Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013) 448–456

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa

The transcendental method from Newton to Kant

Robert DiSalle
Western University, London, Ontario, Canada N6A5B8

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Kant’s transcendental method, as applied to natural philosophy, considers the laws of physics as condi-
Available online 21 December 2012 tions of the possibility of experience. A more modest transcendental project is to show how the laws of
motion explicate the concepts of motion, force, and causal interaction, as conditions of the possibility of
Keywords: an objective account of nature. This paper argues that such a project is central to the natural philosophy
Newton of Newton, and explains some central aspects of the development of his thinking as he wrote the Prin-
Kant cipia. One guiding scientific aim was the dynamical analysis of any system of interacting bodies, and in
Space
particular our solar system; the transcendental question was, what are the conceptual prerequisites
Relativity
Causality
for such an analysis? More specifically, what are the conditions for determining ‘‘true motions’’ within
Gravity such a system—for posing the question of ‘‘the frame of the system of the world’’ as an empirical ques-
tion? A study of the development of Newton’s approach to these questions reveals surprising connections
with his developing conceptions of force, causality, and the relativity of motion. It also illuminates the
comparison between his use of the transcendental method and that of Euler and Kant.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

1. Introduction: the transcendental analysis of the foundations
of physics
Kant’s transcendental method, as applied to the foundations of
physics, examines the role of fundamental physical laws as condi-
tions of the possibility of experience. The larger aim of this ap-
proach is that it identifies, or promises to identify, the general
principles of physics as constitutive principles of the metaphysics
of nature. A more specific aim is to show, for specific metaphysical
concepts such as motion, force, and causal interaction, that their
very employment, at least in an objective account of nature, is
inseparable from the application of Newton’s laws.
The larger aim, as a way of examining the relation between
physics and metaphysics, is a use of the transcendental method
that seems to begin with Kant. But the more specific aim has a clear
precursor in the thinking of Newton. We can see this in his grasp of
a distinction between two kinds of fundamental principle, with
distinct ways of providing foundations for more particular lines
of scientific reasoning. On the one hand are the simple mechanical
principles that allow detailed reasoning about the nature and the
propagation of action by immediate contact; ideally, this reasoning
ought to yield detailed mechanical models of macroscopic process,
of which the vortex theory of planetary motion was the most
prominent example. On the other hand, there is the kind of princi-
ple that clarifies the conceptual basis of natural philosophy, by dis-
tinguishing the concepts as they function in scientific reasoning
from their common-sense or intuitive associations, or their inter-
pretations in abstract philosophical settings. Such principles are
generally mathematical in form, for only thus does such a concep-
tual explication yield a genuine physical magnitude; this form is
what enables them to play (to use the Kantian term) their consti-
tutive role in Newton’s theoretical framework.
It is a familiar part of Newton’s philosophy of science that he
deplored the first kind of principle, as a source of plausible-sound-
ing conjectures rather than scientific knowledge, and preferred the
comparative security of mathematical principles confirmed by
experiment. The point I would like to emphasize in this paper is
that it is not solely this empirical distinction that draws Newton’s
philosophical attention to the second kind of principle. It is also—
and equally centrally—their constitutive function, in a sense not
identical to, but closely related to Kant’s. That is, Newton’s mathe-
matical principles play the role, for Newton as well as for Kant, of

E-mail address: rdisalle@uwo.ca

0039-3681/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2012.10.006
 R. DiSalle / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013) 448–456
explicating the theoretical concepts of natural philosophy. This is
not a matter of providing arbitrary definitions, for the relevant con-
cepts generally have both an intuitive sense from which Newton
begins and a foundation in scientific reasoning. In order to serve
as foundations for natural philosophy, however, they must be not
only separated from their intuitive origins and associations, but
also specified in such a way as to define measurable theoretical
magnitudes. From Newton’s perspective, such principles are too
fundamental either to be explained mechanically or to be con-
firmed by induction: they represent the inexplicable foundations
that enable physics to explain whatever it can in fact explain. Their
empirical status consists primarily in the explications they provide
of physical concepts and their empirically measurable correlates—
especially, the concepts of motion and force that underlie the pro-
gram of causal explanation, and thereby make the world of experi-
ence intelligible as an ordered world of physical law. I will discuss
this sort of transcendental reasoning in Newton’s work, compare it
with Kant’s, and comment on its place in the history of physics.
2. Newton’s analytical project
To see a transcendental aspect in Newton’s thinking is not to
claim that his was a transcendental philosophy. From Kant’s Criti-
cal point of view, the transcendental perspective is precisely what
is lacking in Newton’s metaphysics. In the case of space and time,
indeed, this lack—or, more precisely, the view of space and time as
bound to the nature of things in themselves—is the common error
of Newton’s and Leibniz’s views. There can be no doubt that, in a
certain sense, Kant was correct: Newton did view space and time,
not as things in themselves, but at least as aspects of the world of
things in themselves. But this is hardly to be glossed by the familiar
opposition between Newton the ‘‘substantivalist’’ and Leibniz
the ‘‘relationalist.’’ One could say (cf. Stein, 1967; Stein, 2002)
that the essential difference between Newton and Leibniz was
Newton’s dissatisfaction with the traditional metaphysical catego-
ries of substance and accident, and his consequent assertion that
space and time are neither things, nor reducible to the relations
among things. In support of this view, we may view Newton’s De
gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum (2004a) as supplementing
the better-known Scholium to the Definitions in the Principia
(1999); the former sets the rather laconic discussion of the latter
in the context of a serious inquiry into the nature of motion and
force, the interdependence of substances and the space in which
they exist, the nature and role of God, and the inadequacies of
the Cartesian views on all of these points. In this perspective, the
account of space and time found in Newton’s Scholium appears
as part of a much more reflective and convincing metaphysics than
its critics, since the time of its publication, had taken it to be. This
does not make the position any less dogmatic in Kant’s sense:
Newton’s account treats space and time and time as ontological
conditions for the existence of things, rather than as transcenden-
tal conditions for our experience of things as existing.
If we look at Newton’s Scholium as an imperfect or partial
expression of the metaphysical picture outlined in De Gravitatione,
then the real philosophical import of the arguments of the Scho-
lium will not be understood through their presentation and their
functions in the Principia; indeed, since philosophers began to con-
sider De Gravitatione (i.e. since Stein, 1967), the additional philo-
sophical context it provides has played a crucial role in moving
philosophers to a more sympathetic view of the Scholium. If we
look at the Scholium from the opposite point of view, however,
1
See, for example, Newton’s Opticks (Newton, 1952, p. 404).
2
For further discussion of conceptual analysis in this sense, and its application to the philosophy of the exact sciences, see Demopoulos (2000) AND DiSalle (2012).
3
For further discussion of Newton’s view of the tentative character of fundamental principles, and its implications for his view of the relations between physics and
metaphysics, see Stein (2002), especially pp. 290ff.
