Digressions&Impressions

Stebbing on Analytic Clarification, with some Kuhn and Sellars

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One of the eye-opening claims in Frederique Janssen-Lauret's recent (2022) Cambridge Elements on Susan Stebbing is that "much of Stebbing's published work focussed on the philosophy of physics and especially on the philosophy of physics." (32) Accordingly Janssen-Lauret devotes considerable space to Sttebbing’s philosophy of science in her book, especially, Stebbing's famous critique of Eddington, but also -- and I suspect this prepared my mind for what follows -- to the complex relationship between Stebbing's philosophy of science and her distance from Moore's philosophy. I mention this because while this post continues my series on clarity and Stebbing's views on clarity in particular ((recall here; and here; and yesterday), today I unexpectedly veer into philosophy of science. 

Recall that if clarity is the effect of analysis (the ‘standard conception’), then its character is, at least in part, determined by the nature of analysis. By the 1930s it was sufficiently clear that different kinds of analysis were being practiced alongside each other. In fact, in her (1933) “Logical positivism and analysis," Stebbing made this very point explicit: “there are various kinds of analysis.” She lists “four different kinds,” although in context it’s possible she thinks there are more. “These four kinds are: (1) analytic definition of a symbolic expression; (2) analytic clarification of a concept; (3) postulational analysis; (4) directional analysis.”

On the standard conception of clarity each of these kinds of analysis generates a clarity proper to it. Of course, it’s possible that the kind of fruit born by these four kinds of analysis belongs to the same genus, but one can’t simply assume that, and to her credit Stebbing does not assume so. For Stebbing thinks that "the analytic clarification of a concept differs considerably from the other three kinds of analysis.” While Stebbing’s views on and practice of postulational and directional -- which she sometimes calls ‘metaphysical’ -- analysis have received considerable and increasing attention,[1] her views on analytic clarification much less so. (I substantiate this claim in the footnote accompanying this sentence.)* Even the phrase 'analytic clarification' was -- despite its apparent familiarity -- not much used in the 1930s.

At first sight, it is no surprise that Stebbing's analytic clarification of a concept has received little attention. For she introduces us to it by saying that such analysis “is due to the fact that we often manage to say something which is true although in so saying we believe ourselves to be referring to what is not in fact the case, and are thus also saying something false.” As stated this seems unpromising and has the air of paradox, without having the clarity of the more familiar paradox of analysis (on which Stebbing has very interesting things to say as one can read in Janssen-Lauret's Elements.) 

But what Stebbing has in mind when discussing 'analytic clarification' of a concept is made evident in the discussion of what follows. For, she introduces the very idea of an analytic clarification of a concept, in order to handle instances where a previously relatively successful scientific theory requires non-trivial revision after what we would now call a ‘paradigm change.’ Her examples are, in fact, ‘mass,’ ‘force,’ and ‘simultaneity’ with explicit reference to Newton and Einstein. Here's what she writes. It's terse, and she acknowledges she lacks time to develop it in context:

Examples of concepts which have been thus clarified are mass, force, simultaneity. The need for such analytic clarification is due to the fact that we often manage to say something which is true although in so saying we believe ourselves to be referring to what is not in fact the case, and are thus also saying something false. This happens when we understand to some extent what we are saying but do not understand clearly exactly what we are saying; hence, we suppose something to be essential to the truth of what we say which is, however, not essential. Certainly Newton did not clearly understand what he was referring to when he spoke of "force", but he often said what was nevertheless true when he used sentences containing "force". A striking example is provided by the concept of simultaneity. Before Einstein had asked the question how we determine whether two events are simultaneous, we thought we knew quite well what was meant by saying 'happening at the same time in London and New York'. Einstein has made us see that we did not know quite well what we meant; we now understand that what we thought to be essential is not so. This analytic clarification of a concept cannot be made quite tidy. It involves a change in the significance of all statements in which the concept occurs.  (p. 30)

Ever since Kuhn, we tend to discuss examples like this in terms of incommensurability and paradigm shifts. And I use some of that vocabulary (and also that of Sellars) to elucidate what Stebbing is getting at. But the first thing to note is that analytic clarification can (or is) the effect of scientific development. The clarity achieved is the product of the growth in science. ("Einstein has made us see...") ‘Analytic clarification’ may be the worst philosophical coinage for failure to convey what it is trying to describe!

Who is doing the clarifying is actually left a bit vague (notice the repeated use of we/us), and that's because Stebbing tends to treat science as a social, situated activity. (Peter West also makes this point in his re-evaluation of Stebbing's famous criticism of Eddington in a recent paper in BJHP.) As she puts it, “Science is the work of scientists, who, profiting by each other’s labours, come gradually to achieve an agreed body of knowledge, and in the course of this achievement continually develop new and more powerful technical methods” (Philosophy and the Physicists)** So, I tend to read her as claiming that Einstein triggered a social process of analytic clarification of concepts that had previously been taken for granted in science (and, perhaps, ordinary life--I return to that below). This image of what philosophical analysis can be is in some sense more familiar from strains in the Vienna Circle. and looks forward to Quine's more naturalist approach. 

Interestingly enough, analytic clarification does not merely impact the scientific image, it is also shifts the manifest image. (On my reading, Stebbing's thinks Edgington's mistake was not that he thought science could shape the manifest image, but rather that he conflated the scientific and manifest images in places where they are better kept separate.) It's not just physicists who through the development of general relativity learned something new about the significance of simultaneity, all of us. 

As an aside, the impact of science on the manifest image is itself due to a wider rationalization of the world; many elements of the manifest image have already been infiltrated and shaped by the scientific image. And this means that common sense itself can shift like quicksand. (I suspect her sensitivity to this is one of her more important differences with Moore.)

When I first read the quoted passage (with Kuhn and Quine in the back of my mind), I thought that the lack of tidiness of analytic clarification was due to a kind of semantic holism of concepts, that the significance of each concept was determined by adjoining concepts in a network. (Janssen-Lauret situates Stebbing as a transitional figure toward Quine's and later Wittgenstein's holism.) So that the adjustments that are required when we figure out what simultaneity really means ramifies out to other, adjoining concepts. But Stebbing actually doesn't say this here in the context of analytic clarification.

Rather, the lack of tidiness is due to the fact that the concepts involved are central to the scientific and manifest image(s). And so that that the clarity gained from analytic clarification about the significance of these particular terms has to be fitted to quite a few claims ("the significance of all statements in which the concept occurs” emphasis added). This still involves a holist-friendly thought that the full, changed significance isn't evident from a particular use, but needs to be inferred from a whole range of potentially subtly different uses (but this holism isn't semantic). But I suspect that part of the lack of tidiness is also due to Stebbing’s recognition that science itself is open-ended, perhaps intrinsically so, and that it may discover new uses for the concepts in new statements (predictions, extensions, etc.) or through the new use of technology (recall the passage quoted from Philosophy and the Physicists).

Notice that Stebbing resists the temptation to claim that old paradigms were simply false; that what we thought was true was actually false. Rather, she suggests that one can say true things without actually fully understanding the concepts one uses. "This happens when we understand to some extent what we are saying but do not understand clearly exactly what we are saying." This vantage point is extraordinary difficult to achieve about one's own (paradigmatic) utterances, but does become more easily available during and after a paradigm shift.

On this view part of the point of the later paradigm, of the growth of knowledge more generally, is to elucidate how we could speak truth before while strictly speaking not always understanding fully our own concepts. Stebbing here alerts us to the role of philosophy, analytic clarification, within science during shifts in the research frontier. (Of course, this is not philosophy’s only role.)

There is, of course, a wider lesson here about our lives in societies characterized by complex, cognitive division of labor. In the quoted passage, Newton represents the human condition; as through the growth of science and technology the concepts of the scientific image encroach on the manifest image, and as the division of labor within the sciences becomes ever more fine-grained, it is inevitable that at any given time we say true things without understanding the concepts we use. Somewhat paradoxically then, the clarity that is the effect of analytic clarification grows while science and technology grows; but (ahh) simultaneously their growth means that we often are simultaneously in the dark about the truths we utter confidently.

• This first appeared at: <Stebbing on Clarity with nods to Kuhn, Sellars, and Quine (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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[1] For recent careful work on directional/metaphysical analysis see, Annalisa Coliva "Stebbing, Moore (and Wittgenstein) on common sense and metaphysical analysis." British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29.5 (2021): 914-934. Douglas, Alexander X., and Jonathan Nassim. "Susan stebbing’s logical interventionism." History and Philosophy of Logic 42.2 (2021): 101-117. Neither paper is interested in analytic clarification of a concept. 

