Doctrine and Use: Newton's “Gift of Preaching”

See, for a recent example, Shapiro A. E. , “The gradual acceptance of Newton's theory of light and colors, 1672–1727”, Perspectives on science, iv (1996), 59–140.

Subsequent references are to Newton's final draft, which was sent as a letter, dated 6 February 1671/2, to Henry Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society and the editor of the Philosophical transactions, in Newton I. , The correspondence of Isaac Newton , ed. by Turnbull H. W. Scott J. F. Hall A. R. Tilling L. (7 vols, Cambridge, 1959–77), i, 92–107. With a few changes which are annotated in The correspondence, the letter to Oldenburg was published in Philosophical transactions, vi (1671–72), 3075–87.

Kuhn T. , “Newton's optical papers”, in Cohen I. B. , (ed.), Isaac Newton's papers and letters on natural philosophy (Cambridge, 1958), 27–45, p. 28.

For some recent collection of studies, see Benjamin A. E. Cantor G. N. Christie J. R. R. , (eds), The figural and the literal: Problems of language in the history of science and philosophy, 1630–1800 (Manchester, 1987); Nelson J. S. Megill A. McCloskey D. N. (eds), The rhetoric of the human sciences: Language and argument in scholarship and public affairs (Madison, 1987); “Symposium: Rhetoricians on the rhetoric of science”, in Science, technology, & human values, xiv (1989), 3–49; Peterfreund S. (ed.), Literature and science: Theory and practice (Boston, 1990); Dear P. (ed.), The literary structure of scientific arguments: Historical studies (Philadelphia, 1991).

Shapiro B. , Probability and certainty in seventeenth-century England (Princeton, 1983), and “‘To amoral certainty’: Theories of knowledge and Anglo-American juries, 1600–1850”, Hastings law journal, xxxviii (1986), 153–93; Shapin S. , “Pump and circumstance: Robert Boyle's literary technology”, Social studies of science, xiv (1984), 481–520; Shapin S. Schaffer S. , Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life (Princeton, 1985); Shapin S. , A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago, 1994); Dear P. , “Totius in Verba: Rhetoric and authority in the early Royal Society”, Isis, lxxvi (1985), 145–61; Daston L. , “The factual sensibility”, Isis, lxxix (1988), 452–70, and “Baconian facts, academic civility, and the prehistory of objectivity”, Annals of scholarship, viii (1991), 337–63.

Daston , “Baconian facts” (ref. 5), 356.

Hooke in a letter to Henry Oldenburg, in Newton , Correspondence (ref. 2), i, 110–11.

Ibid., 111–13. See also the “memorandum” Hooke composed several months later, in June 1672, in Newton , Correspondence (ref. 2), i, 195–7. For his comments to Brouncker, see Newton , Correspondence (ref. 2), i, 198, 202.

For a study of Hooke's social status as an “experimental philosopher”, see Shapin S. , “Who was Robert Hooke?”, in Hunter M. Schaffer S. (eds), Robert Hooke: New studies (Woodbridge, 1989), 253–85; Pumfrey S. , “Ideas above his station: A social study of Hooke's curatorship of experiments”, History of science, xxix (1991), 1–44; Iliffe R. , “Material doubts: Hooke, artisan culture and the exchange of information in 1670's London”, The British journal for the history of science, xxviii (1995), 285–318.

Newton I. , Unpublished scientific papers of Isaac Newton, ed. by Hall A. R. Hall M. Boas (Cambridge, 1962), 412.

For a study of the problem of personal choice in the context of current debates about religious unity, see Tuck R. , “Power and authority in seventeenth-century England”, The historical journal, xvii (1974), 43–61.

Sprat T. , The history of the Royal-Society of London, for the improving of natural knowledge (London, 1967), 430.

Skinner Q. , “Thomas Hobbes and the nature of the early Royal Society”, Historical journal, xii (1969), 217–39; Hunter M. , Science and society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981), esp. pp. 33–58, and The Royal Society and its Fellows 1660–1700: The morphology of an early scientific institution (Chalfont St Giles, 1982); Shapin , Social history (ref. 5).

Newton , Correspondence (ref. 2), i, 108–9.

Boyle R. , The works of the Honourable Robert Boyle , ed. by Birch T. , 2nd edn (6 vols, London, 1772), i, 446; Newton , Unpublished scientific papers (ref. 10), 348. For discussions of providential thought among mechanical philosophers in seventeenth-century England, see, for example, Diamond Wm C. , “Natural philosophy in Harrington's political thought”, Journal of the history of ideas, xvi (1978), 387–98; Henry J. , “Occult qualities and the experimental philosophy: Active principles in pre-Newtonian matter theory”, History of science, xxiv (1986), 335–81; Schaffer S. , “Occultism and reason”, in Holland A. J. , (ed.), Philosophy, its history and historiography (Dordrecht, 1985), 117–43, and “Godly men and mechanical philosophers: Souls and spirits in Restoration natural philosophy”, Science in context, i (1987), 55–85.

Cambridge Library Add. MS 3970.9 f. 619. Quoted from Schaffer S. , “Natural philosophy and public spectacle in the eighteenth century”, History of science, xxi (1983), 1–43, p. 4. For “natural philosophy” as a religious category in Newton's work, see Cunningham A. , “How the Principia got its name; or, taking natural philosophy seriously”, History of science, xxix (1991), 377–92.