449
as a very deliberate selection or distillation of Newton’s views, it
is worth inquiring whether the selection has a philosophical
intention. I propose that it does, and that the process of selection
itself reflects Newton’s attempt at a transcendental analysis of
physics from a changing philosophical perspective. Between the
writing of De Gravitatione and the construction of the Principia,
Newton arrived at a radically transformed understanding of the
conceptual basis for his dynamics, and of the conceptual conditions
for applying it to the dynamical problems that he intended it to
solve.
Granting that a deliberate process of philosophical selection
took place, one might interpret Newton’s principle of selection in
a completely different way. One might suppose that Newton’s
overriding concern is to avoid unnecessary controversy of the sort
that he found so distasteful in connection with his ‘‘new theory of
light and colors’’: disagreement over the aims, methods, and
metaphysical underpinnings of natural science, leading to a failure
even to understand the kind of claim that he is making, let alone to
assent to it. On this interpretation, his use of metaphysically
neutral language, or purportedly neutral language, appears to be
a purely defensive rhetorical strategy. For example, his claim
‘‘to use the word ’attraction’ in a general sense for any endeavor
whatever of bodies to approach one another’’—independent
of any and every hypothesis about the cause of the attraction, ‘‘cor-
poreal or incorporeal’’ (Newton, 1999, p. 588)—may be seen as
anticipating and deflecting the standard objection from the
mechanical philosophers, that such forces are mechanically
unintelligible.
What I propose, instead, is to regard this neutrality not merely
as a way of avoiding distracting philosophical questions, but as a
philosophical end in itself—the end, ideally, of a work of philosoph-
ical analysis. I say, ‘‘philosophical analysis,’’ not only to distinguish
this work from what Newton calls the ‘‘Method of Analysis’’ in
mathematics and physics.1 I also want to emphasize its kinship with
the philosophical tradition of conceptual analysis, that is, the work of
clarifying particular concepts by explicating their uses in particular
forms of systematic and pre-systematic reasoning, and of identifying
the presuppositions on which their use implicitly depends.2 The
point of such an analysis is not to avoid metaphysics, but to identify,
and so to isolate, precisely those presuppositions that, apart from
their bearing on metaphysical questions, are also necessary presup-
positions of the physics that he and his contemporaries practiced. Its
transcendental aspect consists precisely in this recognition that such
fundamental principles are justified, not by independent arguments
from metaphysics, but by the constitutive role that they play in the
conceptual system of physics—in other words, as ‘‘conditions of the
possibility,’’ not indeed of experience in general, but of physics as a
coherent explanatory framework. Unlike Kant’s transcendental prin-
ciples, they are not proposed as necessary and sufficient conditions
for a general metaphysics of nature; their necessity is relative to
the physical theory of which they form a part, and their sufficiency
depends on the theory’s empirical sufficiency. A transcendental anal-
ysis thus severely restricted, clearly, could not justify the ‘‘universal-
ity and necessity’’ in Kant’ sense of Newton’s principles, or guarantee
them against replacement by ‘‘some truer method of philosophy.’’
For Newton, however, who consistently emphasized the tentative
character of his fundamental principles, such limitations are charac-
teristic of reasoning in natural philosophy.3 The point of a philosoph-
ical analysis, then, is not to overcome the contingency of all physical
knowledge, but to achieve a clearer understanding of the conceptual
and empirical content of the physical principles at his disposal, and a
450 R. DiSalle / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013) 448–456
deeper grasp of the range of physical problems that the principles
are able to solve.
Recognizing Newton’s approach as philosophical analysis dis-
tinguishes it from the mechanists’ approach to fundamental pre-
suppositions, which is essentially hypothetico-deductive: it starts
from an explanatory hypothesis, that all interactions are ultimately
reducible to the communication of motion by impact, and treats
conformity to this hypothesis as the criterion for an intelligible
explanation. Nothing else would satisfy the demands of what Huy-
gens called ‘‘the true philosophy, in which one conceives of the
causes of all natural effects through mechanical reasons. This, in
my opinion, we must do, or else renounce all hope of ever compre-
hending anything in physics’’ (Huygens 1690a, p. 3).
There is only this difficulty, that Mr. Newton, in rejecting the
vortices of Descartes, wants to say that the heavens contain
only an extremely rare sort of matter, so that the planets
encounter little resistance in their courses. Such a rarity being
supposed, it seems impossible to explain the action either of
gravity or of light, at least by the means that I have employed.’’
(1690b, p. 473)
This quotation expresses a familiar aspect of seventeenth-cen-
tury mechanism, and Newton’s rejection of it is a familiar aspect
of his philosophy. The distinction is worth mentioning here only
in order to emphasize the distinction between two conceptions
of intelligibility, a hypothetical view and what we may call a tran-
scendental one. The first constitutes a severely restricted view of
what may count as an intelligible cause, based on a simplified
model of physical interactions. The second takes the established
principles of mechanics as given, and their use in the solution of
mechanical problems as sufficient evidence of their intelligibility;
it reasons, as it were, backwards from the given principles of
mechanics, to the metaphysical context—involving, especially, con-
ceptions of space, time, and motion—that makes them intelligible.
Huygens’ mechanistic view and Newton’s acceptance of ‘‘attrac-
tion’’ are not, therefore, competing hypotheses at all. Newton’s
view is, in effect, a transcendental standpoint from which mecha-
nistic reduction and irreducible attractions are both merely possi-
ble hypotheses. What makes physical interactions intelligible is
their representation in space and time, as relative accelerations
that conform to the laws of motion. From an analysis that thus de-
fines the conditions of intelligible causation in this (ideally) neutral
way, Newton constructs a program for natural philosophy in which
the question, ‘‘what kinds of interaction exist in nature?’’—a ques-
tion that mechanism answers a priori by its central hypothesis—is
an empirical question, with well-defined empirical procedures for
answering it.
An analysis of this sort is hardly a trivial task, since it is far from
obvious what the ‘‘neutral’’ content of a basic physical concept is,
and how it may be separated from subjective elements arising
from intuitive associations or metaphysical preconceptions. Given
this, and given Newton’s experience of controversy over the meta-
physical preconceptions of his contemporaries, it is doubtful
whether we can attribute to Newton a genuine intention to avoid
controversy altogether; had that been his intention, surely it would
have been advisable to avoid metaphysical subjects altogether, in-
stead of drawing attention to, for example, his views of space and
time. These, in any case, could be expected to invite controversy,
while, arguably, the Principia could have dispensed with them. In-
stead, a crucial point of Newton’s analysis was to establish which
controversies are unavoidable—because they have to do with
establishing the conceptual basis of the physics itself—and yet
tractable: more precisely, they are tractable, in Newton’s view, pre-
cisely because they are unavoidable. They concern presuppositions
which, wittingly or not, everyone who employs the principles of
mechanics will be compelled to make, just because they are impli-
cit in the mechanical laws as understood. For instance, as Newton
points out in the Scholium, his own way of conceiving of and
measuring motion is presupposed by the Cartesian program for
explaining planetary motion. Newton could therefore argue, in
what may be seen as a dialectical manner (cf. DiSalle, 2006), that
his stated conceptions of space, time, and causation represent
a common metaphysical and methodological ground between
himself and his philosophical opponents.
