The Southern Journal of Philosophy Volume 50, Issue 3 September 2012

NEWTON AND THE MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHY: GRAVITATION AS THE BALANCE OF THE HEAVENS
Peter Machamer, J. E. McGuire, and Hylarie Kochiras
abstract: We argue that Isaac Newton really is best understood as being in the tradition of the Mechanical Philosophy and, further, that Newton saw himself as being in this tradition. But the tradition as Newton understands it is not that of Robert Boyle and many others, for whom the Mechanical Philosophy was dened by contact action and a corpuscularean theory of matter. Instead, as we argue in this paper, Newton interpreted and extended the Mechanical Philosophys slogan matter and motion in reference to the long and distinguished tradition of mixed mathematics and the study of simple machines.

1. INTRODUCTION Much has been written about the Mechanical Philosophy of the seventeenth century and its role in the emergence of early modern science. Alan Gabbey, for instance, has offered several detailed analyses of the different uses of the concepts of mechanics and of the mechanical philosophy among early
Peter Machamer is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and Associate Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He has written on a number of seventeenth-century topics and is co-author with J. E. McGuire of Descartess Changing Mind (Princeton University Press, 2009). J. E. McGuire is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. McGuire has published numerous papers on early modern science and philosophy, many of which are collected in Tradition and Innovation: Newtons Metaphysics of Nature (Kluwer, 1995). Recently, he co-authored Descartess Changing Mind with Peter Machamer (Princeton University Press, 2009) and is currently completing a book-length study of Aristotles modal theories with James Bogen. In 2011, McGuire was awarded the Sarton Chair and medal at Ghent University, Belgium. Hylarie Kochiras was a postdoctoral fellow during 201011 at the University of Pittsburghs Center for Philosophy of Science, and is currently a European Institutes for Advanced Study (EURIAS) Fellow at New Europe College in Bucharest. Her research focuses on Newton and early modern philosophy of science, and her publications include Gravity and Newtons Substance Counting Problem (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2009), Lockes Philosophy of Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2009), and Spiritual Presence and Dimensional Space beyond the Cosmos (Intellectual History Review, 2012).
The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 50, Issue 3 (2012), 37088. ISSN 0038-4283, online ISSN 2041-6962. DOI: 10.1111/j.2041-6962.2012.00128.x

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modern natural philosophers (see, e.g., Gabbey 1985, 1990, 1993, 2002). In an early paper, Gabbey suggested that mechanics has had multiple meanings and that there were several so-called mini-revolutions in collision theory, in statics and the theory of machines, in hydrodynamics, in vibration theory, in theories of central forces and rigid body motionseach with its own new principles and procedures (Gabbey 1990, 496). More recently, Gabbey has offered a general taxonomy of these different uses, explicitly distinguishing between mechanics, understood as concerned in some way with manual activity, and mechanical, which connoted the theory of machines and more generally mechanics qua the science of body in motion and rest (2002, 336). Now Gabbey is certainly correct that there were many uses of the concept (and word) mechanical. For instance, we can identify in the early modern period the application of the term mechanical to a variety of different situations, whether mathematical (Newton, as will be indicated subsequently) or nonmathematical (Boyle), whether involving straight line collisions (Descartes and Huygens) or vibrating bodies (Hooke), and, more generally, as applied to a host of situations involving the identication and explanation of the active principles by which change occurs. However, we hesitate to accept Gabbeys conclusion that there are only varieties of mechanical philosophies and no general Mechanical Philosophy in the early modern period, precisely because we reject his sharp distinction between mechanics and mechanical. For our part, it seems benecial to identify the various uses of mechanics and mechanical as somehow referring to versions of a general Mechanical Philosophy, especially in those cases where the actors themselves use various synonymous concepts of mechanics and mechanical.1 More importantly, as we urge below, understanding the character of this Mechanical Philosophy, as well as its development over the seventeenth century, requires understanding how the terms mechanical and mechanical philosophy are related among early modern practitioners. Accordingly, we must consider how the practice of mixed mathematics and the study of simple machineswhich Gabbey would relegate to the category of mechanicsbecame integrated into the mechanical principles used to investigate nature. To make our case, we focus below on Isaac Newtons relationship to the Mechanical Philosophy, aiming to show how Newtons consideration of
1 In this respect, our project is also opposed to Dan Garbers recent claim (Garber, forthcoming) that there was no Mechanical Philosophy in the seventeenth century. The characterization of the Mechanical Philosophy, which we forward below, also differs from that of A. R. and M. B. Hall (Newton 1962). They take the Cartesian reliance on material impact to be a rst-order explanation and take Newtons use of mathematized forces to be a second-order explanation (Newton 1962, 76). We take each to be a version of the mechanical.

