J.E. Ted McGuire RIP (pt 1.)

Nearly everything that's written, even by highly accomplished philosophers, about canonical historical figures is a weird kind of functional garbage. I call it 'functional' because often the disfigurations can be explained by the role the canonical figure plays in some grand narrative about the past, in undergraduate or graduate education, as a bit-player in some more recent partisan debates, and so on. I don't want to claim that Newton fared much worse than most canonical figures, but ever since the Leibniz-Clarke debate, through Kant, Mach, and the reception of Einstein's revolution very impoverished images of Newton displaced whatever nuance one can find in Newton's own writings. Even the one exception, Koyré, is more informative on other figures of the scientific revolution than he is on Newton.

Now, as history of science became a professionalized field, Newton studies helped constitute it. This is associated with names such I.B. Cohen, Westfall, Whiteside, Hesse, Dobbs, the Halls, Herrivel, Dijksterhuis,  Sabra, and so. (And Kuhn, of course.) To the best of my knowledge, Ted McGuire was the first philosopher, or one of the first ones, to pick up on the opportunity to harvest the fruits of this historiographic revolution, or professionalization. And in a series of papers, he reintroduced a complex, messy and endlessly fascinating philosophical figure, Isaac Newton, to his peers and later readers. I have these papers in mind: 

• McGuire, James E., and Piyo M. Rattansi. "Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan’." Notes and records of the Royal Society of London 21.2 (1966): 108-143.
• McGuire, James E. "Force, active principles, and Newton's invisible realm." Ambix 15.3 (1968): 154-208.
• McGuire, J. E. "Atoms and the ‘analogy of nature’: Newton's third rule of philosophizing." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 1.1 (1970): 3-58.
• McGuire, James E. "Body and void and Newton's De Mundi systemate: Some new sources." Archive for history of exact sciences 3.3 (1966): 206-248.

I put the full citations in because each of these papers are lengthy, complex affairs in their own right. Often I cite one paper Y (on topic X). And then years later, I rediscover that X is one of the minor gems in Y, and that there is whole lot more to (say) McGuire 1966b. All these papers were written while he was at Leeds before he helped found the Pittsburgh HPS program (together with Larry Laudan) in 1971. When Ted and I first started corresponding, he once mentioned that he had been "pushing Newton as a philosopher, epistemologist and an ontologist" for most of his career. I was born in 1971, and Pitt HPS has been the dominant HPS program for most of my life. (Yes, Indiana and Madison gave it a run for its money, and for some periods my own Chicago could compete in a number of areas, and now, perhaps, Irvine LPS has taken over the torch. Time will tell.) And so Ted helped train in some fashion or another a whose who in HPS, including a whole number of people who are now shaping Newton scholarship, and who I hope will share their memories of life in daily company of Ted.

Now, most obituaries are more informative about the author than the deceased. In this case more than usual because I came late to Ted in my academic development and so I don't have a lot of anecdotes of him as (say) dissertation supervisor. But I hope what follows is also instructive about Ted, too.

I came to Newton scholarship through George E. Smith's now legendary two-semester year-long undergraduate course on Newton's Principia. And George had a habit of roping his undergraduate students into discrete research projects. Many of these projects developed what's known as the research frontier in Newton (and Huygens) studies (see, for example, this paper). We didn't know any better. George's main focus is evidential arguments, and he ignores issues most other professional philosophers want to talk about when they discuss Newton (or history of science more generally). So, I rarely heard of Ted.

I went to Chicago, to work with Howard Stein. And Stein also did a three-quarters year-long space-time course in which Newton figures heavily. And it was very clear that George and Howard were part of a mutual admiration society (mediated by Bill Harper up in Western Ontario, I believe). Howard also taught a lot of Newton in his empiricism course (where obliquely Newton was pretty much presented as superior not just to Descartes, but also to Locke and Hume). 

Now, Howard had also written a number of astonishing papers on Newton in the late 1960s:

• Stein, Howard. "On the notion of field in Newton, Maxwell, and beyond." (1970). 
• Stein, Howard. "Newtonian space-time." Texas Quarterly 10.3 (1967). 174--200

The second of these didn't just shape a new philosophical Newton, it also influenced contemporary space-time studies.

I mention this because to the best of my knowledge McGuire and Stein never cite or mention each other in print then and since. (If this turns out to be poetic exaggeration, I apologize.) I know they were aware of each other! When I came out of Chicago, with a PhD primarily on the reception of Newton, I knew of McGuire's existence, but it  was more as a distinct orbital body on the horizon than an important influence. But action at a distance, even joint action, is a funny concept.

A few years later, together with Andrew Janiak, I hosted a conference on Newton and/as Philosophy, and I met there some of McGuire's great students including Zvi Biener and Chris Smeenk (both of which I have since collaborated with in co-authored papers and edited volumes). I also met Doreen Fraser and David Miller in that period. Some of his other Pitt students include Brian Hepburn and I think Peter Harman (who I never met). He was also John Henry's supervisor at Leeds. (I am sure I am missing folk.) Ted himself had been one of the first people I invited to keynote in Leiden; he had accepted enthusiastically and I used his name in the call for papers. But at the last minute, he had to withdraw due to a hip replacement.

