Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant: Philosophy and Science in the Eighteenth Century (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 341)

This addresses the transformations of metaphysics as a discipline, the emergence of analytical mechanics, the diverging avenues of 18th-century Newtonianism, the body-mind problem, and philosophical principles of classification in the life sciences. An appendix contains a critical edition and first translation into English of Newton's scholia from David Gregory's Estate on the Propositions IV through IX Book III of his Principia. Preface to the 2nd Edition Introduction Contents Part I: Seismic Vibrations in Metaphysics Chapter 1: Disciplinary Transformations in the Age of Newton: The Case of Metaphysics 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Speculative Philosophy in the Peripatetic Tradition 1.3 Newton and Leibniz 1.4 Locke and Berkeley 1.5 Metaphysics in the Public Domain in Mid-century Britain and Germany 1.6 Hume 1.7 Metaphysics and the Physicians: William Cullen 1.8 The Kantian Turn References Part II: Metaphysics and the Analytical Method Chapter 2: Leibniz’ Concept of Possible Worlds and the Analysis of Motion in Eighteenth-Century Physics 2.1 The Year 1686 2.2 Individual Substance and World 2.3 Causality and Finality in Leibniz’ Physics 2.4 1732: The Birth-Certificate of Maupertuis’ Ideas 2.5 The Least Action Quantity Principle 2.6 The Essay on Cosmology 2.7 A Final View to Euler 2.8 A Priority Problem and Its Recent Discussion 2.9 Resume References Chapter 3: The Limits of Intelligibility: The Status of Physical Science in D’Alembert’s Philosophy 3.1 Abstraction 3.2 Restoration 3.3 Properties 3.4 Simplicity 3.5 Winds 3.6 Essences 3.7 Impenetrability 3.8 Necessity 3.9 Springs and Other Gaps 3.10 Well-Known Facts About Forces 3.11 Attraction as a Last Recourse 3.12 Fluids 3.13 Fluids as Systems: D’Alembert’s Principle 3.14 The Privilege of Destruction 3.15 Broken Branches References Chapter 4: “In Nature as in Geometry”: Du Châtelet and the Post-Newtonian Debate on the Physical Significance of Mathematical Objects 4.1 Introduction 4.2 The Ambivalent Reception of Newton’s Mathematical Physics 4.3 Du Châtelet on the Metaphysics of Mathematical Objects 4.3.1 Mathematical Objects and Metaphysical Idealism 4.3.2 The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Magnitude 4.3.3 The Power of Abstraction 4.3.4 Abstraction and Fictions 4.4 Du Châtelet’s Defense of Inferences from Mathematics to Material Nature 4.4.1 Mathematical Fictions and Approximate Truth 4.4.2 From Mathematical to Physical Continuity 4.5 Conclusion References Chapter 5: Order of Nature and Orders of Science 5.1 Preliminaries: Three Points of Departure and One Aim 5.1.1 ‘Semantical Ladenness’ of Mathematics 5.1.2 Euclideanism 5.1.3 Orders of Science 5.1.4 Understanding the Change of Concepts of Science 5.2 Mechanical Euclideanism: The Case of Newton’s Principia 5.2.1 Mechanical Euclideanism 5.2.2 Axiomatic Structure and Empiristic Methodology 5.2.3 Newton’s Euclideanism 5.3 Newtonian and Analytical Perspectives: Euler’s Program of Rational Mechanics 5.3.1 ‘Synthetical’ Beginnings of Analytical Mechanics 5.3.2 ‘Newtonian’ Axiomatisation Without Newtonian Ontology 5.3.3 ‘Inflation of Principles’ and Metatheoretical ‘Sliding of the Center of Gravity’ 5.3.4 Analytical Principles of Mechanics 5.4 The Edge of Certainty: Lagrange’s Analytical Mechanics 5.4.1 Changing Principles and Concepts 5.4.2 No Geometry, No Methodology, No (Explicit) Scientific Metaphysics: The New Meaning of ‘Analytical’ 5.4.3 Loss of Evidence: ‘Rubber Euclideanism’ 5.5 Kant and Eighteenth-Century Rational Mechanics: Two Projections 5.5.1 The ‘Synthetical’ Projection: Metaphysical Foundations 5.5.2 The ‘Analytical’ Projection: Critique of Judgement 5.6 Conclusion References Part III: Avenues of Newtonianism Chapter 6: Samuel Clarke’s Annotations in Jacques Rohault’s Traité de Physique, and How They Contributed to Popularising Newton’s Physics 6.1 Newton’s Physics Disseminated by a Cartesian Textbook 6.2 Jacques Rohault and His Traité de Physique 6.3 Rohault’s Traité Translated and Annotated by Samuel Clarke 6.3.1 Hoadley’s Account 6.3.2 Whiston’s Account 6.3.3 A Document Unparalleled in the History of Physics 6.4 The Structure of Rohault’s Traité 6.4.1 Matter, Inertia, and Conservation of the Quantity of Motion 6.4.2 Vacuum and Elements 6.4.3 Rules of Collision 6.4.4 Attractive and Repulsive Forces 6.4.5 Light and Colour 6.4.6 Planetary Motion and Free Fall 6.5 Charles Morgan’s Annotations References Chapter 7: Kant on Extension and Force: Critical Appropriations of Leibniz and Newton 7.1 Newton, Locke, Descartes, and Leibniz on Extension 7.1.1 Newton, Locke, and Descartes on Extension as a Primitive 7.1.2 Leibniz on Extension 7.2 Kant’s Objections to Extension as Primitive 7.2.1 Kant’s Rejection of Leibniz’s Criticisms of Extension as a Primitive 7.2.2 Kant’s Arguments Against Atomism 7.3 Force and Causality 7.3.1 Leibniz on Force 7.3.2 Kant on Force 7.4 Brief Methodological Conclusion References Chapter 8: Scotland’s Philosophico-Chemical Physics 8.1 Joseph Black and Thomas Reid in the 1760s 8.2 John Anderson and John Robison, Circa 1780 8.3 Conclusion References Part IV: Can Matter Think? Chapter 9: Materialistic Theories of Mind and Brain 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Can Matter Think? 