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mixed mathematics and simple machines allowed him to extend the basic program of the Mechanical Philosophy to include the mathematical treatment of forces. At the end, we show, pace recent commentators, that Newtons proposal of universal gravitation is entirely consistent with his commitment to the general tenets of the Mechanical Philosophy. First, however, we must clarify our general account of the Mechanical Philosophy, and to do so, we consider generally accepted uses of matter and motion in the Mechanical Philosophys famous slogan matter and motion. 2. A GENERAL CHARACTERIZATION OF THE MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHY For Boyle, as for most other contemporary natural philosophers, there is only one kind of matteran extended, divisible, and impenetrable matter common to all bodies. This single-matter theory for both the celestial and terrestrial realms began to be popular with the publication in 1610 of Galileos Sidereus Nuncius and spread with the growing acceptance of Copernicanism among natural philosophers. Granting that the earth orbits the sun, it was simply no longer clear why terrestrial matter should be considered different in kind from so-called celestial matter. In addition to Copernican pressures to treat the matter of the celestial and terrestrial realms as the same, this unity of matter was reinforced by the revival of ancient atomism and Epicureanism (see Machamer 2009 and Wilson 2008). However, a unied matter theory cannot account for diversity in nature, and this is where motion enters the world-view of the Mechanical Philosophy. The parts of bodies, if left to themselves, would remain at rest relative to one another. Accordingly, motion, as the active causal principle, is necessary to produce change. As Boyle puts it: local motion seems to be indeed the principal amongst second causes, and the grand agent of all that happens in nature ([1666] 1991, 19). Thomas Hobbes is of the same opinion: the variety of all gures arises from the variety of motions by which they are constructed, and motion cannot be understood to have any cause other than another motion . . . it is unintelligible that something depart from rest or from motion except by motion ([1655] 1966, De Corpore, Part 1, Chapter Six). Most leading natural philosophers of the seventeenth century, such as Galileo, Descartes, Barrow, Huygens, and Newton, were in agreement on this point, though many also allowed that immaterial minds could cause motion in some bodies. (Moreover, unlike Hobbes many did not restrict the understanding of efcient causation to motion alone.) Thus, whatever else fell under its purview, the Mechanical Philosophy was the study of local motion. Most particularly, it was the study of local motion

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as the efcient cause of all motions that occur in the cosmos. Accordingly, to explain variety among phenomena, it was no longer necessary to invoke the fourfold causes of the Aristotelian tradition. A single efcient causelocal motionwas sufcient. This conception possessed great explanatory economy. It tied the Mechanical Philosophy to the legacy of ancient atomism, the view that everything is composed by the local motions and shapes of atoms moving in a void, though there would be disputes about the nature of bodies and about whether or not there was a void. Moreover, what became important during the seventeenth century was not that the traditional categories of causes were de-emphasized for explanatory purposes (that certainly occurred) but, rather, that a new stress was placed on the category of law, and on laws of motion, in particular. Increasingly, thinkers from Galileo onward embarked on a search for the regular patterns of motion exhibited by the behavior of phenomena. This culminated in 1665 when the Royal Society offered a prize for the best quantitative treatment of the phenomenon of impact. Inspired by Descartess attempt, based on his three natural laws, to deduce the descriptive rules that govern bodies on impact, Wren, Wallis, and Huygens all submitted detailed quantitative descriptions of the relationship (see Wallis et al. 1669). It is hardly a matter of dispute that the concept of law became a basic, explanatory category in the natural philosophy of the seventeenth century.2 And it is thus hardly surprising that Newton should preface his treatise on motion with the title Axioms, or Laws of Motion. What we propose is that an understanding of the Mechanical Philosophy involves, not only the rejection of Aristotelianism and the acceptance of unied matter that is sometimes conceived of as corpuscular in nature, but also something even more important; it involves the view that motion is the basic efcient cause and that motions regularities can be expressed in terms of quantitative laws. 3. NEWTON AND THE MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHY Adopting our general interpretation of how matter and motion was used during the seventeenth century, we can draw some evident connections between the Mechanical Philosophy and Newtons philosophy of nature. In an early notebook (Questiones quaedam Philosophica, or the Trinity Notebook), Newton declares himself in favor of a unied theory of matter, indeed of atomism (Newton [166165] 2003). Drawing from Greek sources of atomism, he developed a systematic picture of the coordinated motions of atoms in
2 Why this emphasis on laws of nature occurred in the seventeenth century remains a question of debate. See Zilsel 1942, 24579, and the overview of the current debate in Henry 2004.

