Descartes and Newton: Some connections

The relationship is complicated. Let us take four points.

First. both were path-breaking mathematicians. Descartes’ invention of analytic geometry made possible, a generation later, Newton’s (and Leibniz') development of calculus.

Second, they had very different ideas about matter and how different chunks of matter interact. Descartes wanted to get rid of the idea of “occult” causes and effects, or what some call teleology. To speak very roughly, mechanistic explanations involve pushing and teleological ones involve pulling.

For Descartes, everything that happens in the material world had to be explained by things pushing each other around. There could be no “action at a distance,” no pull, just as things didn't happen because inanimate objects (or non-human animals!) wanted them to happen. So the Cartesians of the following generation argued against Newton’s law of gravity — in their eyes Newton was trying to bring back those occult causes, pulling at each other across vast distances!

Third, closely related, Descartes offered his own theory for why some objects orbit around other objects. He called this the theory of “vortices”. the idea is that there is no vacuum. Matter is everywhere. This in turn allows us to believe that (invisible) things are pushing each other around everywhere, even when we only see the moon orbiting the earth, we must infer that it is being pushed by invisible stuff in vortices. Think of the earth as the drain in a bathtub. If you could not see the water circling the drain you would not know why the rubber duckie was moving in a circle around the drain. But Descartes would help you figure it out!

As to the second and third points above, Descartes goes down in history as the cause of resistance to the later work of Newton. But it is important to make a final point here. Descartes seemed to have thought of space in “absolutist” terms that are very akin to those which Newton later adopted. This was in opposition to the “relational” view of space adopted by Leibniz, which in some ways prefigured 20th century relativity. So in how they thought about space, Descartes and Newton can be considered on the same side. The one we generally consider the wrong side.

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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