* For example, back in 2003, in "Susan Stebbing on Cambridge and Vienna Analysis," Michael Beaney assimilates Stebbing's idea of 'analytic clarification of a concept' to Russell’s ‘paradigm’ of analysis. Beaney writes, "I might say ‘It is false that the present King of France is bald’, and take myself (as Meinong and the early Russell did) to be referring to some subsistent (as opposed to existent) object. According to Russell’s theory of descriptions, I am saying something true, despite my confusion as to what I am referring. What we have, then, is also paraphrastic analysis – the aim being here, though, to ‘analyse away’ a problematic expression." (343-344) Later in (2016) "Susan Stebbing and the Early Reception of Logical Empiricism in Britain," Beaney simply skips discussing the analytic clarification of a concept after mentioning its existence.[4] In his (2021) SEP entry on Stebbing with Chapman, they do not even mention it. More recently, Karl Egerton (2021) "Susan Stebbing and the Truthmaker Approach to Metaphysics."[6] also assimilates 'analytic clarification' to analytic definition, but is not much interested in exploring it. Oddly, in Beaney and Egerton ignore Stebbing's claim that analytic clarification a is very different kind of analysis.

**See also Körber, Silke. "Thinking About the “Common Reader:” Otto Neurath, L. Susan Stebbing and the (Modern) Picture-Text Style." Neurath Reconsidered: New Sources and Perspectives (2019): 456.

On Newton's Refutation of the Mechanical Philosophy

In the recent philosophical reception of Newton there is an understandable tendency to focus on the inverse square law of universal gravitation. I don't mean to suggest this is the only such focus; arguably his views on Space have shaped -- through the good works of Stein and Earman -- also debates over spacetime theories. 

The effect of this telescoping has also impacted, I think, the way in which the debate between the mechanical and Newtonian philosophy has been understood. The former is said to posit a contact model in which contact between very small corpuscles explains a lot of observed phenomena. A typical mechanical philosopher creates a hypothetical model, a machine with pulleys and levers (etc.), that can make observed phenomena intelligible. In the mechanical philosophy, which itself was directed against a variety of Aristotelian and Scholastic projects, efficient causation -- once one of four canonical causes (including formal, final, and material) -- has achieved a privileged status.

The scholarly fascination with the status of action at a distance is, thus, readily explicable because it violates the very model of intelligibility taken for granted in the mechanical philosophy. As Newton notes in the General Scholium (first published in the 1713 second edition of the Principia), universal gravity "operates, not according to the quantity of the surfaces of the particles upon which it acts, (as mechanical causes use to do,) but according to the quantity of the solid matter which they contain, and propagates its virtue on all sides, to immense distances, decreasing always in the duplicate proportion of the distances." 

Before I get to the main point of today's post, I offer two asides. First, with its emphasis on hypothetical explanations, the mechanical philosophers (and here I use the term to cover people as diverse as Beeckman, Descartes, Boyle, and Huygens) also exhibit a deep strain of skepticism about the very possibility of truly grasping nature's innards as it were. Spinoza's natura naturans and even Kant's ding-an-sich are the enduring expressions of this strain of skepticism (allowing that Kant is much less a mechanical philosopher). To put this as a serious joke: the PSR is, thus, not an act of intellectual hubris, but a self-limitation of the knower when it comes to fundamental ontology. Second, by showing that there is something wholly unintelligible about the way motion is supposed to be transferred from one body to the other (Essay 2.23.28), Locke, who gets so little credit among contemporary philosophers, had already imploded the pretensions of the mechanical philosophy on conceptual grounds.  Okay, so much for set up.

The mechanical philosophers were not so naïve to think that models that relied on mere impulse, matter in motion, could create hypothetical models of sufficient complexity to provide hypothetical explanations of the phenomena. This is especially a problem because the mechanical philosophers posited a homogeneous matter. So that in addition to matter and motion, they posited size and shape not merely as effects of motion, but also as key explanatory factors in the hypothetical models of visible phenomena (this can be seen in Descartes, Gassendi, and Boyle, whose "The Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy" (1666), I take as a canonical statement of the mechanical philosophy). So that the mechanical philosophy is committed to privileging (to echo a felicitous phrase by Biener and Smeenk [here; and here]) geometric features of bodies.

Even leaving aside the inverse square law and its universal scope, Newton's experimental work on gravity demolished a key feature of the mechanical philosophy: size and shape are irrelevant to understand gravity. I quote from Henry Pemberton's View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (1728):

It will be proper in this place to observe concerning the power of gravity, that its force upon any body does not at all depend upon the shape of the body; but that it continues constantly the same without any variation in the same body, whatever change be made in the figure of the body: and if the body be divided into any number of pieces, all those pieces shall weigh just the same, as they did, when united together in one body: and if the body be of a uniform contexture, the weight of each piece will be proportional to its bulk. This has given reason to conclude, that the power of gravity acts upon bodies in proportion to the quantity of matter in them. Whence it should follow, that all bodies must fall from equal heights in the same space of time. And as we evidently see the contrary in feathers and such like substances, which fall very slowly in comparison of more solid bodies; it is reasonable to suppose, that some other cause concurs to make so manifest a difference. This cause has been found by particular experiments to be the air. --1.2.24 [emphasis added]

Pemberton (who was the editor of the third, 1726 edition of the Principia) goes on to give Boyle's famous vacuum experiments with falling feathers and stones as evidence for this argument. That is, Pemberton uses Boyle's experimental work to refute Boyle's mechanical philosophy. 

Now, in the Principia, references to Boyle's experiment got added only to the (1713) second edition in two highly prominent places: Cotes added a reference to it in his editor's introduction and Newton added a reference to it in the General Scholium at the end of the book. In both cases Boyle's experiment is used as a kind of illustration for the claim that without air resistance falling bodies are equally accelerated and for the plausibility of positing an interstellar vacuum. That is, if one reads the Principia superficially (by looking at prominent material at the front and end), it seems as if Newton and Boyle have converging natural philosophies.

Of course, neither Pemberton nor Newton rely exclusively on Boyle's vacuum experiment to make the point that shape and size (or geometry) is not a significant causal factor when it comes to gravity. The key work is done by pendulum experiments with different metals. (These can be found in Book II of the Principia, which is often skipped, although he drives the point home in Book III, Prop. 6 of Principia.) These show that quantity of matter is more fundamental than shape. And, crucially, shape & size and quantity of matter need not be proportional to or proxies of each other. This fact was by no means obvious, and at the start of the Principia. even Newton offers, as Biener and Smeenk have highlighted, a kind of geometric conception of quantity of matter in his first definition before suggesting that 'quantity of matter' is proportional to weight (and indicating his pendulum experiments as evidence thereof).

Let me wrap up. What's important here is that even if Newton had been wrong about the universal nature of the inverse square law, he showed that the mechanical philosophy cannot account for the experimentally demonstrated features of terrestrial (and planetary) gravity. (So, that the mechanical philosophy is not a natural way to understand Galilean fall.) And this means that in addition to Locke's conceptual claim, Newton shows that the mechanical philosophy's emphasis on just one kind of efficient causation, by way of contact, is not sufficient to explain the system of nature. 

What I say here is not surprising to students of Newton. But it's also not really much emphasized. To be sure, Newton, too, accepted a kind of homogeneous matter, but rather than its size and figure, he showed that an abstract quantity (mass) is more salient. Of course, how to understand mass in Newton's philosophy opens new questions, for as Ori Belkind has argued it should not be taken as a property of matter, but rather as a measure.

 

 

The story starts with a stolen Maupertuis (III); in which some of the main characters reveal themselves

Last week (recall) I returned a stolen Maupertuis to The Institution of Civil Engineers (hereafter: ICE) Library in London. During my visit, while I was admiring a beautiful copy of the third Edition of Newton's Principia, the librarian, Debra Francis, called my attention to a four page manuscript wedged in the first few pages of this Principia. I very quickly decided that it was probably an eighteenth century manuscript because of the paper, ink, and notation/diagrams which looked familiar. (It's immediately made clear we're dealing with falling bodies.) So, while still in the library I sent pictures of it to Niccolo Guicciardini and then to Scott Mandelbrote, George Smith, and Chris Smeenk. Debra and I spent a few minutes on the manuscript which is in English. But most of our attention was devoted to figuring out the provenance of Principia at ICE. As we now know (recall yesterday's post) the ms was found in the Thomas Young's copy of the Principia.

