Steffen Ducheyne

ArgumentLambert ten Kate (1674-1731), the scholar of language, religious writer, art theoretician and collector, and natural philosophy enthusiast, was part of an informal network of Amsterdam-based mathematics and natural philosophy enthusiasts who played a pivotal role in the early diffusion of Newton’s natural philosophical ideas in the Dutch Republic. Because Ten Kate contributed to several areas of research, it is worth asking whether connections can be found between his different scholarly activities and, more specifically, whether his oeuvre as a whole was shaped by his religious views, as has been suggested. In this essay, I shall argue that his oeuvre was indeed shaped by his religious beliefs, which reflect elements typical of Dutchdoperdom, but also reflect a more general Christian orientation that transcends confessional divides. More particularly, I aim to show that, if we want to understand why Ten Kate was drawn to the natural philosophy of his day, and especially to Isaac Newton’s (1642-1727), and why he sought to promote it, we also need to pay attention to this broader Christian orientation in his thought. Along the way, I shall add nuance to earlier characterizations of how ten Kate mobilized Isaac Newton’s natural philosophy according to his own agenda.

In this article, we discuss the development of the concept of a ‘law’ (of nature) in the work of the Dutch natural philosopher and experimenter Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692–1761). Since Van Musschenbroek is commonly described as one of the first ‘Newtonians’ on the Continent in the secondary literature, we focus more specifically on its relation to Newton’s views on this issue. Although he was certainly indebted to Newton for his thinking on laws (of nature), Van Musschenbroek’s views can be seen to diverge from Newton’s on crucial points. We show, moreover, how his thinking on laws of nature was shaped by both international and local factors. We start with a brief discussion of Newton’s concept of ‘laws of nature’ in order to set the stage for Van Musschenbroek’s. We then document the development of Van Musschenbroek’s views on laws of nature in chronological order. We demonstrate how his thinking on laws of nature was tied to institutional, theological and scientific factors. We conclude by pointing to the broader significance of this case study for our understanding of the development of the concept ‘law of nature’ during the eighteenth century.

In this essay, I shall argue that Galileo introduced a new scientifically useful notion of causality. This new notion of causality was an interventionist notion, according to which causal relations can be discovered by actively exploring and manipulating natural processes. The presence of this conception can be seen from Galileo's explanation of floating bodies and his theory of the tides. I shall point to the similarity between Galileo's notion of "cause" and recent interventionist accounts of causation in the philosophy of science (especially James Woodward's).

The Radical Enlightenment refers to a fascinating movement within the Enlightenment that challenged traditional forms of religious, philosophical, and political authority and promoted social reform, freedom, democratic values, social equality, and libertas philosophandi. The study of the Radical Enlightenment focuses on the thought of freethinkers, atheists, pantheists, Spinozists, political reformers, and other kindred spirits. Over the last thirty years scholarly writing on, and about the very notion of, a Radical Enlightenment has proliferated and research on the matter has moved in different directions. This research companion provides a timely and comprehensive overview of current research on this matter, gathering together leading experts who cross the boundaries of geographical terrain, of discipline, of intellectual position and of methodology. In addition to dealing with canonical authors and celebrated texts, such as Spinoza and his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, authors discuss many less well-known figures and debates from the period whose importance is only now being appreciated.

Who’s the greatest of them all? A non-technical explication of Newton’s method in the Principia accompanied by some philosophical reflections In this essay, I seek to explicate the methodology which Newton used in the Principia in a non-technical way. Close attention will be paid to some important results in Books I and III of the Principia and to Newton’s argument for universal gravitation. Based on their discussion, Newton’s key inferential strategies will be brought to the fore. In addition, it will be explained how Newton’s methodology differed from a standard hypothetico-deductive method.

In this article, we document how, in the public arena, British readers of the first edition of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687) tried to make sense of the relation between gravity, matter, and divine and natural causation—an issue on which Newton had remained entirely silent in the first edition of the Principia. We show that readers attached new meanings to the Principia so that parts of it migrated to a different intellectual debate. It will be shown that one particular result Newton obtained in the Principia, namely the rejection of a vacuum in Corollary 3 to Proposition 6 in Book 3, was the most important locus in debates on the relation between gravity, matter, and causation.

It has been suggested in the literature that, although Willem Jacob ‘s Gravesande occasionally treated Newton's doctrines in a selective manner, he was nevertheless an unremitting follower of Newton's methodology. As part of a reassessment of ‘s Gravesande's Newtonianism, I argue that, although ‘s Gravesande took over key terms of Newton's methodological canon, his methodological ideas are upon close scrutiny quite different from and occasionally even incongruent with Newton's views on the matter.