3. The evolution of Newton’s analysis of motion
Dialectical argument can be found already in De Gravitatione,
among the central arguments against Descartes’ definition of ‘‘mo-
tion in the philosophical sense’’ (defined as motion of a body rela-
tive to immediately contiguous bodies). Newton explicitly argues
that Cartesians, when considering any dynamical system such as
the revolution of a planet or comet around the Sun, ignore Des-
cartes’ definition altogether; instead, they actually employ the
dynamical criterion of rotation that Descartes would associate with
‘‘motion in the common sense,’’ and that Newton would eventually
identify as the criterion of ‘‘absolute rotation,’’ namely the ten-
dency of rotating or revolving bodies to recede from the axis of
their motion:
And so the philosopher is hardly consistent who uses as the
basis of philosophy the common motion which he had rejected
a little before, and now rejects that motion as fit for nothing
which alone was formerly said to be true and philosophi-
cal. . ..And since the gyrating of the comet around the sun in
his philosophical sense does not cause a tendency to recede
from the center, which a gyration in the common sense can
do, surely motion ought to be acknowledged in the common
sense, rather than the philosophical. (Newton, 2004, p. 15)
An analogous critical remark is found in the Scholium, suggest-
ing that Newton’s criterion of rotation plays an essential role in the
Cartesian vortex theory:
the individual parts of the heavens [i.e. of the fluid vortex], and
the planets that are relatively at rest in the heavens to which
they belong, are truly in motion. For they change their positions
relative to one another (which is not the case with things that
are truly at rest), and as they are carried around together with
the heavens, they participate in the motions of the heavens
and, being parts of revolving wholes, endeavor to recede from
the axes of those wholes. (p. 413)
In both places, essentially the same dialectical argument is at
work; its aim is to separate the definition of motion that is actually
at work in Cartesian physics from the definition that Descartes
calls ‘‘philosophical.’’ Also in both cases, the same spatial frame-
work is presupposed: the motions treated by physics are to be
understood as changes of position in a single immobile space.
Yet in De Gravitatione, the connections between the dynamical ac-
count of motion and the metaphysics of space are made much
clearer, whereas some of the arguments intended to make these
connections are omitted from the Scholium. I suggest that the
omission is deliberate, and reflects a change in Newton’s view of
the connections between the metaphysical perspective of De Grav-
itatione and his developing dynamical theory—a change that fol-
lows from his mature analysis of what, within his metaphysical
account of space, are the truly necessary presuppositions that the
theory demands.
To appreciate this change, we can consider one of De Gravitati-
one’s central dynamical arguments against the Cartesian theory of
space. In philosophical discussions of space and time since Stein,
 R. DiSalle / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013) 448–456
(1967), this argument has occupied a prominent place, as provid-
ing the crucial dynamical argument against the relativity of motion
that is missing from the Scholium. A brief sketch is therefore suffi-
cient: In order to assign a definite path to the planet Jupiter—or
more generally, to assign a path to any body, so that one can state
the law of inertia—one must be able to specify the spaces through
which Jupiter has passed. Given the Cartesian identification of
body with extension, however, these spaces no longer exist; given
the definition of motion as displacement relative to contiguous
bodies, the relevant motion does not exist:
. . . [N]o one can assign the place according to Descartes at
which the body was in the beginning of the accomplished
motion, or rather he has not said whence it is possible a body
will be moved. And the reason is that according to Descartes
it is not possible to define and assign the place except from
the position of the surrounding bodies, and that after any
motion having been accomplished the position of the surround-
ing bodies remains no more the same as it was before. For
example, if the place of the planet Jupiter were where (it was)
the year before, then having been accomplished it would be at
rest; by what reasoning, I pray, will the philosopher, Descartes,
describe it?
. . . It follows that Cartesian motion is not motion, for it has no
velocity, no definition, and there is no space or distance tra-
versed by it. So it is necessary that the definition of places,
and hence of local motion, be referred to some motionless thing
such as extension alone or space insofar as it is seen to be truly
distinct from bodies. (Newton, 2004, p. 19)
This is undoubtedly a powerful argument, insofar as it notes the
incompatibility between the Cartesian view of motion and the
foundations of Cartesian physics. It exposes the internal incoher-
ence of a philosophy that denies any real spatial structure—since
space is purported to be nothing distinct from matter—while bas-
ing all dynamical explanation on the principle of a privileged spa-
tial trajectory.4 In other words, the philosophical accounts of space
and motion are incompatible with the dynamical account of motion
and its fundamental conception of causality. One might suppose this
to be a particularly embarrassing contradiction for the followers of
Descartes, according to whom the definitions of space and motion,
and the fundamental law of rectilinear motion, were equally sup-
posed to follow from Descartes’ a priori first principles.
From the dynamical arguments of the Principia, however, one
can plausibly reconstruct Newton’s reason for leaving this particular
argument out of the Scholium. Between the writing of De Gravitati-
one and the writing of the Scholium, Newton appears to have
grasped the relativity of motion—and he appears to have appreci-
ated, far more deeply than most of his Cartesian opponents, its role
as a genuine dynamical principle rather than as a general epistemo-
logical claim. This recognition begins with the introduction of what
came to be called the ‘‘Galilean’’ relativity principle, as ‘‘Law 3’’ in
one of the early drafts leading to the Principia, called De motu Sph-
aericorum Corporum in fluidis (Herivel, 1965, pp. 294–296):
The motions of bodies within a given space are the same among
themselves whether that space rests or moves uniformly and
perpetually in a right line without any circular motion. (ibid.,
p. 294; my translation)
Here Newton also introduces, as Law 4, the conservation of the
centre of gravity:
By the mutual actions between bodies their common centre of
gravity does not change its state of motion or rest. (ibid., p. 299)
4
This point is discussed in detail by Stein (1967, 2002).
451
In a subsequent draft the relativity principle and the principle of
conservation of the centre of gravity become Laws 4 and 5 (ibid., p.
