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2 - Physics and metaphysics: three interpretations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Andrew Janiak
Andrew Janiak
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina
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Summary

What is taught in metaphysics, if it is derived from divine revelation, is religion; if it is derived from phenomena through the five external senses, it pertains to physics; if it is derived from knowledge of the internal actions of our mind through the sense of reflection, it is only philosophy about the human mind, and its ideas as internal phenomena likewise pertain to physics. To dispute about the objects of ideas except insofar as they are phenomena is dreaming. In all philosophy we must begin from phenomena and admit no principles of things, no causes, no explanations, except those which are established through phenomena [In omni Philosophia incipere debemus a Phaenomenis, & nulla admittere rerum principia nullas causas nullas explicationes nisi quae per phaenomena stabiliuntur]. And although the whole of philosophy is not immediately evident, still it is better to add something to our knowledge day by day than to fill up men's minds in advance with the preconceptions of hypotheses.

Draft of preface to second edition (Principia, 54)

Numerous interpretations of Newton's work, and of his most general philosophical views, have appeared over the past two centuries. Indeed, by the middle of the eighteenth century, only two decades after Newton's death in 1727, there had already been a huge rash of English and French commentaries published in England and on the Continent.

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Newton as Philosopher , pp. 11 - 49
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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