A preliminary reassessment of Newton's alchemy

Newman, William R.; Iliffe, Rob; Smith, George E.

doi:10.1017/cco9781139058568.013

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…Newton's methodology is a case in point. Depending on our primary concerns, explanations of Newton's methodology could appeal to multiple factors: for instance, Newton's position in the Royal Society (Feingold 2001), his education at Cambridge (Dunlop 2012), his primary interest in alchemy (Newman 2016), and so on, could each form the basis of an explanation of his method. Although these explanations are not equivalent, they are also not necessarily in competition.…”

Section: An Ontic-driven Explanation Of Newton's Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Newton on Islandworld: Ontic-Driven Explanations of Scientific Method

Currie

Walsh

2018

Perspectives on Science

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Philosophers and scientists often cite ontic factors when explaining the methods and success of scientific inquiry. That is, the adoption of a method or approach (and its subsequent success or otherwise) is explained in reference to the kind of system in which the scientist is interested: these are explanations of why scientists do what they do, that appeal to properties of their target systems. We present a framework for understanding such "ontic-driven" explanations, and illustrate it using a toycase, the biogeography of "Islandworld." We then put our view to historical work, comparing Isaac Newton's Opticks to his Principia. Newton's optical work is largely experiment-driven, while the Principia is primarily mathematical, so usually, each work is taken to exemplify a different kind of science. However, Newton himself often presented them in terms of a largely consistent method. We use our framework to articulate an original and plausible position: that the differences between the Opticks and the Principia are due to the kinds of systems targeted. That is, we provide an ontic-driven explanation of methodological differences. We suspect that ontic factors should have a more prominent role in historical explanations of scientific method and development.

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Section: An Ontic-driven Explanation Of Newton's Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Newton on Islandworld: Ontic-Driven Explanations of Scientific Method

Currie

Walsh

2018

Perspectives on Science

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“…William R. Newman focuses on Newton's debt to seventeenth-century chymical corpuscularism (e.g. Newman 2010Newman , 2016. He argues that Boyle's work on chymical analysis and synthesis, which revealed that chemical compounds were made up of heterogeneous components, provided the young Newton with an important heuristic for developing his theory that white light is a heterogeneous mixture of rays of immutable spectral colour.…”

Section: Frameworking Is Inescapablementioning

confidence: 99%

“…He argues that Boyle's work on chymical analysis and synthesis, which revealed that chemical compounds were made up of heterogeneous components, provided the young Newton with an important heuristic for developing his theory that white light is a heterogeneous mixture of rays of immutable spectral colour. Newman's guiding questions lead him to notice, for example, that Newton's earliest descriptions of his theory are found amongst notes he took on Boyle's chymistry (Newman 2016). Newman also pays special attention to Hooke's 1672 criticism of Newton's theory.…”

Section: Frameworking Is Inescapablementioning

confidence: 99%

Frameworks for Historians and Philosophers

Currie¹,

Walsh²

2019

HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History

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The past can be a stubborn subject: it is complex, heterogeneous and opaque. To understand it, one must decide which aspects of the past to emphasise and which to minimise. Enter frameworks. Frameworks foreground certain aspects of the historical record while backgrounding others. As such, they are both necessary for, and conducive to, good history as well as good philosophy. We examine the role of frameworks in the history and philosophy of science and argue that they are necessary for both forms of enquiry. We then suggest that the right attitude towards frameworks is pluralism rather than monism: there is no single correct framework to be applied to a given scientific episode. Rather, a multitude of different frameworks are more or less appropriate given various contexts and aims. From this perspective, good frameworks generate and further, rather than frustrate, historical and philosophical enquiry.Our view sheds light on historical disagreement, and on the relationship between philosophy and history of science.

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Newton’s Scaffolding

Walsh¹

2019

Experiment, Speculation and Religion in Early Modern Philosophy

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A preliminary reassessment of Newton's alchemy

Cited by 3 publications

References 87 publications

Newton on Islandworld: Ontic-Driven Explanations of Scientific Method

Newton on Islandworld: Ontic-Driven Explanations of Scientific Method

Frameworks for Historians and Philosophers

Newton’s Scaffolding

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