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time, space, and place (33651). Newton remained a partisan of atomism throughout his life, opposing the categories of substance and quality that were central to the Aristotelian tradition. His opposition to Aristotelianism is evident in a document dating from the early 1670s. On printed sheets, probably intended for an edition of his theory of optics, Newton tells us that by means of an improper distinction which some make of mechanical Hypotheses, into those where light is put a body, and those where it is put the action of a body, understanding the rst of bodies trajected through a medium, the last of motion or pression propagated through it . . . whereas light is equally a body or the action of a body in both cases (cited in Cohen 1958, 365). Newton goes on to state that the bodies in both cases must cause vision by their motion (365). Unlike the Peripatetic view that light is a qualitative modication of a subject, mechanical hypotheses emphasize that it arises from the motion of bodies. Thus, Newtons purpose is not to put body in opposition to motion, but in opposition to to a Peripatetick quality, stating the question between the Peripatetick and the Mechanick Philosophy by inquiring whether light be a quality or body (365). To buttress the point, Newton contrasts the ontology he favors with the Peripatetic position. The Peripatetics use the terms Quality, Subject, Substance, sensible qualities, whereas the Mechanical Philosophy uses the terms Body, Modes, Actions, leaving undetermined the kinds of those actions (suppose whether they be pressions, strokes, or other dashings), by which light may produce in our minds the phantasms of colours (365). It is important to notice the stress that Newton places on the terms action and motion: it is motionthe motion of bodiesthat acts on the sense organs to produce sensations of color. In general, motion is taken by Newton to be a universal and physical cause, the action of which generates change in nature. This conception remains with Newton throughout his career and is the background of the science of motion developed in the Principia ([1726] 1999) and the Opticks ([1730] 1952). Indeed, it is fair to say that it forms the core of Newtons understanding of the Mechanical Philosophy. However, as important as these general connections between the Mechanical Philosophy and Newtons philosophy are, there is more that can and should be said. We should, in fact, resist reading Newton along purely Boylean lines, according to which the Mechanical Philosophy is intertwined with the corpuscular philosophy and adherence to contact action, and consider Newtons Mechanical Philosophy against the backdrop of two other traditions that affected the way in which seventeenth-century natural philosophers thought of motion as the principal efcient cause acting in nature: the mixed sciences and the simple machines. Earlier mechanics are in fact mostly concerned with the simple machines (and sometimes hydrostatics). For

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instance, Guido Ubaldo says that all simple machines can be reduced to the wheel, and he stresses their practical applications, worrying mostly about their utilities. He also stresses And mechanics, since it operates against nature or rather in rivalry with the laws of nature, surely deserves our highest admiration (Ubaldo [1581] 1969, 241). Optics and astronomy from the ancient period to the seventeenth century used geometry to demonstrate results established by observation and experiment. Since they combined both physical and geometrical principles, they were mixed or subalternate sciences (see Biener 2008). What these sciences studied was motionthe motions of light and of the planets modeled and demonstrated geometrically. Moreover, after Galileo, mechanics became the quantitative study of local motion of bodies, and mechanics and its relation to the simple machines was no longer conceived in opposition with nature. This became the new model of intelligibility for understanding nature (see Machamer 1998). Indeed, in his early unpublished De Motu (1605), Galileo had attacked the Aristotelian principles of sublunar motions (light and heavy) as unintelligible by using Archimedean hydrostatics and, more signicantly, by showing that the motion of all bodies was due to heaviness and could be made intelligible by modeling motion as a balance problem. The simple machines have been studied since antiquity (see Berryman 2009): the balance, the lever, the pulley, the inclined plane, and the screw being the principal devices. Each of these devices involves a relationship of balance (equilibrium) between an input and an output. They exploit mechanical advantage (leverage or input) to multiply the effect of force (output). The lever is a classic example of a device for producing a mechanical advantage. Depending on where the fulcrum is placed in relation to the load, mechanical advantage can be increased or decreased, such that the force applied to the load is equal to the work done by the force exerted on the lever. It is important to notice that the notions of action, force, and motion are involved. The lever is in fact a dynamical system in which the action of a force on one end is balanced on the other by a change in position of the load in the opposite direction. So we have a balanced reconguration of the opposing ends of the lever brought about by the action of motion. Thus motion could be conceived in terms of equilibria relations, as somehow resulting in some sort of stasis (its later connection to statics explicable by the fact that we can measure proportions only by treating them as static, even though they may be continuously changing). And rest could be conceived as a stable equilibrium state. In brief, then, the study of simple machines was the study of motion and rest, and it was characteristically mathematical. The simple machines are thus good examples of using mixed mathematics. They apply mathematical prin-

