Bernard Nieuwentyt died in 1718 in Purmerend then a small town in the Holland countryside north of Amsterdam (now a suburb primarily known for being by populated by working class Amsterdamers in the 1960s and 70s, who made way for future gentrification of the Dutch capital). Two years later, his Gronden van zekerheid (grounds of certainty) was published. There are two, accurate ways to describe the book: (i) it is the best methodological criticism of Spinoza's Ethics published during the eighteenth century, and possibly forever; (ii) it is probably the first, truly free-standing historically informed work in the philosophy of science (or scientific practice) that (a) is not meant to advertise the author's own (purported) scientific achievement or approach [ruling out, say, Descartes's Discourse] and (b) is really about other people's scientific practice.*
Nieuwentyt's Gronden has attracted modest scholarly attention: in 1950, the Dutch logician and logical positivist, Evert Beth, wrote about it at some length in BJPS; Michael Petry published a lecture on it in 1979; the prolific Belgian scholar, Steffen Ducheyne, has since published two pieces on it (once in 2007 and once in Synthese in 2017.)** In addition, the Dutch historian of science, Rienk Vermij, did a book length study of Nieuwentyt. Beth treats Nieuwentyt (anachronistically) as a uniter of "rationalism and empiricism" (34) and signals the importance of Nieuwentyt by placing him between his treatment of the Aristotelian and Kantian philosophy of science. Perhaps I have missed a few more works on Nieuwentyt. But it's safe to say that he has been largely ignored. We can treat him as a cul-de-sac in the history of philosophy.
Now, in one sense the neglect of this work by Nieuwentyt is understandable. It seems to have had relatively little impact on subsequent philosophy (despite Beth's suggestion that there could be a link with Kant). Steffen Ducheyne has convinced me that it was probably known by the so-called Dutch Newtonians and so a few of his views may have been assimilated via Voltaire into the mainstream of European thought.
But in other sense, it is a bit inexplicable. Leave aside (how dare you!) my judgment above. During the eighteenth century Nieuwentyt, who was a foundationalist critic of Leibniz's calculus, was widely read for his (1715) Het regt gebruik der werelt beschouwingen, ter overtuiginge van ongodisten en ongelovigen [The True Use of World-Concepts, in order to convince the atheists and disbelievers] it was translated as The religious philosopher, or the right use of contemplating the works of the Creator (1718), a popular and sophisticated work in physico-theology and natural religion (which has attracted obligatory footnotes in the history of design arguments and eighteenth century views on science and religion). It was translated in several European languages. Niuewentyt was a major European figure, and so it is a bit baffling that his major philosophical work goes neglected.
Given the more general stagnation of Dutch intellectual life in the eighteenth century and the increasing orientation toward the intellectual scene in Paris it is no surprise that Dutch philosophers did not develop Nieuwentyt's views or kept a memory of him alive. When speculative philosophy recovered in the late nineteenth century in the pragmatic low countries, alongside, but apparently independently of (interestingly enough), a flowering of groundbreaking work in experimental physics [Lorentz, Zeeman, Vanderwaals, Kammerling Onnes, etc.], Spinoza was the center of attention (of idealist and mystic-inclined readers). His fierce critic remained forgotten.
To be sure, I am not claiming that Nieuwentyt's philosophy still has something to teach us. Most of his genuine insights -- none of them earth shattering to us now -- have been figured out by others since. Even so the lack of attention to him is not merely a matter of historical justice, if it were to exist, or antiquarian interest; his obscurity has come at a historiographic cost: we miss the indirect impact of Spinoza on the development of an independent philosophy of science (long before Duhem or its reincarnation as a species of Erkenntnistheorie) and the increasing methodological sophistication in philosophical reflection on the nature of science throughout the eighteenth century (and before the term 'scientist' was coined in the modern sense). To what degree such historiographic misconceptions tend to be inscribed in the often tacit self-conceptions of contemporary, working philosophers of science, I leave for another time.
Even though the Netherlands were by far the wealthiest and the most powerful military power during Nieuwentyt's life, Dutch was, despite Stevin's insistence, not the natural language of (natural) philosophy at the time (Latin and French were). The main other reason (for a historian of philosophy) to learn the language today is to read Spinoza's Short Treatise. (Obviously art historians, historians of science, economic historians, and some literary scholars have plenty of reasons to master Dutch.) Nieuwentyt probably wrote his works in Dutch because he assumed he was writing for a large and lively literary public. Somewhat oddly, his death coincides with the near collapse of that public.
Nieuwentyt's fate [unknown in his country, barely known to the relevant scholarly community, largely unstudied] is not unique in philosophical history. A few weeks ago, I mentioned the obscurity of the many Polish philosophers (including some interesting women) who contributed to the early development of analytic philosophy. Often such a fate is the product not just of linguistic isolation (as it is with Nieuwentyt) and lack of a translator-advocate, but also of changes in philosophical fashion and vocabulary such that the now-unknown-philosopher-Y becomes almost incomprehensible to contemporary philosophers and scholars if they, counterfactually, had access to an up-to-date translation (which does not exist).
While barriers to travel and communication have been reduced since Nieuwentyt's day. The linguistic barriers have remained. Without a translator-advocate a philosopher in some non-lingua-franca does not exist to the outside world. So, there is every reason to assume that somewhere, somebody is writing philosophical gems in a small language unknown to most of us. Perhaps, she will find -- like Kierkegaard -- an audience outside her native tongue. But it is equally possible she will remain unknown, perhaps even unknown to our scholarly descendants (in whatever language they will be writing).
*Says who? Says me. Who the fuck are you? Well, I have some expertise on these matter.
**Full disclosure, I co-edited with Tamas Demester the 2017 volume.
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