The conference was an important few days in my life because I met so many people who have become lifelong friends and important interlocuters. In addition, I realized that I had been wrong to think 'all the action was in the reception of Newton because Stein, McGuire, Harper, Smith, Ernan McMullin, Mary Hesse, and Domenico Bertoloni Meli had exhausted the topic.' In front of me the students of Stein, McGuire, Harper, Arthur Fine, Harvey Brown, and Michael Friedman were reading each other's teachers and each other's papers, and just beginning to ask some tough questions. McGuire himself kept learning from the youngsters, engaging with us in print and in private correspondence, and when he couldn't beat us he joined up with some of us (especially Ed Slowik).

After the conference, I returned to Ted's early papers in earnest. And also started pestering him with letters like this, "I am about to write a paper on Newton's Fourth Rule of Reasoning; other than George Smith's work, the most helpful thing I encountered was your long footnote 8 in your 1970 paper on the third rule." The answer was a sweet, "I did consider writing a paper on the fortuna of the rule up to the time of Darwin but never got around to it."

Once you see the footnote, you can see why that's not an empty boast. Here's that eight footnote:

See, for instance: Henry Pemberton, A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (London, x728), 24-5; Colin Maclaurin, An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries (London, 174B), 22; Gowin Knight, An Attempt to demonstrate that all the Phenomena of nature may be explained by two simple active Principles Attraction and Repulsion (London, 1748), 7; George Cheyne, Philosophical Principles of Religion : Natural and Revealed (London, 1715), 36; Willem Jacob Storm-van 's Gravesande, Physices Elementa Mathematica...sive Introductio ad Philosophiam Newtoniam (Editio Secunda, Lugduni Batavorum, 1725), Praefatio, and Liber I, Caput I, I-7; Benjamin Martin, Philosophia Britannica: or a New and Comprehensive System of the Newtonian Philosophy (Reading, 1747) , 1-42. In his first lecture, Martin discusses Newton's four rules in some detail. Thus when 'we take survey of the visible world', we conclude that all bodies 'consist of one and the same sort of Matter or Substance'. He concludes that 'Matter, thus variously modified and configurated, constitutes an infinite variety of bodies, all of which are found to have the following common Properties...'. Thomas Rutherforth, A System of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, i748), Introduction. The first three rules are discussed as the only means of making 'knowledge real and universal'. Rule Three is seen primarily as an inductive rule. Richard Helsham, A Course of Lectures in Natural Philosophy, published by Bryan Robinson, 5th edition (London, 1777). The four rules are quoted in full in the Preface. Robinson notes that 'This method and these rules, have been carefully observed by our author in these Lectures...' (viii). George Adams, Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy (London, t794) , vol. II. In a lengthy lecture entitled 'In the method of Reasoning in Natural Philosophy' Adams concludes his discussion of the history of analogy to extend our conclusion to all other bodies, and thus make it universal: a way of reasoning, that is agreeable to the harmony of things, and to the old maxim, ascribed to Hermes... (p. 34). For this maxim see note 38 below, on Maclaurin. Adams is drawing on Maclaurin's treatise. Tiberius Cavallo, The Elements of Natural or Experimental Philosophy (London, 18o3), vol. I, 7. Quotes Newton's four rules and connects them with the generality of the three laws. William Nicholson, An Introduction to Natural Philosophy (London, 18o5) , vol. I. In his introduction he discusses intuition, demonstration, and probabilistic knowledge, saying of natural philosophy that it is based on analogy: 'To give stability to this science, it is necessary to admit no probabilities, as first principles of analogy, but those which possess the strongest and most incontrovertible resemblance to truth. For this purpose, the following rules are adopted': the first three rules are then quoted without comment. Joseph Priestley, Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit, 2nd edition (Birmingham, 1782), sections I and II; Etienne Bormot de Condillac, OEuvres Completes de Condillac, tome troisieme (Paris, i8o3) , chapitre XII, 327-58; Petrus van Musschenbroek, Elementa physicae (Lugduni Batavorum, 1734), 6, and Introductio ad philosophiam naturalem (Lugdunl Batavorum, 1764), vol. I, 14; Roger Joseph Boscovich, A Theory of Natural Philosophy (Latin-English Edition, London, x 922), sections 4o-2. Boscovich is critical of the third rule on the grounds that induction does not support the transference of many physical properties to the parts of phenomena. The Theory was first published in 1758. Brian Higgins, A Philosophical Essay Concerning Light (London, 1776), 18--19; James Hutton, Dissertations on Different Subjects in Natural Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1790), part III, 279-3o0; William Whewell, On the Philosophy of Discovery (London, 186o), chapter XVIII, 181-2oo, section 14. Whewell is mainly concerned in this chapter with the notion of vera causa as discussed in Newton's first rule. He points out, however, that the third rule's conception of universal laws is inconsistent with the stricture of the fourth rule that a 'law may be inaccurate'. See also Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (London, 184o ), vol I, 4-6, where Whewell observes that the third rule is circular. James Challis, 'On Newton's "Foundations of all Philosophy" ', Phil. Mag., 26 (1863), 28o-92. In this particular article Challis is attempting to base a theory of science on Newton's third rule.
These discussions are the most interesting in the literature I have examined. Most of these writers are concerned with the problem of generalizing properties of matter, rather than with Newton's criterion for deciding essential qualities. Many other writers such as Halley, Sterling, Ferguson, Desaguliers, Wright and Worster mention or refer to the rule; these with the above references are more than sufficient to establish the widespread influence of this aspect of Newton's methodology throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  I am grateful to Laurens Laudan for the references to Condillac and Musschenbroek, and to Peter Heimann for calling attention to Higgins.

