Newton’s “Experimental Philosophy”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ef.12757Keywords:
Isaac Newton, experimental philosophy, empirism, experiment, induction, deductionAbstract
Newton abjured using the term “experimental philosophy,” widely used in Restoration England at the start of his career, until 1712 when he added a passage to the General Scholium of the Principia that brie y expounded his anti-hypothetical methodology. Drafts for Query 23 of the second edition of the Opticks (1706) (which became query 31 in the third edition), however, show that he had intended to introduce the term to explain his methodology earlier. Newton introduced the term for polemical purposes to defend his theory of gravity against the criticisms of Cartesians and Leibnizians but, especially in the Principia, against Leibniz himself. “Experimental philosophy” has little directly to do with experiment, but rather more broadly designates empirical science. Newton’s manuscripts provide insight into his use of “experimental philosophy” and the formulation of his methodology, especially such key terms as “deduce,” “induction,” and “phenomena,” in the early eighteenth century.
Downloads
References
Birch, Thomas (ed.). The History of the Royal Society of London, for Improving of Natural Knowledge, from Its First Rise, 4 vols. Londres, 1756-1757.
Boyle, Robert. “Some Specimens of an Attempt to Make Chymical Experiments Useful to Illustrate the Notions of the Corpuscular Philosophy,” en: Hunter, Michael y Davis, Edward B. (eds.). The Works of Robert Boyle, 14 vols, London/Brook eld, Vt., 1999. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.00246703
Casini, Paolo. “Newton: The Classical Scholia”, en: History of Science, 22, 1984, pp. 1-58. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/007327538402200101
Cohen, I Bernard. Introduction to Newton’s Principia. Cambridge, Mass., Cambridge University Press, 1971.
____________. The Newtonian Revolution. With Illustrations of the Transformation of Scientific Ideas. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Davies, E. B. “The Newtonian Myth”, en: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 34, 2000, pp. 763-780. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0039-3681(03)00045-1
Gabbey, Alan. “Newton, Active Powers, and the Mechanical Philosophy”, en: The Cambridge Companion to Newton. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 329-357. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521651778.011
Guerlac, Henry. “Newton and the Method of Analysis”, en: Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip Wiener, 4 vols. New York, 1973, 3, pp. 378-391.
Guicciardini, Niccolò. “Analysis and Synthesis in Newton’s Mathematical Work”, en: Cohen, I. Bernard and Smith, George E. (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Newton, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 308-328. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521651778.010
Hall, A. Rupert. Philosophers at War: The Quarrel between Newton and Leibniz. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511524066
Harrison, John. The Library of Isaac Newton. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Henry, John. “Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy: Active Principles in Pre-Newtonian Matter Theory”, en: History of Science, 24, 1986, pp. 335-81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/007327538602400401
Hintikka, Jaakko y Remes. Unto, The Method of Analysis: Its Geometrical Origin and Its General Signi cance. Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1974.
Hooke, Robert. Micrographia: Or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses, with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon. Londres, 1665; reimpresión facsímile: Bruselas, 1966. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.904
Koyré, Alexandre y Cohen. I. Bernard. “Newton & the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence with Notes on Newton, Conti, & Des Maizeaux,” en: Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences, 15, 1962, pp. 63-126.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. “Summa hypotheseos physicæ novæ”, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Berlin, Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1966, Ser. 6, 2, p. 340.
McGuire, J. E. “Atoms, and the ‘Analogy of Nature’: Newton’s Third Rule of Philosophizing”, en: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 1, 1970, pp. 3-58. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0039-3681(70)90024-5
____________. “Body and Void and Newton’s De mundi systemate: Some New Sources”, en: Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 3, 1966, pp. 206-248. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00327625
____________. “Newton’s ‘Principles of Philosophy’. An Intended Preface for the 1704 Opticks and a Related Draft Fragment”, en: British Journal for the History of Science, 5, 1970, pp. 178-189. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S000708740001092X
McGuire, J. E. y Rattansi, P. M., “Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan’,” en: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 21 (1966), pp. 108-43 (versión en español en este volumen). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.1966.0014
McGuire, J. E. y Tamny, Martin. Certain Philosophical Questions: Newton’s Trinity Notebook. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983.