In this essay I reassess Willem Jacob ‘s Gravesande's Newtonianism. I draw attention to ‘s Gravesande's a-causal rendering of physics which went against Newton's causal understanding of natural philosophy and to his attempt to establish a solid foundation for the certainty of Newton's natural philosophy, which he considered as a powerful antidote against the theological aberrations of Descartes and especially Spinoza. I argue that, although ‘s Gravesande clearly took inspiration from Newton's natural philosophy, he was running his own scientific and intellectual agenda and that he was combining Newtonian and non-Newtonian elements.

SUMMARYIn this paper I will probe into Herman Boerhaave's appropriation of Isaac Newton's natural philosophy. It will be shown that Newton's work served multiple purposes in Boerhaave's oeuvre, for he appropriated Newton's work differently in different contexts and in different episodes in his career. Three important episodes in, and contexts of, Boerhaave's appropriation of Newton's natural philosophical ideas and methods will be considered: 1710–11, the time of his often neglected lectures on the place of physics in medicine; 1715, when he delivered his most famous rectorial address; and, finally, 1731/2, in publishing his Elementa chemiae. Along the way, I will spell out the implications of Boerhaave's case for our understanding of the reception, or use, of Newton's ideas more generally.

Baruch Spinoza’s (1632–77)Tractatus theologico-politicus (1669 or 1670) caused outrage across the Dutch Republic, for it obliterated the carefully installed separation between philosophy and theology. The posthumous publication of Spinoza’s Ethica, which is contained in his Opera posthuma (1677), caused similar consternation. It was especially the mathematical order in which the Ethica was composed that caused fierce opposition, for its mathematical appearance gave the impression that Spinoza’s heretical teachings were established demonstratively. In this essay, I document how the Dutch physician, local politician, and amateur mathematician and experimenter Bernard Nieuwentijt (1654–1718) attempted to physico-mathematically and methodologically counter the threats posed by Spinoza’s program. Nieuwentijt tried to defend the authority of the scriptures in times at which they came under attack by the new philosophy and by the emerging sciences that were gradually winning terrain. The crux of his defense consisted in delineating a modest epistemology, a “learned ignorance,” that would cure Spinoza’s followers of their pansophical aspirations, on the one hand, and remove the conflict between the Bible and reason, on the other. The specific way in which he sought to accomplish this distinguished him from Dutch Reformed thought, or so I will argue.

In this discussion paper, I seek to challenge Hylarie Kochiras’ recent claims on Newton’s attitude towards action at a distance, which will be presented in Section 1. In doing so, I shall include the positions of Andrew Janiak and John Henry in my discussion and present my own tackle on the matter . Additionally, I seek to strengthen Kochiras’ argument that Newton sought to explain the cause of gravity in terms of secondary causation . I also provide some specification on what Kochiras calls ‘Newton’s substance counting problem’ . In conclusion, I suggest a historical correction .Keywords: Isaac Newton ; Action at a distance; Cause of gravity; Fourth letter to Bentley

This chapter examines the series of drastic epistemological and methodological transformations in the status of hypotheses in British natural philosophy during the seventeenth century. It explains that hypotheses played a rather marginal role in Francis Bacon's methodological thought because he believed they lacked any physical content, although they occupied a centre stage in the Bacon-inspired natural philosophy program of Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. The chapter mentions that Boyle and Hooke provided a new definition of hypothesis, which is that of something conceived of as causally sufficient and probable explications of natural phenomena that stand in an evidential relation to the natural phenomena they serve to elucidate.

In this essay the authors explore the nature of efficient causal explanation in Newton’s "Principia and The Opticks". It is argued that: (1) In the dynamical explanations of the Principia, Newton treats the phenomena under study as cases of Hall’s second kind of atypical causation. The underlying concept of causation is therefore a purely interventionist one. (2) In the descriptions of his optical experiments, Newton treats the phenomena under study as cases of Hall’s typical causation. The underlying concept of causation is therefore a mixed interventionist/mechanicist one

In this paper, I take up the question to what extent and in which sense we can conceive of Johannes Baptista Van Helmont’s (1579-1644) style of experimenting as “modern”. Connected to this question, I shall reflect upon what Van Helmont’s precise contribution to experimental practice was. I will argue - after analysing some of Van Helmont's experiments such as his tree-experiment, ice-experiment, and thermoscope experiment - that Van Helmont had a strong preference to locate experimental designs in places wherein variables can be more easily controlled (and in the limit, in relatively closed physical systems such as paradigmatically the vessel, globe or sphere (vas, globus, sphera)). After having reviewed some alternative candidates, I shall argue that Van Helmont’s usage of relatively isolated physical systems and a moderate degree of quantification, whereby mathematical procedures mainly refer to guaranteeing that quantities are conserved by roughly determining them, are the characteristics that best captures his contributions to “modern” experimentation.