Against the acceptance of ignorance that rigorous skepticism often demanded, and against the false escape from it found in sophistical knowledge—or what Voltaire called imaginative philosophical romances—Voltaire offered a different solution than the rigorous dialectical reasoning of Socrates: namely, the power and value of careful empirical science. Here one sees the debt that Voltaire owed to the currents of Newtonianism that played such a strong role in launching his career. Voltaire's own critical discourse against imaginative philosophical romances originated, in fact, with English and Dutch Newtonians, many of whom were expatriate French Huguenots, who developed these tropes as rhetorical weapons in their battles with Leibniz and European Cartesians who challenged the innovations of Newtonian natural philosophy. In his Principia Mathematica (1687; 2nd rev. edition 1713), Newton had offered a complete mathematical and empirical description of how celestial and terrestrial bodies behaved. Yet when asked to explain how bodies were able to act in the way that he mathematically and empirically demonstrated that they did, Newton famously replied “I feign no hypotheses.” From the perspective of traditional natural philosophy, this was tantamount to hand waving since offering rigorous causal accounts of the nature of bodies in motion was the very essence of this branch of the sciences. Newton's major philosophical innovation rested, however, in challenging this very epistemological foundation, and the assertion and defense of Newton's position against its many critics, not least by Voltaire, became arguably the central dynamic of philosophical change in the first half of the eighteenth century.
While Newtonian epistemology admitted of many variations, at its core rested a new skepticism about the validity of apriori rationalist accounts of nature and a new assertion of brute empirical fact as a valid philosophical understanding in its own right. European Natural philosophers in the second half of the seventeenth century had thrown out the metaphysics and physics of Aristotle with its four part causality and teleological understanding of bodies, motion and the cosmic order. In its place, however, a new mechanical causality was introduced that attempted to explain the world in equally comprehensive terms through the mechanisms of an inert matter acting by direct contact and action alone. This approach lead to the vortical (swirling vortex) account of celestial mechanics, a view that held material bodies to be swimming in an ethereal sea whose action pushed and pulled objects in the manner we observe. What could not be observed, however, was the ethereal sea itself, or the other agents of this supposedly comprehensive mechanical cosmos.
Yet rationality nevertheless dictated that such mechanisms must exist since without them philosophy would be returned to the occult causes of the Aristotelian natural tendencies and teleological principles. Figuring out what these point-contact mechanisms were and how they worked was, therefore, the charge of the new mechanical natural philosophy of the late seventeenth century. Figures such as Descartes, Huygens, and Leibniz established their scientific reputations through efforts to realize this goal.
Newton pointed natural philosophy in a new direction. He offered mathematical analysis anchored in inescapable empirical fact as the new foundation for a rigorous account of the cosmos. From this perspective, the great error of both Aristotelian and the new mechanical natural philosophy was its failure to adhere strictly enough to empirical facts. Vortical mechanics, for example, claimed that matter was moved by the action of an invisible agent, yet this, the Newtonians began to argue, was not to explain what is really happening but to imagine a fiction that gives us a speciously satisfactory rational explanation of it. Natural philosophy needs to resist the allure of such rational imaginings and to instead deal only with the empirically provable. Moreover, the Newtonians argued, if a set of irrefutable facts cannot be explained other then by accepting the brute facticity of their truth, this is not a failure of philosophical explanation so much as a devotion to appropriate rigor. Such epistemological battles became especially intense around Newton's theory of universal gravitation. Few questioned that Newton had demonstrated an irrefutable mathematical law whereby bodies appear to attract one another in relation to their masses and in inverse relation to the square of the distance between them. But was this rigorous mathematical and empirical description a philosophical account of bodies in motion? Critics such as Leibniz said no, since mathematical description was not the same thing as philosophical explanation, and Newton refused to offer an explanation of how and why gravity operated the way that it did. The Newtonians countered that phenomenal descriptions were scientifically adequate so long as they were grounded in empirical facts, and since no facts had yet been discerned that explained what gravity is or how it works, no scientific account of it was yet possible. They further insisted that it was enough that gravity did operate the way that Newton said it did, and that this was its own justification for accepting his theory. They further mocked those who insisted on dreaming up chimeras like the celestial vortices as explanations for phenomena when no empirical evidence existed to support of such theories.