9.3 The Question of the Soul 9.4 The Workings of the Brain 9.5 Conclusion Afterword 2022 References Chapter 10: Kant’s Second Paralogism in Context: The Critique of Pure Reason on Whether Matter Can Think 10.1 The Paralogism: Its Formal Structure 10.2 The Context: Kant and His Opponents 10.3 Conclusion Postscript (2022): Materialism and Anti-materialism in the Eighteenth Century References Part V: Metaphysics and Natural History Chapter 11: Kant’s Universal Natural History and Analogical Reasoning in Cosmology 11.1 Introduction 11.2 Kant’s Analogical Method in the Universal Natural History 11.3 Analogical Reasoning: Some Historical Context 11.4 Kant’s Theory of Analogy 11.5 Kant’s Cosmological Analogy 11.6 Conclusion References Chapter 12: Natural or Artificial Systems? The Eighteenth-Century Controversy on Classification of Animals and Plants and Its Philosophical Contexts 12.1 Eighteenth-Century Classification as a Double-Faced Enterprise 12.2 Are Systems as Such Unnatural? 12.3 Method and Form I – Is the Tree of Porphyry Natural? 12.4 Method and Form II – Method Versus System 12.5 Biological Content I – Resemblance of Structure 12.6 Biological Content II – Growing Tensions 12.6.1 Natural Groups 12.6.2 Buffon’s Species Concept 12.6.3 From Structure to Organisation 12.7 Prospects: A Meaningless Nature References Part VI: Looking Back and Ahead Chapter 13: Beyond Newton, Leibniz and Kant: Insufficient Foundations, 1687–1786 13.1 Introduction 13.2 Background Distinctions 13.3 The Shape of Mechanics After 1730 13.4 Sufficient Foundations, 1760–1830 13.5 Insufficient Foundations: Laws 13.6 Insufficient Foundations: Matter 13.7 Some Morals References Appendices Appendix I: Newton’s Scholia from David Gregory’s Estate on the Propositions IV Through IX Book III of His Principia The Sources for Our Edition About the English Translation Abbreviations Used Newton’s Scholia Newton’s Excerpts from Macrobius’ Commentary on Clcero’s Dream of Sclplo Newton’s Excerpts from Macrobius’ Commentary on Cicero’s Dream Remarks on Newton’s Scholia References Appendix II: The Concepts of Immanuel Kant’s Natural Philosophy (1747–1780): A Database Rendering Their Explicit and Implicit Networks Networks of Concepts and Their Representation Kant’s Natural Philosophy Explicit and Implicit Networks Among Concepts The Form of Representation Aspects of Kant’s Theory of Matter as Rendered in the Database The Databases “Begriffe” Rendering Networks of Concepts Context I – The Location of Concepts in Kant Context II – The Location of Concepts in Contemporary Science Grouping According to Fields of Knowledge The Additional Databases This extended new edition offers a multifaceted insight into a period of intellectual history in the West in which the balance between speculative theories and experiential science was reset. As is well known, the interrelationship between philosophy and science underwent a profound change in the early modern period, in the course of which the sciences freed themselves from the conceptual framework of traditional metaphysics. The contributions of the volume focus on the eighteenth century, the critical and quite contradictory final phase of this process. The volume distinguishes itself by tracing this transition process not only in the obvious case of the new mechanics - Newtonianism and analytic mechanics - but also by addressing new speculative philosophies of nature - early modern atomism or imponderable physics - and new metaphysical controversies such as the body-mind problem (Can matter think?) as well as developments in special scientific fields such as cosmology/astronomy and natural history. The volume is written by historians of philosophy and the sciences of the early modern period and is intended primarily for specialists and students in these fields of knowledge. However, it is certainly also interesting and useful for cultural historians working on this period. It is a truism that philosophy and the sciences were closely linked in the age of Leibniz, Newton, and Kant; but a more precise determination of the structure and dynamics of this linkage is required. The subject matter of this volume is the interactions among the developments in philosophy and the transformations that the different branches of sciences, Baconian as well as classical, underwent during this period. Among the topics addressed are the transformations of metaphysics as a discipline, the emergence of analytical mechanics and its consequences for founding physics on metaphysics, the diverging avenues of 18th-century Newtonianism, the body-mind problem as dealt with by philosophers and physicians, and philosophical principles of classification in the life sciences. As an appendix, a critical edition and first translation into English of Newton's scholia from David Gregory's Estate on the Propositions IV through IX Book III of his Principia is added