{"id":4259,"date":"2017-05-03T08:33:04","date_gmt":"2017-05-02T20:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/?p=4259"},"modified":"2017-05-02T18:23:11","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T06:23:11","slug":"vegetative-and-mechanical-processes-in-newtons-chymistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/vegetative-and-mechanical-processes-in-newtons-chymistry\/","title":{"rendered":"Vegetative and mechanical processes in Newton\u2019s Chymistry"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

In my last post<\/a>, I started thinking about the lesser-known aspects of Newton\u2019s work\u2014his chymistry, theology and Church history\u2014in order to learn more about his methodology. \u00a0In particular, I wondered what kinds of methodological continuity, if any, there are across his many projects. \u00a0In this post, I\u2019ll focus on a tract, now referred to as \u2018Of Natures obvious laws and processes in vegetation\u2019<\/a>, from Newton\u2019s alchemical corpus.\u00a0 Newton probably wrote this piece in 1672\u2014the year that he wrote his \u2018New Theory of Light and Colour\u2019<\/a>.\u00a0 The piece represents Newton\u2019s attempt to give a synopsis of his early alchemical reading and to come up with, essentially, a \u2018theory of everything\u2019.<\/p>\n

There is a great deal to interest us in this tract, including an early mechanical-\u00e6thereal theory of gravity and a discussion of the nature of God.\u00a0 But here, I\u2019ll focus on one idea: Newton\u2019s distinction between mechanical<\/em> processes and vegetative<\/em> processes.\u00a0 Where \u2018vegetation\u2019 is the generative process through which animals, plants and minerals grow, putrefy and regenerate themselves, \u2018mechanical\u2019 processes involve adding, subtracting and rearranging parts (described as \u201ca gross mechanical transposition of parts\u201d (5r)).\u00a0 Newton considers these processes to be exhaustive: \u201cNatures actions are either vegetable or purely mechanical\u201d (5r).<\/p>\n

Newton\u2019s discussion of this idea highlights several methodological continuities.\u00a0 I\u2019ll discuss two of them here.<\/p>\n

The first concerns the way Newton infers physical processes from observed phenomenal patterns.\u00a0 Drawing comparisons across the ‘three kingdoms of nature’\u2014animal, vegetable and mineral\u2014Newton notes that some metals grow, putrefy and regenerate within the Earth, much in the way that trees grow out of the earth, suggesting that some metals and minerals \u2018vegetate\u2019.\u00a0 In contrast, some salts and minerals appear to generate by the simple combining and arranging of parts.\u00a0 And so Newton proposes that there are two distinct processes at work in nature: vegetative and mechanical.\u00a0 The postulated distinction in turn guides further exploration of natural phenomena, enabling him to unify some patterns of generation and to differentiate others.\u00a0 The phenomena he explores go well beyond the initial cluster of metals and salts, eventually including organic life, heat and flame, and gravitation.\u00a0 And these phenomena, in turn, offer further clues about nature\u2019s hidden processes.\u00a0 In short, observed phenomena illuminate underlying processes, which, in turn, guide further exploration of phenomena.<\/p>\n

We see Newton engaging in similar inferential patterns in both the Principia<\/em> and the Opticks<\/em>.\u00a0 In the Principia<\/em>, from the observed Keplerian orbits of the planets, Newton infers the inverse-square centripetal force.\u00a0 The inverse-square force, in turn, guides Newton\u2019s exploration of other celestial phenomena, allowing him to calculate the motions of comets, the shapes of planets, and also to correct for perturbations of orbits.\u00a0 Similarly, in the Opticks<\/em>, from the phenomena of the unequal refraction of light, Newton infers the heterogeneity of white light.\u00a0 The heterogeneity of white light, in turn, guides Newton\u2019s exploration and theorising of other optical phenomena, including the colours of thin plates, thick plates and coloured fringes.\u00a0 In other words, this inferential feedback loop between phenomena and processes appears to be a standard feature of Newton\u2019s methodology.\u00a0 In Query 31 of his Opticks<\/em>, Newton describes this in terms of the joint methods of ‘analysis’ and ‘composition’.\u00a0 \u2018Of Natures obvious laws\u2019 might be considered an early manifestation of this method.<\/p>\n

A second feature worth considering is the way Newton operationalised the concept of vegetation in order to develop a quantitative test for such processes.\u00a0 The term \u2018vegetative\u2019 was familiar to those concerned with the study of life and vitalism, and Newton was happy to speculate on the nature of this process:<\/p>\n