313), and by the writing of the Principia, Newton decided that, in-
stead of postulating these principles, he could derive them as
(respectively) Corollary V and Corollary IV to the laws of motion:
Corollary IV: The common center of gravity of two or more
bodies does not change its state whether of uniform motion
or rest as a result of the actions of the bodies upon one another;
and therefore the common center of gravity of all bodies acting
upon one another. . .either is at rest or moves uniformly straight
forward. (1999, p. 421)
Corollary V: When bodies are enclosed in a given space, their
motions in relation to one another are the same whether the
space is at rest or whether it is moving uniformly straight for-
ward without circular motion. (1999, p. 423)
Furthermore, having articulated the ‘‘Galilean’’ relativity princi-
ple, and thus acknowledged that space at rest and a space in
uniform motion are dynamically indistinguishable, Newton recog-
nized what might be called an extended form of relativity: in
certain circumstances, even an accelerated system of bodies is
indistinguishable—within the system—from a system that is at rest
or in uniform motion. In a subsequent draft, De motu corporum liber
primus (cf. Herivel, 1965), Newton introduces what finally becomes
Corollary VI to the Laws in the Principia:
If bodies are moving in any way whatsoever with respect to one
another and are urged by equal accelerative forces along paral-
lel lines, they will all continue to move with respect to one
another in the same way as they would if they were not acted
on by those forces. (1999, p. 423)
The circumstances required by the hypothesis are extremely
special ones. Yet an actual system such as that of Jupiter and its
moons, or Saturn and its moons, may meet these requirements to
a fair approximation as it is accelerated toward the sun. From char-
acteristics of the satellites’ orbits, Newton can infer that their
accelerations toward the Sun are equal and parallel to a high de-
gree of approximation (Newton, 1999, p. 807; Book III, Proposition
6, Theorem 6). Corollary VI therefore permits Newton to treat the
system itself as if it is in uniform rectilinear motion, or at rest—
in effect, as an isolated system whose only (relatively) fixed point
is its centre of gravity.
The significance of the relativity principle for Newton’s reason-
ing, even in these manuscripts, is spelled out explicitly and even
dramatically. Newton immediately draws its consequences for
the great question of the ‘‘system of the world’’: he acknowledges
that the entire system may be either at rest (‘‘as is commonly be-
lieved’’) or in uniform motion, without any observable conse-
quence for the dynamical interactions of the planets and the sun.
To begin with, the question no longer concerns which body is at
rest in the centre; in this system of interacting bodies, only the
centre of gravity can remain fixed, and that only relatively.
Moreover the whole space of the planetary heavens either rests
(as is commonly believed) or moves uniformly in a straight line,
and hence the communal centre of gravity of the planets (by
Law 4) either rests or moves along with it. In both cases (by
Law 3) the relative motions of the planets are the same, and
their common centre of gravity rests in relation to the whole
space, and so can certainly be taken for the still centre of the
whole planetary system. (Herivel, 1965, p. 301)
From this new perspective, the question of the system of the
world takes a form in which it has a determinate physical answer:
452 R. DiSalle / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013) 448–456

Hence truly the Copernican system is proved a priori. For if the
common centre of gravity is calculated for any position of the
planets it either falls in the body of the Sun or will always be
very close to it. (ibid.)
It should be clear from the context that ‘‘proved a priori’’ does
not mean ‘‘proved from first principles,’’ independent of experi-
ence; evidently the proof starts from empirical estimates of the
relative masses and positions of the planets. But these empirical
premises, when combined with the laws of motion, determine an
answer to the Copernican question; given all of these premises,
there is not any room for an ‘‘equivalence of hypotheses’’ in
Leibniz’s sense regarding the system of the world,5 nor any need
to defend any particular hypothesis by merely plausible arguments.
From Newton’s new perspective, moreover, the fundamental
problem of the system of the world has been completely separated
from the problem of determining trajectories in absolute space.
What should be evident here is that Newton’s mature analysis
of motion, in light of his deepening grasp of relativity, is a striking
retreat from the position expressed in De Gravitatione. It is not nec-
essary, in order to determine the motion of Jupiter or any other
planet, to know the positions in absolute space that it has occu-
pied. It remains true that Descartes’ definition of motion makes
the basic laws of motion incoherent; what is required to make
them coherent, as Euler later pointed out (cf. below), is the
assumption, not of absolute places, but of a distinguished class of
trajectories maintaining the same directions in space over time.
Obviously Newton does not have a replacement in his broader con-
ceptual scheme for absolute space, as the collection of all absolute
places, nor do we have any reason to suppose that he felt the need
to replace it (which seems so obvious to us in hindsight). Equally
obviously, however, he has seen that he does not need to appeal
to absolute space in his explanatory scheme. On the contrary, from
the perspective of the Principia and the dynamical problems it at-
tempts to solve—especially, the problem of the system of the
world—the separation of absolute space from his explanatory
framework is a conceptual necessity.
This transition shows how closely Newton’s philosophical
method is connected with his empirical method. Indeed, it is part
of what distinguishes the latter as a novel form of empiricism.
Smith (2002a, 2002b) has identified, as an outstanding feature of
Newton’s empirical procedure, the determination of theoretical
magnitudes from phenomena. The transcendental role of the laws
of motion in this procedure is evident: all of Book I of the Principia
is devoted to deriving from the laws, for a variety of possibly rele-
vant dynamical situations, principles for inferring forces from ob-
served relative motions. But this, as Smith emphasizes, is
inevitably an approximative procedure; more or less precise obser-
vations, it is hoped, will provide more or less exact measurements
of theoretical parameters. For this reason Newton’s aim of reason-
ing ‘‘more securely’’ about celestial motion requires that certain
relations hold ‘‘quam proxime,’’ or ‘‘as nearly as possible.’’ It is not
enough to show, for example, that stable apsides in planetary or-
bits imply an inverse-square central force; it must also be shown
that nearly-stable apsides constrain the power-law of the central
force within certain bounds. It is not enough to show that an ellip-
tical orbit implies an inverse-square force; Newton would also de-
mand to know that a nearly elliptical orbit implies a nearly
inverse-square force (Smith, 2002b). This kind of security, as New-
ton’s phrase indicates, is a matter of degree, and of knowing what
degree of error in the theory is compatible with degrees of error in
the determination of the phenomena. An important further aspect
of Newton’s methodology, therefore, is to avoid being led ‘‘down
the garden path,’’ by lines of approximative reasoning that
ultimately fail to converge on stable theoretical magnitudes, or
on genuine features of nature.
In the context of this methodological preoccupation, the appar-
ent shift in Newton’s thinking on motion, from the point of view
expressed in De Gravitatione to the mature view of De motu corpo-
rum and the Principia, takes on a further philosophical significance.
