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Matter and Spirit as Natural Symbols in eighteenth-century British natural philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

C. B. Wilde
C. B. Wilde
Affiliation:
3, Midmoor Walk, Dam Head Estate, Blackley, Manchester.
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Extract

During the course of the eighteenth century important changes occurred in the conception of matter held by British natural philosophers. Historians of science have described these changes in different ways, but certain common features can be abstracted from the more recent accounts. First, there was a movement away from Newtonian matter theory, which saw all matter as the various organizations of homogeneous particles and the forces of attraction and repulsion acting between them. In place of this theory increasing favour was shown towards a more empirical or ‘chemical’ approach to matter which assumed the existence of several essentially distinct types of matter each endowed with different specific qualities or properties. Second, there was an increasing tendency to accept activity as a property of matter itself rather than to ascribe it to immaterial forces.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , July 1982 , pp. 99 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1982

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References

An earlier version of this paper was read to a joint meeting of the British Society for the History of Science and the Sociology of Science Study Group of the British Sociological Association, on ‘New perspectives in the history and sociology of scientific knowledge’, University of Bath, March 1980.

1 Throughout this paper the word ‘Newtonian’ will be used to designate the explanation of phenomena through the use efforces of attraction or repulsion.

2 The first change is described in Thackray, Arnold, Atoms and powers: an essay on Newtonian matter theory and the development of chemistry, Cambridge, Mass., 1970CrossRefGoogle Scholar; despite significant differences of emphasis, Schofield, Robert E.'s Mechanism and materialism: British natural philosophy in an age of reason, Princeton, 1970Google Scholar, is also in general agreement with this. For the second change, see Heimann, P. M. and McGuire, J. E., ‘Newtonian forces and Lockean powers: concepts of matter in eighteenth-century thought’, Historical studies in the physical sciences, 1971, 3, 233–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Heimann, P. M., ‘“Nature is a perpetual worker”: Newton's aether and eighteenth-century natural philosophy’, Ambix, 1973, 20, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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5 The work of Mary Douglas is currently the strongest anthropological influence. See Bloor, David, ‘Polyhedra and the abominations of Leviticus’, British journal for the history of science, 1978, 11, 245–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the papers by Steven Shapin and Barry Barnes, and Brian Wynne, in Barnes, and Shapin, (eds.), Natural order: historical studies of scientific culture, London and Beverley Hills, 1979.Google Scholar Robin Horton's traditional thought and western science’, in Young, M. F. D. (ed.), Knowledge and control: new directions for the sociology of education, London, 1967, pp. 137–71Google Scholar, has also been much cited and discussed.

6 Of course Newton himself tried to devise a purely mechanical explanation of universal gravitation in a letter to Boyle of 1679, but was later forced to abandon it. This account of Newton's ideas of matter/spirit relations is based on Newton's ‘mature’ thought, but I believe it is also consistent with his earlier views. For a fuller account of Newton's ideas on the status of forces, see McGuire, J. E., ‘Force, active principles, and Newton's invisible realm’, Ambix, 1968, 15, 154–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and also Westfall, R. W., Force in Newton's physics: the science of dynamics in the seventeenth century, London & New York, 1971.Google Scholar

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12 Cotes argued that ‘either gravity must have a place amongst the primary qualities of all bodies, or extension, mobility, and impenetrability must not’, ibid., i, p. xxvi. Cajori enumerates the insertions made by Newton into the second edition of the Principia to declare his agnosticism on the cause of gravity; ibid., ii, 634.

13 This ‘proof’ grew out of Newton's four letters to Bentley which Bentley followed verbatim on occasions in his A confutation of atheism from the origin and frame of the world, London, 1693Google Scholar, which constituted his 6th–8th Boyle lectures for 1692. See especially his 7th lecture, pp. 28–31.

14 In his Boyle lectures, Clarke argued that gravity ‘cannot possibly be the result of any Motion originally impressed on Matter, but must of necessity be caused … by something which penetrates the very Solid Substance of all Bodies … Which is, by the way, an evident demonstration … that the world depends every Moment on some Superior Being, for the Preservation of its Frame’; A discourse concerning the being and attributes of God, the obligations of natural religion, and the truth and certainty of the Christian revelation, 7th edn., London, 1728, p. 158.Google Scholar See also Brampton Gurdon's Boyle Lectures, The pretended difficulties in natural or revealed religion no excuse for infidelity, London, 1723, pp. 173–4Google Scholar, and Baxter, Andrew, An enquiry into the nature of the human soul, London, 1733, p. 13.Google Scholar

15 See p. 105, below.

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18 Ibid., pp. 23–4.

