Certain Philosophical Questions: Newton's Trinity Notebook (review)

412 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 24:3 JULY ~986 fend wie vage. Die Ursachen dieses Klimawechsels h~itten griindlicherer Kl~rung bedurft; leider l~il3tBell neuere Erklirungsan~tze unberiicksichfigt, die die Spinozarenaissance u. a. mit der Erschiitterung des christlichen Offenbarungsglaubens durch die von Lessing edierten WoOllier Fragtaentt in Zusammenhang bringen (vgl. H. Timm, Gott und die Fr~, 1974). Eine erschtpfende und vollauf befriedigende Darstellung der Spinozarezeption yon ihren Anf~ngen bis zur Goethezeit ist angesichts der eingangs angedeuteten Schwierigkeiten in n~iherer Zukunft wohl kaum zu erwarten. Nicht allein deshalb ist Bells Arbeit, die (besonders zu Herders intellektueller Entwicklung) reichhaltige Informationen in ldarer Form darbietet, yon Nutzen. WINFRIED SCHRODER Ruhr-Universit~t Bochura J. E. McGuire and Martin Tamny, Certain Philosophical Questions: Newton's Trinity Notebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Pp. xii + 519. $84.5o. Roughly one fourth of the present volume (329-465) offers a transcription and expansion of the bulk of Isaac Newton's earliest known student notebook, produced between early 1664 and mid-1665, along with editor's notes identifying the most likely textual sources or stimuli for Newton's comments. Another small portion (46689 ) reproduces another set of related notes, "of Colours," written out roughly a year after the condusion of the first notebook; and there is a handy short glossary to help the neophyte recognize special technical terms and terms used idiosyncratically by Newton. The vast bulk of the book, however, consists of a commentary by J. E. McGuire and Martin Tamny intended to prepare the reader of Newton's notebook to understand the content, context, and longer term significance of Newton's earliest approaches to a series of central problems in natural philosophy. The Questions quaedam philosophicae, as Newton tided them, are well worth the attention, not only of Newton scholars--for whom they provide major insights into the origins of Newton's work on the foundations of mathematics, matter theory, and optics---but of anyone concerned with the history of early modern philosophy or English intellectual life. In particular, they point up the key role played by scholarly editions of Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophersin stimulating discussions of the nature of space, time, matter, and of mathematical concepts. Newton's personal copy of Diogenes is extensively dog-eared to mark specific places on a number of pages where statements about infinity, the nature of the cosmos, the void, and minima appear. These opinions are taken up in the Question~ at their appropriate places. Though Newton's copy of Sextus (16~ 1 Paris edition) is now lost, it is certainly the source of Newton's rather extensive discussions concerning atoms of time (~a-2~, 353-54, 418). It will surprise almost no one to find the young Newton deeply engaged in trying to sort out aspects of Cartesian natural philosophy--though I was surprised to see him adopting substantial aspects of vortex Cosmology until--if McGuire and Tamny are correct--well into the 168os. Also among the expected are BOOK REVIEWS 413 Newton's fascination with Robert Boyle's E~er/.~/s Touching Colours and with Walter Charleton's presentation of Gassendist atomism. Much more interesting and surprising is the well documented claim made here that Newton's fascination with optics emerged initially out of his interest in Thomas Hobbes' physiological analysis of vision to which the authors dedicate a full chapter of their commentary. And it is interesting to note that Newton had initiated work on "Newton's rings" before becoming acquainted with Hooke's Micrographia. Finally, though there are a few indications here of what would become Newton's intense and often unorthodox religious positions, there is no hint at all of any alchemical or Hermetic interests. In a small number of places I was disturbed by the authors' tendency to use speculation based on rational reconstructions to fill in what they view to be lacunae in Newton's comments on topics of interest. Thus, where Newton is dealing with how to judge the swiftness or slowness of motions they write: "Unfortunately he does not give an answer, but it can be conjectured..." (89); and where Newton writes of beams of white light giving...