From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, by Alexander Koyré, [1957], at sacred-texts.com
Malebranche, Newton & Bentley
Henry More's conception of space, which makes it an attribute of God, is by no meansI have said it already, but I should like to insist upon itan aberrant, odd and curious invention, a "fancy," of a Neoplatonic mystic lost in the world of the new science. Quite the contrary. It is, in its fundamental features, shared by a number of the great thinkers of his time, precisely those who identified themselves with the new scientific world-view.
I need not insist on Spinoza who, though he denied the existence of void space and maintained the Cartesian identification of extension and matter, carefully distinguishes between extension, as given to the senses and represented by the imagination, and extension as perceived by the understandingthe former, being divisible and movable (and corresponding to the Cartesian indefinitely extended world), constituting the sempiternal many-fold of ever-changing and finite modi, the latter, truly and fully infinite and therefore indivisible, constituting
the eternal and essential attribute of the a se and per se existing Being, that is, of God.
Infinity belongs unavoidably to God, not only to the very dubious God of Spinoza, but also to the God of the Christian religion. Thus, not only Spinoza, the by no means pious Dutch philosopher, but also the very pious Father Malebranche, having grasped the essential infinity of geometrical space, is obliged to connect it with God. The space of geometers or, as Malebranche calls it, the "intelligible extension," is, according to Christ Himself, who appears as one of the interlocutors of the Christian Meditations of Malebranche,1
Malebranche, of course, does not want to put matter into God and to spatialize God in the manner in which Henry More or Spinoza did it. He distinguishes therefore the idea of space, or "intelligible extension," which he places in God, from the gross material extension of the world created by God.2
The intelligible extension is "eternal, necessary, infinite," whereas the3
It is just the confusion between the intelligible extension and the created one that induces some people to assert the eternity of the world and to deny its creation by God. For,4
This is, as a matter of fact, a rather natural error as Malebranche himself does not fail to point out to his Divine Master; he recognizes, of course, that his doubts are removed, and that he now sees the distinction that formerly escaped him. Still5
By no means. In spite of the Cartesian axiom hinted at by Malebranche (in the role of the discipulus of the dialogue), according to which we are entitled to assert of the thing what we clearly perceive to belong to its idea, the reasoning attributing infinity and eternity to material extension was illegitimate; thus the Divine Master replies:6
The Disciple of Malebranche's dialogue is fully convincedwho, indeed, would not be by such a Master? Nobody else, alas, shared his conviction.
Antoine Arnauld considered the Malebranchian distinction
between "intelligible" and "created" extension as perfectly spurious and corresponding only and solely to the Cartesian distinction between (real) extension given to the senses and the same real extension as object of pure understanding. According to him Malebranche's "intelligible extension" was simply the infinite extension of the material universe. Thirty years later, Dortous de Mairan made fundamentally the same reproach, though he formulated it in a somewhat different and much nastier manner: according to him Malebranche's "intelligible extension" was indistinguishable from that of Spinoza. . . .7
But not only philosophers shared, more or less, Henry More's conception of space: it was shared by Newton, and this, because of the unrivaled influence of Newton on the whole subsequent development, is, indeed, of overwhelming importance.
It may seem strange, at first glance, to link together Henry More and Isaac Newton. . . . And yet, this link is perfectly established.8 Moreover, as we shall see, More's explicit teaching will throw some light on the implicit premises of Newtonian thinking, a light all the more necessary as Isaac Newton, in contradistinction not only to Henry More but also to René Descartes, is neither a professional metaphysician like the former, nor, like the latter, at once a great philosopher and a great scientist: he is a professional scientist, and though science, at that time, had not yet accomplished its disastrous divorce from philosophy, and though physics was still not only designated, but also thought of, as "natural philosophy," it is nevertheless true that his primary interests are in the field of "science," and not of "philosophy." He deals,
therefore, with metaphysics not ex professo, but only insofar as he needs it to establish the foundations of his intentionally empirical and allegedly positivistic mathematical investigation of nature. Thus the metaphysical pronouncements of Newton are not very numerous and, Newton being a very cautious and secretive person as well as a very careful writer, they are rather reticent and reserved. And yet they are sufficiently clear so as not to be misunderstood by his contemporaries.