The previous summary describes the general core of the Newtonian position in the intense philosophical contests of the first decades of the eighteenth century. It also describes Voltaire's own stance in these same battles. His contribution, therefore, was not centered on any innovation within these very familiar Newtonian themes; rather, it was his accomplishment to become a leading evangelist for this new Newtonian epistemology, and by consequence a major reason for its widespread dissemination and acceptance in France and throughout Europe. A comparison with David Hume's role in this same development might help to illuminate the distinct contributions of each. Both Hume and Voltaire began with the same skepticism about rationalist philosophy, and each embraced the Newtonian criterion that made empirical fact the only guarantor of truth in philosophy. Yet Hume's target remained traditional philosophy, and his contribution was to extend skepticism all the way to the point of denying the feasibility of transcendental philosophy itself. This argument would famously awake Kant's dogmatic slumbers and lead to the reconstitution of transcendental philosophy in new terms, but Voltaire had different fish to fry. His attachment was to the new Newtonian empirical scientists, and while he was never more than a dilettante scientist himself, his devotion to this form of natural inquiry made him in some respects the leading philosophical advocate and ideologist for the new empirico-scientific conception of philosophy that Newton initiated.
For Voltaire (and many other eighteenth-century Newtonians) the most important project was defending empirical science as an alternative to traditional natural philosophy. This involved sharing in Hume's critique of abstract rationalist systems, but it also involved the very different project of defending empirical induction and experimental reasoning as the new epistemology appropriate for a modern Enlightened philosophy. In particular, Voltaire fought vigorously against the rationalist epistemology that critics used to challenge Newtonian reasoning. His famous conclusion in Candide, for example, that optimism was a philosophical chimera produced when dialectical reason remains detached from brute empirical facts owed a great debt to his Newtonian convictions. His alternative offered in the same text of a life devoted to simple tasks with clear, tangible, and most importantly useful ends was also derived from the utilitarian discourse that Newtonians also used to justify their science. Voltaire's campaign on behalf of smallpox inoculation, which began with his letter on the topic in the Lettres philosophiques, was similarly grounded in an appeal to the facts of the case as an antidote to the fears generated by logical deductions from seemingly sound axiomatic principles. All of Voltaire's public campaigns, in fact, deployed empirical fact as the ultimate solvent for irrational prejudice and blind adherence to preexisting understandings. In this respect, his philosophy as manifest in each was deeply indebted to the epistemological convictions he gleaned from Newtonianism.
Newton pointed natural philosophy in a new direction. He offered mathematical analysis anchored in inescapable empirical fact as the new foundation for a rigorous account of the cosmos. From this perspective, the great error of both Aristotelian and the new mechanical natural philosophy was its failure to adhere strictly enough to empirical facts. Vortical mechanics, for example, claimed that matter was moved by the action of an invisible agent, yet this, the Newtonians began to argue, was not to explain what is really happening but to imagine a fiction that gives us a speciously satisfactory rational explanation of it. Natural philosophy needs to resist the allure of such rational imaginings and to instead deal only with the empirically provable. Moreover, the Newtonians argued, if a set of irrefutable facts cannot be explained other then by accepting the brute facticity of their truth, this is not a failure of philosophical explanation so much as a devotion to appropriate rigor. Such epistemological battles became especially intense around Newton's theory of universal gravitation. Few questioned that Newton had demonstrated an irrefutable mathematical law whereby bodies appear to attract one another in relation to their masses and in inverse relation to the square of the distance between them. But was this rigorous mathematical and empirical description a philosophical account of bodies in motion? Critics such as Leibniz said no, since mathematical description was not the same thing as philosophical explanation, and Newton refused to offer an explanation of how and why gravity operated the way that it did. The Newtonians countered that phenomenal descriptions were scientifically adequate so long as they were grounded in empirical facts, and since no facts had yet been discerned that explained what gravity is or how it works, no scientific account of it was yet possible. They further insisted that it was enough that gravity did operate the way that Newton said it did, and that this was its own justification for accepting his theory. They further mocked those who insisted on dreaming up chimeras like the celestial vortices as explanations for phenomena when no empirical evidence existed to support of such theories.
The previous summary describes the general core of the Newtonian position in the intense philosophical contests of the first decades of the eighteenth century. It also describes Voltaire's own stance in these same battles. His contribution, therefore, was not centered on any innovation within these very familiar Newtonian themes; rather, it was his accomplishment to become a leading evangelist for this new Newtonian epistemology, and by consequence a major reason for its widespread dissemination and acceptance in France and throughout Europe. A comparison with David Hume's role in this same development might help to illuminate the distinct contributions of each. Both Hume and Voltaire began with the same skepticism about rationalist philosophy, and each embraced the Newtonian criterion that made empirical fact the only guarantor of truth in philosophy. Yet Hume's target remained traditional philosophy, and his contribution was to extend skepticism all the way to the point of denying the feasibility of transcendental philosophy itself. This argument would famously awake Kant's dogmatic slumbers and lead to the reconstitution of transcendental philosophy in new terms, but Voltaire had different fish to fry. His attachment was to the new Newtonian empirical scientists, and while he was never more than a dilettante scientist himself, his devotion to this form of natural inquiry made him in some respects the leading philosophical advocate and ideologist for the new empirico-scientific conception of philosophy that Newton initiated.
