Newton on Matter and Activity (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 507 1537), became a standard word-index to Renaissance editions of Aristotle and remains a useful tool for those working with Latin editons of Aristotle. Antonaci's second volume deals with the latter part of Zimara's life, sketching in the historical and philosophical context in which he lived and analyzing several of Zimara's works. Like its predecessor, volume 2 is rather diffuse and long winded, given to generalities and extended background sections which are not always illuminating . As far as Zimara himself is concerned, much contained here is already available in Bruno Nardi's Saggi suU'aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIV(Florence, 1958) and in other secondary works. Still, it is useful to have so much information on Zimara collected in one place, and certain sections of the book make additions to our understanding of him and his times. For example, Antonaci's study of the medical work of Zimara is revealing once again of the medical basis of much Italian philosophy of the Renaissance. Also valuable is the analysis of various unpublished works from manuscripts in Florence, Milan, and Paris. In the latter section, numerous excerpts are published, though a full text would have been welcome in some cases, for example, the Quaestio de gravibus et levibus, which should be compared with medieval discussions on the subject as well as with Girolamo Borro's De motu gravium et /ev/um(Florence, 1575) and Galilei's De motu(ca. 159o). It is always welcome to have a substiantial study of a little-known philosopher; every little bit helps the historian's attempt to reconstruct the past. On the other hand, a study such as this could have been more tightly organized and more disciplined . As yet we still do not have a critical bibliography for Zimara. For all their strength, the bibliographies in both volumes of Antonaci's work are diffuse and undirected. Nevertheless, these volumes should find a place in major research libraries and perhaps a few others as well. CHARLES B. SCHMITT The Warburg Institute Ernan McMullin. Newton on Matter and Activi~. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978. Pp. viii + 16o. $7.95. This is a study of Newton's thought on the universal qualities of matter, whether matter is active or passive, whether gravity is an essential property of matter, and the origin of the motion of matter; there is also an epilogue on what later natural philosophers up to the present have thought about these topics. The author conceives his. work as being partly a chapter of the story of the concept of matter, the conclusion being that Newton's role is paradoxical since, although the concept played a crucial role in his world view, his scientific achievement provided modern scientists with a substitute, namely, the concept of mass (p. l). McMullin also conceives his book as a case study in the historical interaction between science and philosophy, and here he asserts that Newton's reflections on matter and activity were influenced both by the demands of his successful mathematical physics and by ideas inherited from several philosophical traditions (pp. 75, lo6), such as "the 508 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY notion of a 'quantity of matter'.., which finds echoes in the nominalist physics of fourteenth-century Paris" (p. 1o7), and ideas of powers, spirits, and active principles which can "be traced back to neo-Platonism, alchemy, and the hermetic assumptions he found so congenial" (pp. lO7-8). The book is also an analysis of the metaphysical foundations of Newtonian science, adding further counterevidence against what McMullin himself calls "no longer fashionable views" (p. 125), such as "the positivist claim that science would have been better of without this excess metaphysics" (p. x25). One specific metaphysical presupposition stressed by McMullin is that "apparent motions at a distance can be explained only by postulating the agency of non-material endties (e.g., direct divine action, non-material entities operating at a distance, a non-material medium) to transmit action" (p. lol; cir. pp. 75-xol, esp. P- 79). Another is that Newton's principle of the passivity of matter was in part "theological in its inspiration. He believed the christian doctrine of Creation...