At this point it would be useful to say why I jumped to the conclusion it was an eighteenth century manuscript and perhaps not insignificant, and why I sent the manuscript to these four scholars. [If you are impatient to find out the big reveal, jump to the paragraph below that starts with: "it turns out"....] For, while I have published quite a bit on Newton, I don't usually spend my time looking at manuscripts and thanks to the internet I barely spend any time in special collections anymore. However, between 1993 and 1996 or so my earliest academic experience involved spending multiple Summers in the Huygens archives in Leiden while George Smith and I were working on our project reconstructing Huygens' empirical argument against universal gravity. At the time I was lucky that Joella Yoder (the world's leading Huygens scholar) often overlapped with me in Leiden, while she was cataloging the Huygens' papers at the Leiden University library. She basically gave me on the job training in archival research. Along the way, and with help of many kind archivists and librarians, I was exceedingly lucky in discovering previously unknown material and rediscovering maps (see here, pp. 93-97 & here, pp. 51-55) important to our argument (the forthcoming paper is archived here).* But while this is rich experience, I wouldn't trust myself to know the difference between, say, a forgery or a real Huygens ms. However, I do know by acquaintance what paper and ink of the era looks like.

Second, I have read the Principia three times. Once as an undergrad in the second semester of George Smith's famous Newton course at Tufts University. Once, but in much less detail, with Howard Stein in graduate school in his course on the history of space-time theories. And then again in great detail with Chris Smeenk when we wrote a Handbook article on Newton's Principia. There are a whole range of diagrams and formulations that are distinctive to the Principia because while Newton was building on the work of others, he was also innovating mathematically in it (or drawing on then still secret innovations). But to simplify greatly, while Newton's methods, results, and theories shaped subsequent research, Newton's notations and his presentation of the material are rather distinctive (and were displaced within a century); it has its own vernacular. To give a very low-level example: in Newton the second law is a proportionality (and not an equality such as F=ma). And again, because I rarely work with the Principia (and, as historians of physics go, a below average mathematician), I wouldn't trust myself to identify a passage with any particular proposition of the Principia without double checking a few times.

Now, Niccolo Guicciardini (Milan) is a historian and philosopher and a specialist on Newton's mathematics (and physics!) and who also has deep knowledge of Newton's manuscripts. He is also very generous with his time, and he does not make one feel silly if one reveals one's ignorance. (He was an important interlocuter to me when I developed my interpretation of Newton's philosophy of time and then again, when I responded to Katherine Brading's excellent criticism [see also here] of it.)+ So, he was the first person I thought of. But, as I reflected on what I had seen, I figured it might be useful for somebody to be able to visit the ICE library to inspect the manuscript in person in London. So, that's why I thought of Scott Mandelbrote in Cambridge, who among his many other intellectual virtues, is one of the leading scholars of Newton's manuscripts, including the paper, watermarks, (etc.). And I sent it to Smith and Smeenk because I hoped they would get a kick out of it, and I figured they might recognize the material that's being discussed in the manuscript much more quickly than I would.

Much to my joy Niccolo almost immediately responded to my email. And rather than pointing out my obvious mistake -- 'why bother me with this juvenilia; clearly a school boy exercise; didn't you notice the 19th century notation?' -- he wrote me back to congratulate me on the manuscript which was previously unknown to him. He then went on to say, "I might have seen the hand before … intriguing indeed." And at that moment I knew the story of 'my' stolen Maupertuis would have an interesting afterlife. In a subsequent email he warned me that was not sure about identity of the author and also that it may take a while before he would get back to me due to a family holiday. Okay, so much for set up.

It turns out that Guicciardini and Mandelbrote almost immediately set to work to identify the author, and they are so confident of the author's identity that Niccolo has informed the ICE library of it on March 1. <Drumroll, please.> They think the hand is Henry Pemberton’s--the editor of the third edition! Now, there are not many known manuscripts by Pemberton. But, as I learned from Niccolo, he has a very distinctive way of writing "this." You can see this on p 2 of the manuscript that I have reprinted below and compare it to a letter by Pemberton to Newton (9 February 1725; Cambridge UL, MS Add. 3986.7, fol 1r-1v) that Niccolo shared with Debra Francis and myself.

So, let's connect some dots. The manuscript is in the hand of Henry Pemberton (1694 – 1771), who was the editor of the third edition of the Principia--that is the version of the copy that Tomas Young owned and that was donated to ICE library. So, this leaves some open questions:

1. How did Thomas Young acquire this copy of the Principia and the Pemberton ms?

A neat, perhaps too neat, hypothesis is that ICE library actually owns Pemberton's own copy of the edition of Principia that he edited. And so that Pemberton himself inserted the manuscript in his copy of the Principia. This would at least explain how the manuscript ended up in the ICE library copy without having to posit a complex further web of linkages. However, we know that mathematical manuscripts circulated through the eighteenth century. (Well I did not know much about that, but Niccolo reminded me.) And it's also possible that the Pemberton manuscript and Thomas Young's copy of the Principia were brought together by Young himself.

        2. Did Young ever use the Ice Libary Pemberton ms.? 

        3. What are the contents of the ICE library Pemberton ms.? About this more soon.

        4. And can the contents help explain why Pemberton wrote this ms.? As we shall see, this will lead us to some outstanding historical puzzles and some major intellectual controversies. Stay tuned! 

 

The story starts with a stolen Maupertuis (II)

Last week (recall) I returned a stolen Maupertuis to The Institution of Civil Engineers (hereafter: ICE) Library in London. During my visit, while I was admiring a beautiful copy of the third Edition of Newton's Principia, the librarian, Debra Francis, called my attention to a four page manuscript wedged in the first few pages. The manuscript was in English and seemed to be written by somebody familiar with the mathematics of the Principia. It looked 18th century to me. So, while still in the library I sent pictures of it to Niccolo Guicciardini and then, separately in a joint email, to Scott Mandelbrote, George Smith, and Chris Smeenk. 

As I noted, the copy of the Principia is part of the Telford collection that originates the library and was donated by a MR. Young in 1840 (as a plaque inside the book reveals). You may recall that in my original post, I remarked "I immediately tried to remember Thomas Young's dates." Of course, I quickly googled these (1773 – 1829), and left it aside. 

Most of my own original thoughts were about the author and contents of the manuscript, especially because I could tell Niccolo was excited to receive it. More about that soon.

After a visit to the vault (which did not contain the paperwork we were looking for), I left the library with a promise from Debra Francis to track down the provenance of 'Mr. Young's Principia.' Today she reported back to me. Well, hold on to your seats, because it's a banger:

This is from the Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 1, p. 11 (see here).

Thus, it seems pretty clear that this is referring to the Thomas Young, who indeed had a brother (and nephew) called Robert Young who seems to have survived him (and seems to have died around 1850). So, the plot thickens. And in my next installment we'll return to the manuscript, its author, its contents, and, of course, how it ended up in Thomas Young's personal copy of the Principia. For Niccolo had a hunch about that, that's turning out to be very fruitful...to be continued.

The story starts with a stolen Maupertuis

Actually, the story starts with me buying a copy of Maupertuis' (1738) La figure de la terre at auction online. I am a modest rare book collector; my principle of collecting is 'works that intersect with my scholarly research in neat ways' (all other things being equal, which is not always -- <think of prices> -- the case). So that means that unlike many collectors, I am not always after the first edition of a work and do not mind copies that show sign of some scholarly use (which also means I can afford them more easily). 

Now, my first scholarly projects starting with George Smith were on the Huygens-Newton debate over universal gravity and the shape of the Earth, and the measurements that settled it. Maupertuis' measurements in Lapland -- the title page of the 1738 work prefers 'polar circle' -- were part of the evidence that helped resolve the debate. While others (Maglo, Terrall, Shank, etc.) would publish with more detail on La Figure, I used this work by Maupertuis to make some modest, albeit distinctive claims about the philosophical particulars of Adam Smith's History of Astronomy. 

The pictures of the lot suggested a very clean copy, but one with a modern binding. Much to my surprise the bidding for it remained relatively calm even in the final minutes. And so for under 500€ (generally the most I am willing spend on a rare book) I was the proud owner of a work that is a joy to read, has an interesting story, and that shows up in non-trivial places in my own scholarship. I was elated! The seller sent it off with tracking, and the book arrived after a few days. I had last held a physical copy in my hand over twenty years ago in Chicago (presumably at the Newberry library, but I just noticed there is also a copy in Regenstein so maybe there).  