If the dynamical treatment of Jupiter’s motion, or the motion of its
system of satellites, really did depend on our knowing ‘‘where Jupi-
ter was a year ago,’’ or at any other time, then the fact that ‘‘the
parts of space cannot be seen,’’ and that motion relative to them
cannot be detected, would be a serious obstacle. The known accel-
eration of Jupiter’s system with respect to the Sun must be as-
sumed to result in a definite path through the parts of absolute
space, but this path remains necessarily unknowable even on
Newton’s account, given Corollaries V and VI. For the same reasons,
however, our ignorance of the path in absolute space has no effect
on the dynamical analysis of Jupiter’s motion. Nor does it affect
the analysis of the system of Jupiter and its moons, and the forces
by which the moons are maintained in their orbits, since by
Corollary VI those forces are completely independent of Jupiter’s
acceleration toward the Sun. Yet Jupiter’s system is nonetheless
part of a larger interacting system, and structure of the latter sys-
tem, and the forces holding it together, are Newton’s ultimate con-
cerns. What is the guarantee that Newton’s approximative
determination of these forces is not a ‘‘garden path’’? Or, rather,
since one never has such a guarantee, what ground is there for
confidence that such reasoning is relatively secure? In this more
general case, as in the case of Jupiter’s system, if anything
depended on determining trajectories in absolute space, such a
confidence would be completely unjustified. Here we find the most
plausible explanation why Newton omitted, in the Principia, an
argument against Descartes that later philosophers have found so
compelling a feature of De Gravitatione. The dynamical reasoning
concerning the forces and masses of the solar system must be
secure, to whatever degree of approximation is possible, indepen-
dently of the position, velocity, and even the acceleration of the
system in absolute space. If we find eventually that the entire solar
system is a significant part of a larger interacting system, we will
not find that our approximate measures of forces and masses are
thereby undermined.
Newton never explicitly explained this change in his thinking.
Yet it seems to me sufficiently corroborated by his discussion, in
The System of the World, of the very possibility just envisaged.
It may be alleged that the sun and planets are impelled by some
other force, equally and in the direction of parallel lines. But by
such a force (by Cor. VI of the Laws of Motion) no change would
happen in the situation of the planets to one another, nor any
sensible effect follow; but our business is with the causes of
sensible effects. Let us therefore neglect every such force as
imaginary and precarious, and of no use in the phenomena of
the heavens


(Newton, 1969, pp. 18-19)
This is in part merely an acknowledgement of a kind of relativ-
ity of acceleration, insofar as acceleration is only measured with
respect to a local center of mass frame such as the solar system,
Jupiter’s system, or Saturn’s system. As such it is arguably a pro-
found insight on Newton’s part, reached by few of Newton’s suc-
cessors before Einstein (Kant among them). But from the
methodological point of view, to note this application of Corollary
VI is to secure the results of Newton’s dynamical reasoning against
the possibility of yet-unknown forces acting on a yet-unimagined
scale. It secures the measurement of masses and forces within
the local system, or at least the reasonableness of increasingly good

5
See, for example, Leibniz’s 1694 letter to Huygens (Leibniz, 1962, p. 184).
 R. DiSalle / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013) 448–456 453

approximations, independently of any hypotheses about the sys- so far as the same body, yielding only with difficulty to the force
tem’s connection to larger systems, or its state of motion in abso- of a resisting obstacle, endeavors to change the state of that
lute space. In the cited passage, Newton’s specific purpose is to obstacle. Resistance is commonly attributed to resting bodies
justify the reasoning from Jupiter’s Keplerian motion to the center and impetus to moving bodies; but motion and rest, in the pop-
of the force that maintains it in orbit; if we may ‘‘neglect as imag- ular sense of the term, are distinguished from each other only
inary’’ any accelerative force acting on the entire solar system, we by point of view, and bodies commonly regarded as being at
may conclude that ‘‘the whole remaining force by which Jupiter is rest are not always truly at rest. (Newton, 1999, pp. 404-5)
impelled, will be directed (by Prop. 3, Cor. 1) toward the center of
This is a strikingly clear statement that the concept of inertia, in
the Sun’’ (Newton, 1969, p. 19). Thus, in addition to recognizing
order to serve as a conceptual foundation for Newton’s dynamics,
that the local frame of the solar system may be only approximately
had to be separated from the intuitive associations that suggested
inertial, Newton shows that the dynamical analysis of the system,
its initial plausibility, and had to be redefined in light of Newton’s
and the measurements of the relevant magnitudes, are secure
dynamical understanding of the relativity of motion. Only this pro-
against future enlargements of our very partial knowledge. Newton
cess of analysis enables the concept to play its necessary role in
had remarked, in the Scholium on space and time, that ‘‘it is possi-
Newton’s dynamical reasoning.
ble that there is no body truly at rest to which places and motions
may be referred’’ (Newton, 1999, p. 411); interpreted in light of la-
4. Newton’s analysis of causation
ter discussions such as this one of Jupiter, and in light of Newton’s
general strategy for considering systems of bodies that may also be
Newton’s work of philosophical analysis is most prominently
accelerating parts of larger systems, this remark does not appear as
displayed in his discussion of space, time, and motion. But it is also
poignant as it might seem when we first encounter it in the Prin-
evident in his discussions of causation, and action at a distance,
cipia. Its ultimate significance is that the lack of a material refer-
even when he might appear to be trying to set aside the controver-
ence-point for rest and motion is of no transcendental
sial philosophical question. Concerning action at a distance, for
significance, in a program in which states of motion are to be
example, remarks like those already quoted suggest such an at-
determined by dynamical reasoning—and then, only with respect
tempt, and the same might be said of his familiar remark about
to the local center-of-mass frame. The need for metaphysical neu-
his inability to discover the cause of gravity, namely, that ‘‘it is en-
trality and the requirement of empirical security are satisfied by
ough that gravity really exists and acts according to the laws that
the same conceptual analysis.
we have set forth and is sufficient to explain all the motions of
This analysis explicates a transformation of the old question of
the heavenly bodies and of our sea’’ (Newton, 1999, p. 943). Janiak
the system of the world, one that separates it from the intuitively
(2006) and Friedman (2009) have done much to illuminate the
obvious-seeming question that would have preoccupied, say,
metaphysical conceptions, and in particular the theological con-
Copernicus: ‘‘what body is at rest in the centre of the world?’’ To
ceptions, that form the philosophical context for this apparently
put it in transcendental terms, the condition of the possibility of
neutral talk. Yet it appears from other remarks that, here, too, New-
turning this question into an objective, scientific question, one
ton’s aim was not only to appear neutral on questions of causation,
capable of a determinate empirical answer rather than a hypothet-
but to articulate, through a careful analysis, a genuinely neutral
ical one, is that the notion of ‘‘rest in the centre’’ be reconceived as
understanding of causation with a foundation in the accepted laws
a dynamical notion; it is applicable, in any system of interacting
of motion. In the third ‘‘Rule of Reasoning’’ in the Principia, Newton
bodies, only to the system’s center of gravity, and even then it is
attempts another subtle dialectical argument against the mecha-
a relative notion, since that center may be at rest or in uniform mo-
nistic view, arguing in effect that the essential properties of mat-
tion. So the vestigial trace of the Copernican question becomes,
ter—even the ones taken for granted by mechanists, such as
‘‘which body (if any) is closest to the system’s center of grav-
impenetrability—are known only from the phenomena, and are
ity?’’—a question whose answer is completely independent of the
not understood on any deeper level. Hence gravity may be consid-
system’s motion in absolute space. A closely related explication,
ered at least as well understood as impenetrability, given that only
and consequent change in understanding, occurs almost simulta-
for the former is there evidence for extension to all bodies in the
neously in Newton’s conception of the ‘‘vis inertiae.’’ The manu-
universe: ‘‘the argument from phenomena will be even stronger
script in which the relativity principle first appears (Herivel,
for universal gravity than for the impenetrability of bodies, for
1965, p. 294) is also the last in which the vis inertiae is defined sim-
which, of course, we have not a single experiment, and not
ply as the power of a mass to maintain its state of motion or rest
even an observation, in the case of the heavenly bodies’’ (1999, p.
