Newtonianism

Newton was not only a natural philosopher and Newtonianism was not only a scientific theory. Newton was also a pious Christian and an active theologian. Newtonianism, on the other hand, besides its scientific content or because of it, was gradually identified with the rise of a Whig oligarchy and with the new balance of power that resulted from the Revolution of 1687–1689 in England. Thus, soon after the publication of Newton's two major works, Newtonianism became the cornerstone of a new intellectual program that affected significantly the political and theological trends of the time. The people who set out this program in England were Newton's friends and supporters, including Richard Bentley, Samuel Clarke, William Whiston, John Harris, William Derham, and Jean Desaguliers. They actively propagandized the idea that Newton's intellectual achievements provided a perfect model for social order, political harmony, and liberal but orthodox Christianity. Although the promotion of this aspect of Newtonianism employed the technical achievements of Newtonian natural philosophy, the discourse built on this basis was not technical in itself. It was primarily through the Boyle lectures (a series of lectures established in Robert Boyle's will to defend Christian orthodoxy against the various forms of atheism) that Newton's followers unfolded the ideological implications of Newtonian science and turned it into a component of moderate Enlightenment.

One major problem with Newtonian philosophy was that it was used by both freethinkers and its religious-minded supporters. The former adopted the mathematical and experimental method as a clue that provided a liberal spirit in the investigation of the natural world; the latter, in addition to this, championed the moral and metaphysical implications of Newton's thought to wage war against pure rationalists and the various representatives of "irreligious pluralism." The other major problem, however, was that in the course of this confrontation, the Newtonian philosophy gave rise to a "heretic" approach to Christian theology, which was much denounced by the official Anglican Church.

Freethinkers and materialists of the time picked up those elements of Newtonian philosophy that fitted their perception of nature. The doctrine of universal gravity was of prominent importance to this process of adaptation. People with a preference for Spinozistic philosophy, like John Toland, gladly adopted this principle, but they suggested that one should perceive gravity as inherent to matter. Thus, in the hands of free-thinkers, the power of gravity provided another evidence that matter is inherently active and offered further support to a purely naturalistic explanation of the universe, devoid of supernatural agencies and occult qualities.

In this atmosphere, even Newton himself was credited with potential atheism. Quite a few Christian thinkers held him responsible for the "misinterpretations" of his theories that resulted in the rejection of divine providence. They cautioned that despite the obvious usefulness of modern science, one should not confuse human knowledge with absolute truth, since the latter becomes known only through revelation. Other thinkers, however, believed not only that Newton's achievements were in accordance to Christian faith, but also that if the new theories were seen in their proper perspective, they would enhance the belief in a universe created and governed by God. Thus, Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), in order to fight Toland's views on the inherently active character of matter, drew upon Newton's argument about the reality of empty space. In his Boyle lectures of 1704 he argued that according to Newton's own demonstration, the existence of a void space is a necessary consequence of the existence of gravitation. And this void space is, of course, the most clear demonstration that the existence of matter is not necessary.

Clarke's belief in the existence of an empty space turned out to be decisive to his metaphysical investigations. This belief was firmly based on the notions of absolute space and time introduced by Newton in the scholium to Definition VIII of the Principia. Newton had stressed that only absolute space and time are real and Clarke extended this thought by stating that they are "affections which belong, and in the order of our Thoughts are antecedently necessary, to the Existence of all Things." Space was not a substance in its own right, but from the fact that it is necessarily existent, Clarke inferred that it must be a property of God. This conclusion provided a decisive argument for the necessity of a universal self-existent Being whose attributes are eternity, infinity, and unity. Clarke was well aware, however, that at the theological level there was a potential conflict between the doctrine of Trinity and the view of God's unity that ensued from the notion of absolute space. Although his initial intention was to fight Toland's idea that both God and matter could be considered self-existent principles, in the course of the debate he came to entertain serious doubts about the validity of the doctrine of Trinity. Thus, what initially was an argument against materialism led him to a radical reinterpretation of the Bible in favor of Divine unity. By 1711, in the third edition of his Boyle lectures, Clarke had made this interpretation quite explicit, and one year later he culminated his scriptural investigations with the publication of the Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity. The outcome of his analysis confirmed the distinction between the attributes of God and those of the Son; the former belonged to the eternal being and thus were absolute, whereas the latter belonged to a product of the divine will, and therefore were relative.

