Introduction
This essay with address the philosophical issues that Cartesians took with the the explanation that Newton had postulated approaching the end of the 17th century as well as with the counter-issues that the Newtonians would develop. This clash between the philosophical ideologies of Isaac Newton and René Descartes, occurred due to the perceived notion by Cartesians that any philosophical theory had to include a reason for such a phenomena to occur, a cause. This was something that Newton had not provided in his paper, citing a greater need to focus on proposing laws that described and could accurately predict the effects of gravity. Thus, a lack of an underlying cause was interpreted by Descartes and the followers of his philosophy to be a reversion back to explanation through occult powers. Cartesians also took Newton’s non-providing of a cause to be a turn in the wrong direction in the effort to create a foundation for the explanation of all phenomena through basic underlying properties of matter. The debate then turned to which of the two philosophies was the more occult and what the definition of occult had been transformed into, it thus becomes rather obvious upon further review that it is the mechanical philosophy which is the more occult philosophical theory, given the unsubstantiable claims that are made and the lack of a use of experimental evidence. This is in contrast to the mathematical and experimental work used to describe Gravity, without the ascription of a hypothesis or a cause.
Occult Explanation
He postulated this theory so that observations could be explained without needing to revert to occult reasoning which had been rather dominant in the systems of philosophical inquiry used by Aristotle and also taught for thousands of years. Newton on the other hand, held the ideology that it wasn’t necessary in natural philosophy to put forth causes when explaining a phenomena. He even rejects the need for hypothesis, believing that it could have an influence on the Newton even rejects claims by other natural philosophers who ascribe occult explanations of gravitation to him, “The cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know and therefor would take more time to consider of it.” So whilst Newton doesn’t ascribe an underlying cause for gravity, and even expresses his distaste for those who do, “is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it”2, Cartesians associate him with such claims due to the fact that he doesn’t provide a cause. And thus, whilst Cartesians do make such bold claims about Newton’s theory, Newton himself is in almost entire agreeance with the sentiment of Cartesians, except on one point, how philosophical enquiry must be done. Despite this mutual agreeance on the futility of describing observations through occult reasoning, there was still great animosity between Cartesians and Newtonians, Roger Cotes explains,
“therefor gravity can by no means be called an occult cause of the celestial motion, because it is plain from the phenomena that such a power does really exist. Those rather have recourse to occult causes who set imaginary vortices of a manner entirely fictitious and imperceptible by our senses to direct those motions”
Cotes and other Newtonians argued that it is more occult to to describe gravity and other similar phenomena through imperceivable objects than it is to claim the predictive power of the mechanism of gravity. However it is to important to note that the cartesian theory was widely regarded as superior to that of Newtons, despite the problems that it had, “it is enormously difficult to reconcile Descartes’ collision rules with his claim that all bodily motion occurs in circular paths”. This superiority can be attributed to the mysterious, occult like quality that gravity had in comparison to the various pressure theories put forth by Descartes. There were also many objections to Newtons work in that it allowed for the possibility of distant action between bodies.
“Many of Newton's most influential contemporaries objected vigorously to the fact that his philosophy had made room for—if not explicitly defended—the possibility of distant action between material bodies”
The contention arose because, as both Huygens and Leibniz believed, the revival of non-contact forces would lead to the revival of antiquated Aristotelian ideas, this criticism was widespread throughout academic circles.
Cartesian Unification
Another important part of the Cartesian school of thought was the desire to describe everything using a fundamental set of laws, which for them was mechanics. Descartes theorised that all observations, even those which appeared to act as if influenced by action at a distance, could be explained through the attribution of macro scale properties to micro scale phenomena. Descartes provides the analogy of the growth of a tree, “who has ever detected with the senses the minute bodies that are added to a growing tree in one day?”, Descartes uses this analogy to explain how seemingly undetectable phenomena can be reasonably explained by assuming what occurs in the natural macro scale world, for example wind providing a force on a object, can be extended to the micro scale world, and be used to describe seemingly occult phenomena such as gravity. Descartes adopted this philosophy because of the distrust he held for the human senses, and thus, he rejected qualities and fundamental properties of matter, other than that of size, shape and motion. It is through these properties that Descartes attempts to describe the physical world, and whilst he wasn’t the first person to adopt the mechanical view of the world, Descartes did describe all manner of phenomena previously described through occult powers and such a philosophy became the major philosophy even decades after Newton had provided his laws on gravity. Such an example is the way that Descartes described gravity and magnetism, the very epitome of occult powers, gravity was described as functioning as such;
“a small vortex around the earth, turning with the earth and terminating at the height of the moon… it is a deficiency of centrifugal tendency by which some bodies are forced down toward the centre by others,”.