McMullin, Ernan. Newton on Matter and Activity. Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1976.
Newton, Isaac. “An Account of the Book Entituled Commercium epistolicum,” en: Philosophical Transactions 29, no. 342 (enero 1714/15), pp. 173-224. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1714.0021
____________. “Una serie de preguntas propuestas por el Sr. Isaac Newton ... y aquí recomendadas para la industria de los amantes de la Filosofía Experimental, tal como fueron generosamente impartidas al editor en una carta del mencionado Sr. Newton del 8 de julio de 1672”, en: Philosophical Transactions, 7, no. 85 (julio de 1672), [5]004-5007.
____________. Optice: sive de reflexionibus, refractionibus, in exionibus et coloribus Lucis. Latine reddidit Samuel Clarke, A.M. Reverendo admodum Patri ac Dno Joanni Moore Episcopo Nowicensi a Sacris Domesticis. Accendunt Tractatus duo ejusdem Authoris de Speciebus & Magnitudine Figurarum Curvilinearum, Latine scripti. Londini, Impensis Sam. Smith & Benj. Walford, Regiae Societatis Typograph. Ad Insignia Principis in Coemetrio D. Pauli., 1706.
____________. Opticks: Or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, In extions and Colours of Light. Based on the Fourth Edition London, 1730. New York, Dover, 1952.
____________. Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 2 vols, the third edition whit variant readings, edited by Alexandre Koyré & I. Bernard Cohen. Cambridge Mass, Harvard University Press, 1972.
____________. The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, H. W. Turnbull, J. F. Scott, A. Rupert Hall, and Laura Tilling (eds.), 7 vols.. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1959-77.
____________. The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton. D. T. Whiteside (ed.), 8 vols. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967-1981.
____________. The Optical Papers of Isaac Newton, Alan E. Shapiro (ed.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984.
____________. The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. tr. I. Bernard Cohen & Anne Whitman, con la asistencia de Julia Budenz. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999.
____________. Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton. A Selection from the Portsmouth Collection in the University Library, Cambridge, A. Rupert Hall y Marie Boas Hall (eds.). Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1962.
Norton, John. “The Scope, Limits and Distinctiveness of the Method of ‘Deduction from Phenomena’: Some Lessons from Newton’s ‘Demonstrations’ in Optics”, en: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 51, 2000, pp. 45-80. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/51.1.45
Otte, Michael y Panza, Marco (eds). Analysis and Synthesis in Mathematics: History and Philosophy, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 196. Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1997. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3977-9
Schüller, Volkmar. “Newton’s Scholia from David Gregory’s Estate on the Propositions IV through IX, Book III of His Principia”, en: Lefèvre, Wolfgang (ed.). Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant: Philosophy and Science in the Eighteenth Century. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 220, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 2001, pp. 213-65.
Shapiro, Alan. Fits, Passions, and Paroxysms: Physics, Method, and Chemistry and Newton’s Theory of Colored Bodies and Fits of Easy Re ection. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Webster, Charles. “Henry Power’s Experimental Philosophy”, en: Ambix, 14, 1967, pp. 150-178. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1179/amb.1967.14.3.150
Whiston, William. A Vindication of the New Theory of the Earth from the Exceptions of Mr. Keill and Others. Londres, 1698.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2007 Alan E. Shapiro
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term "Work" shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher a nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoCommercia-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions: (a) Attribution: Other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;(b) Noncommercial: Other users (including Publisher) may not use this Work for commercial purposes;
4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal;
5. Authors are permitted, and Estudios de Filosofía promotes, to post online the preprint manuscript of the Work in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access). Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work is expected be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Estudios de Filosofía's assigned URL to the Article and its final published version in Estudios de Filosofía.
