An Evolutionary Taxonomy of Eighteenth-Century Newtonianisms

A n E vo lu tio n a ry T a xo n o m ymlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA o f E ig h teen th -C en tu ry N ew to n ia n ism s R O B E R T E . S C H O F I E L D Among the many misnome rs for the e ighte e nth century, the “Age of Newton,” perhaps, promises the most and provides the least insight into the thought of the period. For the use of that term implies a definable set of doctrines, or mode of investigation, of general influ­ ence on men of the Enlightenment, which can be identified with that of the great physicist. Yet the most cursory investigation of eighteenth-century thought will falsify each particular of that implica­ tion. W e cannot identify, with any precision, a Newton doctrine; whatever Newtonian doctrines we can identify do not remain fixed, and however changing we permit our Newtonian doctrines to be, they are not of general influence.1 There is little doubt, for example, that a characteristic element in early eighteenth-century thought was a confidence in the power of human reason to solve human problems, a confidence justified, in large measure, by the example of the sciences. Nor is there a n y doubt that prominent advocates of that view came regularly to include New­ ton’s name in their litany of exemplars. This does not, however, indicate with any surety the influence of Newton, for this faith in the generalizable virtues of the scientific method (whatever that might be) 175 176 / WVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA R O B E R T E . S C H O F I E L D d id not spring uniquely from Newton’s successes, as the Cartesian Fontenelle and the Leibnizean Christian Wolff abundantly testified.2 Here, as in the cosmological analogy of the world machine, Newton’s name was substituted for that of earlier natural philosophers as its value in intellectual currency rose during the century. W e are today too fully aware of the authoritative abuse of “Freudian” or “Darwin­ ian” in current pop sociology to assign much significance to “Newto­ nian” abused in that manner in the eighteenth century. Yet surely its use, even in that manner, suggests that Newton had come to represent some kind of intellectual authority to a substantial portion of the learned world. W hat kind of authority did the term “Newtonian” represent and with what accuracy can one say it was genuinely New­ tonian? The task of identifying and tracing “influences” in the fu ll range of problems and solutions considered by men of the Enlightenment is notoriously a difficult one, and one which I shall generally evade. But even in the sciences, where the authority of the “Incomparable Sir Isaac” ought to be clearest, the superficial validity of the term Newto­ nian (manifest in ritual obeisances to the grand master) obscures man­ ifold national and temporal divergences and conceals a skein of var­ iant Newtonianisms which must first be untangled before any genuine relevance of the description can emerge. The obvious beginning to our task of disentanglement is with New­ ton, and his publication in 1687 of the P hilosophiae N a tu ra lis P rincipia M a th em a tica . Yet this term inus a quo does not, as one might hope, help to identify that Ur-Newtonianism from which all other forms of the doctrine might be presumed to have evolved. It has become clearer every recent year how very little is known of this man whose name has been borrowed for an age: in spite of scholarly effort so massive and sustained as to earn the title of the “Newton Industry,” there has not yet been published a complete and critical edition of both of Newton’s major published works— to say nothing of the minor publications; quantities of manuscripts still lie, essentially unstudied, in the archives of Trinity and King’s Colleges, Cambridge; and the first edition of Newton’s correspondence is still incomplete. For all its acknowledged T a xo n o m y o f N ew to n ia n ism s ImlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGF 177...