After opening the package, I opened the book and I had my first modest disappointment. The neat map I remembered at the front of the book was not there. My spirits started to deflate, but after looking through the book I found it at the back. (See here for a picture of the map at Gallica.) Interestingly enough, the copy of the English translation in the British Library, which seems to be one used by Google to scan it also has the map in front, whereas the French version has it in back (but the reproduction is badly done)! So, I wondered if I had misremembered and had only looked at the English translation. More on this below.

However, when I started to look through the book more slowly I had a true shock. There was an impressive library stamp on the page facing the frontispiece with "The Institution of Civil Engineers" and an address at "25 Great George Street, Westminster" in London. (See the picture below this post.) Now, I have bought books at auction before that had impressive library stamps in them. I always do due diligence before I bid and check out the provenance. Usually I find that the book had belonged to a seminary or school library that had closed or merged. Most sellers show a library stamp in the pictures that the seller usually supplies in auction. How could I have missed this?

I went online to check the lot I had bought and to my shock there was no picture of the stamp! I then went online to look for the Institution of Civil Engineers library, and found an impressive website, which suggested the library was flourishing although it had moved a few doors down. I checked the catalogue and it showed a copy of the book I was holding in my hand. At that moment, I realized I had almost certainly a stolen book in my hands (although part of me hoped they had sold off a duplicate).

I knew I had to move quickly, so I immediately wrote the auction house with my suspicion (so that they would keep my payment in escrow). (It was Friday afternoon after hours for the auction house so I knew I would not hear back before Monday at the earliest.) I then contacted the seller/dealer through the auction house message system in France; he responded quickly but in a dismissive fashion. (I return to that below.)

I decided to call the ICE library. The person who picked up the phone was a librarian, Debra Francis. I quickly explained the situation. It turns out the ICE library is supposed to have two French copies of La Figure (one part of a special collection). While we were talking she established one of these copies was missing. I was not surprised, I was holding it! At this point I knew the book had to be returned, but I was not wholly eager to take the loss. So, I gave her my yahoo email address, but little else info about me.

However, it was time to be more assertive with the seller. In our online interactions he revealed that he had bought the book a few months ago at another (reputable) auction house, and that these would have been cautious about provenance. (I was stunned how little he paid!) I decided to call the specialist listed on their website. I explained the situation to him, and after some back and forth he explained that the book was bought through an intermediary as part of a much larger estate of a deceased book-dealer. So, now I knew that my seller was not himself the thief or an accomplice in selling on stolen goods, and that the book was probably missing at least since 2020 or so. (My seller had merely looked the other way downstream.) The member of staff of this auction house told me they were insured against this kind of thing. So, I decided that my seller could probably get his money back there.

By monday, after some further communication between us, my seller agreed not to accept my money if I returned the book to the library in London. And much to my relief my auction house agreed to this approach provided I would supply them with pictures of the stamp and of the book, as well as a letter of the ICE library and me handing it back. I contacted my new librarian friend at ICE, Debra Francis, and she was eager to facilitate this.  

So, this morning I went to the lCE library right next to Parliament. I was stunned by how beautiful it was. And I was welcomed by Debra, who decided to give me a grand treat. First I was given a tour of the library and told its history. I was shown some of the special collections. And then we did the hand-over. But as we did the hand-over she showed me the copy of the 1738 La Figure from their special collection. It was much less pristine copy of the book than 'mine' that I was returning. But as we opened it, it did have the map on the facing page of the frontispiece just as I had remembered! 

For some reason this cheered me up greatly. In part, because it created a new puzzle why did some copies have the map in front and others in the back? (And more interestingly, which one was the original and which on the possible bootleg?) I have done a modest survey online today some seem to lack the map altogether, but other library copies do have the map and there is no clear pattern whether it's in front or in the back of the book.

Now, while Debra Francis was correcting some infelicities in the letter she had made out to my auction house, I had a chance to inspect the box with the original holdings of the library donated by (if I am not mistaken) Thomas Telford. Most of the books were clearly engineering specific. But my heart started to flutter when behind the glass I saw a copy of the Opticks. Judging by its tattered spine an original fourth edition. When my librarian friend returned we opened the case and it turned to be a fragile copy of the third edition.:)  [See picture below.] She had a quick peek in the catalog and informed me there should be more Newton holdings in the case. I scanned the list, and then looked more closely in the case, and immediately spotted a posthumous edition of Newton's work on fluxions. At this point, I had forgotten my misery over the Maupertuis and switched into scholar, teacher, and collector mode and started to pontificate on the significance of these holdings. Then I stopped mid-sentence, I had spotted the Principia!

When she took it out it was a pristine copy of the third edition donated by a Mr. Young in 1840. I immediately tried to remember Thomas Young's dates. I don't think I have ever held a third edition the Principia (the last one published during his life). Despite my excitement I was a bit sad there were no marginalia. However, as I was ruminating over this Debra Francis called me attention to a four page manuscript wedged in the front pages of the book. I have reproduced the first page below. (It's in English and fairly easy to follow.) I immediately took pictures of the whole manuscript and sent them to the great Niccolo Guicciardini to see if he could identify the author.

At this point my host invited me down to the basement where the members registry is held to see if we could identify which Young had donated the copy of the third edition of the Principia. (It turns out the relevant copy of the registry is in storage.)  As it happens the basement office is next to the vault, and I could not resist an offer of a tour of it (including learning the escape route on the other side of the vault). For, it turns out that the library has a special collection which houses just about every important book published in the 17th century on clocks and finding longitude.  So, for the next half hour I geeked out and excitedly explained the significance of each book I recognized to my patient host. And I was also struck by the presence of some works wholly obscure even to a specialist. By the time I left, I forgot to send the materials to the auction house because I was thinking of new research projects. 

 

 

On the General Hermeneutic; Quentin Skinner on the task of the Historian, part I

As Sam James’s debate with the great John Pocock showed, there are very special problems attendant on writing the history of the present, because you’re going to be writing about people who can answer back. I mean, I never had the problem that, when I explained the precise ideological orientation of Hobbes’ political philosophy, Hobbes will be able to publish an article in which he rubbished what I had said. But this, of course, was what John Pocock sought to do in this particular case. I’m not going to try to adjudicate; I thought that Sam James’s work was wonderful, and very challenging.

But what I want to say, on my own account, is that the approach that I’ve been trying this afternoon to sketch in talking to you purports to be a general hermeneutic. That’s to say, it’s generally applicable — applicable to the present, of course, because it’s generally applicable. So, it’s not just a story about how to get at the past. If you try to use it to get at the present, you encounter all the special problems of trying to get at the present, which I just alluded to. There are special difficulties, of course, attendant on writing contemporary history. And that’s not just because people can answer back; it’s also for a deeper reason, which we’re all familiar with, which is that it’s much more difficult to see our own concepts and our own arrangements as contingent. The goal of the historian, as I’ve been talking about this figure, is to show the contingency of the questions that are raised in the history of philosophy: the extent to which they can be understood if, and only if, you studied the circumstances in and for which they were written. But it’s very much harder, I think, to see your own concepts as having the same kind of contingency. If you see them as wholly contingent, it’s hardly going to be very easy to affirm their truth. So, I think that the history of the present has very great difficulties with attaining the kind of objectivity to which my approach aspires. I think that the historian can at least aspire to give you a sort of objective account — it might not be the account that the agent themselves will give of philosophical works in the past — [but] much more difficult to do it on ourselves.--Quentin Skinner (January 28, 2023) interviewd by Ming. [emphasis added--ES]

Perhaps because when I was younger I was rather polemical toward Quentin Skinner's methodological (and interpretive) historiographic positions an unusual number of people called my attention to the interview with Skinner I have partially quoted above. I had little interest in reading the interview because Skinner has been interviewed rather frequently, and by people who don't really challenge him. But because so many people suggested to me I should read it, I decided to take a look. Somewhat predictably it has triggered a new round of polite disagreement in me.+

I am happy I did so because the interview is fascinating; in it we learn a lot about the origins and development of the Cambridge Texts series that shaped how multiple disciplines could teach the past and how scholars could research it. In addition Skinner says insightful things on the frequently self-deceptive nature of autobiographical writing. And -- the piece has a lot of riches --for people who have just come to the Cambridge school he makes some helpful claims about its intellectual roots of it in twentieth century philosophy.* Go read the full interview yourself!