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ciples to physical objects. However, it must be noted that they describe only certain properties of the physical bodies they treat. Many physical properties, such as the materials constituting any given simple machine, are neglected and not taken to be relevant to the explanations.3 In what follows, we aim to show two things: rst, that Newton placed himself in this tradition of the simple machines and, second, that Newton used the balance as the model for treating gravitational action as a simple machine. 4. MECHANICAL PRINCIPLES IN THE AUTHORS PREFACE Let us turn now to the Authors Preface to the Principia, which appeared in the rst edition and was retained in all subsequent editions.4 Two features of the Preface make it especially interesting for our purposes. First, Newton recongures the relationships among geometry, mechanics, and natural philosophy in such a way that gravity becomes part of mechanics. Second, he claims to have discovered the gravitational force through mechanical principles, which he identies with the mathematical principles of natural philosophy that provide the title for his treatise. To begin, it is worth quoting the rst paragraph of the Authors Preface in full.
Since the ancients (according to Pappus) considered mechanics to be of the greatest importance in the investigation of nature and science and since modernsrejecting substantial forms and occult qualitieshave undertaken to reduce the phenomena of nature to mathematical laws, it has seemed best in this treatise to concentrate on mathematics as it relates to natural philosophy. The ancients divided mechanics into two parts: the rational, which proceeds rigorously through demonstrations, and the practical. Practical mechanics is the subject that comprises all the manual arts, from which the subject of mechanics as a whole has adopted its name. But since those who practice an art do not generally work with a high degree of exactness, the whole subject of mechanics is distinguished from geometry by the attribution of exactness to geometry and of anything less than exactness to mechanics. Yet the errors do not come from the art but from those who practice the art. Anyone who works with less exactness is a more imperfect mechanic, and if anyone could work with the greatest exactness, he would be the most perfect mechanic of all. For the description of straight lines and circles, which is the foundation of geometry, appertains to mechanics. Geometry does not teach how to describe these straight lines and circles, but postulates such a description. For
3 See Bertoloni Meli 2010 for discussion of how the study of simple machines, for practitioners such as Galileo, was integrated with an axiomatic tradition in natural philosophy. 4 Additional draft prefaces, never completed, were written in the years just prior to and following the publication of the second edition in 1713. See Cohens translation and discussion of one of these draftsthe Unpublished Preface to the Principia, as he calls the manuscript ULC Ms. 3968, fol. 109in his Guide to Newtons Principia (Newton [1726] 1999, 4954). See also the discussion by Guicciardini, who refers to that same draft as the Intended Preface (Guicciardini 2009, 30305).

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geometry postulates that a beginner has learned to describe lines and circles exactly before he approaches the threshold of geometry, and then it teaches how problems are solved by these operations. To describe straight lines and to describe circles are problems, but not problems in geometry. Geometry postulates the solution of these problems from mechanics and teaches the use of the problems thus solved. And geometry can boast that with so few principles obtained from other elds, it can do so much. Therefore geometry is founded on mechanical practice and is nothing other than that part of universal mechanics which reduces the art of measuring to exact proportions and demonstrations. But since the manual arts are applied especially to making bodies move, geometry is commonly used in reference to magnitude, and mechanics in reference to motion. In this sense rational mechanics will be the science, expressed in exact proportions and demonstrations, of the motions that result from any forces whatever and of the forces that are required for any motions whatever. The ancients studied this part of mechanics in terms of the ve powers that relate to the manual arts [i.e., the ve mechanical powers] and paid hardly any attention to gravity (since it is not a manual power) except in the moving of weights by these powers. But since we are concerned with natural philosophy rather than manual arts, and are writing about natural rather than manual powers, we concentrate on aspects of gravity, levity, elastic forces, resistance of uids, and forces of this sort, whether attractive or impulsive. And therefore our present work sets forth mathematical principles of natural philosophy. For the basic problem [lit. whole difculty] 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. It is to these ends that the general propositions in books 1 and 2 are directed, while in book 3 our explanation of the system of the world illustrates these propositions. For in book 3, by means of propositions demonstrated mathematically in books 1 and 2, we derive from celestial phenomena the gravitational forces by which bodies tend toward the sun and toward the individual planets. Then the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea are deduced from these forces by propositions that are also mathematical. If only we could derive the other phenomena of nature from mechanical principles by the same kind of reasoning! For many things lead me to have a suspicion that all phenomena may depend on certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by causes not known, either are impelled toward one another and cohere in regular gures, or are repelled from one another and recede. Since these forces are unknown, philosophers have hitherto made trial of nature in vain. But I hope that the principles set down here will shed some light on either this mode of philosophizing or some truer one. (Newton [1726] 1999, 38183)

Although at the outset of the Preface, Newton characteristically claims some continuity with the ancients, he then recongures disciplinary boundaries by opposing a still-dominant ancient division. As he describes it, Practical mechanics is the subject . . . from which the subject of mechanics as a whole has adopted its name. But since those who practice an art do not generally work with a high degree of exactness, the whole subject of mechanics is distinguished from geometry by the attribution of exactness to geometry and of anything less than exactness to mechanics. Part of Newtons concern in these

