Abstract
In 1720, Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande wrote Physicis elementa mathematica, experimentis confirmata. Sive introductio ad philosophiam Newtonianam (An Introduction to Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy; or, Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, Confirmed by Experiments). Although he was undoubtedly one of the most important popularizers of Newtonian physics, experimental methodology and epistemology in the 1720s, his empirical claim somehow backfired: in applying tenets of Newtonian methodology, he was ultimately led to validate the Leibnizian principle of the conservation of living forces, contrary to the Newtonians. This conclusion invited a great deal of anger, particularly from Samuel Clarke who, in a volume of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society from 1729, accused ’s Gravesande of having written the book with the aim of “darkening Newton’s philosophy”. In a reply, which ’s Gravesande published as a supplement to his Essay upon a New Theory of the Collision of Bodies, he developed a hybrid methodology that relied upon both experimentation and reason. In my paper, I shall thoroughly analyse this interesting combination.
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Notes
- 1.
Iltis (1973), 344.
- 2.
As is well known, in 1720, ’s Gravesande published the first volume of his major treatise Physices elementa mathematica experimentis confirmata, sive introductio ad philosophiam Newtonianam (the second was published in 1721). In 1723, he decided to publish a compendium called Philosophiae newtonianae institutiones, in which he added a chapter on the measurement of living forces (’s Gravesande 1720b–21, 1723).
- 3.
Israel (2001), 524: “Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande, the Leiden professor who did more than anyone else to engineer the triumph of English philosophy and science in the Dutch mainstream Enlightenment in the 1720s, was essentially a Newtonian who turned to Locke only in the 1730s and, even then, never gave much prominence to his ideas.”
- 4.
Feingold (2004), 72: “His lectures and his publications [...] rendered Newton’s abstruse mathematical physics into visual and dramatical experimental demonstrations”.
- 5.
Clarke (1728), especially 382.
- 6.
Clarke commonly read the discrepancies between what he himself considered to be Newtonian orthodoxy, as ignorance or misunderstandings of Newtonian concepts; concepts not “rightly” used by particular authors.
- 7.
Steffen Ducheyne very convincingly shows how the omission of the 4th regulae philosophandi in ’s Gravesande’s Physices Elementa is not accidental, but a conscious decision to develop “a major epistemological and methodological difference” from Newton (see Ducheyne 2014b, 100). It is also important to observe, as Ducheyne did, the difference of meanings between Newton and ’s Gravesande.
- 8.
- 9.
Ducheyne (2012).
- 10.
Cassirer (1951), 61.
- 11.
“Je ne suis pas tout a fait pour le Criterium de des Cartes. Parce que dans la geometrie mesme on s’imagine souvent de comprendre tres clairement des choses qui sont fausses. Il y reste donc tousjours a scavoir si l’on a compris clairement et distinctement, ce qui est. assez douteux dans de longues demonstrations. Et de la naissent les paralogismes. Je serais donc plus pour les divers degrez de vraisemblance, laquelle dans certaines rencontres est si grande que d’estre quelque fois comme 100,000,000,000 et plus contre un, que le vray ou le faux d’une proposition, et qu’en de certaines choses cela va comme a l’infini.” (Christian Huygens to Burcher de Volder, September 1691, in: Huygens (1888–1950), vol. X, 739, letter no. 2701a).
- 12.
Especially regarding his interpretation of the absence of miraculous acts in the Cartesian world.
- 13.
It seems to be a paradox because of all the quarrels triggered between Leibniz and Newton.
- 14.
Gerhard Wiesenfeldt argued in his book Leerer Raum in Minervas Haus: Experimentalle Naturlehre an Der Universitat Leiden, 1675–1715 that this kind of “Theatrum physicum” did mark the end of Cartesianism (Wiesenfeldt 2002, 90). On the contrary for some commentators, it means the beginning of a Cartesian empiricism (see, for example, van Bunge 2013 and Nyden 2013). My point is slightly distinct: I argue that there were many different experimental traditions before the introduction of Newton’s philosophy (without presupposing the life or the death of Cartesianism), precisely because it seems to me that this kind of categorization darkens the historical interpretation of the thought.
- 15.
See Lunsingh Scheurleer et al. (1975).
- 16.
See Brunet (1926), 40; see also de Volder’s eulogy by Jean Leclerc: “Il fut cette même année en Angleterre, où il demeura quelques semaines, pour y voir les habiles gens de ce païs-là. Je ne sai s’il fut content de son voyage, car je ne me souviens pas de lui en avoir rien ouï dire. Il avoit un peu apris d’Anglois et il en savoit assez, pour entendre les livres écrits en cette Langue; sur tout ceux qui traitent de matieres, qui concernoient ses Etudes; c’est à dire la Philosophie et les Mathematiques.
