Article - Cartesian Physics and Metaphysics
Article - Religious Views of Isaac Newton
Article - Newton's natural philosophy (optics, space, matter, motion and gravity, and God)
It also discusses Descartes', Leibniz's, and Kant's views.
Prior to 1720, there had been two prominent metaphysical systems that described the universe. Both were in decline by the 1720s:
1) Aristotelian Scholasticism
A view of the world based on Aristotle's physics and metaphysics as incorporated into
Catholic theology by scholastics starting with Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. It dominated
university teaching for several centuries.
2) Cartesianism
The first philosophy of a mechanical universe as described by René Descartes in the 1640s.
It was a dualist system with two "substances" - extended (matter) and non-extended (minds,
souls, God). It was rationalist philosophy driven by deductive, rather than inductive, thinking.
The most prominent enhancements had been made by French philosopher Nicholaus Malebranche
with his theory of occassionalism.
In physics, Descartes claimed that the universe operated like a mechanical clock, that all motion,
both terrestrial and the motion of the heavens, was caused by the direct interactions of physical
components; basically that there were tiny bits of matter pushing on material objects
that could be seen.
The three new rising systems were:
1) Lockean - Newtonianism: dominant in Great Britain and France
An inductive, empirical science based approach. Newton's ideas (classical mechanics) of mass,
acceleration, and force, as well as gravity, came to replace Descartes' theory of motion.
Unlike Gottfried Leibniz, Newton did not believe that God had created a perfect universe. While
it operated by the laws Newton described, the universe was prone to deterioration (planets would
go out of orbit). So God intercedes every so often to keep things on track.
2) Liebnizian - Wolffianism: dominant in central Europe (Germany) and Scandinavia
A rationalist, science mechanical based approach more developed than Cartesianism. It was
dualist and was based on the idea of "pre-established harmony." It held that although God had
free will and the power to intercede in the mechanics of the universe, He did not need to because,
from His being perfect, he had created a system that did not need tinkering with ("the best of all
possible worlds").
3) Monist materialism:
The a monist-determination perspective that the world is completely material and everything
(all motion, thinking) is necessarily fixed (determined). There is no contingency, God or
human free will. There was no other "possible universe." This philosophy had it roots in
ancient Epicureanism and Baruch Spinoza's rationalist philosophy of the 1670s.
The first two systems were influential in the development of Deism. The third influenced atheism.
On mechanical philosophy:
"We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of the past and the cause
of the future. An intellect which at any given moment knew all of the forces that animate
nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it, if this intellect were vast
enough to submit the data analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement
of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect
nothing could be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present
before its eyes."
Pierre Simon Laplace (1749 - 1827) "A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities"
The Leibniz-Clarke Debates about whether space is absolute.
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