Matter & Gravity in Newton's Physical Philosophy: A Study in the Natural Philosophy of Newton's Time |
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absolute space action active principle atheism atoms attraction attribute Berkeley Book Boyle Brewster CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Cartesian cause of gravity centre centripetal forces Chapter Clarke conceived concept corpuscles deductions density Descartes Descartes's developed distance divine doctrine earth edition effluvia effluvium electric Enchiridion Metaphysicum ether hypothesis ethereal medium ethereal spirits existence experience experimental explain gravity extension fact fluid function Galileo Gassendi geometrical Gilbert Huygens ibid ideas immaterial inertia infinitely divisible laws Leibniz letters to Bentley Lond London Malebranche mass material mathe mathematical expression mathematical physics matical means metaphysical metaphysical causes move movement Natural Philosophy never Newton says Newton thought Newtonian objection Optics particles phenomena planets pores primary Principia qualities of matter reason Robert Boyle Scholium scientific Sir Isaac Newton solid Soul substance theology theory of light things tion trans UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA vacuum vortex vortices
Popular passages
Page 164 - Hitherto we have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the power of gravity, but have not yet assigned the cause of this power. This is certain, that it must proceed from a cause that penetrates to the very centres of the sun and planets, without suffering the least diminution of its force; that operates not according to the quantity of the surfaces of the particles upon which it acts (as mechanical causes...
Page 138 - And now we might add something concerning a certain most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies, by the force and action of which spirit the particles of bodies attract one another at near distances and cohere, if contiguous; and electric bodies operate to greater distances, as well repelling as attracting the...
Page 235 - I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses ; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis ; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.
Page 167 - WHEN I wrote my treatise about our system, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity ; and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose.
Page 142 - And as the earth, so perhaps may the sun imbibe this spirit copiously, to conserve his shining, and keep the planets from receding further from him : and they that will may also suppose that this spirit affords or carries with it thither the solary fuel and material principle of light, and that the vast aetherial spaces between us and the stars are for a sufficient repository for this food of the sun and planets.
Page 230 - Whereas the main Business of Natural Philosophy is to argue from Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical...
Page 207 - The notion of the world's being a great machine, going on without the interposition of God as a clock continues to go without the assistance of a clockmaker, is the notion of materialism and fate, and tends (under pretence of making God a supramundane intelligence)^ to exclude providence and God's government in reality out of the world.
Page 217 - ... from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena; and to this end the general propositions in the first and second book are directed.
Page 217 - I give an example of this in the explication of the System of the World; for by the propositions mathematically demonstrated in the former Books, in the third I derive from the celestial phenomena the forces of gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and the several planets. Then from these forces, by other propositions which are also mathematical, I deduce the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea.
Page 107 - And though this increase of density may at great distances be exceeding slow, yet if the elastic force of this medium be exceeding great it may suffice to impel bodies from the denser parts of the medium towards the rarer with all that power which we call gravity.