Philosophical Perspectives on Newtonian Science (Electronic book text)

These original essays explore the philosophical implications of Newton'swork. They address a wide range of topics including Newton's influence on hiscontemporaries and successors such as Locke and Kant, and his views on themethodology of science, on absolute space and time, and on the Deity.Howard Steincompares Newton's refusal to lock natural philosophy into a preexisting system withthe more rigid philosophical predilections of his near-contemporaries ChristianHuygens and John Locke. Richard Arthur's commentary provides a useful gloss onStein's essay. Lawrence Sklar puzzles over Newton's attempts to provide a unifiedtreatment of the various real quantities: absolute space, time, and motion.According to Phillip Bricker's responding essay, however, the distinctions Sklardraws do not go to the heart of the debate between realists andrepresentationalists.J. E. McGuire and John Carriero debate Newtons views of therelationship between the Deity and the nature of time and space. Peter Achinsteinlooks at the tension between Newton's methodological views and his advocacy of acorpuscular theory of light; he suggests that Newton could justify the latter by aweak inductive inference, but R.I.G. Hughes believes that this inference involvesan induction Newton would be unwilling to make. Immanuel Kant's critique of Newton'sview of gravity is discussed and amplified by Michael Friedman In response, RobertDiSalle raises a number of problems for Friedman's analysis. Errol Harris and PhilipGrier extend the discussion to the present day and look at the ethical implicationsof Newton's work.Phillip Bricker is Associate Professor of Philosophy at theUniversity of Massachusetts at Amherst. R.I.G. Hughes is Associate Professor ofPhilosophy at the University of South Carolina. Philosophical Perspectives onNewtonian Science is included in the Johns Hopkins Series on the History andPhilosophy of Science.