Abstract
In a famous passage in the preface to his Treatise, Hume expressed the fervent hope that he could do for moral philosophy what Newton had done for natural philosophy.1 In 18th-century ethics, literature, political theory, theology, and of course, natural science, similar sentiments were expressed openly and frequently.2 Newton’s Principia seemed to have established, almost overnight, new standards for rigor of thought, clarity of intuition, economy of expression and, above all, for the certainty of its conclusions. At long last, natural philosophy, which had hitherto been open to such controversy and speculation, was established on a secure foundation. It was tempting to believe that conjecture had given way to demonstration and that an infallible system, based on rigorous inductions from experimental evidence, had finally been devised.3 Outside of the natural sciences, where Newton’s real achievements were obscured by what scientific non-initiates took them to be, the enthusiasm for Newton reached an even higher pitch. Newton’s great contribution, it was said, was not so much his cosmological synthesis per se, but rather the formulation of a new conception of science and its methods. Newton was seen as the harbinger of an inductive, experimental learning which proceeded by a gradual ascent from the particulars of observation to general laws which were true and virtually incorrigible. What Bacon had prophesied in the way of an inductive interpretation of nature, Newton had brought to fruition.
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Notes
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford, 1896), p. xx. Newton himself had suggested that his new methods might well have a bearing on moral philosophy: “And if natural philosophy in all its parts, by pursuing this Method shall at length be perfected, the Bounds of Moral Philosophy will also be enlarged.” See Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks (New York, 1952), Query XXXI. Taking up this theme, Pope insisted that we should “Account for Moral, as for nat’ral things.” See Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man ( London, 1786 ), Epistle IV.
In each of these domains, and others as well, one can point to several figures who wanted to “Newtonize” their subject in various ways. The most overt of these are the attempts to model works of politics or theology strictly along the deductive lines of the Principia. For example, George Cheyne in part 2 of his Philosophical Principles of Religion: Natural and Revealed (London, 1715) constructs an elaborate theological system beginning with definitions and axioms and then proceeding to a series of theorems, lemmas, and corollaries deduced from the axioms.
Even a brief sampling of 18th-century texts illustrates how enthusiastically physicists adopted Newton’s call for a non-conjectural science. Thus, Oliver Goldsmith described how science had progressed from being an “hypothetical system” to an “authentic experimental system” (A Survey of Experimental Philosophy [London, 17761, p. 4 )
W. ‘sGravesande, an eminent Dutch Newtonian, observed that, thanks to Sir Isaac, “all hypotheses are to be rejected” in natural philosophy (Mathematical Elements of Physics, Proved by Experiments [London, 1720], I, 5). ‘sGravesande went on to insist that “He only, who in physics reasons from phenomena, rejecting all feigned hypotheses, and pursues this method to the best of his power, endeavors to follow the steps of Sir Isaac Newton, and very justly declares that he is a Newtonian philosopher… ” (ibid., p. xi). Henry Pemberton, in his View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (London, 1728), contrasts the unreliable hypothetical method which “makes a hasty transition from our first and slight observations on things to general axioms” with the Newtonian and Baconian method of cautious ascent (p. 5). Writing about the same time, 1731, the Dutch physicist Musschenbroek asserted that as a result of Newton’s work, “all hypotheses are banned from physics” (cited in Rosenberger’s Geschichte der Physik [Braunschweig, 1887], III, 3). Earlier still, one of Newton’s first followers, George Cheyne, asserted that “… imaginary or Hypothetical Causes, have no place in true Philosophy” (above, n. 2, pt. 1, p. 45).
Cf. K. Popper’s `A Note on Berkeley as a Precursor of Mach’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 5 (1953), 26–36, and G. J. Whitrow’s `Berkeley’s Philosophy of Motion’, ibid., 37 ff.
For a discussion of, and excerpts from, Reid’s paper in the Phil. Trans., see my ‘Postmortem on the Vis Viva Controversy’, Isis 59 (1968), 131–43.