Now, the paragraph I quoted from the interview occurs in the context of a question about a debate between Samuel James and Pocock about Pocock's "earlier work." Somewhat oddly, during the interview with Skinner it is never stated that James is denying the purported unity of the Cambridge school (concluding there are at least two "strands" if not two "enterprises"). As it happens this is a topic that has already been broached during the interview because Skinner had already stated, "I don’t think it’s helpful to suppose that there’s a Cambridge School." And while there is a way to parse Skinner's claim that makes it distinct from James' argument it is quite at odds with Pocock's own claim (reiterated in response to James) to have helped lay the foundations for the Cambridge school that (on Pocock's telling) was invented by Skinner in his famous (1969) essay! That is, Skinner has already denied the terms of the debate between James and Pocock, so, if Skinner is right, there is no need to adjudicate it. There is, if one presses on this topic, much more such comedy running through the interview (not the least the status of Skinner's utterances on the nature of the Cambridge school in light of the "very great difficulties" diagnosed by himself.) Perhaps, I'll return to that some time.

But my present interest is in the status of a general hermeneutic that seems to be applicable in all circumstances. Now, what is striking and highly revealing in Skinner's formulation of such a hermeneutic, is that "The goal of the historian, as I’ve been talking about this figure, is to show the contingency of the questions that are raised in the history of philosophy." I leave aside the really tough question whether a general hermeneutic is really possible. Although to note skeptically that it reminds me of the hope that methodologists of science once had to discover a logic of induction or a general methodology of science.

Rather, here I focus on the oddity to posit this ["the contingency of the questions that are raised in the history of philosophy"] as the goal of any historian let alone the historian of philosophy for at least three reasons: first, shouldn't the purported contingency of the questions be established by historical enquiry and not be presumed? I don't deny that sometimes, perhaps often, this is a conclusion of historical research. Some historians allow us to celebrate such continency (think of Daston, Justin Smith, etc.). However, even if one denies that there are eternal questions, it is still possible, say, that bits of philosophy are institutionalized as authoritative in a context (think Aristotle and Thomas in the Catholic Church, or Mencius in the Chinese bureaucracy, or Buddhism in the Ashoka empire and its aftermath) that then shapes centuries of fairly constrained enquiry,

One need not be a structuralist to see that if one posits a trade-off between population and luxury spending (as Socrates does in the truthful city) the modeling space is highly constrained even if there are huge technological and demographic changes (as Malthus noticed).  Fill in your own example. I put it in terms of types of models because it is far more likely that there is going to be continuity between or rediscovery of those, even though the tokens have all kinds of external commitments unrelated to the trade-off under issue. That may sound like cheating, but often later authors (not just Malthus, but also Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Berkeley, Smith, and Mill) explicitly refer back to Plato's version. 

Back in 1969, Skinner linked the denial of the sameness of questions to the impossibility of learning from the purported "solutions" of past thinkers to our (perennial) questions or the ones we put to them. Fair enough. But this criticism cannot be directed at the idea that Plato's solutions (birth-control, enhancements, different property arrangements) are very much still explored in much greater depth in these types of two-factor models. (Not that I want to turn you into a population ethicicist or an anachronistic political economist.)** 

Second, shouldn't the historian of philosophy, especially, be allowed to focus on other goals (e.g., what happened, why did it happen, how did we get from then to now, which arguments are worth a second look, etc.)? I don't mean to be exhaustive here. There are a plurality of goals in the pursuit of historical enquiry as such and also in the history of philosophy. In a lot of these, the question of contingency may arise only side-ways. 

Of course, I don't mean to deny -- in fact it is highly salient -- that Skinner's position is articulated in, and received some of its plausibility from, the historical aftermath of what was thought to be the demise of the principle of sufficient reason (which is highly intolerant of contingency). This demise was marked by Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being and Russell's rejection of the PSR (alongside Bradley's idealism). But if historical fortune shifts, and the PSR is re-animated (as Della Rocca argues) then it's foreseable Skinner's approach will seem just special pleading.

Third, there seems to be an unstated assumption that if we understand a question in its proper context, it's contingency is revealed; but this, too, presupposes what needs to be argued or shown. Why can't the original context reveal that a certain question was over-determined? Once Hershell discovered the first binary star system and that they obeyed Kepler's laws, it was pretty predictable that questions about the nature and mechanism of action at distance would be re-openend. Of course, this debate was constrained by new theories and conducted in terms that were more mathematized than earlier versions. Even if one allows, as I do, genuine incommensurability between scientific theories, the continuity of and refinement in evidence creates the possibility of asking questions that are overdetermined and that are, in a certain sense, continuous with each other even if particular at a time. 

Skinner also seems to be claiming, in addition, that if the questions are contingent then it follows that the concepts used in answering them, including our own, will also be contingent. (I infer that from his implied claim we have to see our "own concepts as having the same kind of contingency.") But even if one grants that the questions philosophers have asked are contingent, it does not follow that the conceptual structure that are part of the answers to these questions are contingent. After all, given certain starting point X -- that, let's stipulate is contingent -- what follows from X, namely the answers or concepts Y, can be a kind of hypothetical or conditional necessity. And it would be odd to call Y 'contingent.' Certain questions can have only a narrow range of answers, not the least because earlier folk can shape the manner of later uptake.

Skinner is, thus, naturally read as claiming that his general hermeneutic is callibrated to show that all philosophical questions and answers are contingent. In fact, in the interview this is the view he attributes to Collingwood (something already present in Skinner's famous 1969 essay) as follows:

[Collingwood] and his numerous followers always insisted that the history of philosophy, and perhaps especially of moral and political philosophy, should be written as an account, not of how different answers were produced for a set of canonical questions, but rather as a subject in which the questions as well as the answers are always changing, and in which the questions are set by the specific moral and political issues that seem most salient, most troubling, at different times — and they will continually change and people will continually find that the pressures of their societies are operating in such a way as to raise new questions. 

This is indeed Collingwood's view in the Autobiography. The only sameness that Collingwood allows there is the process that gets one from one question to the next answer. But in Collingwood the claim is linked explicitly to a metaphysical claim, which is simultaneously a claim about metaphysics: that at any given time metaphysics just is what people "believe about the world's general nature" and the history of such beliefs. In fact, the whole Autobiography is almost a carricature, albeit an highly entertaining one, of late historicism. Back in 1969, Skinner Himself granted that it was "excessive" because according to Collingwood (and now I quote Skinner 1969): "we cannot even ask if a given philosopher "solved the problem he set himself."" 

Such historicism (and its valorization of the creative and wholly ideosyncratic genius lurking in it) may be true, of course, but it is odd to think that it can be safely presupposed in one's general hermeneutic today. Skinner himself is, of course, much more cautious than Collingwood and, as far as I know, does not rest his own case on such historicism or such claims about metaphysics. But once we remove it from this wholly skeptical position that only a history of beliefs is possible and no knowledge (not even partial of the world's general nature) there is really not much to say on behalf of the idea that "there are only individual answers to individual questions."

But -- you can probably see this coming a mile away -- while Collingwood's 'logic of question and answer' is fully intelligible, even anchored by, and part of a whole cloth that involves such a historicism (including commitments to the unity of epochs and cultures, the denial of the PSR, etc.), in Skinner it is just special pleading. While I will not assert that one's hermeneutic is always beholden to one's metaphysics -- if that were so no historical understanding would be possible --, it should also not be the case that one's hermeneutic settles metaphysical questions by fiat. 

Without Collingwood's broader metaphysical commitments, Skinner's focus on contingency seems arbitrary. That is, somewhat paradoxically, the general hermeneutic is itself best understood as more informative of the commitments of the Skinnerite historian, perhaps even revealing of Skinner's unwritten autobiography, and so best applicable to the recent present than the past.++

 

Foucault, Similitude, and Hume & Newton

As for similitude, it is now a spent force, outside the realm of knowledge. It is merely empiricism in its most unrefined form; like Hobbes, one can no longer 'regard it as being a part of philosophy', unless it has first been erased in its inexact form of resemblance and transformed by knowledge into a relationship of equality or order. And yet similitude is still an indispensable border of knowledge. For [in classical period] no equality or relation of order can be established between two things unless their resemblance has at least occasioned their comparison. Hume placed the relation of identity among those 'philosophical' relations that presuppose reflection; whereas, for him, resemblance belonged to natural relations, to those that constrain our minds by means of an inevitable but 'calm force'.