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and surrounding linesmost notably, his assertion that geometry is founded on mechanical practice and is nothing other than that part of universal mechanics which reduces the art of measuring to exact propositions and demonstrationsis to advance an epistemological view of geometry that opposes the Cartesian one. Several commentators have recently shown that Descartess La Gomtrie ([1637] 1902) was indeed the Prefaces specic target5 and that identication has played centrally in debates about whether or which sort of geometrical constructivism Newton accepted.6 However, we need not engage those debates here; instead we note some more general points. First, we take Newton to be following Isaac Barrow when he says geometry is founded on mechanical practice. Barrow held that local motions were even to be thought of as being the basis of geometry. Lecture One of his Geometrical Lectures: Explaining the Generation, Nature and Properties of Curve Lines (1735) opens with a discussion of motion and then goes on to discuss time and then velocity. Barrow ends the rst lecture with a discussion of uniform and uniformly accelerated motion. Lecture Two is entitled Generation of magnitudes by local movements: The simple motions of translation and rotation. Barrow writes in the opening lines of this lecture: Mathematicians are not limited to the actual manner by which a magnitude has been produced; they assume any method of generation that that may be best suited to their purpose (Barrow [1735] 1916, 42). In a similar vein, Newton considers mechanics to be the science of local motions, and these motions are used by the mathematicians to construct or generate curves, but not necessarily by using material instruments (such as rulers and compasses). Mechanics precedes geometry because one must know about the motion of points to know about lines, about the motion of lines to know about planes, and about the motions of points on a plane to know about curves.7 Second, to recongure the relationships among mathematics, mechanics, and natural philosophy, Newton identies erroneous presumptions in that ancient division between rational and practical mechanics that he means to overthrow. Contrary to the presumption of rational mechanics, Newton wants us to realize that there is exactness in the divinely created machine of the world. Thus, the objects of mathematical methods are not conned to abstract mathematical entities, and mechanics should no longer be thought to be a branch of mathematics. Moreover, disputing the longstanding presumption that practical mechanics, with its restricted domain, legitimately repre5 See Domski 2003 and Guicciardini 2009. See also Garrison (1987, 614) for discussion of Cartesian analysis as Newtons target. 6 See also Garrison 1987 and Sepkowski 2005. 7 See Domski (this volume) for more on the importance of geometry for Newtons science of bodies.

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sents the science of motion, Newton wants us to realize that the science of motion fundamentally includes the natural powers or forces, notably gravity, levity, elastic forces, resistance of uids, and forces of this sort, whether attractive or impulsive (Newton [1726] 1999, 382).We should no longer allow our understanding of the domain of mechanics, the science of motion, to be determined by practical mechanics, which traditionally restricted its gaze to the imperfect machines of human creation and the powers or forces associated with them. Natural powers and forces are also in the purview of rational mechanics, for as Newton asserts, the world is a machine and a perfect one, with God its creator being the most perfect mechanic of all.8 For Newton, the principles governing this perfect machine are mathematical, which leads us to our nal point. These mathematical principles are one and the same with mechanical principles, and it is by means of those mechanical or mathematical principles that causal principlesforcesare discovered from phenomena. Newton rst denotes the process of discovery as the goal of natural philosophy: For 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 (Newton [1726] 1999, 382). Subsequently, in the brief remarks expressing his wish to discover the short range, interparticulate, attractive and repulsive forces that preoccupy him elsewhere, he identies the mathematical principles facilitating such discoveries as mechanical. If only we could derive the other phenomena of nature from mechanical principles by the same kind of reasoning! (382). It appears, then, that the natural philosophy that Newton introduces in the Preface qualies as a Mechanical Philosophy in the sense set out earlier. As he cashes out his Principia project, he draws from the simple machine tradition by using mathematical proportions that express the operations of nature. The purpose of the Authors Preface is to place the Principia in the tradition of the mixed sciences with the simple machines subsumedthat is, to place it in the mechanical/geometrical tradition of the ancients. But as the Preface also makes clear, Newton also sees himself as extending this tradition in important ways. The conception of mechanics that is at play in the Principia can protably be understood within this innovative framework. In the Preface, rational mechanics is presented as the science of motions resulting from any forces whatsoever (Newton [1726] 1999, 382). Thus
8 Newton repeats his own thoughts on the matter in his rst letter to Bentley, which is included in Newton: Philosophical Writings (2004, 9497). Earlier, mathematician and physician Henri de Monantheuil had asserted the world to be a machine, and indeed of machines, the greatest, most efcient, most rm, most beautiful, and its creator to be the most accurate and incessant Geometer. Monantheuils remarks are translated and discussed by Helen Hattab (2005, 11315).

