New Trends in Newtonian Scholarship: Benefits and Pitfalls

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

¹See, in particular, S. Mandelbrote (ed.), Newton and Newtonianism (Special Issue), Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 35 (2004), 415–663; J. E. Force and R. Popkin (eds), Newton and Religion. Context, Nature and Influence (Dordrecht, 1999) and J. E. Force and R. Popkin (eds), The Books of Nature and Scripture: Recent Essays on Natural Philosophy, Theology and Biblical Criticism in the Netherlands of Spinoza's Time and the British Isles of Newton's Time (Dordrecht, 1994).

²Mandelbrote (note 1); Force and Popkin, 1999 and 1994 (note 1,). For other recent work, see D. B. Haycock, William Stukeley: Science, Religion and Archaeology (Woodbridge, 2002); S. Snobelen, ‘Isaac Newton, Heretic: The Strategies of a Nicodemite’, British Journal for the History of Science, 32 (1999), 381–419; L. Stewart, ‘Seeing through the Scholium: Religion and the Reading of Newton in the Eighteenth Century’, History of Science, 36 (1996), 123–65.

³The Newton and Newtonianism special issue of Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science is more wide ranging in scope. See, in particular: T. Ahnert, ‘Newtonianism in Early Enlightenment Germany 1720–1750: Metaphysics and the Critique of Dogmatic Philosophy’, Mandelbrote (note 1), 471–91; E. G. E. van der Wall, ‘Newtonianism and Religion in the Netherlands’, Mandelbrote (note 1), 493–514 and J. F. Baillon, ‘Early Eighteenth-Century Newtonianism: The Huguenot Contribution’, Mandelbrote (note 1), 533–48.

⁴F. Manuel, Isaac Newton Historian (Cambridge, 1963) and The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford, 1974). For an early analysis of Newton's belief in a prisca sapienta see J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, ‘Newton and the Pipes of Pan’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 21 (1966), 108–43. For more recent studies, see R. Iliffe, ‘Those “Whose Business it is to Cavill”: Newton's Anti-Catholicism’, Force and Popkin, 1999 (note 1), 97–119; R. Markely, ‘Newton, Corruption and the Tradition of Universal History’, Force and Popkin, 1999 (note 1), 121–43; K. J. Knoespel, ‘Interpretive Strategies in Newton's Theologiae Gentiles origines philosophiae’, Force and Popkin, 1999 (note 1), 179–202.

⁵For studies on eighteenth century anti-Newtonianism, see G. N. Cantor, ‘Revelation and the Cyclical Cosmos of John Hutchinson’, in J. L. Jordanova and R. Porter (eds), Images of the Earth: Essays in the History of the Environmental Sciences (Chalfont St. Giles, 1979), 3–22; C. B. Wilde, ‘Hutchinsonianism, Natural Philosophy and Religious Controversy in Eighteenth Century England’, History of Science, 18 (1980), 1–24; L. Stewart, ‘Samuel Clarke, Newtonianism and the Factions of Post-Revolutionary England’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 42 (1981), 53–72; M. Benjamin, ‘Medicine, Morality and the Politics of Berkeley's Tar-Water’, in A. Cunningham and R. French (eds), The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1990), 165–93.

⁶For important comments in this respect, see Rob Iliffe, ‘Abstract Considerations: Disciplines and the Incoherence of Newton's Natural Philosophy’, Mandelbrote (note 1), 427–54.

⁷Indeed, English Tory High-Anglicans who were vocal opponents of religious dissent were often enthusiastic supporters of Newton. See A. Guerrini, ‘The Tory Newtonians: Gregory, Pitcairne and their Circle’, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986), 288–311; R. J. J. Martin, ‘Explaining John Freind's History of Physick’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 19 (1988), 399–418. Supporters of the anti-Newtonian John Hutchinson often separated Newton from the heresies of his followers. See N. Aston, ‘From Personality to Party: the Creation and Transmission of Hutchinsonianism 1725–1750’, Mandelbrote (note 1), 625–44.