Philosophy of Space and Time: the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence Adam Caulton, Trinity 2017

The Rotating Bucket and the Globes

Essay topic

Do Newton’s discussions of the rotating bucket experiment and of the globes thought-
experiment provide the basis of an argument for the existence of absolute space?

Core Reading

• I. Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (London, 1687): the “Scholium to

Definition VIII”, paragraphs 8-14. Reproduced and translated in H.G. Alexander (ed.),
The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Manchester University Press, 1956), pp. 152-160, in J.
Earman, World Enough and Space-Time (MIT, 1989) pp. 20-26, and in N. Huggett (ed.)
Space from Zeno to Einstein (MIT Press, 1999), ch. 7 (and in a great many other places).
Available online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-stm/scholium.html .
• J. Barbour, Absolute or Relative Motion? Volume 1: The Discovery of Dynamics (Cambridge,
1989). Reprinted as The Discovery of Dynamics (Oxford, 2001). Chapter 12.5.
• J. Earman, World Enough and Space-Time (MIT, 1989), pp. 61-73 and 81-84.
• R. Rynasiewicz, “By their Properties, Causes and Effects: Newton’s Scholium on Time,
Space, Place and Motion – I. The Text”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 26
(1995), pp. 133-153. Available online via TDNet.

Further Reading

• N. Huggett, “Why manifold substantivalism is probably not a consequence of classical

mechanics”, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13 (1999), pp. 17-34.
• N. Huggett (ed.) Space from Zeno to Einstein (MIT Press, 1999), commentaries to chapter
7. Sections 4-5.
• R. Laymon, “Newton’s Bucket Experiment”, Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (1978),
pp. 399-413. Available online via TDNet.
• P. Horwich, “On the Existence of Time, Space and Space-Time”, Nous 12 (1978), pp.
397-419. Section III. Available online via TDNet.
• T. Maudlin, “Buckets of Water and Waves of Space: Why Spacetime is Probably a
Substance”, Philosophy of Science 60 (1993), pp. 183-203, esp. sections 1-4.