Atom and Individual in the Age of Newton: On the Genesis of the Mechanistic World View (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 88)

In this stimulating investigation, Gideon Freudenthal has linked social history with the history of science by formulating an interesting proposal: that the supposed influence of social theory may be seen as actual through its co­ herence with the process of formation of physical concepts. The reinterpre­ tation of the development of science in the seventeenth century, now widely influential, receives at Freudenthal's hand its most persuasive statement, most significantly because of his attention to the theoretical form which is charac­ teristic. of classical Newtonian mechanics. He pursues the sources of the parallels that may be noted between that mechanics and the dominant philosophical systems and social theories of the time; and in a fascinating development Freudenthal shows how a quite precise method - as he descriptively labels it, the 'analytic-synthetic method' - which underlay the Newtonian form of theoretical argument, was due to certain interpretive premisses concerning particle mechanics. If he is right, these depend upon a particular stage of con­ ceptual achievement in the theories of both society and nature; further, that the conceptual was generalized philosophically; but, strikingly, Freudenthal shows that this concept-formation itself was linked to the specific social relations of the times of Newton and Hobbes. Front Matter....Pages i-xv Introduction....Pages 1-9 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 Newton’s Justification of the Theory of Absolute Space....Pages 13-28 Leibniz’s Foundations of Dynamics....Pages 29-43 The Discussion Between Leibniz and Newton on the Concept of Science....Pages 44-71 Front Matter....Pages 73-76 The Concept of Element in 17th Century Natural Philosophy....Pages 77-84 The Concept of Element in the Systematic Philosophy of Hobbes....Pages 85-91 The Concept of Element in 18th Century Social Philosophy....Pages 92-97 The Relationship Between Natural and Social Philosophy in the Work of Newton, Rousseau, and Smith....Pages 98-103 Front Matter....Pages 105-107 England Before the Revolution....Pages 108-114 The Antifeudal Social Philosophy of Hobbes....Pages 115-137 The Rise of Civil Society in England....Pages 138-152 Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society....Pages 153-160 Civil Society and the Analytic-Synthetic Method....Pages 161-168 Front Matter....Pages 169-172 The Bourgeois Individual and the Essential Properties of a Particle in Newton’s Thought....Pages 173-188 Element and System in the Philosophy of Leibniz....Pages 189-204 Afterword....Pages 205-213 Back Matter....Pages 215-276