{"id":4103,"date":"2016-07-05T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2016-07-05T00:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/?p=4103"},"modified":"2016-07-04T22:54:56","modified_gmt":"2016-07-04T10:54:56","slug":"locke-and-the-newtonian-achievement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/locke-and-the-newtonian-achievement\/","title":{"rendered":"Locke and the Newtonian Achievement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kirsten Walsh writes…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In the Principia<\/em>, Newton claimed to be doing experimental philosophy.\u00a0 Over my last three posts, I\u2019ve wondered whether we can interpret his so-called \u2018experimental philosophy\u2019 as Baconian.\u00a0 In the first two posts, I identified methodological similarities between Bacon and Newton: first, the use of crucial instances<\/a>; second, the use of Baconian induction<\/a>.\u00a0 In each case, I concluded that, without some sort of textual evidence clearly tying Newton\u2019s method to Bacon\u2019s, such similarities don\u2019t demonstrate influence.\u00a0 In my third post, I tried a different approach: I considered Mary Domski\u2019s claim that Newton\u2019s Principia<\/em> should be considered Baconian because members of the Royal Society recognised, and responded to, it as part of the Baconian tradition<\/a>.\u00a0 While Domski\u2019s argument was fruitful in helping us better to understand what\u2019s at stake in discussions of influence, I raised several concerns with her narrative.\u00a0 In this post, I shall address those concerns in more detail.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s focus on Domski\u2019s account of how Locke reacted to Newton\u2019s Principia<\/em>. \u00a0Domski argues that Locke regarded Newton\u2019s mathematical inference as the speculative step in the Baconian program.\u00a0 That is, building on a solid foundation of observation and experiment, Newton was employing mathematics to reveal forces and causes.\u00a0 In short, Domski suggests that we read Locke\u2019s Newton as a \u2018speculative naturalist\u2019 who employed mathematics in his search for natural causes.\u00a0 Last time, I expressed two concerns with this account.\u00a0 Firstly, \u2018speculative naturalist\u2019 looks like a contradiction in terms (I have discussed the concept of \u2018speculative experimental science\u2019 here<\/a>), and surely neither Locke nor Newton would have been comfortable with the label.\u00a0 Secondly, there\u2019s a difference between being part of the experimental tradition founded by Bacon, and being Baconian<\/em>.\u00a0 Domski\u2019s discussion of the reception of the Principia<\/em> establishes the former, but not necessarily the latter.<\/p>\n

We can get more traction on both of these concerns by considering Peter Anstey\u2019s<\/a> account of how the Principia <\/em>influenced Locke.\u00a0 Anstey argues that Newton\u2019s achievement forced Locke to revise his views on the role of principles in natural philosophy.\u00a0 In the Essay<\/em>, Locke offers a theory of demonstration\u2014the process by which one can reason from principles to certain truths via the agreement and disagreement of ideas.\u00a0 In the first edition, Locke argued that this method of reasoning was only possible in mathematics and moral philosophy, where one could reason from certain principles.\u00a0 Due to limitations of human intellect, such knowledge was not possible in natural philosophy.\u00a0 Instead, one needed to follow the Baconian method of natural history which provided, at best, probable truths.\u00a0 However, Anstey shows us that, by the late 1690s, Locke had revised his account of natural philosophy to admit demonstration from \u2018principles that matter of fact justifie\u2019 (that is, principles that were discovered by observation and experiment).<\/p>\n

I now draw your attention to two features of this account.\u00a0 Firstly, Newton\u2019s scientific achievement<\/em>\u2014his theory of universal gravitation\u2014as opposed to his successful development of a new natural philosophical method per se<\/em> forced Locke to revise his position on demonstration from principles.\u00a0 (A while ago, Currie and I<\/a> noted that this situation is to be expected, if we take the ESD seriously.)\u00a0 This feature should make us suspicious of Domski\u2019s claim that Newton\u2019s Principia<\/em> was taken to exemplify the speculative stage of Baconian natural philosophy.\u00a0 Locke did not see Newton\u2019s achievement as a system of speculative hypotheses, but as genuinely empirical<\/em> knowledge, demonstrated from principles that are justified by observation and experiment.\u00a0 Newton had not constructed a Baconian natural history, but nor had he constructed a speculative system.\u00a0 Rather, Locke recognised Newton\u2019s achievement as something akin to a mathematical result\u2014one which his epistemological story had better accommodate.\u00a0 This forced him to extend his theory of demonstration to natural philosophy.\u00a0 And so, by the late 1690s, we find passages like the following:<\/p>\n

\u201cin all sorts of reasoning, every single argument should be managed as a mathematical demonstration; the connection and dependence of ideas should be followed, till the mind is brought to the source on which it bottoms, and observes the coherence all along\u201d (Of the Conduct of the Understanding<\/em>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Secondly, Anstey emphasises that Locke didn\u2019t regard Newton\u2019s mathematico-experimental method as Baconian, but only as consistent with his, Locke\u2019s, theory of demonstration.\u00a0 (Anstey also claims that Locke never fully integrated the revisions required to his view of natural philosophy in the Essay<\/em>.)\u00a0 On this blog, we have suggested that, in the 18th<\/sup> century, a more mathematical experimental natural philosophy displaced the natural historical approach. \u00a0And Anstey has offered a sustained argument for this position here<\/a>.\u00a0 He argues that the break was not clean cut, but in the end in Britain mathematical experimental philosophy trumped experimental natural history.\u00a0 That this break was not clean cut helps to explain why experimental moral philosophers, such as Turnbull<\/a>, thought they were pursuing both a Baconian and a Newtonian project, and were quite comfortable with this.<\/p>\n

Notice that I\u2019ve shifted from the vexed question of the extent to which Bacon influenced Newton, to a perhaps more fruitful line of enquiry: how Newton influenced Locke and others. \u00a0This is no non sequitur<\/em>.\u00a0 The members of the Royal Society strove to understand Newton in their terms\u2014namely, in terms of Baconianism and the experimental philosophy. \u00a0Here, it seems that two conclusions confront us. \u00a0Firstly, we (again<\/a>) find that Newton was taken as legitimately developing <\/em>experimental philosophy by emphasising both the role of experimentally-established principles of natural philosophy and the capacity of mathematics to carry those principles forward.\u00a0 These aspects are, at best, underemphasised in Bacon and certainly missing from the Baconian experimental philosophy adopted by many members of the Royal Society. \u00a0Secondly, we see that Newton\u2019s influence on Locke was due, at least in part, to his scientific achievements. \u00a0Newton did not argue directly with Locke\u2019s epistemology or method, nor did Locke take Newton\u2019s methodology as a replacement for his own. \u00a0Rather, Locke took Newton\u2019s scientific success <\/em>as an example of demonstration from \u2018principles that matter of fact justifie\u2019.\u00a0 This, in turn, necessitated modifications of his own account.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kirsten Walsh writes… In the Principia, Newton claimed to be doing experimental philosophy.\u00a0 Over my last three posts, I\u2019ve wondered whether we can interpret his so-called \u2018experimental philosophy\u2019 as Baconian.\u00a0 In the first two posts, I identified methodological similarities between […]<\/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":[289,226,366,224],"class_list":["post-4103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","tag-baconian","tag-experimental-philosophy","tag-locke","tag-newton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4103","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=4103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}