For Voltaire (and many other eighteenth-century Newtonians) the most important project was defending empirical science as an alternative to traditional natural philosophy. This involved sharing in Hume's critique of abstract rationalist systems, but it also involved the very different project of defending empirical induction and experimental reasoning as the new epistemology appropriate for a modern Enlightened philosophy. In particular, Voltaire fought vigorously against the rationalist epistemology that critics used to challenge Newtonian reasoning. His famous conclusion in Candide, for example, that optimism was a philosophical chimera produced when dialectical reason remains detached from brute empirical facts owed a great debt to his Newtonian convictions. His alternative offered in the same text of a life devoted to simple tasks with clear, tangible, and most importantly useful ends was also derived from the utilitarian discourse that Newtonians also used to justify their science. Voltaire's campaign on behalf of smallpox inoculation, which began with his letter on the topic in the Lettres philosophiques, was similarly grounded in an appeal to the facts of the case as an antidote to the fears generated by logical deductions from seemingly sound axiomatic principles. All of Voltaire's public campaigns, in fact, deployed empirical fact as the ultimate solvent for irrational prejudice and blind adherence to preexisting understandings. In this respect, his philosophy as manifest in each was deeply indebted to the epistemological convictions he gleaned from Newtonianism.
Toward Science without Metaphysics
Voltaire also contributed directly to the new relationship between science and philosophy that the Newtonian revolution made central to Enlightenment modernity. Especially important was his critique of metaphysics and his argument that it be eliminated from any well-ordered science. At the center of the Newtonian innovations in natural philosophy was the argument that questions of body per se were either irrelevant to, or distracting from, a well focused natural science. Against Leibniz, for example, who insisted that all physics begin with an accurate and comprehensive conception of the nature of bodies as such, Newton argued that the character of bodies was irrelevant to physics since this science should restrict itself to a quantified description of empirical effects only and resist the urge to speculate about that which cannot be seen or measured. This removal of metaphysics from physics was central to the overall Newtonian stance toward science, but no one fought more vigorously for it, or did more to clarify the distinction and give it a public audience than Voltaire.
The battles with Leibnizianism in the 1740s were the great theater for Voltaire's work in this regard. In 1740, responding to Du Châtelet's efforts in her Institutions de physiques to reconnect metaphysics and physics through a synthesis of Leibniz with Newton, Voltaire made his opposition to such a project explicit in reviews and other essays he published. He did the same during the brief revival of the so-called “vis viva controversy” triggered by du Châtelet's treatise, defending the empirical and mechanical conception of body and force against those who defended Leibniz's more metaphysical conception of the same thing. In the same period, Voltaire also composed a short book entitled La Metaphysique de Newton, publishing it in 1740 as an implicit counterpoint to Châtelet's Institutions. This tract did not so much articulate Newton's metaphysics as celebrate the fact that he avoided practicing such speculations altogether. It also accused Leibniz of becoming deluded by his zeal to make metaphysics the foundation of physics. In the definitive 1745 edition of his Éléments de la philosophie de Newton, Voltaire also appended his tract on Newton's metaphysics as the book's introduction, thus framing his own understanding of the relationship between metaphysics and empirical science in direct opposition to Châtelet's Leibnizian understanding of the same. He also added personal invective and satire to this same position in his indictment of Maupertuis in the 1750s, linking Maupertuis's turn toward metaphysical approaches to physics in the 1740s with his increasingly deluded philosophical understanding and his authoritarian manner of dealing with his colleagues and critics.
While Voltaire's attacks on Maupertuis crossed the line into ad hominem, at their core was a fierce defense of the way that metaphysical reasoning both occludes and deludes the work of the physical scientist. Moreover, to the extent that eighteenth-century Newtonianism provoked two major trends in later philosophy, first the reconstitution of transcendental philosophy à la Kant through his “Copernican Revolution” that relocated the remains of metaphysics in the a priori categories of reason, and second, the marginalization of metaphysics altogether through the celebration of philosophical positivism and the anti-speculative scientific method that anchored it, Voltaire should be seen as a major progenitor of the latter. By also attaching what many in the nineteenth century saw as Voltaire's proto-positivism to his celebrated campaigns to eradicate priestly and aristo-monarchical authority through the debunking of the “irrational superstitions” that appeared to anchor such authority, Voltaire's legacy also cemented the alleged linkage that joined positivist science on the one hand with secularizing disenchantment and dechristianization on the other. In this way, Voltaire should be seen as the initiator of a philosophical tradition that runs from him to Auguste Comte and Charles Darwin, and then on to Karl Popper and Richard Dawkins in the twentieth century.
edited from the Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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