problematic, so I made a special effort to show that Newton\u2019s use of hypotheses is more consistent than we think.\u00a0 I argued that:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>In <em>Principia<\/em>, Newton appears to be working with the same implicit <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/2010\/10\/does-newton-feign-an-hypothesis\/\" target=\"_blank\">definition<\/a> of \u2018hypothesis\u2019 that he works with in his early optical papers; and<\/li>\n<li>Hypotheses perform similar methodological roles in all of Newton\u2019s natural philosophical work.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I need to do some more work to properly explicate this methodological role.\u00a0 But, to state it very broadly, Newton temporarily assumes hypotheses, which act as \u2018helping premises\u2019 in his inferences from phenomena.\u00a0 The fact that a statement may appear in Newton\u2019s writing as a hypothesis, and then reappear later in a query, rule of reasoning, or phenomenon, has convinced many Newton scholars that Newton is inconsistent in his use of hypotheses.  Against this conviction, I argue that Newton applies the label \u2018hypothesis\u2019 to things that perform a particular function, rather than to a particular claim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kirsten Walsh writes&#8230; Over the weekend, I participated in a conference on \u2018Newton and his Reception\u2019, at Ghent University.\u00a0 I presented a paper based on my idea that Newton is working with an \u2018epistemic triad\u2019.\u00a0 I had an excellent audience [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4582,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[274,227,237,224,238],"class_list":["post-2181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","tag-certainty","tag-history-of-science","tag-hypotheses-non-fingo","tag-newton","tag-queries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4582"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}