Few intellectuals, besides trained mathematicians, could read Principia, or even the Opticks, without great difficulty. As a result popularized works were much in vogue, such as Voltaire’s Elements of Newton’s Philosophy, Pemberton’s View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (London, 1728), and Maclaurin’s Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophical Discoveries (London, 1750 ). Although these books all praised Newtonian science for the certainty of its conclusions and the experimental bias of its founder, none of them did justice to Newton’s theory of scientific method. For a discussion of some of these works, see I. B. Cohen’s Franklin and Newton (Philadelphia, 1956 ).
Reid to Hume, 18 March, 1763, Works of Thomas Reid, D. D., ed. Hamilton, 6th ed. (Edinburgh, 1863), I, 91. Hereafter all page references will be to the Works unless indicated otherwise.
This reading of Hume as a total sceptic, unable to distinguish sound from unsound judgment, is not as far-fetched as it might seem. After all, it was Hume who wrote “The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason, has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.”
if ever our philosophy concerning the human mind is carried so far as to deserve the name of science, which ought never to be despaired of, it must be by observing facts, reducing them to general rules, and drawing just conclusions from them,“ An Inquiry into the Human Mind (1765), abbreviated to Human Mind, in Works, I, 122.
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), hereafter abbreviated to Intellectual Powers, in Works, I, 235.
When a man has, with labour and ingenuity, wrought up an hypothesis into a system, he contracts a fondness for it, which is apt to warp the best judgment“ (Intellectual Powers, p. 250). ”When a man has laid out all his ingenuity in fabricating a system, he views it with the eye of a parent; he strains phenomena to make them tally with it, and makes it look like the work of nature“ (Intellectual Powers, p. 472).
The facts are phenomena of… nature, from which we may justly argue against any hypothesis, however generally received. But to argue from a hypothesis against facts, in contrary to the rules of true philosophy“ (Human Mind, p. 132).
Newton wrote to Oldenburg: “For the best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be, first diligently to investigate the properties of things and establish them by experiment, and then seek hypotheses to explain them. For hypotheses ought to be fitted merely to explain the properties of things and not attempt to determine them… ” (Turnbull, ed., Correspondence of Isaac Newton [Cambridge, 1959], I, 99, my italics). See also Newton’s fourth regula philosophandi.
Thus he writes: “Men are often led into error by the love of simplicity which disposes us to reduce things to few principles, and to conceive a greater simplicity in nature than there really is… We may learn something of the way in which nature operates from fact and observation; but if we conclude that it operates in such a manner, only because to our understanding that appears to be the best and simplest manner, we shall always go wrong” (Intellectual Powers, pp. 470–71). Cf. ch. VII of Human Mind (p. 206) where Reid similarly notes that: “There is a disposition in human nature to reduce things to as few principles as possible.” Cf. this sentiment with Bacon’s remark that “the human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity than it finds” (Novum Organum, Book I, Aphorism xlv).
Intellectual Powers, p. 472. Earlier, he had written in a similar vein: “Now, though we may, in many cases, form very probable conjectures concerning the works of men, every conjecture we can form with regard to the works of God has as little probability as the conjectures of a child with regard to the works of a man” (ibid., p. 235). “Men,” he writes, “only begin to have a true taste in philosophy when they have learned to hold hypotheses in just contempt; and to consider them as the reveries of speculative men, which will never have any similitude to the works of God” (ibid., p. 309).
Reid’s adversary, David Hartley, had been one of the more important proponents of reductio techniques, as well as a vigorous advocate of the hypothetico-deductive method. Cf. especially Hartley’s Observations on Man (London, 1749 ), I, ch. I, Prop. v. Hartley’s views are discussed in Chapter 8 below.
Newton wrote: “I cannot think if effectual for determining the truth to examine the several ways by which the phenomena may be explained, unless there can be a perfect enumeration of all those ways” (Turnbull, above, n. 1:, I, 209).