(Definition 2, ibid.; compare De Gravitatione, Definition 8, in
796).
Newton, 2004, p. 36.). As Herivel remarks (1965, pp. 27-8), to
In later remarks, Newton applies the same kind of analysis to
this point Newton maintains the intuitive notion of inertia as the
Leibniz’s conception of cause, in responding to Leibniz’s objections
‘‘vis insita,’’ the power that a body requires in order to maintain
to universal gravitation. Leibniz had argued that properties such as
its state of motion. In all subsequent definitions, however, in spite
hardness and gravity must be explicable by mechanical causes:
of the possibly misleading language of ‘‘force of inertia,’’ there is no
doubt that Newton has reconsidered this concept in light of his Thus, sir, you see why God could not create atoms, that is,
new appreciation of relativity. Instead of a force that maintains a bodies hard by their own nature, bodies of a primitive and insu-
body in its state, it is now a force that a body exerts only when perable hardness not to be accounted for; as he could not create
an external influence acts to change its state (Definition 12, ibid., planets that should move round of themselves, without any
p. 306). In the late draft De motu corporum (Herivel, 1965, p. cause that should prevent their removing through the tangent:
315), Newton gives the explicitly relativistic account that finally for a miracle at least must keep the planet in, and prevent the
appears in the Principia: separation of the parts of a hard body, if a mechanical or intel-
ligible cause does not do it. (Leibniz to Hartsoeker, 1712, in
[A] body exerts this force only during a change of its state,
Newton, 2004, p. 113)
caused by another force impressed upon it, and the exercise
of this force is, depending on viewpoint, both resistance and This is Leibniz’s familiar argument that Newton’s theory re-
impetus: resistance in so far as the body, in order to maintain quires a ‘‘perpetual miracle,’’ since it requires a planet to maintain,
its state, strives against the impressed force, and impetus in constantly as if by a law of nature, a path that deviates from
454 R. DiSalle / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013) 448–456
rectilinear motion without the operation of any intelligible
mechanical cause. But Newton’s reply reveals and attacks the
unexamined assumptions implicit in Leibniz’s conception of cause:
So then gravity and hardness must go for unreasonable occult
qualities unless they can be explained mechanically. And why
may not the same be said of the vis inertiae and the extension,
the duration, and mobility of bodies, and yet no man ever
attempted to explain these qualities mechanically, or took them
for miracles or supernatural things or fictions or occult quali-
ties. They are the natural, real, reasonable, manifest qualities
of all bodies seated in them by the will of God from the begin-
ning of creation and perfectly incapable of being explained
mechanically, and so may be the hardness of primitive particles
of bodies. (Newton, unpublished letter to Memoirs of Literature,
1712; Newton, 2004, p. 116)
Newton’s point is partly that the mechanists make assumptions
that are unintelligible by their own criteria, insofar as no mechan-
ical explanation can be given for inertia, or hardness, or even
extension; but he is also making the further point, that it is in
the nature of science generally to make phenomena intelligible
by means of fundamental principles that are, in themselves,
inexplicable.
The only possible philosophical justification for such principles
is the transcendental one, that they are presupposed by the pre-
vailing account of physical causation, and therefore implicated in
the successful application of that account to the phenomena. For
this reason, the laws of motion, themselves inexplicable, determine
a conception of cause, and empirical criteria for its application, that
makes the forces of nature intelligible. In particular, the laws legit-
imize the appeal to gravity as an intelligible cause, even if gravity
itself turns out to have a deeper cause: gravity is a cause because it
satisfies the constraints of the laws of motion, so that one can
determine its causal efficacy empirically, and measure it quantita-
tively, through the phenomena of motion.
But [Leibniz] goes on and tells us that God could not create plan-
ets that should move round of themselves without any cause
that should prevent their removing through the tangent. For a
miracle at least must keep the planet in. But certainly God could
create planets that should move round of themselves without
any other cause than gravity that should prevent their removing
through the tangent. For gravity without a miracle may keep
the planets in. And to understand this without knowing the
cause of gravity, is as good a progress in philosophy as to under-
stand the frame of a clock and the dependence of the wheels
upon one another without knowing the cause of the gravity of
the weight which moves the machine is in the philosophy of
clockwork. . .(Newton, unpublished letter to Memoirs of Litera-
ture, 1712; Newton, 2004, p. 117)
The last remark might be read as subtly mocking the mechani-
cal philosophy: it highlights the fact that the very epitome and em-
blem of mechanism—clockwork—depends for its motion on natural
powers that are, from the mechanistic perspective, still completely
mysterious. (This would apply, in the historical context, to the elas-
ticity of springs as well as to the gravity of pendulums.) But the
deeper point is that the very notion of a natural power is suffi-
ciently explicated by the laws of motion; the identification of such
natural powers, and their employment in the explanation of natu-
ral phenomena, is more vital to the progress of philosophy than
their reduction to some purportedly ‘‘intelligible’’ mode of action.
This is not to say that Newton ought to have, or even could have,
admitted the intelligibility of gravity as action at a distance. It only
means that he has sufficiently demonstrated its standing as a
known cause of observable effects, whatever its ultimate meta-
physical basis may be. In light of this, one might look at the remark
that ‘‘gravity does exist’’ as especially significant for Newton’s tran-
scendental project. He has shown that the laws of motion define a
conception of causality that is sufficiently rigorous and secure that
it allows us to admit the existence of causes, and to determine their
modes of action, even when our philosophical idea of an intelligible
interaction is not completely satisfied.
