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The General Scholium: Some Notes on Newton's Published and Unpublished Endeavours

Ducheyne, Steffen (2007) The General Scholium: Some Notes on Newton's Published and Unpublished Endeavours. [Preprint]

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    Abstract

    Newton’s immensely famous, but tersely written, General Scholium is primarily known for its reference to the argument of design and Newton’s famous dictum “hypotheses non fingo”. In the essay at hand, I shall argue that this text served a variety of goals and try to add something new to our current knowledge of how Newton tried to accomplish them. The General Scholium highlights a cornucopia of features that were central to Newton’s natural philosophy in general: matters of experimentation, methodological issues, theological matters, matters related to the instauration of prisca sapientia, epistemological claims central to Newton’s empiricism, and, finally, metaphysical issues. For Newton these matters were closely interwoven. I shall address these matters based on a thorough study of the extant manuscript material.

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    Item Type: Preprint
    Additional Information: This paper has been published in "Lias: Sources and Documents Relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas", vol. 33, no. 3n 2006, pp. 223-274.
    Keywords: Newton, Principia, non-gravitational forces, explanation, theology, 17th century natural philosophy
    Subjects: Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics
    General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science
    General Issues > Causation
    General Issues > Theory/Observation
    General Issues > Explanation
    General Issues > Science and Religion
    General Issues > Experimentation
    General Issues > History of Science Case Studies
    Conferences and Volumes: ?? 2007004 ??
    Depositing User: Steffen Ducheyne
    Date Deposited: 25 Oct 2008
    Last Modified: 07 Oct 2010 11:15
    Item ID: 3461
    URI: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/3461

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