19 Ibid., pp. 23–4, 35.

20 Ibid., p. 20. In his third letter, Leibniz insists that God is not present to things by his situation but by his essence; ibid., p. 28.

21 Leibniz did not of course believe with Descartes that matter is only extended substance, but he did hold that extension enters into the essence or nature of bodies; see Latta, Robert (ed.), Leibniz: the Monadology and other writings, Oxford, 1898, p. 28nGoogle Scholar. In his third letter to Clarke, Leibniz denied that the soul is extended; see Alexander, , op. cit. (17), pp. 28–9.Google Scholar

22 On Newton's conception of nature as a perpetual worker, see Heimann, , ‘“Nature is a perpetual worker”’, op. cit. (2)Google Scholar. My interpretation of the relations between matter, spirit, and nature in the Leibniz-Clarke debate differs significantly from Heimann's treatment of these issues in his op. cit. (4). It appears to me that Heimann has not sufficiently distinguished between matter and nature in arguing that Newton denied that activity is intrinsic to the natural order (ibid., p. 273), and this leads him to the paradoxical assertions that ‘In denying that the activity of nature was intrinsic to the natural order, Newton emphasized the role of active principles … conceived as the manifestation of God's causal agency in nature’, and that ‘active principles were regarded as “general Laws of Nature” rather than as divine abrogations of the laws of nature’ (ibid., p. 274). From Heimann's own account it is clear that Newton did conceive of nature as being active, but that he did not believe matter to be so. If there was a ‘shift in theological sensibility’, as Heimann claims, then it was not from the view that activity was extrinsic to the natural order to the view that it was intrinsic to it, but from the view that all activity in nature had a spiritual cause to the view that matter itself could be defined as active substance, thus abrogating the need for spiritual agencies in nature. However, this claim itself would, I believe, be far too sweeping; see p. 108, above.

23 John Hutchinson (1674–1737) was a land steward to the Duke of Somerset who was introduced to the study of natural philosophy by John Woodward, c 1700. He claimed to have derived his own system of natural philosophy from the Bible by reading it in the original Hebrew without points. His most important ‘discovery’ was that all the phenomena of nature could be explained by reference to a mechanical fluid which he called ‘the Names’. This fluid acted in three forms which appeared to the senses as fire, light, and air. He argued that the fluid was an analogical representation of the Trinity. Fire was centred at the sun where, by its great agitation, it put the surrounding ‘air’ into the action of light which then streamed out to the periphery of the world system ‘congealing’ back into air as it did so. The outermost limits of the world were circumscribed by an impenetrable barrier of congealed atoms of light from which the air was forced back to the sun where it was once more put into the action of light. By this perpetual circulation, the original motion put into the world by God was preserved. Hutchinson used the expansive pressure of the fluid throughout the world system to explain gravity, cohesion, and many other phenomena. For further details, see Kuhn, A. J., ‘Glory or gravity: Hutchinson versus Newton’, Journal of the history of ideas, 1961, 22, 303–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cantor, G. N., ‘Revelation and the cyclical cosmos of John Hutchinson’, in Jordanova, L. J. and Porter, Roy (eds.), Images of the earth: essays in the history of the environmental sciences, Chalfont St Giles, 1979, pp. 3–22Google Scholar; Wilde, C. B., ‘Hutchinsonianism, natural philosophy and religious controversy in eighteenth century Britain’, History of science, 1980, 18, 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 The philosophical and theological works of John Hutchinson, Esq., 3rd edn., 12 vols., London, 1748–1749Google Scholar: ‘A treatise of power essential and mechanical’, v, 147–8Google Scholar; and ‘The covenant in the cherubim’, vii, 329Google Scholar. All subsequent references to Hutchinson's work will be made to this edition.

25 Ibid., ‘An essay toward a natural history of the Bible’, i, 13.

26 Ibid., ‘A treatise of power’, v, 253–4, 282–93.

27 On the meaning of ‘High Church’, see p. 122, above.

28 Toland, John, Pantheisticon: or the form of celebrating the Socratic society …, London, 1751, p. 71Google Scholar. Here Toland alludes to Newton's assertion that all things are contained and move in God, in attempting to identify God with nature.