Of all Newton’s four regulae, it was the first that Reid regarded most highly. It is, he argues, “a golden rule; it is the true and proper test by which what is found and solid in philosophy may be distinguished from what is hollow and vain” (Intellectual Powers, p. 236). In the light of Reid’s opposition to the principle of simplicity, it may seem curious that he could speak so glowingly of the first regula since that rule seems to presuppose the simplicity of nature. On the other hand, as I point out later, Reid has a rather novel interpretation of the meaning of the first rule.
Reid to Kames, 16 December, 1780, Works, I, 57.
Intellectual Powers, p. 261. In the same work, he observes that Newton “laid it down as a rule of philosophizing, that no causes of natural things ought to be assigned but such as can be proved to have a real existence. He saw that… the true method of philosophizing is this: From real facts, ascertained by observation and experiment, to collect by just induction the laws of Nature, and to apply the laws so discovered, to account for the phenomena of Nature” (Ibid., pp. 271–2).
Reid’s perennial adversary, David Hartley, had used an argument very like this to establish the existence of the aether. “Let us suppose”, he wrote, “the existence of the aether, with these its properties, to be destitute of all direct evidence, still if it [viz., the aether] serves to account for a great variety of phaenomena, it will have an indirect evidence in its favour by this means” (Observations on Man [London, 1749 ], I, 15 )
Perhaps the most specious argument of this kind was Bryan Robinson’s defence of the aether: “This Aether being a very general material Cause, without any Objection appearing against it from the Phaenomena, no Doubt can be made of its Existence: For by how much the more general any Cause is, by so much stronger is the Reason for allowing its Existence. The Aether is a much more general Cause than our Air: And on that Account, the Evidence from the Phaenomena, is much stronger in Favour of the Existence of Aether, than it is in Favour of the Existence of the Air” (A Dissertation on the Aether of Sir Isaac Newton [London, 1747], preface, n. p.).
Intellectual Powers, p. 397. Years earlier, he had written to Kames: “A cause that is conjectured ought to be such that, if it really does exist, it will produce the effect… Supposing it to have this quality, the question remains — Whether does it exist or not?… If there be no evidence for it, even though there be none against it, it is a conjecture only, and ought have no admittance into chaste natural philosophy” (16 December, 1780, Works, I, 57 ).
Francis Bacon, Works, ed. Ellis & Spedding (London, 1858), IV, 63.
George Turnbull, Reid’s teacher, particularly stressed the mechanical character of scientific discovery: “And by the discoveries made in natural philosophy, we know, that no sooner are facts collected, and laid together in proper order than the true theory of the phenomenon in question present itself” (Principles of Moral Philosophy, [London, 1740], p. 59).
Intellectual Powers, p. 472. Earlier he put the point even more candidly: “The world has been so long befooled by hypotheses in all parts of philosophy, that it is of the utmost consequence to every man who would make any progress in real knowledge, to treat them with just contempt, as the reveries of vain and fanciful men, whose pride makes them conceive themselves able to unfold the mysteries of nature by the force of their genius” (ibid., p. 236).
Human Mind, p. 181. Reid’s contemporary, Jean D’Alembert, was similarly sceptical about finding truth by the hit-or-miss method of conjectures and refutations: “It may be safely affirmed that a mere theoretician (un physicien de cabinet) who, by means of reasonings and calculations, should attempt to divine the phenomena of nature and who should afterwards compare his anticipations with facts would be astonished to find how wide of the truth almost all of them had been” (Mélanges de Litterature, d’Historie, et de Philosophie [Amsterdam, 1767], v, 6).
Thus, he writes: “Conjectures in physical patters have commonly got the name of hypotheses, or theories” (Intellectual Powers, p. 235). Sir William Hamilton in his Lectures on Metaphysics took Reid to task for confusing theories and hypotheses; see especially ibid., p. 120.