Magnetism is described by a similarly complex and purely mechanical framework, with shaped micro particles being introduced to solve the issue of north and south poles providing different forces. Regardless of how provable or unprovable this philosophy is, and the lack of any quantitative framework, Cartesian theory provides a unified theory that is based on a sound macro/micro scale fusion, and is thus more reliable if similarities can be drawn between the micro scale world and the macro scale world. Cartesians thus distrusted any new theories that didn’t have a direct mechanical explanation, which the theory of gravity didn’t provide for. It also follows that any theory which seemingly ascribed a quality (the quality of attraction to other mass) is in direct conflict with the unified system that was posited by Descartes. This direct conflict was a point of great dispute amongst philosophers of the time, a unified theory simplified the world, meaning that fewer exceptions had to be made when describing physical phenomena. Newton believed however, that one had to be able to know the properties and predict observations before claiming to know how the phenomenon occurs. Newton had in-fact studied Cartesian theories whilst at Cambridge university, and had rejected it. Cartesian unification did however provide a good foundation on which to describe phenomena such as gravity, which wouldn’t have a non-occult cause ascribed to it otherwise, Descartes mechanical philosophy moved philosophy away from the real occult philosophy, and became important as a universal theories that attempted to explain everything through a set of postulates.
Causes vs Laws
One big point of contention, which in fact was undeniably one of the principle reasons for the conflict of philosophies, was Newtons lack of an explanation into a Cause of the gravity he had described. There happened to be a long standing tradition in philosophy of providing the cause of an observation first, which the Cartesians had been a major proponent of, whereas Newton held that for the successful description of observations, one must inquire into the properties and behaviors of such a phenomena,
“but our purpose is only to trace out the quantity and properties of this force from the phenomena, and to apply what we discover in some simple cases as principle, by which, in a mathematical way, we may estimate the effects thereof in more involved cases”.
Here, Newton is trying to explain that is in fact more beneficial to investigate an observation without inquiring into the causes or proposing a hypothesis, describing the difficulty one might have with finding a cause for some phenomena as powerful as gravity, “that penetrates to the very centers of the sun and planets without suffering the least diminution of its force.”4 Moreover, whilst Newton claimed that gravity was the reason for attraction between mass, he rejected any claim that his theory provided a cause, citing that he has no impression as to the fundamental reasoning behind such attraction. However, the Cartesians do have a reason to inquire as to the causes of phenomena such as gravity and magnetism, in that inquiry into the laws of a certain phenomenon don’t provide a reason for the occurrence, unlike mechanical theory which provided a clear reason for the phenomena to occur. This is countered however by the fact that Newtons systematic mathematical theory gave accurate predictions and could be used practically, whereas mechanical philosophy couldn’t, and attempts to use it to make predictions were unsuccessful. This set up an issue, that Cartesian theory provided a cause, but no evidence or testable hypotheses of the cause, and Newtonian theory provided empirical evidence and a testable theory, but no cause for the phenomena to occur. Though, It was widely viewed that Newtons lack of a cause was in fact an ‘action at a distance’ claim, which was was another critical component of cartesian theory, that all observations can be explained through the contact forces between matter, something that was in direct conflict with Newtons ideas, “Gravity acts on all bodies universally and is proportional to the quantity of matter in each”4, this, to some, seemed to suggest a cause, despite Newton not claiming to be hypothesizing on the cause for any forces.
Conclusion
Fundamentally, this conflict between Cartesians and Newtonians stems back to one principle issue, Newtons lack of providing a cause for gravity. Much of the animosity and caviling that occurred, can be linked to the debate over what constituted natural philosophy and whether providing laws in a theory but no cause counts as a valid philosophical theory. But interpretations of Newtons theory also becomes important as whether the theory allows for occult reasoning to be brought back into philosophy. The outcome of this debate also decided what the definition of occult was, given that both the Cartesians and the Newtonians argued over which of the two theories reverted to occult descriptions more in their models. It is thus clear that despite Newton breaking the long time standing tradition of causes and effects in philosophy, his chain of investigation followed valid philosophical ideas, and his lack of proposing a cause can be justifiably taken as no cause and it thus becomes the Cartesians, who proposing unsubstantiable ideas held more occult ideas in their theories.