29 Ibid., p. 59. Toland argued that ‘…Matter itself cannot cohere, unless contained by some Force …’. In his Letters to Serena, London, 1704, p. 201Google Scholar, he also referred to Newton's conjecture in the scholium to definition VIII of the Principia that perhaps there is nothing absolutely at rest. He used this as part of his argument that motion is essential to matter.

30 Hutchinson, , op. cit. (24)Google Scholar, ‘A treatise of power’, v, 25, 148–9, 184–5Google Scholar. For Hutchinson it was the reverse: the power to act where He is not present was what distinguished God from mere mechanical agents.

31 Ibid., pp. 12–13, 22, 24, 84.

32 Ibid., ‘Glory mechanical’, xi, 224Google Scholar. For example, because the fluid became denser as it receded from the sun, the planets were pushed towards the sun, from the denser to the rarer medium. Light permeating the interstices of bodies was the cause of fluidity, while the pressure of the air from without was the cause of cohesion. On ‘the Names’, see n. 23, above.

33 On Newton and the possibility of transmutation, see McGuire, , op. cit. (8), p. 186Google Scholar; McGuire, J. E., ‘Transmutation and immutability: Newton's doctrine of physical properties’, Ambix, 1967, 14, 69–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter, The foundations of Newton's alchemy; or ‘The hunting of the greene lyon’, Cambridge, 1976, pp. 218–20.Google Scholar

34 Newton, I., Opticks, 4th edn., London, 1730, pp. 324 f.Google Scholar

33 Hutchinson, , op. cit. (24), ‘A treatise of power’, v, 139 f.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., p. 141.

37 Hutchinson used the words ‘atoms’, ‘units’, and ‘corpuscles’ interchangeably. He considered that different types of bodies were composed of corpuscles of different shapes and sizes, and he clearly thought transmutation impossible. The fluid of ‘the Names’ was distinguished from all other matter, its corpuscles being finer and not subject to gravity, since they were the cause of gravity.

38 On Newton's matter theory, see Thackray, , op. cit. (2), chapter IIGoogle Scholar; and Thackray, A., ‘Matter in a nutshell: Newton's Opticks and eighteenth-century chemistry’, Ambix, 1968, 15, 154–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Baxter, , op. cit. (14)Google Scholar. This was perhaps the classic Newtonian attempt to prove the existence of God by showing that gravity admits of no other cause.

40 On these developments in Newtonian matter theory, see Heimann, and McGuire, , op. cit. (2), p. 240Google Scholar; and Thackray, , op. cit. (2), pp. 176–8.Google Scholar

41 On indivisibility, see Thackray, ibid., pp. 65–8, 82; and idem, op. cit. (38).

42 Hélène Metzger detected this change of mood in her Attraction universelle et religion naturelle chez quelques commentateurs anglais de Newton, Paris, 1938, p. 200.Google Scholar

43 See Knight, Gowin, An attempt to demonstrate that all the phenomena in nature may be explained by two simple active principles, attraction and repulsion, London, 1754Google Scholar, passim; Price, Richard, Four dissertations, 2nd edn., London, 1768Google Scholar, dissertation I, ‘On providence’, passim, especially pp. 28 ff, 40 ff; on Robison, see Morrell, J. B., ‘Professors Robison and Playfair, and the theophobia gallica: natural philosophy, religion and politics in Edinburgh, 1795–1815’, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, 1971, 26, 43–63 (48)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Gregory and Stewart, see Barfoot, Michael, ‘Causation and context: two responses to Hume in late eighteenth-century Scotland’, paper presented to the tenth Hume Conference, Trinity College, Dublin, 08 1981.Google Scholar

44 Clayton, Robert, An essay on spirit wherein the doctrine of the Trinity is considered in the light of nature and reason…, London, 1751, p. 9Google Scholar. Clayton was an intimate friend of Samuel Clarke. He obtained his first bishopric in 1729 through Clarke's influence with Queen Caroline. His continual attacks on the doctrine of the Trinity led to an action against him by the Irish prelates, but he died of a nervous fever while proceedings against him were in progress.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid., p. 11.