The principles of her vegetable actions are noe other than the seeds or seminal vessels of things those are her onely agents, her fire, her soule, her life (5r).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But such a qualitative description of the process wasn\u2019t very helpful for establishing which phenomena were generated by which processes.\u00a0 Especially since, as he noted, some natural phenomenon might appear to have been generated through vegetative processes, but in fact be produced mechanically.\u00a0 The way to distinguish between the two kinds of effects was to analyse them\u2014i.e. break the entity down into its parts\u2014and then try to put it back together again.\u00a0 If the recomposition was successful, then this indicated mechanical processes, if it wasn\u2019t, then vegetative processes were operative.\u00a0 And so the methods of resolution and composition, or analysis and synthesis, provided him with a way of testing for vegetative processes.\u00a0 And thus \u2018vegetation\u2019 was effectively operationalised: the concept was defined through the operations which tested for it.<\/p>\n

We see Newton engaging in a similar practice in his study of interference phenomena.\u00a0 His hypothesis on the nature of light postulated a hypothetical cause for the observed pattern of coloured rings: an \u00e6thereal \u2018pulse\u2019.\u00a0 Operationalising the concept of a pulse gave Newton a unit of measurement and, eventually, a way of formalising and abstracting the explanation.\u00a0 I have argued<\/a> that Newton\u2019s hypotheses played sophisticated supporting roles in his optical investigations.\u00a0 The role performed by the hypothesis of vegetation in this alchemical tract, and the way Newton links it to observation and experiment, looks similarly rich and sophisticated.<\/p>\n

This feature helps me to say something more specific about, what I have termed, Newton\u2019s \u2018rhetorical style\u2019.\u00a0 As I have noticed in previous posts, Newton took familiar terms and stretched them to fit his methodology.\u00a0 It is well-known that he did this with physical concepts such as \u2018force\u2019 and \u2018mass\u2019, and I have shown, on this blog<\/a>, that he did this with methodological concepts such as \u2018query\u2019, \u2018hypothesis\u2019 and \u2018principle\u2019.\u00a0 Bill Newman<\/a> has demonstrated that Newton also borrowed the concepts of \u2018analysis\u2019, \u2018synthesis\u2019 and \u2018redintegration\u2019 from chymistry and adapted them to his optical work\u2014massaging them to fit his own needs.\u00a0 But Newton\u2019s use of \u2018vegetation\u2019 highlights a particular feature of his rhetorical style: Newton took common terms with imprecise, qualitative meanings and defined them in terms of methods which measure, quantify or detect certain processes.\u00a0 And so what was really innovative in this case wasn\u2019t that Newton used analysis and synthesis to investigate salts and metals, but rather, that he defined mechanical and vegetative processes in terms of that kind of intervention<\/em>.\u00a0 In other words, Newton\u2019s rhetorical style involved operationalising<\/em> concepts\u2014turning them into tools of measurement.<\/p>\n

I closed my last post by pointing out that Newton\u2019s efforts to pass off his published work as experimental philosophy may well have been politically motivated: by describing his work as \u2018experimental philosophy\u2019, he was signalling his commitment as much to the Royal Society as to observation- and experiment-based theorising.\u00a0 Newton\u2019s chymical papers were circulated much more privately and so, presumably, the same political motivations didn\u2019t apply.\u00a0 Moreover, Newton did not describe himself as an \u2018experimental philosopher\u2019 in his published work until 1713.\u00a0 So it is not surprising that we find no explicit mention of experimental philosophy or the methods of the Royal Society in this tract, which predates that explicit declaration by at least 40 years.\u00a0 However, the two features I\u2019ve identified highlight Newton\u2019s commitment to observation- and experiment-based theorising.\u00a0 That this commitment is evident, absent of any political pressure, suggests that it was genuine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kirsten Walsh writes… In my last post, I started thinking about the lesser-known aspects of Newton\u2019s work\u2014his chymistry, theology and Church history\u2014in order to learn more about his methodology. \u00a0In particular, I wondered what kinds of methodological continuity, if any, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4582,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[16470,16472,9578,224,16471],"class_list":["post-4259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","tag-chymistry","tag-mechanical-process","tag-methodology","tag-newton","tag-vegetative-process"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4259","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=4259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}