Newton's physics, or, it would be better to say, Newton's natural philosophy, stands or falls with the concepts of absolute time and absolute space, the selfsame concepts for which Henry More fought his long-drawn-out and relentless battle against Descartes. Curiously enough, the Cartesian conception of the only relative, or relational, character of these and connected notions is branded by Newton as being "vulgar" and as based upon "prejudices."
Thus in the famous scholium which follows the Definitions that are placed at the very beginning of the Principia, Newton writes:9
Absolute, true and mathematical time and spacefor Newton these qualifications are equivalent and determine
the nature both of the concepts in question and of the entities corresponding to themare thus, in a manner of which we have already seen some examples, opposed to the merely common-sense time and space. As a matter of fact, they could just as well be called "intelligible" time and space in contradistinction to "sensible." Indeed, according to the "empiricist" Newton,10 "in philosophical disquisitions we ought to abstract from our senses and consider things themselves, distinct from what are only sensible measures of them." Thus:11
Time is not only not linked with motionlike Henry More before him, Newton takes up against Aristotle the Neoplatonic positionit is a reality in its own right:12
that is, it is not, as Descartes wants us to believe, something which pertains only to the external, material world and which would not exist if there were no such world, but something which has its own nature (a rather equivocal and dangerous assertion which Newton later had to correct by relating time, as well as space, to God), "and by another name is called duration"; that is, once more, time is not, as Descartes wants us to believe, something
subjective and distinct from the duration which he, Descartes, identifies with the amount of reality of the created being. Time and duration are only two names for the same objective and absolute entity.
But, of course,13
It is just the same concerning space:14
that is, space is not Cartesian extension which moves around, and which by Descartes is identified with, bodies. This is, at most, relative space, which is mistaken for the absolute space that subtends it by both Cartesians and Aristotelians.15
because relative space, which is, so to speak, attached to the body, moves with that body through absolute space16
Just as we have distinguished absolute, immovable space from the relative spaces that are and move in it, so we have to make a distinction between absolute and relative places which bodies occupy in space. Thus, elaborating More's analysis of this concept and his criticism of the traditional as well as the Cartesian conceptions, Newton states:17
Placelocusis thus something which is in the bodies, and in which bodies are in their turn. And as motion is a process in which bodies change their places, not taking them along with them but relinquishing them for others, the distinction between absolute and relative spaces implies necessarily that of absolute and relative motion, and vice versa, is implied by it:18
As for the inner structure of space, it is characterized by Newton in terms that strongly remind us of the analysis made by Henry More:19
Newton, it is true, does not tell us that space is "indivisible" or "indiscerpible";20 yet it is obvious that to "divide" Newton's space, that is, actually and really to separate its "parts," is just as impossible as it is impossible to do so with More's, an impossibility that does not preclude the making of "abstract" or "logical" distinctions and divisions, or prevent us from distinguishing inseparable "parts" in absolute space and from asserting its indefinite, or even infinite "divisibility." Indeed, for Henry More, as well as for Newton, the infinity and the continuity of absolute space imply the one as well as the other.
Absolute motion is motion in respect to absolute space, and all relative motions imply absolute ones:21
"From infinity to infinity retain the same position. . . ." What does infinity mean in this place? Obviously not only the spatial, but also the temporal: absolute places retain from eternity to eternity their positions in the absolute, that is, infinite and eternal space, and it is in respect to this space that the motion of a body is defined as being absolute.
Alas, absolute motion is very difficult, or even impossible, to determine. We do not perceive spaceit is, as we know, inaccessible to our senses. We perceive things in space, their motions in respect to other things, that is, their relative motions, not their absolute motions in respect to space itself. Moreover, motion itself, or in itself, the status of motion, though utterly opposed to the status of rest, is nevertheless (as we see it clearly in the fundamental case of uniform, rectilinear, inertial motion) absolutely indistinguishable from the latter.
