III.3 - The General Scholium

Summary

In 1713 Newton finally published the second edition of the Principia. Its changes included not only the new Rules of Philosophising discussed in III.1, but also the very famous General Scholium. This chapter provides the fullest ever contextualisation and interpretation of that text. It charts in detail how Newton’s dispute with Leibniz led him to double-down on his anti-metaphysical stance, and to declare many questions – not least concerning causation – to be beyond the boundaries of legitimate natural philosophy (now described as ‘experimental’). Second, it shows that Newton’s talk of the ‘God of Dominion’ was derived from Samuel Clarke’s recent writings – in line with Clarke’s position, Newton had now moved away from his earlier neo-Arianism into a position of trinitarian nescience in which all speculation on the subject, with consubstantialist or Arian, was dismissed as ‘metaphysical’. The role played by the ‘God of Dominion’ was simply the standard refrain of Newtonian natural theology: that the true conception of the divine that could be predicated from nature was not of an impersonal metaphysical first principle, but of a living God. Finally, Newton’s talk of God’s ‘substantial’ omnipresence was again not a concession to metaphysical thinking, but a residue of yet another polemic devised by his friend Samuel Clarke, this time against the freethinker Anthony Collins.