creators_name: Schliesser, Eric
type: other
datestamp: 2008-11-19
lastmod: 2010-10-07 15:17:27
metadata_visibility: show
title: Newtonian Emanation, Spinozism, Measurement, and the Baconian Origins of the Laws of Nature
subjects: history-of-philosophy-of-science
subjects: laws-of-nature
subjects: history-of-science-case-studies
full_text_status: public
keywords: Newton, Bacon, Spinoza, emanation, formal causation, laws of nature, measurement
abstract: This paper investigates what Newton could have meant in a now famous passage from De Gravitatione (hereafter “DeGrav”) that “space is as it were an emanative effect of God” (21). First I offer a careful examination of the four key passages within DeGrav that bear on this. I argue that the logic of Newton’s argument permits several interpretations (section I). Second I sketch four options: i) one approach associated with the Cambridge Platonist, Thomas More, recently investigated by Dana Jalobeanu and Ed Slowik; ii) one traditional neo-Platonic approach; iii) a necessitarian approach associated with Howard Stein’s interpretation, recently reaffirmed by Andrew Janiak; iv) an approach connected with Bacon’s efforts to reformulate a useful notion of form and laws of nature. Hitherto only the first and third options have received scholarly attention. I offer arguments to treat Newtonian emanation as a species of Baconian formal causation and in this way to combine some of the most attractive elements of the first three options (section II). Finally in Section III, I suggest that the recent scholarly focus on emanation has obscured the importance of Newton’s very interesting claims about existence and measurement in the same passage(s). 
date: 2008
date_type: published
citation: Schliesser, Eric (2008) Newtonian Emanation, Spinozism, Measurement, and the Baconian Origins of the Laws of Nature. UNSPECIFIED.
document_url: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4343/1/Newtonian_Emanation.doc