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understood, mechanics demonstrates the properties of any and all motions that arise from the action of any and all forces. Mechanics is rational in that it demonstrates the properties of motions that arise from the action of natural powers and not from the action of the simple machines. Accordingly, Newtons chief concern in the Principia is with motions caused by natural powers such as gravity: therefore I offer this work as the mathematical principles of philosophy, for the whole burden of philosophy seems to consist in thisfrom the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena (382). It is clear, then, that Newton conceives of the Principia as the science of motions demonstrated by geometrical principles. It is from motions geometrically considered that the action of the forces producing them can be investigated. The laws of motion describe the relation between the action of forces and the motions they produce. But since the Principia is concerned with the geometrical modeling of motions abstractly considered (i.e., rational mechanics), it
use[s] interchangeably and indiscriminately words signifying attraction, impulse, or any sort of propensity towards a center, considering those forces not from a physical, but only from a mathematical point of view. Therefore, let the reader beware of thinking that by the words of this kind I am anywhere dening a species or mode of action or a physical cause or reason, or that I am attributing forces in a true and physical sense, to certain centers (which are only mathematical points) if I happen to say that centers attract or that centers have forces. (Denition 8; Newton [1726] 1999, 408)

Newton makes the same point forcibly in the opening of Section 11, Book 1, and in the Scholium to Proposition 69, Book 1. But what does it mean to consider forces mathematically and not physically? It means, in the rst instance, to deal with the observable effects of a force, a phenomenon that can be described accurately by the use of geometry. Thus, we can measure and demonstrate mathematically the change in a bodys speed or momentum that results from the action of a force. Thus, what is captured geometrically are the observable changes of state that bodies undergo apart from any consideration of the sorts of physical causes involved. This distinction is set out clearly in the Scholium to Proposition 69, Book 1. Newton tells us that he is not considering the
species of forces and their physical qualities, but their quantities and mathematical proportion, as I have explained in the denitions. Mathematics requires an investigation of those quantities of forces and their proportions that follow upon any conditions that may be supposed. Then, coming down to physics, these proportions must be compared with the phenomena so that it may be found out which condi-

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tions [or laws] of forces apply to each kind of attracting bodies. And then nally it will be possible to argue more securely concerning the physical species, physical causes, and physical proportions of these forces. (Newton [1726] 1999, 58889)

It is clear, then, that the mathematical treatment of force relates only to certain quantities of bodies and with the geometrical proportions that pertain to them. The mathematics describes only the activities of the causes. Consider, for instance, the second law of motion. It tells us that A change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and takes place along the straight line in which that force is impressed (Newton [1726] 1999, 416). Here is one of the fundamental proportions of the Principia. It tells us that the change in a bodys motion is directly proportional to the action of an impressed force. In speaking of the bodys motion, Newton is referring to its quantity of motion or momentum, the measure of which is mass x velocity (Denition 2). An impressed force is the action that changes the state of a body all at once or successively by degrees (Law 2, Denition 4; Newton [1726] 1999, 416). Note that the notion is completely general and is not restricted to any particular mode of action, whether attractive or repulsive. Thus, the dened proportions and quantities can be treated geometrically without considering the kind or species of force involved. The generality of Newtons science of motion is shown dramatically in Proposition 1, Theorem 1 of the First Book of the Principia. He proves that if a body is continually drawn toward some center, its otherwise inertial motion will be transformed into motion along a curve, and that a line from the center to the body will sweep out equal areas in equal times. In the proof Newton speaks of a centripetal force, by which the body is continually drawn back from the tangent to this curve (Newton [1726] 1999, 445). But this simply means that at successive instants, each of an innite number of points on the curve is directed to the center, regardless of the mode of action. Again, the proof says nothing about a body at a center exerting a force, and nothing of this sort is assumed. The center is a geometrical point around which equal areas may be found. The basic idea is intuitively simple, namely, that if a body is moving in purely inertial motion, then with respect to any point not on that line of motion, the law of equal areas must apply. Newton shows this in the case of all the curves generated by the conic sections. The generality of the proof is important. It allows Newton to speak of a centripetal force without assuming the physical mode of action involved, which can be determined, presumably, only in light of empirical data. Interestingly, at the beginning of Section 11, Book 1, Newton says that he will henceforth speak of the motion of bodies that attract one another, considering centripetal forces as attractions, although perhapsif we speak in the language of physicsthey might be more truly called impulses (Newton [1726] 1999, 561). If Proposition 1,