5. The transcendental method after Newton
Kant, it is well known, regarded Euler’s critique of Leibnizian
metaphysics, and his defense of Newtonian space and time, as a
crucial influence on his own developing conceptions, not only of
space and time in particular, but of the relation between physics
and metaphysics in general. At first glance, however, Euler’s dis-
cussion of space and time has a rather different philosophical as-
pect from Newton’s. In fact it appears to be a kind of
hypothetico-deductive metaphysics, emerging primarily from the
conviction that philosophical accounts of space and time must be
compatible, at least, with the known laws of physics. Indeed, Euler
characterizes his purpose explicitly in such terms: the basic laws of
mechanics are so well confirmed, he writes, that:
they absolutely must be founded in the nature of body; and
since it is metaphysics that concerns itself with the nature
and properties of bodies, the knowledge of these truths can
serve as a guide to its thorny researches. For we would be right
to reject in this science all reasonings and all ideas, however
well founded they might otherwise seem, that lead to conclu-
sions contrary to these truths; and we are authorized to admit
in this science no principles except those that can co-exist with
these very truths. (Euler, 1748, pp. 324–5)
The hypothetico-deductive aspect of his reasoning is clear from
his critique of the Leibnizian relational account of space and time,
in which he emphasizes the explanatory inadequacy of any such
account: there is nothing in the relative positions of bodies, he
points out, that can explain the spatio-temporal features of the
laws of motion, in particular the principle of inertia. The very no-
tion that bodies must preserve a given direction in space, unless
accelerated by an external cause, is inexplicable except without
reference to space itself. Interestingly, Euler considers what would
come to be known as the ‘‘Machian’’ explanation of inertia, that is,
the hypothesis that inertia in a given body arises from the influ-
ence of distant masses:
If they say that it is with respect to the fixed stars that one must
explain the principle of inertia, it would be quite difficult to
refute them, because the fixed stars, being themselves at rest,
are so far away from us that the bodies that are at rest with
respect to absolute space, as one regards it in mathematics,
are also regarded as at rest with respect to the fixed stars. But
beyond the fact that it would be a very strange proposition
and contrary to many other dogmas of metaphysics to say that
the fixed stars direct bodies in their inertia, this rule would also
be found to be false if we were allowed to apply it to bodies that
are close to a fixed star. (ibid., p. 328)
This remark echoes Newton’s remark in his response to Leibniz,
noting that the principle of inertia is implicitly taken as mechani-
cally inexplicable. But Euler suggests the further reflection that any
attempt to explain it—not merely to refer the motion of bodies to
the fixed stars, but to seek the origin of their inertia in some sort
of interaction with the stars—would be a radical departure from
any physical theory contemplated at the time. What’s more, he
is making a more subtle point, that since it is a central principle
of contemporary physics, the only alternative to taking it as
 R. DiSalle / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013) 448–456
fundamental is to explain it in some fashion. The latter is not only a
project that has not occurred to philosophers up to Euler’s time—all
of whom implicitly and explicitly appeal to the principle without
question, whatever their theories of space and time—but also an
extremely strange project according to any prevailing notions of
bodies and their interaction.6
In addition to viewing physical principles as constraints on
metaphysics, however, Euler also views the principles from a tran-
scendental perspective, insofar as he considers the conditions of
the possibility of employing the concepts that those principles em-
ploy. The difficulty with the Leibnizian metaphysical conception, in
Euler’s view, is not only that its hypotheses are difficult to recon-
cile with established truths of mechanics, but also that it denies
the very ground on which the basic concepts of mechanics are
intelligible. His argument, therefore, in this respect, is precisely
analogous to Newton’s argument about the vortex theory, namely
that the theory employs concepts (most notably centrifugal force)
that the theory’s proponents regard, officially, as philosophically
unintelligible. Euler claims that ‘‘if it were not possible to conceive
of [the principle of inertia] without mixing in the ideas of space
and time, that would be a sure mark that these ideas are not purely
imaginary, as the metaphysicians claim’’ (Euler, 1748, p. 326). In
Euler’s account of inertia—somewhat more clearly than in New-
ton’s—the concept of sameness of direction, and of a trajectory that
maintains the same direction over time, plays the central role. But
‘‘if space and place were nothing but the relation of co-existing
bodies, what would be the same direction?’’ (ibid, p. 330). The
characterization of uniform motion raises the same kind of concep-
tual difficulty: ‘‘since uniform motion describes equal spaces in
equal times, I ask, first, what are these equal spaces, in the opinion
of those who deny the reality of space?’’ (ibid, p. 331). And a sim-
ilar question arises in the case of time, for ‘‘if time is nothing else -
. . . but the order of successions, in what way can the equality of
time-intervals be rendered intelligible?’’ (ibid, p. 332). We can
see that, despite the generally hypothetico-deductive character of
his conception of the relation between metaphysics and physics,
Euler employs philosophical arguments against Leibnizian meta-
physics that have something of the transcendental character of
Newton’s. They imply that the concepts contained in the laws of
motion depend, in ways not appreciated by the Leibnizian meta-
physicians, on presuppositions about space and time—presupposi-
tions that cannot be referring to something purely imaginary, if the
laws of motion are supposed to hold for what is real.
Kant later commented that mathematical physicists, unwilling
to base fundamental physical principles on mere empirical con-
cepts—which would not provide a basis for the apodeictic certainty
that such laws ought to have—‘‘preferred to postulate them, with-
out inquiring into their a priori sources’’ (Kant, 1786, p. 472). Evi-
dently Newton and Euler were prominent among the physicists
whom Kant had in mind, but we can see that this characterization
is not entirely correct. It would be more correct to say that Newton,
at least (and less consistently, Euler), had a different conception of
the a priori sources of the laws of motion. To Kant, for whom ‘‘the
true metaphysics is taken from the essential nature of the thinking
faculty’’ (ibid.), the transcendental investigation of the laws of nat-
ure traces them ultimately to the conditions of the possibility of
experience in general. In the ‘‘relatively transcendental’’ approach
of Newton, the aim is more modest: to characterize the presuppo-
sitions that make his program of physical investigation possible,
and the associated concepts of causation and force intelligible. This
might be compared to what has since been characterized as the
‘‘relativized a priori’’ (cf. Friedman, 1999), insofar as it concerns
6
It may be argued that the general theory of relativity does provide an explanation of the principle of inertia, insofar as it permits a derivation of the principle from Einstein’s
field equations and some auxiliary assumptions (cf. Brown, 2005). This only reinforces Euler’s point, that the ‘‘relationalists’’ of his time unquestioningly accepted a dynamics in
which the principle is fundamental, and failed to see how the question of its explanation would necessarily arise, in a theory that was consistently ‘‘relational.’’
455
the presuppositions of a particular physical theory. But Newton’s
approach aims for a kind of objectivity that is eschewed by its
twentieth-century neo-Kantian counterpart. In the latter the rela-
tivized a priori comprises the principles that are taken as definitive
of a particular theoretical framework, that is, as a priori relative to
that axiomatic structure. In Newton’s case, the theoretical frame-
work and its axiomatic structure are the end products of his tran-
scendental analysis; the starting-point of the analysis is an
established practice of theoretical investigation, whose general
presuppositions Newton seeks to uncover, and to express in their
most general form. The presuppositions are relative, but only inso-
far as the security of the theoretical practice is relative to a given
historical state of knowledge of the world.