Reid to Kames, 17 December, 1780, Works, I, 56.
He makes a similar point when he notes approvingly that: “Sir Isaac Newton, in all his philosophical writings, took great care to distinguish his doctrines, which he pretended to prove by just induction, from his conjectures, which were to stand or fall according as future experiments and observations should establish or refute them” (Intellectual Powers, p. 249). In his own work, Reid follows Newton’s example, separating “facts” about the human mind from conjectures. He has, for instance, a separate chapter in the Inquiry called “Some Queries Concerning Visible Figure Answered”, and a chapter in his Intellectual Powers on an “Hypothesis concerning the Nerves and Brain”. One of Reid’s main criticisms of David Hartley’s psychological writings was that they mingled hypotheses with facts.
For a discussion of this point, see I. B. Cohen’s Franklin and Newton (Philadelphia, 1956) as well as his more recent publications.
Reid to Kames, 16 December, 1780, Works, p. 56.
Ibid. Elsewhere he makes a similar point: “Let hypotheses be put to any of these uses as far as they can serve. Let them suggest experiments or direct our inquiries; but let just induction alone govern our belief” (Intellectual Powers, p. 251).
Intellectual Powers, p. 235. More than a century earlier, Newton had deplored the preoccupation with hypotheses among his scientific colleagues. He observed that finding a general hypothesis accounting for all the appearances had become “the philosophers’ universali topick” (Turnbull, above, n. 15, I, 96–97; cf. I. B. Cohen, ed., Isaac Newton’s Letters and Papers on Natural Philosophy [Cambridge, 1958 ], p. 179 ).
B. Martin, Philosophical Grammar, 7th ed. (London, 1769), p. 19. Martin was rather more sympathetic to hypotheses than most of his British contemporaries.
For a discussion of the evolution of the meaning of `hypothesis’ in Newton’s work, see Cohen’s Franklin and Newton.
Newton, Principia, General Scholium. Compare this with Reid’s remark that “hypotheses ought to have no place in the philosophy of nature” (Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind [EAPHM], 1788, Works, II, 526). It is significant that whereas Newton’s disclaimer of hypothesis was confined to “experimental philosophy”, Reid broadens it to apply to all of the philosophy of nature.
Reid’s contemporary, James Gregory, perceived that the then predominant disdain for hypotheses was due to such terminological ambiguities as I have described briefly above: “The prejudice against hypotheses which many people entertain is founded on the equivocal signification of a word. It [viz., ‘hypothesis] is commonly confounded with theory… ” (Quoted by Dugald Stewart in his Works [London, 1854], II, 300). 40 It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that a great deal of the history of 18th-century methodological thought could be gleaned from carefully attending to the changing nuances in the meaning of this crucial term.
Reid was continually claiming that Newton was carrying on Bacon’s work. In his
Intellectual Powers (p. 436) he asserted that “Lord Bacon first delineated the only solid foundation on which natural philosophy can be built; and Sir Isaac Newton reduced the principles laid down by Bacon into three or four axioms which he calls regulae philosophandi.” In his Brief Account of Aristotle’s Logic (Works, II, 712), he insisted that Newton “in the third book of his ‘Principia’ and in his `Optics’, had the rules of the Novum Organum constantly in his eye”. Or, elsewhere, “… the best models of inductive reasoning that have yet appeared, which I take to be the third book of the Principia and the Optics of Newton, were drawn from Bacon’s rules” (Human Mind, p. 200).
It was a common 18th-century mistake to write about Newton as if he invariably kept the Novum Organum at his finger-tips. For an early and influential example of this tendency, see the Introduction to Pemberton’s View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy. It is perhaps significant that among Reid’s surviving manuscripts is a Precis of Pemberton’s View.
The true method of philosophizing in this: From real facts, ascertained by observation and experiments, to collect by just induction the laws of Nature, and to apply the laws so discovered, to account for the phenomena of Nature“ (Intellectual Powers, pp. 271 ff.).