Newtonian philosophy found itself in the basis of the heterodox theology suggested by Clarke. It is now well-known that Newton himself was also an anti-Trinitarian. William Whiston, another disciple of Newton, publicly supported the same belief at the expense of his academic career. In the uncertain atmosphere of postrevolutionary England, all these manifestations of heterodoxy could not escape the attention of those who defended religious "orthodoxy" and a certain aspect of social order. As a result, Newtonianism was engaged in the political debate of the time. The degree to which the basic concepts of the Newtonian natural philosophy became acceptable by various groups of English society depended on the political and religious affiliations of these groups. The fact that Newtonianism might be viewed as a faction in philosophy caused a major discomfort to those who held "Tory sensibilities." Political factionalism of the seventeenth century was deemed one of the factors that subverted the political basis of the Stuart monarchy. In this sense, the Newtonian philosophy represented much more than a new trend in the investigation of nature: for a significant part of the English society it symbolized potential social disorder, and Newton was largely held responsible for this. Therefore, words like attraction and inertia, as well as methodological commitments like experimentalism and the mathematical representation of nature, became part of a polemic.

This was not the case with another aspect of Newtonianism that prevailed on the Continent during the eighteenth century, namely Voltaire's Newtonianism. It took nearly fifty years for the Newtonian worldview to find its first devoted advocates in France. Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698–1759) was the first who pleaded with his countrymen not to dismiss unwisely the exegetical power of attraction. Subsequently, Voltaire, convinced by Maupertuis's assurance about the worth of Newton's synthesis, launched a systematic attempt to familiarize the French educated public with the new natural philosophy. Inevitably, the propaganda for the Newtonian system had to go hand in hand with the undermining of the Cartesian tradition. The French public recognized numerous defects in Descartes's natural philosophy but they believed that an advancement in philosophy would correct these errors and restore the primacy of Cartesian tradition; under no circumstances were they willing to cure Descartes's deficiencies by replacing his philosophy with the Newtonian synthesis. Voltaire dated the beginnings of the decline of the "chimerical philosophy" of Descartes in France to 1730. The main objective of his own attack was to secure Newton's primacy on the basis of the superiority of his analytical method: Newton was superior to Descartes because his discoveries were a product of a systematic inductive investigation of nature confirmed by geometry. Newton never mistook conjectures for truth as was, in fact, the case with Descartes.

An equally important aspect of Voltaire's undertaking was related to the theological dimension of Newtonian philosophy. Quite unexpectedly, Voltaire proclaimed the superiority of Newtonian theology over the Cartesian conception of God, whose "rational" character might seem, at first glance, more appropriate to the atmosphere of the rational Enlightenment. What basically annoyed Voltaire was the inclination of many followers of the Cartesian tradition to adopt a quasi atheist stance, in the context of which the universe was the poor product of matter and motion. In Leibnizian philosophy, the counterpart of this stance was a kind of "rational" atheism, since the principle of sufficient reason held good even for God. Newton's voluntarism was a decisive answer to these stances. The will of God was absolutely impenetrable by human intellect. The universe was not a product of natural or logical necessity but the outcome of God's unrestrained will. Fallen man had access only to the results of His choices as they were revealed by the order of universe and the laws that govern the natural phenomena.

Voltaire's interpretation of the Newtonian philosophy became popular in a great part of the European continent. The favorable attitude toward Christian faith and the countering of the Aristotelian and Cartesian dogmatism that ensued from this interpretation was an invaluable tool for those who promoted religious tolerance and moderate political reform. John Locke's survey of the limits of human knowledge served as the counterpart of this aspect of Newtonianism and comprised the basis of an intellectual current that defended freedom of thought in a variety of sociopolitical environments. As a result, experimental philosophy came to represent far more than a scientific method. It epitomized the ability of citizens to overcome the restrictions of the established authorities without disturbing the social order, to participate in the acquisition of knowledge by their own means, and to establish paradigmatic procedures of social consent that would guarantee human progress and happiness.