In the context of Newton’s broader empiricism, however, the
Kantian extension of these principles, to the status of transcenden-
tal conditions of the possibility of physical inquiry in general,
would not be warranted. In spite of Newton’s willingness to extend
inductive inferences as far as the evidence would allow (cf. Smith,
2002b), his awareness that the accepted principles and practice
could ultimately lead us astray, and therefore require revision, re-
quires him to acknowledge any extension of the principles, either
in scope or in exactness, as necessarily tentative. This circumstance
offers an illuminating interpretation of another noteworthy differ-
ence between Newton and Kant, regarding whether gravitation
should be regarded as immediate action at a distance (cf. DiSalle,
1990; Friedman, 1990). From Kant’s point of view it would seem
that Newton, having identified the laws of motion as criteria for
intelligible interactions, and having shown (in the Scholium to
the Laws of Motion) that the law of action and reaction applies
to attractions, had no good reason to resist the conclusion that
gravitational interaction is immediate, or to insist on the possibil-
ity of some eventual mechanical explanation. One could argue (cf.
Friedman, 2009; Janiak, 2008) that Newton’s resistance to this con-
clusion had something to do with the connections among his con-
ceptions of gravity, space, and the relation of God to both of these,
and this is likely at least part of the full historical explanation.
Alternatively, one could argue that it is the very generality of
Newton’s conception of interaction—as essentially defined by the
laws of motion—that prevents him from acknowledging what Kant
urges, namely, that the only viable interpretation of interaction by
gravity is as immediate action at a distance. Newton was well
aware that the application of the third law of motion to gravity
was extremely tentative, at best (cf. Smith, 2002b; Stein, 2002).
He was also aware, on the one hand, that gravity has characteris-
tics that distinguish it from mechanical interactions (acting ‘‘in
proportion to the quantity of solid matter,’’ rather than in propor-
tion to the surfaces of particles affected, cf. Newton, 1999, p. 943);
on the other hand, that the influence of gravity has a kind of geo-
metrical extension, and geometrical structure, in the space sur-
rounding a massive body: it can be understood as ‘‘a certain
efficacy diffused from the center through each of the surrounding
places in order to move the bodies that are in those spaces’’ (ibid.,
p. 407). Not envisioning a finite dynamical propagation of gravity
through space, Newton nonetheless appears to have thought of
gravity as having a kind of distribution in space, allowing for coun-
terfactual reasoning concerning the accelerations of any bodies
that might be placed there. This is an aspect of gravity that Newton
might reasonably have found difficult to comprehend through the
idea of immediate action at a distance. More important, he might
reasonably have regarded it as a reason to think that the mode of
action of gravity was not deducible from the phenomena at his dis-
posal. Indeed, in light of the post-Newtonian history of gravitation
456 R. DiSalle / Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013) 448–456
theory, the combination of attributes emphasized by Newton ap-
pears to include just those that, confronted with the invariance
and consequent limiting character of the speed of light, motivate
the general theory of relativity. Newton was not, in this case or
in general, willing to treat as an essential feature of the world a
property whose measurement was necessarily approximate, and
whose precise physical nature was correspondingly uncertain.
The notion of transcendental principles whose employment, and
whose consequences, depend so fundamentally on our knowledge
of empirical facts was precisely the aspect of the physicists’ view to
which Kant especially objected. But it was a notion central to New-
ton’s combination of philosophical and methodological analysis,
and it is a point on which the subsequent development of physics
seems to vindicate Newton over Kant. A proper general under-
standing of the role of transcendental principles in physics will
eventually come to terms with the ongoing interplay between
the conceptual necessities of current theory and the empirical con-
tingencies of theoretical progress.
References
Demopoulos, W. (2000). On the origin and status of our conception of number.
Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 41, 210–226.
DiSalle, R. (1990). The ‘‘essential properties’’ of matter, space, and time. In Bricker &
Hughes (Eds.). Philosophical Perspectives on Newtonian Science. Cambridge,
Massachussetts: MIT Press, 1990. (pp. 203–209).
DiSalle, R. (2006). Understanding space-time: The philosophical development of physics
from Newton to Einstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DiSalle, R. (2012). Analysis and intepretation in the philosophy of modern physics.
In M. Frappier, D. Brown, & R. DiSalle (Eds.), Analysis and interpretation in the
exact sciences: Essays in honour of William Demopoulos (pp. 1–18). Dordrecht:
Springer.
Euler, L. (1748). Réflexions sur l’espace et le temps. Histoire de l’Academie Royale
des sciences et belles lettres. 4, 324–333. Berlin: Académie Royale des sciences
et belles lettres.
Friedman, M. (1990). Kant and Newton: Why gravity is essential to matter. In
Bricker & Hughes (Eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Newtonian Science.
Cambridge, Massachussetts: MIT Press, 1990. (pp. 185–202).
Friedman, M. (1999). Reconsidering logical positivism. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Friedman, M. (2009). Newton and Kant on absolute space: From theology to
transcendental philosophy. In M. Bitbol, P. Kerszberg, & J. Petitot (Eds.),
Constituting objectivity: Transcendental perspectives on modern physics
(pp. 35–50). New York: Springer.
Herivel, J. (1965). The background to Newton’s Principia. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Janiak, A. (2008). Newton as philosopher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, I. (1786). Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft. Kants
Gesammelte Schriften, Akademie Ausgabe (Vol. 4, pp. 465–565). Berlin: Georg
Reimer, 1911.
Leibniz, G. W. (1962). Die mathematische Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Vol.
2). Hildesheim: Georg Olms (First published 1855).
Newton, I. (1952). Opticks. London, New York: Dover Publications (First published
1704).
Newton, I. (1969). The system of the world (A. Motte, Trans.) (2nd ed.). London:
Dawson’s (First published 1731).
Newton, I. (1999). The Principia: Mathematical principles of natural philosophy (I. B.
Cohen & A. Whitman, Trans.) (3rd ed.). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press (First published 1726).
Newton, I. (2004). Philosophical writings. In A. Janiak (Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Smith, G. E. (2002a). The methodology of the Principia. In Cohen & Smith (Eds.). The
Cambridge Companion to Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002. (pp. 138-73).
Smith, G. E. (2002b). From the phenomenon of the ellipse to an inverse-square
force: Why not? In D. Malament (Ed.), Reading natural philosophy: Essays in the
history and philosophy of science and mathematics to honor Howard Stein on his
70th Birthday (pp. 31–70). Chicago: Open Court Press.
Stein, H. (1967). Newtonian space-time. Texas Quarterly, 10, 174–200.
Stein, H. (2002). Newton’s metaphysics. In Cohen & Smith (Eds.). The Cambridge
Companion to Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
(pp. 256–307).