Ce fut apparemment la Société Royale d’Angleterre, toute occupée à rechercher la Vérité, par la voie des Experiences, et peutêtre l’exemple de l’illustre Mr Boyle, qui en étoit comme l’ame et qui faisoit une grande dépense en son particulier pour cela, qui firent naître à Mr. de Volder la pensée de proposer à Mrs. les Curateurs de l’Academie de faire quelque dépense pour la même chose. Il le leur persuada et ces Mrs. acheterent un endroit près de l’Academie, qu’ils firent disposer en forme de théatre, afin que les Etudians pussent voir commodément les Experiences de Physique et de Méchanique, que Mr. de Volder feroit devant eux” (Leclerc 1709, 362–363).
- 17.
- 18.
See ’s Gravesande (1736).
- 19.
- 20.
Gori (1972), 181.
- 21.
- 22.
Ducheyne extensively analyzes this conception of analogy “proven” by God: “analogy is guaranteed by the fact that God governs the universe by invariable laws”.
- 23.
At this point, it is very interesting to note how ’s Gravesande plays with the relationship between certainty and probability established by John Locke (Locke 1706, chap. XVI, sec. 6).
- 24.
In this perspective, it seems important to place ’s Gravesande’s approach into the general perspective defined by Ian Hacking and Paolo Rossi, as ably summarized by Barbara J. Shapiro. The main point is the link between empiricism and probability: “Ian Hacking’s study of the origins of mathematical probability were linked to empiricism, and particularly to medicine and astrology, which made diagnoses, prognoses and predictions on the basis of observable signs. For Hacking, signs play a particularly important part in the transformation from probability in the ‘low sciences’ to mathematics. Because his primary concern is mathematics rather than philosophy or natural sciences, and his focus is on the Continent rather than England, Hacking tends to slight the role of the Royal Society. Nevertheless, both Hacking, by emphasizing astrology and medicine, and Paolo Rossi, by emphasizing technology, have made important contributions to our understanding of how experience and probability of the ‘low sciences’ made inroads into conceptions of scientific philosophy. They help to show us that natural science not only was freeing itself from the unattainable goals of scientific demonstration but was helping to shape a new mathematics more suited to scientific inquiry.” (Shapiro 1983, 38).
- 25.
In the Acta Eruditorum, Mars 1686, 132.
- 26.
“Il y a donc une grande différence entre la force motrice et la quantité de mouvement, à tel point que l’une ne peut être estimée à partir de l’autre [...]. Il apparaît de là que la force doit être estimée à partir de l’effet qu’elle peut produire, par exemple, la hauteur à laquelle elle peut élever un corps pesant d’une grandeur et d’une espèce déterminée.” (Leibniz 1860, 118).
- 27.
Duchesneau (1994).
- 28.
Iltis (1971).
- 29.
Brown (1984).
- 30.
Nyden (2014), 218.
- 31.
Pierre Costabel in his paper “’s Gravesande et les forces vives ou des vicissitudes d’une expérience soi-disant cruciale” was the first to show that ’s Gravesande had really performed experiments, and secondly that what he did was not really a crucial experiment (see Costabel 1964).
- 32.
“elle ne mène pas à des règles différentes de celles qui sont connues et que l’expérience a confirmées, mais on trouvera ici ces règles démontrées d’une manière différente de celles qu’elles ont été jusqu’à présent, et on verra comment d’un Principe contraire à l’expérience, les Philosophes sont parvenus à ces règles, par un raisonnement dans lequel ils ont négligé de faire attention à tout ce qui devait être considéré, sans quoi il était impossible de parvenir à la vérité par le chemin qu’ils avaient pris.” (’s Gravesande 1722, 2–3).
- 33.
Ducheyne (2014a), 37.
- 34.
Clarke (1728), 382.
- 35.
Ibid., 385.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
’s Gravesande (1722), 3.
- 38.
Clarke (1728), 381–382.
- 39.
As argued by Steffen Ducheyne: “[eighteenth century scholars] are gradually freeing Enlightenment science from its ‘Newtonian straight jacket’” (Ducheyne 2014a, 31).
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Rey, AL. (2018). The Experiments of Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande: A Validation of Leibnizian Dynamics Against Newton?. In: Bodenmann, S., Rey, AL. (eds) What Does it Mean to be an Empiricist?. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 331. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69860-1_5
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