Butts - The Methodological Heritage of Newton

The Methodological Heritage of Newton

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in Newton and his influence. His thought, like that of Aristotle and every other great thinker, underwent development which contemporary scholars are seeking to understand more clearly than did their predecessors, awed as they were by the overwhelming Newtonian achievement.

As the titles indicate, the range of the essays included in this volume is wide, but most are concerned not so much with explaining Newtons development as with assessing his contribution to the thought of others. They explore all aspects of the conceptual background - historical, philosophical, and narrowly methodological - and examine questions that developed in the wake of Newtons science. The papers are varied yet unified in their attention to common themes and show the wealth of philosophical matter to be found in scientific synthesis. Newton left a rich complexity of philosophical problems whose attempted resolution helps our understanding both of method and positive science. His theories are one of the greatest achievements in physics; they are also valuable case studies for those interested in grasping the methodological and broadly philosophical basis of science.

Four of the seven essays in this volume were prepared for an international conference on Newton held at the University of Western Ontario in April 1967; the three other papers were added by the editors to supplement and unify the collection.

ROBERT E. BUTTS is chairman of the department of philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. He studied at Syracuse University and the University of Pennsylvania where he received a PH.D. He has taught at the Universities of Pennsylvania, St. Lawrence, and Bucknell, and has published several papers on the history and philosophy of science.

JOHN W. DAVIS is a professor in the department of philosophy at the University of Western Ontario, and was formerly head of the department of philosophy at the universitys Middlesex College. He received his PH.D. from Boston University in 1957 and has taught at Emerson College and Clark University. Dr. Davis has published several articles on philosophy.

The
Methodological
Heritage of

Edited by

ROBERT E. BUTTS
JOHN W. DAVIS

Copyright Canada 1970 by
University of Toronto Press
SBN 8020 1597 2

Published in Great Britain by
Basil Blackwell, Oxford
SBN 631 12200 1

Printed in Great Britain by
Western Printing Services Limited, Bristol

The illustration on the jacket is from a drawing by Isaac Newton from the New College, Oxford, Collection at the Bodleian Library.

To N. R. Hanson
1924-1967

GIFTED ADVENTURER IN IDEAS AND IN LIFE

The editors, and the Department of Philosophy of which they are members, owe many debts incurred in the preparation of this volume. Professor John W. Davis conceived the original idea of the conference that provided the basis for the present volume. An idea needs substance. This came in the form of enthusiastic endorsement of the project by Dr. John Rowe, in 196667 Dean of Talbot College in the University of Western Ontario. Through him the department secured the funds necessary for a successful meeting. How can he be thanked? We realize that there is no way, and so does he. The grant-in-aid of publication of this volume came from the University of Western Ontario Committee on Publication in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and we here acknowledge this grant with thanks. The editors also thank Dr. Rowe for generous grants from the Talbot College research budget. Without this support the present volume could not have been readied for publication in any form.

The editors also owe much to friends and colleagues. The list cannot be complete, but among those who contributed in important ways to the project the following must be mentioned: Colin Burnett, who helped in tracking down references; Mrs. Pauline Campbell, Mrs. O. M. Hitchins, and Miss Judy Walsh, who expertly prepared the typescript; Professors F. E. L. Priestley and Edward Madden, who read and commented on the papers in this volume written by the editors; Professors W. K. Wilson, D. J. Hockney, and C. D. Rollins, who acted as silent co-editors with respect to some papers; Gerd Buchdahl, whose timely arrival as Visiting Professor of Philosophy in 1966-67 actually set the stage for a colloquium on Newton.

London, Canada

R.E.B.

March 1968

J.W.D.

Robert E. Butts and John W. Davis

N. R. Hanson, Late of Yale University

F. E. L. Priestley, University of Toronto

John W. Davis, University of Western Ontario

Gerd Buchdahl, University of Cambridge

L. L. Laudan, University of Pittsburgh

Robert E. Butts, University of Western Ontario

Paul K. Feyerabend, University of California, Berkeley

The Methodological Heritage of Newton

ROBERT E. BUTTS and JOHN W. DAVIS

A colloquium entitled The Methodological Heritage of Newton was held on 31 March and 1 April 1967, at the University of Western Ontario. The papers by Hanson, Priestley, and Buchdahl were delivered at the colloquium. The authors have revised the texts as they wish them to appear here.

The session on Buchdahls paper was chaired by Professor Lewis W. Beck of the University of Rochester; the session on Priestleys paper by Professor Nicholas Rescher of the University of Pittsburgh; and the session on Hansons paper by Professor E. H. Madden of State University of New York at Buffalo.

Because of the untimely death of Professor Hanson a few short weeks after the colloquium, the editors must take responsibility for the text of his paper as it appears. The paper is an outgrowth of an earlier paper delivered at the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, so that by the time it was delivered at the University of Western Ontario it had reached a more or less final version. The revisions made are editorial only, having to do with the formal aspects of the paper.

A paper by P. K. Feyerabend was scheduled for presentation at the colloquium but the authors illness prevented its delivery. The paper here printed is a later version of the paper that was to be given. The other papers by Butts, Davis, and Laudan were especially prepared for this volume.

The purpose of this Introduction is to provide a summary of the papers, to make some suggestions about contexts which may prove helpful in reading the papers, and tentatively to suggest some of the relationships that may be found among the papers. It was a consensus of those at the colloquium that the papers of which this volume is an outgrowth had an unusual degree of unity. In the course of the discussion that occurred after the papers, both formally and informally, many of the same themes were struck.

The title of the colloquium was retained as the title of this volume because it seemed to the editors to be an apt rubric under which to group the seven parts. Methodological Heritage may seem unnecessarily narrow, especially since a number of the papers discuss more wide-ranging philosophical issues. Methodology, for most philosophers, is an enterprise that is not totally absorbed in giving ex post facto form to what might be taken as the steps actually followed by a given scientist in producing his theories or in making his experimental tests. There is methodology as the general attempt to formulate rules of scientific method (either rules of confirmation or of discovery), and there is methodology as the general philosophy of science (including concern for rules of confirmation, and the like). Only the papers by Laudan on Reid and by Butts on Whewell deal with methodology in the former sense and that only sparingly. The other papers deal with those larger questions that touch upon all aspects of the conceptual background historical, philosophical, and narrowly methodological that developed in the wake of Newtons science. The papers show, both in their variety and in their inevitable attention to common themes, the richness of philosophical matter to be derived from a great scientific synthesis. Had Newton left only a set of directives for doing science, no alternative would be available except to discard it as uninteresting and unworkable. What he left the papers in the present volume are illuminating proof of this is a rich complexity of philosophical problems whose attempted resolution helps our understanding of both method and positive science.