It is only by their causes and effects that absolute and relative motions can be distinguished and determined:22
Thus it is only in the cases where our determination of the forces acting upon the bodies is not based upon the perception of the change of the mutual relations of the bodies in question that we are actually able to distinguish absolute motions from relative ones, or even from rest. Rectilinear motion, as we know, does not offer us this possibility. But circular or rotational motion does.23
Rotational or circular motion, everywhere on the earth as in the skies, gives birth to centrifugal forces, the determination of which enables us to recognize its existence in a given body, and even to measure its speed, without taking into account the positions or behavior of any
other body outside the gyrating one. The purely relative conception finds its limitand its refutationin the case of circular motion and, at the same time, the Cartesian endeavor to extend this conception to celestial motions appears as it really is: a clumsy attempt to disregard the facts, a gross misinterpretation or misrepresentation of the structure of the universe.24
The Newtonian discovery of the absolute character of rotationin contradistinction to rectilinear translationconstitutes a decisive confirmation of his conception of space; it makes it accessible to our empirical knowledge and, without depriving it of its metaphysical function and status, it ensures its role and its place as a fundamental concept of science.
The Newtonian interpretation of circular motion as
motion "relative" to absolute space, and, of course, the very idea of absolute space with its physico-metaphysical implications, met, as we know, with rather strong opposition. For two hundred years, from the times of Huygens and Leibniz to those of Mach and Duhem, it was subjected to searching and vigorous criticism.24a It has, in my opinion, withstood victoriously all the assaults, which is, by the way, not so very surprising: it is indeed the necessary and inevitable consequence of the "bursting of the sphere," the "breaking of the circle," the geometrization of space, of the discovery or assertion of the law of inertia as the first and foremost law or axiom of motion. Indeed, if it is the inertial, that is, the rectilinear uniform motion that becomesjust like restthe "natural" status of a body, then the circular one, which at any point of its trajectory changes its direction though maintaining constant its angular velocity, appears, from the point of view of the law of inertia, not as a uniform, but as a constantly accelerated motion. But acceleration, in contradistinction to mere translation, has always been something absolute, and it remained so until 1915, when, for the first time in the history of physics, the general relativity theory of Einstein deprived it of its absoluteness. Yet as, in so doing, it reclosed the universe and denied the Euclidean structure of space, it has, by this very fact, confirmed the correctness of the Newtonian conception.
Newton thus was perfectly right in stating that we are able to determine the absolute rotational or circular motion of bodies without needing, for that purpose, a term of reference represented by a body at absolute rest; though he was wrong, of course, in his pious hope of being able,
finally, to achieve the determination of all "true" motions. The difficulties that stood in his path were not merelyas he believed them to bevery great. They were insurmountable.25
The real distinction between space and matter, though it involves the rejection of the Cartesian identification of the essence of matter with extension, does not, as we know, necessarily imply the acceptance of the existence of an actual vacuum: we have seen Bruno, and Kepler too, assert that space is everywhere full of "ether." As for Newton, though he, too, believes in an ether that fills at least the space of our "world" (solar system), his ether is only a very thin and very elastic substance, a kind of exceedingly rare gas, and it does not completely fill the world space. It does not extend itself to infinity as is sufficiently clear from the motion of comets:26
and as unresisting matter, that is, matter deprived of the vis inertiae, is unthinkable, it is obvious that the celestial spaces are void also of matter. Moreover, even where it is present, Newtonian ether does not possess a continuous structure. It is composed of exceedingly small particles between which, of course, there is vacuum. Elasticity, indeed, implies vacuum. In a Cartesian world, that is, in a world constituted by a continuously-spread uniform matter, elasticity would be impossible. Nay, if all spaces were equally full (as they must be according to Descartes) even motion would not be possible.27
Matter, according to Newton, who shares the atomic conceptions of his contemporaries (and even improves upon them in a very interesting manner), has an essentially granular structure. It is composed of small, solid, particles and therefore28