So, that footnote was constructed decades before the internet. It's an astonishing synthesis that basically tells future grad students where to look. I am sometimes disparagingly called 'widely read' or broad. But I am still busy tracking down some of Ted's leads in this note! (I had some pride in my dissertation because McGuire misses Adam Smith's and Diderot's treatment.) At the time, the idea to put any scholar in historical context was still radical. But even more innovative was the idea that this context included lots of now forgotten people. In addition, that material not thought of as 'scientific' like Newton's theology and angelology was crucial to understanding his more 'philosophical' views. 

Our correspondence took off after he read a draft of my paper on gravity as a relational quality in Newton. He discerned at once that I was defending (and updating) a version of his position against Stein and Janiak. He suggested some improvements including a thought experiment that when a while later I ran it past Bill Harper at an airport, Harper just sat there and said (at least according to my self-serving memory), in awe, 'you have battled Stein to a draw.' (And I noted quietly 'with the help of McGuire.') After that, our correspondence took on a more chatty and more equal flavor. (Ted had that capacity to make you forget he had heard it all before.) And he would read and improve many of the Newton papers I wrote in the next decade.

In a recent self-serving "introduction" to my collection Newton's Metaphysics: Essays (OUP 2022), I added a note qualifying my own claim to originality, "Obviously that diagnosis does no justice to Ted McGuire's contribution to Newton scholarship. McGuire's work anticipates most of my own efforts."

I finally met Ted at an APA session in Chicago organised by Geoff Gorham, February 2010. I don't want to claim we hit it off at once. But I was impressed by his kindness, his wit, and his sharpness (he was already in his late 70s). He was a much abler drinker than I am, too. But shortly thereafter we got chance to deepen our connection. My then new Ghent colleagues, Maarten Van Dyck and Steffen Ducheyne, had nominated Ted for a special Sarton Chair at the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Sarton Chair, and Ted came to Ghent for a few fantastic days, where I got to enjoy his witty stories and to pick his brain on lots of arcane knowledge. (One of the highlights of my intellectual life is to witness the logician Dirk Batens and Ted debate Descartes' alleged Spinozism.)

After that Ghent visit he always greeted me with a clear fondness as we kept crossing paths on the Newton circuit. He helped sponsor and put together a conference on Newton and Empiricism that Zvi Biener and I hosted at Pitt. I finally got to see the Cathedral of Learning inside, as well as some terrific bars. And I kept sending my draft Newton papers to him for comments. Since he was often in Poland with his partner Barbara Tuchanska at Lodz University (where Ted also did some teaching--I hope the lecture notes show up some day), it was easy for him to come over to Belgium or Holland and I enjoyed sparring with him.

Since this post is already long, and I realize I have not told you anything yet about Ted's many substantive contributions to Newton scholarship (other than that my own work is greatly indebted to it), I'll start doing a series of Ted-mania posts in the next few weeks to invite some of you to join in the fun that is scholarship, but also to appreciate some of Ted's towering contributions to it. He will be missed. A giant has passed.*

 

*HT James Lennox for sharing the news of Ted's passing away a few days ago.

Comments

[George Gale]

Lovely piece Eric, thank you. We all have our memories of dear Ted. In Spring 1983, I went to the Pitt Center for the first time. Nick Rescher sponsored me, and Peter Machamer was already a pal. I met Ted for the first time, and he was gracefully congenial and welcoming, and immediately started to probe me on Leibniz. We worked together all semester on the topic, I learned some amazing stuff, and, with Peter, crashed my way through Ted's fantastic wine cellar, drinking some incredible wines.
One of the awesome parts of that semester was Ted's seminar on Newton's optics. All of us fellows sat in. It was the most incredible free-for-all you could imagine: Ron Giere, Tom Nickles, John Worrall, Jim Woodward, and me, all of us sitting at Uncle Ted's feet, learning about Newton. One of the highlights of my intellectual life.

[James R Hofmann]

I remember Ted fondly. Speaking of seminars, he and Sellars did one on Descartes in about 1980 that was off the charts. Odd that he and Larry Laudan died within a few months of each other.