Elanor Taylor

This book offers a systematic interpretation of Isaac Newton’s views on the fundamental metaphysics of substance. Drawing on a number of published and unpublished texts, and exploring Newton’s engagement with his philosophical predecessors and contemporaries, it reconstructs his views on God, bodies, minds, and the relationships that obtain between them. The early chapters explore Newton’s arguments for God’s existence and analyze his understanding of the non-univocity of substance. Subsequent chapters explore his innovative approach to bodies, on which they are mere collections of powers, and work through issues relating to divine and natural causation. The final chapters explore Newton’s views on the nature of mind, dualism, and the mind–body problem before examining his infamous claim that space is God’s sensorium. The metaphysical system that emerges from the analysis on offer in the book shows Newton to have developed views that are innovative, perceptive, and—by the standards of the period—compelling.