As for matter itself, the essential properties that Newton ascribes to it are nearly the same as those that have been listed by Henry More,28 by the old atomists and the modern partisans of corpuscular philosophy: extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility, to which is addeda most important additioninertia, in the precise, new meaning of this word. In a curious combination of anti-Cartesian empiricism and ontological rationalism, Newton wants to admit as essential properties of matter only those that are (a) empirically given to us, and (b) can be neither increased nor diminished. Thus he writes in the third of his Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy, by which he replaced the third fundamental Hypothesis of the first edition of the Principia:30
For since the qualities of bodies are only known to us by experiments, we are to hold for universal all such as universally agree with experiments, and such as are not liable to diminution can never be quite taken away. We are certainly not to relinquish the evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and vain fictions of our own devising; nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which is wont to be simple and always consonant to itself. We in no other way know the extension of bodies than by our senses, nor do these reach it in all bodies; but because we perceive extension in all that are sensible, therefore we ascribe it universally to all others also. That abundance of bodies are hard we learn by experience; and because the hardness of the whole arises from the hardness of the parts, we therefore justly infer the hardness of the undivided
Lastly, if it universally appears, by experiments and astronomical observations, that all bodies about the earth gravitate toward the earth, and that in proportion to the quantity of matter which they severally contain; that the moon likewise, according to the quantity of its matter, gravitates toward the earth; that, on the other hand, our sea gravitates toward the moon; and all the planets one
We see, therefore, that Newton, no more than Galileo or even Descartes, includes gravity, or mutual attraction, in the essential properties of bodies in spite of the fact that its empirical foundations are much stronger than those of such a fundamental property as impenetrability. Newton seems to suggest that the reason for this exclusion consists in the variability of gravitation as opposed to the immutability of the inertia. But this is by no means the case. The weight of a body "gravitating" toward the earth is indeed diminished as it recedes from it: but the attractive force of the earthor any other bodyis constant, and, just as in the case of inertia, proportional to its mass, and it is as such that it appears in the famous inverse square formula of universal gravitation. This is so because31
Thus the attraction of a body is a function, or sum, of the attractions of its (atomic) particles, just as its mass is the sum of the masses of the selfsame particles. And yet it is not an "essential property" of the body, or of its particles. As a matter of fact it is not even an adventitious property of them; it is in no sense their property. It is an effect of some extraneous force acting upon them according to a fixed rule.
It isor should bea well-known fact that Newton did not believe in attraction as a real, physical force. No more than Descartes, Huygens or Henry More could he admit that matter is able to act at a distance, or be animated by a spontaneous tendency. The empirical corroboration of the fact could not prevail against the rational impossibility of the process. Thus, just like Descartes or Huygens, he tried at first to explain attractionor to explain it awayby reducing it to some kind of effect of purely mechanical occurrences and forces. But in contradistinction to the former, who believed that they were able to devise a mechanical theory of gravity, Newton seems to have become convinced of the utter futility of such an attempt. He discovered, for example, that he could indeed explain attraction, but that in order to do so he had to postulate repulsion, which, perhaps, was somewhat better, but not very much so.
Fortunately, as Newton knew full well, we need not have a clear conception of the way in which certain effects are produced in order to be able to study the phenomena and to treat them mathematically. Galileo was not obliged to develop a theory of gravityhe even claimed his right to ignore completely its naturein order to establish a mathematical dynamics and to determine the laws of fall.32
Thus nothing prevented Newton from studying the laws of "attraction" or "gravitation" without being obliged to give an account of the real forces that produced the centripetal motion of the bodies. It was perfectly sufficient to assume only that these forceswhether physical or metaphysicalwere acting according to strict mathematical laws (an assumption fully confirmed by the observation of astronomical phenomena and also by well-interpreted experiments) and to treat these "forces" as mathematical forces, and not as real ones. Although only part of the task, it is a very necessary part; only when this preliminary stage is accomplished can we proceed to the investigation of the real causes of the phenomena.
