Interpreting Newton: Critical Essays

by Edited by Andrew Janiak , Eric Schliesser

• ISBN13: 9780521766180
• ISBN10: 0521766184
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-02-27
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This collection of specially commissioned essays by leading scholars presents new research on Isaac Newton and his main philosophical interlocutors and critics. The essays analyze Newton's relation to his contemporaries, especially Barrow, Descartes, Leibniz and Locke and discuss the ways in which a broad range of figures, including Hume, Maclaurin, Maupertuis and Kant, reacted to his thought. The wide range of topics discussed includes the laws of nature, the notion of force, the relation of mathematics to nature, Newton's argument for universal gravitation, his attitude toward philosophical empiricism, his use of 'fluxions', his approach toward measurement problems and his concept of absolute motion, together with new interpretations of Newton's matter theory. The volume concludes with an extended essay that analyzes the changes in physics wrought by Newton's Principia. A substantial introduction and bibliography provide essential reference guides.

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors	p. vii
Acknowledgements	p. x
Introduction	p. 1
Newton and his contemporaries	p. 11
Newton's law-constitutive approach to bodies: a response to Descartes	p. 13
Leibniz, Newton and force	p. 33
Locke's qualified embrace of Newton's Principia	p. 48
What geometry postulates: Newton and Barrow on the relationship of mathematics to nature	p. 69
Philosophical themes in Newton	p. 103
Cotes's queries: Newton's empiricism and conceptions of matter	p. 105
Newton's scientific method and the universal law of gravitation	p. 138
Newton, Huygens, and Euler: empirical support for laws of motion	p. 169
What did Newton mean by 'Absolute Motion?	p. 196
From velocities to fluxions	p. 219
The reception of Newton	p. 255
Newton, Locke, and Hume	p. 257
Maupertuis on attraction as an inherent properly of matter	p. 280
The Newtonian refutation of Spinoza: Newton's Challenge and the Socratic Problem	p. 299
Dispositional explanations: Boyle's problem, Newton's solution, Hume's response	p. 320
Newton and Kant on absolute space: from theology to transcendental philosophy	p. 342
How Newton's Principia changed physics	p. 360
References	p. 396
Index	p. 419
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