47 Ibid., p. 12.

48 Ibid., p. 24.

49 Like Toland, , Clayton, considered ‘All Nature … to be animated, or alive’Google Scholar; ibid., p. 12.

50 Priestley, J., Disquisitions relating to matter and spirit, London, 1777, p. 17.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., introduction, p. xxxviii. Priestley argued that an atom must be divisible (p. 6), and that the nutshell theory shows how little the properties of matter depend upon the idea of its being solid substance (p. 17). By replacing the notion of solid substance with that of repulsive power, Priestley endeavoured to remove the penetrability/impenetrability distinction between spirit and matter (pp. 4–5, 15, 18).

52 Ibid., p. 8. Priestley attacked Baxter with arguments similar to those used by Leibniz against Clarke: to ascribe the powers of matter to God was to deny any distinction between God and nature (pp. 8–9).

53 Ibid., p. 17.

54 Ibid., pp. 18, 60 f, 74 f.

55 Ibid., p. 49.

56 Ibid., p. 108.

57 Hutchinson, , op. cit. (24), ‘A treatise of power’, v, 101–2.Google Scholar

58 Cf. n. 23, above.

59 Andrew Wilson (1718–92) was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh (1764). He worked in Newcastle and London before being appointed physician to the medical asylum in London some time before 1777. His chief works of natural philosophy were The principles of natural philosophy, with some remarks upon the principles of the Newtonian philosophy …, London, 1758Google Scholar, and Short observations on the principles of moving powers assumed by the present system of philosophy, London, 1764.Google Scholar

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61 Idem., The principles of natural philosophy, op. cit. (59), p. 4.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., p. 5.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid., p. 6.

65 Ibid., p. 56.

66 Ibid., p. 58.

67 Ibid. For Hutchinsonian cosmology, cf. n. 23, above.

68 Ibid., pp. 55–9.

69 Ibid., pp. 33–4.

70 Ibid., pp. 38–42.

71 Ibid., p. 41.

72 Ibid., p. 44.

73 Ibid.

74 Jones, William, Physiological disquisitions, or, discourses on the natural philosophy of the elements, pp. 5–8Google Scholar. Jones argued that to invest matter with motive properties of any kind would be to make it an animal as the Stoics had, a doctrine which, he claimed, had been revived by Clayton. Jones had already provided the most comprehensive reply to Clayton, 's Essay in his A full answer to the essay on spirit, London, 1753.Google Scholar

75 Jones, , Physiological disquisitions, op. cit. (74), p. 8.Google Scholar

76 Ibid., p. 9.

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid., pp. 3–5, 9.

79 Ibid., p. 2.

80 See n. 23, above.

81 Jones, , Physiological disquisitions, op. cit. (74), p. 5.Google Scholar

82 For the Hutchinsonians, the universe was not only finite, but also man-centred—as one would expect from a group whose religious sentiments focused on the unique events of the Fall and the salvation of man through Christ. This is in contrast with Newtonian speculations on the plurality of worlds.

83 Heimann, and McGuire, , op. cit. (2), p. 306.Google Scholar

84 Adams adopted many of Hutchinson's ideas, including the notion of a fire–light–air plenum, but he does not satisfy my definition of a Hutchinsonian as set out in Wilde, , op. cit. (23), p. 15Google Scholar: he nowhere indicated that he believed that the mechanism of the universe could be read directly out of Scripture.

85 Adams, G., Lectures on natural philosophy, 5 vols., London, 1794, i, 21.Google Scholar

86 Ibid., i, preface, p. x.

87 Ibid., iv, 33.

88 Ibid., p. 69.

89 For an interesting account of the reaction in Scotland to the French Revolution, see Morrell, , op. cit. (43).Google Scholar

90 Douglas, M., Natural symbols: explorations in cosmology, Aylesbury, 1973.Google Scholar

91 Ibid., p. 18.

92 Ibid., p. 185.

93 For alternative approaches, see the works cited in n. 5, above.

94 Barnes, Barry and Shapin, Steven, ‘Where is the edge of objectivity?’, British journal for the history of science, 1977, 10, 61–6 (64).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95 Douglas, M., Implicit meanings: essays in anthropology, London, 1975Google Scholar, does not offer a systematic approach to the formulation of cosmologies. It is a collection of essays most of which antedate Natural symbols. Her other major work on this subject, Purity and danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo, London, 1966Google Scholar, only deals with those societies which have a strong sense of boundary between the sacred and profane, which, as she points out in Natural symbols, by no means includes all societies. The latter work seeks also to comprehend those societies with a weak sense of boundary. It is, therefore, her most systematic and comprehensive attempt to date to examine the relations between social structure and the formulation of cosmologies.