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Theorem 1 were interpreted physically, the centripetal forces would consist of discrete impulses successively driving the body into a curve around a center. The element Newton draws from the simple machine tradition is his means of discovering or identifying genuine causes in the world.9 The Principias third book applies the principles developed in the previous books to the solar system; having found the gravitational forces mathematical proportions, he describes it as the force by which celestial bodies are kept in their orbits (Newton [1726] 1999, 806). It therefore is legitimate to understand Newtons natural philosophy as mechanical, in virtue of the mathematical approach that he draws from the simple machine tradition and takes to identify forces as physical causes. 5. GRAVITATION Following our account of Newtons relationship to the Mechanical Philosophy, as one ltered through his sensitivity to mixed mathematics and simple machines, we have a novel way of understanding how the force of gravitation is itself consistent with, and also an extension of, the Mechanical Philosophy. Our approach to gravitation is opposed to now-standard readings, according to which material contact action is taken to be the sine qua non of the Mechanical Philosophy. For example, Andrew Janiak suggests that a prohibition against unmediated distant action was a crucial norm of the mechanical philosophy (in all its guises) (2008, 53).10 On this account, there are several signicant passages that indicate Newtons distance from the traditional
9 For more on the importance of a mechanical interpretation of mathematics for Newtons project, see Guicciardini, who remarks, Hobbes and Barrow . . . maintained that a mechanically based geometry is a discipline endowed with scientic character insofar as it yields knowledge of causes. According to Newton, a mechanically based geometry achieves exactly this end (Guicciardini 2009, 302). Newton wanted to inject certainty into natural philosophy via geometry. From his viewpoint, algebra was not endowed with the certainty that characterizes geometry. He often repeated that geometrical objects, such as plane curves, are better understood if the reason of their genesis is known (319). For more on Newtons attitude toward the certainty of geometry, see Janet Folinas contribution to this volume. 10 Janiak explicitly indicates that he does not claim to have identied or characterized all variants of the mechanical philosophy but, rather, to have identied those he considers most salient for understanding Newton: as he calls them, strict mechanism and loose mechanism. The strict mechanist does not admit forces, except insofar as forces may be reduced to bodily properties, namely, size, shape, motion, and solidity; while the loose mechanist allows forces, such as those involving impact. Both deny unmediated distant action, and again, although Janiak does not aim to identify all variants of the Mechanical Philosophy, he appears to see a prohibition against distant action as common to all variants, as indicated by the quoted remark (Janiak 2008, 5253). McGuire also emphasized contact action in an earlier paper. After identifying a wide range of meanings of mechanical, McGuire writes that while there was no agreement about the sufcient conditions, all agreed that contact action was a necessary condition for a mechanical explanation (McGuire, 1972, 523n2).

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Mechanical Philosophy. For instance, just prior to the most famous words of the General Scholium, which was added in the 1713 editionwords by which Newton explains that he has assigned no cause to gravity because he will not feign hypotheseshe writes that the forces cause acts not in proportion to the surfaces of the particles on which it acts (as mechanical causes are wont to do) but rather in proportion to the quantity of solid matter (Newton [1726] 1999, 943). Similarly, in Query 28, rst added for the 1706 Optice (a Latin edition of his Opticks), he distinguishes himself from those philosophers who do feign hypotheses in their zeal to explain all things mechanically, that is, by dense matter (Newton [1730] 1952, 369). However, we should not sever the ties between gravitation and the Mechanical Philosophy on these grounds alone. As the phenomena of the natural world include gravitational effects, a fundamental feature of the Mechanical Philosophy, as understood by Newton, must be the explanation of those effects by means of something drawn from the study of the mathematics of simple machines, which we take to be the sine qua non of seventeenth-century mechanics. The mechanics guring in this endeavor increasingly expanded into problems about force and local motion. The discipline had traditionally been understood as mixed mathematicsa science whose objects were physical in some sense but yet, in virtue of its methods, was mathematical.11 But this is not to say that mechanics when classied as mixed mathematics excluded all consideration of force; as Machamer and Woody (1994) have emphasized, problems within the simple machines were not limited to statics but also included dynamics. As a notable example, bodies on a balance will be in equilibrium if the ratio of their masses (or weights) is inversely proportional to the ratio of their distances from the fulcrum. This had been used to explain various phenomena, from pseudoAristotles Mechanica to Galileos De Motu, and in ways that employed the heaviness of bodies without trying to explain it. As traditionally classied, then, mechanics could employ the force of heaviness without looking into the nature of matter to determine how these forces worked.12 For those hoping that the functioning of simple machines would be an illuminating guide to the functioning of natural processes, there was an important question of just how far that illumination could reach. For Galileo, the balance served as a model of intelligibility for a range of phenomena. Unlike the Aristotelians irreducible substantial forms, the balance was a physical object, and modeling some phenomenon on it enabled one to visualize that phenomenon in terms of the proportions, structures, and interre11 12

See, e.g., Bertoloni Meli 2006. See Des Chene 2005; see also Garber 2002, esp. 189, and Berryman 2009, 24445.