Let the philosopher pride himself on his precision as much as he will... I nevertheless dare defy him to make a single step in his progress without the aid of resemblance. Throw but one glance upon the metaphysical aspect of the sciences, even the least abstract of them, and then tell me whether the general inductions that are derived from particular facts, or rather the kinds themselves, the species and all abstract notions, can be formed otherwise than by means of resemblance. [20]

At the border of knowledge, similitude is that barely sketched form, that rudimentary relation which knowledge must overlay to its full extent, but which continues, indefinitely, to reside below knowledge in the manner of a mute and ineffaceable necessity.--Michel Foucault The Order of Things (1970) {1994, Vintage Books Edition} Translated by Alan Sheridan* (original Les Mots et les Choses, 1966), pp. 67-68

The position attributed to Hume by Foucault in the first paragraph above recalls Hume's claim (in the first Enquiry) that "it seems evident, that, if all the scenes of nature were continually shifted in such a manner, that no two events bore any resemblance to each other, but every object was entirely new, without any similitude to whatever had been seen before, we should never, in that case, have attained the least idea of necessity, or of a connexion among these objects." (EHU 5.8) Even so the view being attributed to Hume is also a bit awkward as an interpretation of Hume's accounts of natural and philosophical relations (a distinction articulated in the Treatise), and the role of resemblance and identity among them. I want to highlight three problems.

First, in his own voice, Foucault distinguishes natural and philosophical relations as follows: philosophical relations presuppose reflection. Now, in Hume reflection is a mechanism of the mind that turns ideas into new impressions. That is, "impressions of reflexion are only antecedent to their correspondent ideas; but posterior to those of sensation, and deriv'd from them." (Treatise 1.1.2.1.) The paradigmatic examples of impressions of reflexion are "desire and aversion, hope and fear." (Treatise 1.1.2.1.) That is to say, the passions and emotions. I mention this explicitly because on Foucault's interpretation, the elements or relata or building blocks of philosophical relations are impressions of reflection or the ideas derived from them. (And it would be surprising if the passions played a role in them.)

For, Hume does not explicitly claim that reflection is presupposed in any philosophical relation including identity (which is the one singled out by Foucault). After all he claims, "we extend it to mean any particular subject of comparison, without a connecting principle." (Treatise 1.1.5.1) So, it is strictly speaking false to suggest that in Hume philosophical relations require the operation of reflection.

But one may well think this is not the end of the matter. After all, Hume lists seven sources of comparison that can be "considered the sources of all philosophical relations. (Treatise 1.1.5.1, emphasis added.) These turn out to be viz. "resemblance, identity, relations of time and place, proportion in quantity or number, degrees in any quality, contrariety, and causation." (Treatise 1.3.1.1,) If reflexion is crucial to these (especially identity) than the spirit of Foucault's account can be saved. But none of them presuppose reflexion. In addition, Hume divides this list "into two classes; [first] into such as depend entirely on the ideas, which we compare together, and [second] such as may be chang'd without any change in the ideas." Crucially, again, reflexion is irrelevant to this. So, Foucault misrepresents Hume here on philosophical relations.*

To be sure, I don't mean to deny Foucault's claim that "no equality or relation of order can be established between two things unless their resemblance has at least occasioned their comparison." This is Hume's position, too: 

The first [philosophical relation] is resemblance: And this is a relation, without which no philosophical relation can exist; since no objects will admit of comparison, but what have some degree of resemblance.  (Treatise 1.1.5.3; emphasis in original)

But while it is true that for Hume identity is only a philosophical relation this is not true for resemblance in Hume. For, second, Hume recognizes two kinds or sites of resemblance, one is a philosophical relation and when it functions in a philosophical relation, although resemblance "be necessary to all philosophical relation, it does not follow, that it always produces a connexion or association of ideas." (Treatise 1.1.5.3) Only natural relations generate an association of ideas. And for Hume there are three such natural relations of which resemblance is one. (Treatise 1.1.4.1.) Which he does treat, as Foucault suggests, as a "gentle force." (Treatise 1.1.4.1)  [As an aside, Foucault's 'calm' force is almost certainly the effect of translation either from Hume's English to Foucault's French Hume or from Foucault's text to my translation, etc. For this reason, I am treating resemblance and similitude as synonyms here even though Hume does not really use 'similitude' in the Treatise.]

This, matters because, third, thus, in Hume's Treatise similitude/resemblance doesn't just reside mutely 'below knowledge' acting as a natural relation behind the scenes as it were constraining our mind, but it is also the content of knowledge (and so made explicit). So, here, too, Foucault is misrepresenting Hume's position.

Now, so far, I have skipped the material Foucault quotes and references with endnote [20] in the material I have quoted above. It's natural to read Foucault here as quoting Hume as evidence for his position. But Hume scholars may well wonder what the source of the quoted passage is. (It's not Hume after all.) In fact, the passage quoted by Foucault that starts with "Let the philosopher pride..." is not, first impressions notwithstanding by Hume, but rather is as endnote [20] indicates, a quote from Merian's (1767) Reflexions philosophiques sur la ressemblance, a book I had never looked at before.

Merian is a translator of Hume's first Enquiry and an important critic of Hume, which gave the world the term 'phenomenalism' in order to describe Hume (in 1793). See this (1997) paper by Laursen and Popkin for details (here). Sadly, their paper does not mention the Reflexions philosophiques. With help from Profs. Sophie Roux and Charles T. Wolfe, I located an online copy of the work, which is not very long. Merian does not seem to mention Hume or natural & philosophical relations in his Reflexions! So, Foucault's reading of Hume is not indebted to this work by Merian! (In fact, Merian merely seems here to be capturing Hume's insight of the first Enquiry 5.8 -- a work he had translated just a few years before -- that I quoted above.)

We can conclude then that here on Hume, Merian is not a source for Foucault, but that Merian is used by Foucault to articulate Hume's position (that Foucault recognizes in Merian's 1767 text). At this point one may well wonder if in the quoted passage above, Foucault is relying primary on the first Enquiry, but that would be curious here because he does directly refer to the Treatise (1.3.3 & 1.4.4--the latter a bit odd because it is Hume's account of the modern philosophy) in a endnote in a later chapter on the relationship between Hume's account of causation and its relationship to similarity.

To be sure I don't mean to suggest that you need to follow my interpretation of Hume's account of natural and philosophical relations. That's notoriously contested terrain. But rather that Foucault gets rather basic features of Hume's position wrong. Given that all the other references to Hume in The Order of Things are actually rather formulaic (and the kind of shorthand one may find in post-Kantian philosophy) one may well wonder how carefully Foucault read his Hume. (Oddly he never cites Merian again in the book.)

You may think that this is just scholarly book-keeping. That would be fine actually. However, the significance of this is that it undercuts Foucault's larger claim (which concludes the section) that "from the seventeenth century, resemblance was pushed out of the boundaries of knowledge, toward the humblest and basest of its frontiers." (71) This is, as we have seen, not true for Hume. I also would deny this is true of, say, of Newton's natural philosophy. If anything, one of the key issues in Newton's account of space and time is that Newton cane give a clear account of what Newton calls the 'species and magnitude' of the measure of space, but that he has a difficulty to do so for the measure of time. (See the postscript to my seventh chapter in my Newton's Metaphysics: Essays.) So the resemblance of spaces is much easier secured by Newton (and can do all kinds of work for him through geometric reasoning) than the putative resemblance of time. (This is no trivial matter if we look ahead to Einstein.) 

I actually suspect that in the background early modern empiricism (here meaning Locke, Newton, and Hume) in all their variety are tacitly assimilated by Foucault to 20th century (Carnapian) empiricism where resemblance is indeed foundational (although problematized by Goodman and Quine). But that's just a hunch.

 

 

Newton on the laws of nature and interstellar space

Since Space is Divisible in infinitum, and Matter is not necessarily in all places, it may also be allowed that God is able to create Particles of Matter of several Sizes and Figures, and in several Proportions to Space, and perhaps of different Densities and Forces, and thereby to vary the Laws of Nature, and make Worlds of several sorts in several Parts of the Universe.--Isaac Newton Opticks Query 31 

The quoted passages dates from the 1706 Latin edition of the Opticks and ended up in Query 31 of the later English edition. As regular readers know (recall here), I am rather fond of it, and I have explored the significance and implications of it also in my scholarly work (including writing with Zvi Biener here; and here solo). Because of a visit to Duke, and my conversations with Katherine Brading and Caleb Hazelwood while there, I had occasion to revisit the passage. 