96 The account that follows is abstracted from various essays by Basil Bernstein collected in his Class, codes and control: theoretical studies towards a sociology of language, 3 vols., London, 1974, i.Google Scholar

97 Ibid., p. 184.

98 Ibid., p. 176.

99 Douglas, , op. cit. (90), p. 80.Google Scholar

100 Ibid., p. 82.

101 Ibid., p. 84.

102 Ibid, p. 83.

103 Ibid., p. 84.

104 Ibid., p. 86.

105 Ibid.

106 Ibid., p. 87.

107 Ibid., p. 174.

108 Ibid., p. 91.

109 It will be obvious from the above account that the classification of reality is only partly determined by social structure, since one type of social structure (strong grid) produces two different types of cosmology. The crucial factor seems to be the social experience of individuals.

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115 Douglas would not expect all social forms to fit neatly into one of the three structures outlined above. She is anxious to stress that the grid/group diagram enables one to handle social change, and hence intermediate positions between the ones she has described.

116 Jacob, , op. cit. (114), p. 65Google Scholar, and passim; see also Dahm, John J., ‘Science and apologetics in the early Boyle Lectures’, Church history, 1970, 39, 172–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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120 See Wilde, op. cit. (23), pp. 7–11.Google Scholar

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124 Hutchinson, , op. cit. (24), ‘The state of nature…’, xii, 19.Google Scholar

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126 Dictionary of national biography, xvii, 1235–7.Google Scholar

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130 Hutchinson, , op. cit. (24), ‘A treatise of power’, v. 42.Google Scholar

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133 On Toland, see Jacob, M. C., ‘John Toland and the Newtonian ideology’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1969, 32, 307–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Toland and other ‘freethinkers’, see Jacob, , op. cit. (114), chapter VI.Google Scholar

134 Toland, , Letters to Serena, op. cit. (29), p. 166.Google Scholar

135 Ibid., pp. 169, 174–88, and passim.

136 Ibid., p. 192.

137 Toland, , op. cit. (28), p. 17.Google Scholar

138 Ibid., p. 83. Toland's radical whig political views were even more clearly expressed in his Anglia liberata: or the limitation and succession ofthe crown of England explained and asserted …, London, 1701.Google Scholar

139 Clayton, R., The scripture doctrine of the Christian hierarchy, Dublin, 1741, pp. 65–6.Google Scholar

140 Ibid., p. 66.

141 On Priestley, see McEvoy, J. G. and McGuire, J. E., ‘God and nature: Priestley's way of rational dissent’, Historical studies in the physical sciences, 1975, 6, 325–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where a comprehensive survey of the literature on Priestley can be found. See also McEvoy, J. G., ‘Joseph Priestley, “aerial philosopher”: metaphysics and measurement in Priestley's chemical thought from 1762 to 1781’, Ambix, 1978, 25, 1–55, 93–116, 153–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 1979, 26, 16–38; and Lindsay, Jack (ed.), Autobiography of Joseph Priestley, Bath, 1970.Google Scholar

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143 Ibid.

144 Compare, for example, the political sentiments expressed by Priestley in An essay on the first principles of government, and on the nature of political, civil, and religious liberty, London, 1768Google Scholar, with those in his A political dialogue on the general principles of government, London, 1791.Google Scholar

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146 Ibid., p. 195.

147 Ibid.

148 See n. 23, above.

149 Clayton also proposed in the Irish House of Lords that the Athanasian and Nicene creeds be expunged from the liturgy of the Church of Ireland.

150 For a history of this High Church pressure on the whigs, see Bennett, , op. cit. (122)Google Scholar; see also Every, , op. cit. (113)Google Scholar, chapter V, and Sykes, , op. cit. (113), pp. 32 fGoogle Scholar. Sykes makes the important point that the whigs were forced to make some show of defending the established Church, since it was the safety of the Church that the Revolution had been brought about to secure; ibid., pp. 33–4.

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152 Ibid., p. 195.

153 On this point, see Bracken, Harry H., The early reception of Berkeley's immaterialism, 1710–1733, The Hague, 1965, pp. 76 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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