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lations of clearly observable parts. In Day IV of his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems ([1632] 1953), for instance, Galileo explained the tides by invoking the motion of a pendulum, which he elsewhere reduces to the balance; in other works, he also invoked the balance to treat problems of free fall.13 Understanding the balance also seems to have been in Newtons mind when assessing gravitational forces. In the balance there is an equilibrium obtained between the forces on each side of the arm at different distances from the fulcrum, and the physical arm of the balance is neglected. So the planets balance each other by their attractive forces, and the connection between them is neglected. In Newtons System of the World, in fact, he imagines that the planets are connected as if by a rope (Newton [1728] 1969, 3839). The taut rope might be seen as playing the role of the arm of a balance. Newton explicitly mentions machines and their forces in Corollary II to the Axioms or Laws of Motion. There among his talk of equipollent and equilibrium, he gives a general rule about the composition and resolution of forces as applied in the case of a complex machine made of balances, levers, and screws. He concludes: the whole of mechanics . . . depends on what has just now been said. For from this are easily derived the forces of machines, which are generally composed of wheels, pulleys, levers, stretched strings, and weights, ascending directly or obliquely, and the other mechanical powers . . . (Newton [1726] 1999, 41920). But he had used wheels and weights, and all those images in his proof. So it seems reasonable to conclude that though he was conning his talk to real machines, he was using the machine language to show how forces in general work. Later in the Scholium to the same chapter, Newton again illustrates gravitation of the parts of the earth by saying, As bodies are equipollent in collisions and reections if their velocities are inversely inherent forces [i.e., forces of inertia], so in the motions of machines those agents [i.e., acting bodies] whose velocities (reckoned in the direction of their forces) are inversely as their inherent forces are equipollent and sustain one another by their contrary endeavors (Newton [1726] 1999, 42829). He then moves on to talk about the balance, the pulley, and other complex machines. Yet he says, But my purpose here is not to write a treatise on mechanics. Real machines are instances of the wide range and certainty of the third law of motion (430), which is the more general form for rational mechanics and indicates the reciprocal action and reaction of all phenomena on one another. Newtons theory of gravitational force is illuminated when seen against this background of simple machines. It, too, constitutes a dynamical system, a
13

See the discussion in Machamer 1998, esp. 61.

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system of mutually interacting bodies constrained by the action of omnipresent forces. The law states that all bodies mutually attract one another in direct proportion to their masses and inversely as the square of the distances separating them. Thus the action of one body is equally balanced or put into equilibrium by the opposing action of other bodies. Mathematically considered, gravitation is a phenomenon whereby bodies act mutually on one another at a distance. But since their ability to attract one another is directly proportional to their masses, gravitation is a penetrative force acting instantaneously and reciprocally on the total mass of each body. Furthermore, gravitational action generates curves by means of motions that satisfy the geometry of the conic sections. Thus, in Newtons eyes, the reciprocal action of bodies on one another generates physical curves that can be analyzed geometrically. Newtons gravitational theory beautifully exemplies his espousal of the ontology of force, action, and body. Moreover, as we have stressed throughout, it exhibits his adherence to the traditions of the mixed sciences and the simple machines, the latter understood as dynamical systems. It also reveals Newtons extension of this tradition: the theory of gravitation clearly illustrates his claim in the Preface that he is concerned, not with manual powers as were the ancients, but with the natural powers, which include gravity. 6. CONCLUSION Newton clearly ts into the tradition that, by the late seventeenth century, believed that motion may be described by regular and universal geometrical laws. This is a shift of focus from individually natured things (Aristotle) to nature itselfa turn away from things whose intrinsic inner natures or essences are the source and measure of what they can do, and toward nature as a system of laws by which individual things act in concert. So there is a shift away from inner and individual principles or causes of change and toward general systems of change. This is what the Mechanical Philosophy had become. This emphasis and use of the simple machines will continue in the work of Euler and Lagrange. They will disagree with Newton in many respects but will bring back the simple machines explicitly as the way of proving the application of their analytic method to the world (see Hepburn 2007, 2010).14 What we have tried to show is that the Newtonian revolution was steeped in the tradition of mixed mathematics and the simple machines.
14 See Michael Friedmans contribution to this volume for Kants use of the balance in his treatment of the Newtonian notion of quantity of matter.

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When this is combined with a view of the unity of matter, it opens the world to being understood by a set of universal laws that apply to all matter and to the forces that are active in bringing about changes. Maybe we should call this, innovation through tradition.15 REFERENCES
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15 Many special thanks to Mary Domski who helped us sort out our thoughts and gave tangible input into the restructuring of this paper. She might well be listed as a co-author. Thanks also to two anonymous referees.

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