This is precisely what Newton does in the book so significantly called not Principia Philosophiae, that is, Principles of Philosophy (like Descartes), but Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, that is, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. He warns us that:33
In his Letters (written five years after the publication of the Principia) to Richard Bentley who, like nearly everybody else, missed the warning just quoted and interpreted Newton in the way that became common in the eighteenth century, namely as asserting the physical reality of attraction and of attractive force as inherent to matter, Newton is somewhat less reserved. He first tells Bentley (in his second letter):34
In the third one, he practically comes into the open. Though he does not tell Bentley what he, Newton, believes the force of attraction to be in rerum, he tells him that:35
As we see, Newton does not pretend any longer not to know the cause of gravity; he only informs us that he left this question unanswered, leaving it to his readers to find out themselves the solution, namely that the "agent" which "causes" gravity cannot be material, but must be a spirit, that is, either the spirit of nature of his colleague Henry More, or, more simply, Goda solution that, rightly or wrongly, Newton was too cautious to announce himself. But that Dr. Bentley could notand did notfail to understand.
As for Dr. Bentley (or more exactly Mr. Richard Bentley, M. A.he became DD. in 1696), who did not know much physicshe was by training a classicistand obviously did not grasp the ultimate implications of Newton's natural philosophy, he espouses it wholeheartedly, as far, at least, as he understands it, and turns it into a weapon for the Confutation of Atheism in the Boyle Lectures which he gave in 1692.
Richard Bentley follows so closely, and even so servilely, Newton's teaching, or lessonshe copied nearly verbatim the letters he received from him, adding, of course, some references to the Scriptures and a good deal of rhetoricthat the views he expresses can be considered as representing, in a large measure, those of Newton himself.
The atheists Mr. Bentley deals with are essentially the
materialists, more precisely those of the Epicurean brand, and it is rather amusing to see that Bentley accepts the fundamentals of their conception, that is, the corpuscular theory of matter, the reduction of material being to atoms and void, not only without the apparent hesitations and cautious reserve of Newton, but even as something that goes without saying and without discussion. He only objects, as it has always been done, that it is not enough, and that they cannot explain the orderly structure of our universe without superadding to matter and motion some purposeful action of a non-material cause: the fortuitous and disorderly motion of atoms cannot transform chaos into a cosmos.
Yet, if the pattern of his reasoning is quite traditionalbut we must not blame Mr. Bentley for that: it is also the Newtonian pattern and, moreover, did not Kant himself tell us a century later that the physico-teleological proof of the existence of God is the only one that has any value?the contents of the demonstration are adapted to the present-day (Bentley's present day) level of scientific philosophy.
Thus, for instance, he accepts without the slightest criticism the contemporary version of Giordano Bruno's conception of the universe: an infinite space with an immense number of star-suns. Bentley maintains, of course, that the stars are finite in numberhe thinks he can prove itand would even like them to be arranged in space so as to build a "firmament." But if this cannot be done, he will accept their dispersion in the boundless void. Bentley, indeed, insists upon the void. He needs it, of course, as we shall see in a moment, in order to be able to demonstrate the existence and the action, in the world,
of non-material, non-mechanical forcesfirst and foremost of the Newtonian universal attractionbut he is also somehow elated and ravished by the idea that this our world is chiefly composed of void spaces, and he indulges in calculations that show that the amount of matter in the universe is so small as practically not to be worth speaking of:36
. . . . . . . . . . .
And first, because every fixed star is supposed by astronomers
It is clear that with this immense void at their disposal:37
[paragraph continues] Accordingly, Democritian atoms, whatever their initial disposition in space, would pretty soon be completely dispersed and would be unable to form even the most simple bodies, and much less, of course, such an artful and well-ordered system as, for instance, our solar world. Fortunately for itsand for ourexistence, atoms are not free and independent of each other but are bound together by mutual gravitation.