Before I get to that let me offer some clarification on Newton's terminology for those of you who have never seen this passage before: the universe can (but need not) be composed of different worlds. Ordinarily, when Newton uses 'world,' he means thereby to refer to a solar system. Newton recognizes that the universe could be composed of different worlds that coexist (in the General scholium he remarks [recall] on the beauty of the night sky to aliens in other worlds)! A 'system of worlds' is a collection of solar systems (we would say, a 'galaxy') that, presumably, share in a uniform motion or frame of reference.

But Newton also uses 'world' in a metaphysically richer sense. A world in this richer sense is constituted and characterized by the kinds of “particles of Matter” and forces that are to be found in it. The matter and forces of a world can be described by laws of nature. Newton's attitude toward matter and forces is realist in that they are part of his basic ontology; matter and forces ground the laws of nature, which are derivative from them: note Newton's "thereby."

In fact, as an aside, at the start of the Principia, Newton notes that the "basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces." So, the ontological priority of forces (and matter) is reflected in his epistemic aims. 

The passage quoted at the top of this post suggests that Newton's laws are not primitive or productive in the sense that, say, Maudlin's treatment of laws implies (recall). In my work with Biener, especially, I have tried to explain how we should think of the metaphysics of laws according to Newton (short version: it's complicated). But in what follows I want to make a further suggestion about what we might call the extension or locality of the laws of nature.

For Newton, at every point of space, there is time and God, and places that might be filled by matter. (Conversely, there are space and God at every moment of time.) But there are also enormous number of otherwise empty spaces, some enormous. Now, we can discern in Newton treatment of four kinds of empty spaces: first, there are (interstitial) empty spaces within bodies. Second, there are empty spaces among (planetary) bodies within worlds. Third, there are vast empty spaces between solar systems. Fourth, there are enormous empty spaces between galaxies. (I think this is the doctrine of the Principia, but Newton did not always think this because he sometimes experimented with aether theories.)

Now, according to the doctrine that I ascribe to Newton based on the passage quote at the top of the post, the properties of bodies, and their forces of interaction generate the laws that govern them. How to think about the grounding relation between laws and the bodies they describe, I leave to others. (In fact, Caleb Hazelwood is circulating a fascinating paper about this.) On my view (see here), and also (say) David Miller Marshall (here), the Newtonian laws really are about interactions of bodies or systems of bodies (in which they are grounded).

So, here comes the pay-off of this discussion. It follows from these features of bodies, forces and laws, that on Newton's views the laws can be said to be present in interstitial spaces. They are also present in the spatial voids within and between solar systems. You may wonder, given the view I am sketching here, why I am so confident this is so between solar systems for Newton. However, on his view light easily and rapidly moves between solar systems, and we know that for Newton light rays themselves are composed of particles (with mass). Moreover, on his view solar systems tend to be part of a galaxy  which follows a uniform motion or has a general frame of reference.

I do not mean to suggest that all the laws of nature that exist in a galaxy are also always present in the vast voids that occupy the spaces of a galaxy. It's possible, after all, some kinds of bodies that can be found in parts of a galaxy are, in principle, unable to move among different solar systems. Notice, that lurking here is genuine lack of knowledge how many kinds of bodies there are in the universe and so how many kinds of laws will be discovered. Newton knew that he was making all kinds of homogeneity assumptions (this was explicit in hypothesis 3 of the first edition), and he also knew that the evidential basis of his claims was limited to a small speck of vast space.

So, on the view that I am sketching here, there need to be no laws of nature present in the vast empty spaces or darkness among galaxies (that is, the fourth kind of spaces). So, for Newton it's possible the total universe is rather dappled (in Nancy Cartwright's sense). Of course, in so far as light also may move among galaxies there may be considerable possibility for uncovering unified laws. (Brading teased me that on my view, as bodies move into empty spaces the laws of nature are simultaneously extended--which I find a lovely implication..) But that's an open question. (Zvi Biener and I argue that methodologically, within physics research, Newton assumes universal laws until there is evidence otherwise. But that's a different register.)

One final thought. Often discussions of Newton assimilate his views of laws of nature to Descartes. In Descartes, the laws are kind of second causes and are universal in scope. The issue I have sketched here does not arise there because, in principle, all bits of matter of the universe are indirectly in contact with each other (and are either part of a universal vortex, or mediate among large solar vortices). Spinoza grasps the significance of this picture with a beautiful treatment in a justly famous letter to Oldenburg (that I suspect shaped Leibniz's metaphysics non-trivially):

all bodies are surrounded by others, and are mutually determined to exist and operate in a fixed and definite proportion, while the relations between motion and rest in the sum total of them, that is, in the whole universe, remain unchanged. Hence it follows that each body, in so far as it exists as modified in a particular manner, must be considered as a part of the whole universe, as agreeing with the whole, and associated with the remaining parts. As the nature of the universe is not limited, like the nature of blood, but is absolutely infinite, its parts are by this nature of infinite power infinitely modified, and compelled to undergo infinite variations. 

While in my writings I tend to bring Newton rather close to Spinoza, it should be clear that on the view sketched here, Newton cannot endorse this lovely picture.

 

 

 

Hobbes and Newton on the co-constitution of bodies and minds

The definition, therefore, of body may be this, a body is that, which having no dependence upon our thought, is coincident or coextended with some part of space...they answer best that define an accident to be the manner by which any body is conceived; which is all one as if they should say, an accident is that faculty of any body, by which it works in us a conception of itself. --Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy, Concerning Body, Part Second, chapter 8 "Of Body and Accident" [HT Jennifer Jhun]

In what follows I use 'Hobbes' as shorthand for his Elements of Philosophy. (I, thus, ignore any other works by Hobbes.) Because Hobbes is a quintessential modern corpuscularian, and we are often told that the encounter with Galileo was decisive to Hobbes' life it is natural to read passages like the one just quoted as instantiating a primary/secondary quality distinction, especially because Galileo seems clear on the distinction in (say) The Assayer. (See Martha Bolton's lovely review essay in the Stanford Encyclopedia.) Hesitation on the ascription of the primary/secondary quality distinction to Hobbes immediately creeps in (not just because Bolton does not mention Hobbes, but also) because in (the quoted passage from) Hobbes it seems nearly all qualities of bodies are what one might call 'secondary' and only the bare bodies themselves, and perhaps magnitude (as being the quality body shares with extension or parts of space), are what one might call 'primary' if it wouldn't be so odd to call body itself a quality of (ahh) body. 

A Hobbesian accident may be thought of as a disposition or relational quality (as Jhun suggests in the paper that triggered this post). In particular, it is a quality of body that is intelligible to us (assuming that if we an have a conception of it, it's intelligible). There is an interesting question lurking here to what degree accidents are co-constituted by the conceptions of agents. And, so, it seems that for Hobbes there is a bare and parsimonious absolute ontology of fairly homogeneous matter, and that the rest of nature's structure or differentiation is, in part, the effect of the conceptualizing existence of material minds like ours.*

So, if Hobbes has or anticipates a primary/secondary quality of bodies distinction at all (which I am doubting), the list on the primary side is going to be rather short (it seems to include only magnitude or extension, which Hobbes explicitly treats as synonyms "The extension of a body, is the same thing with the magnitude of it, or that which some call real space.")+ And the list of secondary qualities will include features that are generally taken to be primary in the early modern tradition. For example, in the same section Hobbes goes on to write: 

[T]here are certain accidents which can never perish except the body perish also; for no body can be conceived to be without extension, or without figure. All other accidents, which are not common to all bodies, but peculiar to some only, as to be at rest, to be moved, colour, hardness, and the like, do perish continually, and are succeeded by others; yet so, as that the body never perisheth. [emphasis in Hobbes]

So, Hobbes does have a distinction between universal or what one may call 'intrinsic' or 'essential' qualities of body -- these are the accidents that make a body a body while it exists -- and non-universal or extrinsic or inessential qualities of body. Now, as readers of Newton's third rule of reasoning know, there is no necessary requirement to treat universal qualities as intrinsic qualities of bodies. That a quality is a universal property of matter may be an accidental feature of the universe; God's will or the laws of nature could have been otherwise. But it looks like Hobbes tacitly denies any gap between the universal and intrinsic qualities of body. And that makes sense, because Hobbes' list of these is incredibly short: only extension/figure is universal to body, and it must intrinsic to it.