The whole object of natural philosophy, as Newton expressly teaches, is reducible to these two heads: first, by just induction from experiment and observation, to discover the laws of nature; and then, to apply those laws to the solution of the phaenomena of nature. This was all this great philosopher attempted, and all that he thought attainable“ (Active Powers, p. 529).
Reid to Kames, 16 December 1780, Works, I, 57; cf. p. 59.
Even Dugald Stewart, one of Reid’s most enthusiastic admirers, admits that Reid was less explicit than he might have been about the sort of inductions he endorsed. In an account of Reid’s life written in 1803, Stewart noted that: “it were perhaps to be wished that he [Reid] had taken a little more pains to illustrate the fundamental rules of that [inductive] logic the value of which he estimated so highly… ” (in Reid, Works, I, 11). For an interesting contemporary critique of Reid’s theory of induction, see Joseph Priestley’s Examination of Dr. Reid’s Enquiry (London, 1774), pp. 110 ff.
Human Mind, p. 163. Elsewhere he asserts that “all our curious theories… so far as they go beyond a just induction from facts, are vanity and folly… ” (ibid., pp. 97–98). Reid sees the “slow and patient method of induction” as “the only way to obtain any knowledge of nature’s work” (Intellectual Powers, p. 472). Again, he suggests that the discovery of inductive laws “is all that true philosophy aims at, and all that it can ever reach” (Human Mind, p. 157).
In his unpublished “Lectures on Natural Philosophy” (1758), in the Library of the University of Aberdeen, Reid calls the regulae “the rules for reasoning by induction” (p. 7).
Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest of natural philosophers, has given an example well worthy of imitation, by laying down the common principles or axioms, on which the reasonings in natural philosophy are built… [the Regulae] are principles which, though they have not the same kind of evidence that mathematical axioms have; yet have such evidence that every man of common understanding readily assents to them… “ (Intellectual Powers, p. 231).
December, 1780, Works, I, 57. Compare this with Newton’s observation that: “As in Mathematics, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction… By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument ends in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: And the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover’d and establish’d as Principles, and by them explaining the Phaenomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations” ( Opticks, ed. Cohen [New York, 1952 ], pp. 404–5 ).
Cf. Newton’s Regula IV where he concedes that “propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena... may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions [i.e. refuted] ”.
There must be many accidental conjunctions of things as well as natural connections; and the former are apt to be mistaken for the latter… Philosophers, and men of science, are not exempted from such mistakes“ (Human Mind, p. 197). The evidence that scientific laws ”have no exceptions, as well as the evidence that they will be the same in time to come as they have been in time past, can never be demonstrative“ (Intellectual Powers, p. 484). Cf. ibid., p. 272.
The second rule was this: “And so to natural effects of the same kind are assigned the same causes, as far as they can be.”
Rule III began as follows: “The qualities of bodies which admit neither intension nor remission, and which belong to all bodies on which one can make experiments, are to be taken as the qualities of all bodies whatsoever.”
Human Mind, p. 199. This axiom is an exact translation of Newton’s remark in the second regula to the effect that “effectuum naturalium ejusdem generis easdem esse causas.” Elsewhere, Reid remarks that the second rule “has the most genuine marks of a first principle” (Intellectual Powers, p. 451).
Take away the light of this inductive principle, and experience is as blind as a mole; she may, indeed, feel what is present, and what immediately touches her; but she sees nothing that is either before or behind, upon the right hand or upon the left, future or past“ (Human Mind, p. 200).
A natural philosopher can prove nothing, unless it is taken for granted that the course of nature is steady and uniform“ (ibid., p. 130; cf. ibid., p. 1981).
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Laudan, L. (1981). Thomas Reid and the Newtonian Turn of British Methodological Thought. In: Science and Hypothesis. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7288-0_7
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