Now this is already a refutation of atheismBentley, as we have seen, has learnt from Newton that gravitation cannot be attributed to matteras it is clear38
just because action at a distance39
Now, if we admit, as we must do, that this mutual
attraction cannot be explained by any "material and mechanical agent," the indubitable reality of this power of mutual gravitation.40
Moreover, even if reciprocal attraction were essential to matter, or if it were simply a blind law of action of some immaterial agent, it would not suffice to explain the actual fabric of our world, or even the existence of any world whatever. Indeed, under the unhampered influence of mutual gravitation, would not all matter convene together into the middle of the world?
Bentley seems to have been rather proud of having found that God not only pulled or pushed bodies towards each other, but also counteracted His actionor, more simply, suspended itin the case of the fixed stars, at least of the outermost ones, which He prevented in this manner from leaving their places and maintained at rest.
Alas, Newton explained to him that his reasoning implied a finite world and that there was no reason to deny its possible infinity, that the difficulties Bentley found in the concept of an infinite sum or series were not contradictions, and that his refutation of the infinity (or eternity) of the world was a paralogism. Newton confirmed, however, that even in the case of an infinite world the mere and pure action of gravity could not explain its structure, and that choice and purpose were clearly apparent in the actual distribution of the heavenly bodies in space, as well as in the mutual adjustment of their masses, velocities and so on:41
. . . . . . . . . . .
To your second query, I answer, that the motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone, but were impressed by an intelligent Agent. For since comets descend into the region of our planets,
. . . . . . . . . . .
To make this system, therefore, with all its motions, required a cause which understood and compared together the quantities of matter in the several bodies of the sun and planets, and the gravitating powers resulting from thence; the several distances of the primary planets from the sun, and of the secondary ones from Saturn, Jupiter, and the earth; and the velocities with which these planets could revolve about those quantities of matter in the central bodies; and to compare and adjust all these things together, in so great a variety of bodies, argues that cause to be, not blind and fortuitous, but very well skilled in mechanics and geometry.
Having learnt his lesson, Bentley writes therefore:42
I. For, first, if the matter of the universe, and consequently the space through which it's diffused, be supposed
Furthermore, even if the matter of the chaos could build the separate bodies of the planets, they "could not possibly acquire such revolutions in circular orbs, or in ellipses very little eccentric," as they actually perform, by the mere action of the forces of inertia and gravity, and finally, "if we should grant . . . that these circular revolutions could be naturally attained," it still requires a divine power and providence to preserve them, and, generally speaking, to preserve the fabric of the world. For, even if we admitted that the combination of inertia and gravity would suffice for the maintaining of the orbital motion of the planets, what about the fixed stars? What prevents them from coming together? "If the fixed stars . . . are supposed to have no power of gravitation, tis plain proof of divine Being" as it shows the non-natural character of gravitation. "And tis as plain a proof of a divine Being if they have the power of gravitation." For,
in that case, only a divine power can compel them to remain in their assigned places. But what if the world were not finite, but infinite? According to Bentley it does not make a very great difference:43
In spite of these clear proofs of God's purposeful action in the world, there are, as we know, people who refuse to be convinced by them and who argue that an infinite world can have no purpose. What indeed can be the usefulness of these innumerable stars that are not even seen by us, either by the unassisted eye or through the strongest telescope? But, replies Bentley, embracing the pattern of reasoning based on the principle of plenitude, "We must not confine and determine the purposes in creating all mundane bodies merely to human ends and uses." For, though, as it is evident, they are not created for our sakes, they are certainly not made for their own:44
An indefinitely extended and populated world, immersed in an infinite space, a world governed by the wisdom and moved by the power of an Almighty and Omnipresent God, such is, finally, the universe of the very orthodox Richard Bentley, future Bishop of Worcester and Master of Trinity College. Such is, doubtlessly too, the universe of the very heretical Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Isaac Newton, Fellow of the Royal Society and of the same Trinity College41