Again, one may well treat the distinction between features of body that never perish except when the body perishes and features that are transient qualities of bodies as a kind of anticipation of the primary/secondary quality distinction. And I think that's fine, as long as one remembers that the transient qualities of bodies include accidents that are often treated as primary (hardness, motion/rest) by the rest of the tradition.

The significance of this is two-fold. First, relative to Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Locke, Hobbes is really an outlier. But, second, I do think pre-Principia Newton toyed with something close to Hobbes' position. This seems to be suggested by an extended aside in Newton's manuscript known as 'De Grav.' (I call it an 'aside' because it both detracts from the main argument of De Grav, and, in fact, is in some tension with it, or so I have argued.) After articulating the exceptionally clear idea of space, Newton offers a tentative hypothesis on the nature of body with an extended thought experiment involving God's creation. I quote the crucial passage from Andrew Janiak's edition:

And hence these beings will either be bodies, or very similar to bodies. If they are bodies, then we can define bodies as determined quantities of extension which omnipresent God endows with certain conditions. These conditions are: (1) that they be mobile, and therefore I did not say that they are numerical parts of space which are absolutely immobile, but only definite quantities which may be transferred from space to space; (2) that two of this kind cannot coincide anywhere, that is, that they may be impenetrable, and hence that oppositions obstruct their mutual motions and they are reflected in accord with certain laws; (3) that they can excite various perceptions of the senses and the imagination in created minds, and conversely be moved by them...--Newton's Philosophical Writings, edited Janiak, p. 43

To be sure, this is not exactly Hobbes' position. For, Newton does not rely on Hobbes' terminology of 'accidents'. Hobbes would not define body as determined quantities of extension (let alone let God's will play such an outsized role).  And it does seem that Newton is inclined to treat mobility and impenetrability as universal qualities of bodies, where Hobbes would not. But here in (3) Newton does echo Hobbes in thinking that except for the spatiality of body, it is rather to central to body (I almost wrote 'intrinsic to body') as such that body has a relationship to minds. 

Now, again there are important differences between Hobbes and Newton even on this point. In Newton this relationship is causal: bodies can "excite various perceptions of the senses and the imagination," whereas in the passages quoted from Hobbes the relationship is conceptual, we cognize features of bodies which, thereby, become intelligible if not differentiated. (Of course, there are plenty of passages in Hobbes, in which our thinking is treated in terms of the effects on the senses by bodies in motion!)

This soft connection between Hobbes and Newton is not wholly contingent. We know from Newton's early notebooks that Newton read De Corpore, and that he reacted strongly against Hobbes' materialism. And so while I don't want to claim that Newton was self-consciously following and modifying Hobbes (and Newton's position evolved away from  the one presented De Grav), I do want to claim them as occasional partial fellow-travelers when it comes to analyzing bodies as spatialized, in one absolute sense, and as treating the differentiating properties of bodies as being more than accidentally linked to minds that perceive or cognize them. 

On adequately filled places (Covid Diaries & Seneca)

After nearly a month, it's time for another long covid update. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here, here;  here;  here, here; here; and here). And, as usual, the situation is a mixed bag.

First, the good news. Thanks to non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (basically extra strength Aleve for those Stateside) I have managed to eliminate debilitating headaches. By 'debilitating' I mean: being in bed all day, and being incapable of reading or watching streaming online content. So, the amount of suffering has been reduced dramatically! In addition, if I take the meds before I socialize -- say a lunch in a quiet place -- I am capable of enjoying it without nuisance. So, I have some hope that I can reduce my relative social isolation. My body does notice I have socialized (I have a strange kind of fatigue then), so it's not without consequence, but it's better than it was. 

Unfortunately, some of life's simple pleasures remain out of reach due to my inability to engage in quite modest cognitive multitasking: even gentle walking while talking with others wipes me out cognitively. (I can do serious walking alone.) I am unable to enjoy music in the background while we're talking or even playing silently. I can't cycle in the city, I can't play basketball with my son, etc.

For example, recently, I had a lunch with a college friend in a quiet London club. The background music and noise of other lunch-guests were quite modest. I enjoyed it. (Hurrah!) I did have a vague sense that my capacity to eavesdrop on other conversations was much diminished. Once I walked out of the club into the air, I noticed how exhausted I was; and despite the lack of headache, and more meds, I was unable to concentrate again that day. It would not be wrong to call it 'brain fog', but the fatigue in my body is even worse: I walk slower then, and think slower. As I have mentioned before, I suspect a lot of symptoms commonly associated with aging are really the effects of post-viral syndromes. 

In Seneca's Letter 56, he notes that "words seem to be more distracting" to him "than noises; for words demand attention, but noises merely fill the ears and beat upon them." Seneca mentions that shouting is not as distracting as singing and an intermittent noise more troublesome [molestior] than a steady one, and I would agree. In fact, hearing other people talk or even just hum while I am engaged in some activity of my own drives me batty. (Well not as badly as a few months ago, but still.) I have mentioned, I think, that this makes family life with a teenager challenging. He hums when he is happy.

While Seneca repeatedly suggests in this letter and others that finding inner mental tranquility is fundamentally healing, he also recognizes that rousing ourselves to keeping busy with good works is healing, too [ad rerum actus excitandi ac tractatione bonarum artium occupandi sumus], and, if I read him alright, necessary for the non-sage (that is all of us). A Christian may well think this is a call to charity, but I read it somewhat self-servingly as keeping true to my vocation (as scholar and teacher). I don't want to claim Seneca invents the protestant work ethic, but I do think he is an important voice in its development.

In fact, Seneca notes that when he is in forced retirement (due to illness or political failure--the letter contains a rare admission or at least allusion to it) ambition is often revived [interdum recrudescit ambitio]. I recognize the truth of this because much to my own surprise, in my forced leave of absence, my disabilities have re-directed even expanded my vocational ambitions as a scholar (even if I have come to accept that some projects have to be let go), and (while more challenging) teacher.

Even though I had to withdraw from quite a few projects and also have given up on a number of papers, in some respects being a scholar has become easier because I have so many fewer social interactions and don't travel to conferences. I probably read more than I have ever. 

One unexpected effect -- I have mentioned it before -- of these covid diaries is that other scholars reveal their own enduring challenges with disability to me. I recognize that in my environment I have missed a lot of quiet suffering and almost heroic persistence. It's humbling to recognize what a bad observer of my umwelt I have been and, more importantly, to recognize that so many folk have achieved so much with chronic pain and cognitive instabilities. 

This experience makes me interpret Seneca's suggestion that a hidden disease is worse than one in the open (which is on the road to being cured) in a social way. Norms that internalize suffering, 'being Stoic' as they say, hidden from the world are, while convenient to the powerful, a social evil. In a famous passage, Adam Smith notes that people tend to refuse acknowledgment of poverty and disease and thereby make it worse. (Smith thinks our gaze and recognition naturally falls on the rich, famous, and beautiful/healthy.) Sometimes I wonder if I hear about other people's suffering now because other people sense greater receptivity on my part, or if they think it's only fair that after having read about my trials I ought to welcome learning of theirs, or if I have actually become more willing to discern other people's struggles. Despite my vocation as a teacher, I tend to be skeptical of narratives of growth. 

And after hinting at the need for regular cognitive-therapy -- good and solid thoughts [cogitationes bonas, solidas] -- as the road to wisdom, Seneca grudgingly admits that sometimes the best self-care is to seek out a quiet spot. I laugh, and admit that the reading room of the British Library is indeed my best friend. In fact, I now have my spot in the reading room that the other regulars leave alone -- and the librarians at circulation have started to recognize --; I love quietly reciting, in the spirit of cognitive-therapy, Newton's (early) definition of place being a part of space that a thing fills adequately just before I sit down at 'my' desk. 

This past month a co-authored paper was rejected by referees. And I had hoped to circulate the first seven chapters of my Foucault/liberal art of government book [I am soliciting catchy titles!], which covers his material on the physiocrats and the ordoliberals, to trusted friends. But the manuscript is still too much a mess, and so its circulation has been pushed back into the Summer. No professional life without ordinary professional disappointments, I tell myself. 

This is also my last digression of the academic year. On Saturday, we go on family holiday, and I don't expect resuming D&I until August. Thank you, my dear reader, for your continued interest in my (near) daily mumblings.