Reference and Analysis: The Representation of Time in Galileo, Newton, and Leibniz

Productive scientific discourse must both search for conditions of intelligibility of the object under investigation, and it must enable successful reference. Representations apt for analysis and those apt for reference are typically not the same, and the resultant discourse may thus be heterogeneous and multivalent, a fact missed by philosophers who, like logicians, equate discursive homogeneity with rationality. I show this to be the case in texts where Galileo, Newton and Leibniz investigate the nature of time, and shed new light on the debate about time and space between Clarke (Newton’s spokesman) and Leibniz.