Mitchell W. Fraser , English pulpit oratory from Andrews to Tillotson (London, 1932), 3.

Sprat T. , A discourse made by the Ld Bishop of Rochester to the clergy of his dioces, at his visitation in the year 1695 (London, 1696), 352; see also Patrick S. , A friendly debate between a conformist and a non-conformist (London, 1669), 7–10. For studies relating the new sermonical code to the new prose style, see Jones R. F. , “Science and English prose style in the third quarter of the seventeenth century”, Publications of Modern Language Association, xlv (1930), 977–1009; idem, “The attack on pulpit eloquence in the Restoration: An episode in the development of the Neo-Classical standard for prose”, in Jones R. F. , (ed.), The seventeenth century: Studies in the history of English thought and literature from Bacon to Pope (Stanford, 1951), 111–42; Mitchell F. , English pulpit oratory (ref. 17).

Evelyn J. , The diary of John Evelyn, ed. by de Beer E. S. (6 vols, Oxford, 1955), iv, 330.

Quoted from Dickens A. G. , The English Reformation (New York, 1964), 318.

Quoted from Seaver P. S. , The Puritan lectureships: The politics of religious dissent 1560–1662 (Stanford, 1970), 2.

Quoted from Seaver , Puritan lectureships (ref. 21), 18.

Young R. F. , Comenius in England (reprint of the 1932 edn, New York, 1971), 65.

Simon J. , Education and society in Tudor England (Cambridge, 1966), 381.

Popkin R. H. , The history of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1979), esp. pp. 66–86.

Perkins W. , Works (London, 1609), ii, 759.

Geree J. , The character of an old English puritan or non-conformist (London, 1646), 2.

Baxter R. , “The reformed pastor”, in Practical works (London, 1707), iv, 358, quoted from Simon I. , Three Restoration divines: Barrow, South, Tillotson (Paris, 1967), 15.

Glanvill J. , A seasonable defense of preaching (London, 1678), 41, 107.

Calvin J. , Institutes of the Christian religion, transl. by Beveridge Henry (2 vols, London, 1962), i, III.xxv. 10–11, 274–5.

Ibid., i, II.ii.14, 482.

Newton I. , The mathematical papers of Isaac Newton, ed. by Whiteside D. T. (8 vols, Cambridge, 1967–81), vi, 192.

Newton I. , “A treatise on revelation”, ed. by Manuel F. E. , in his The religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford, 1974), 107–25, p. 113.

Shapiro B. J. , John Wilkins 1614–1672: An intellectual biography (Berkeley, 1969), 75–78. See also Christensen F. , “John Wilkins and the Royal Society's reform of prose style”, Modern language quarterly, vii (1946), 179–87, 279–90.

Wilkins J. , Ecclesiastes: Or, the gift of preaching as it falls under the rules of art (London, 1669), 5.

Ibid., 7.

Ibid., 8–9.

Quoted from Greene R. A. , “Whichcote, Wilkins, ‘Ingenuity’, and the reasonableness of Christianity”, Journal of the history of ideas, xlii (1981), 227–52, p. 235.

Newton , “A treatise” (ref. 33), 120.

Newton I. , Sir Isaac Newton's theological manuscripts, ed. by McLachlan H. (Liverpool, 1950), 120.

The sermon is included in the Newton papers in The National Library, The Hebrew of Jerusalem, Yahuda MSS, MS 21. The draft is unfortunately incomplete, and the third part of “applications” is missing.

Ibid., 3.

First and second paragraphs, in Newton , Correspondence (ref. 2), i, 92.

Third and fourth paragraphs, ibid., 92–93.

Wilkins , Ecclesiastes (ref. 35), 25.

Newton , Newton's theological manuscripts (ref.40), 120.

Seventh paragraph, in Newton , Correspondence (ref. 2), i, 94.

Schaffer S. , “Glass works: Newton's prisms and the uses of experiment”, in Gooding D. Pinch T. Schaffer S. , (eds), The uses of experiment (Cambridge, 1989), 67–104, esp. pp. 74–75.

Descartes R. , Oeuvres philosophiques, ed. by Alquie F. (3 vols, Paris, 1963), i, 753–6.

The beginning sentence of the eighth paragraph, in Newton , Correspondence (ref. 2), i, 94.

Wilkins , Ecclesiastes (ref. 35), 22.

Koyré A. , Newtonian studies (London, 1965), 43.

The eighth paragraph, in Newton , Correspondence (ref. 2), i, 95.

See, for example, the commentary on Newton's 1672 article by H. W. Turnbull, in Newton , Correspondence (ref. 2), i, 104; Lohne J. A. , “Experimentum crucis”, Notes and records of the Royal Society, xxiii (1968), 169–99.

Bacon F. , Novum organum , ed. by Hutchins R. M. (Chicago, 1952), 164. Bacon's discussion of crucial experiments comprises Section 36, Book II, of the Novum organum, and was part of his typology of the methodological functions of experiments.

Bacon , Novum organum (ref. 55), 140; Bacon Francis , The advancement of learning and New Atlantis, ed. by Johnston A. (Oxford, 1974), 87–94.

Hooke R. , Micrographia (reprint, New York, 1961), 54.

Ibid., 53–54.

Brennan R. E. , Thomistic psychology: A philosophic analysis of the nature of man (New York, 1941), 39.

St Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (Cambridge, 1970), xvii, “Psychology of human acts” (Ia 2ae), Ques. 13, Art. 2, 127 (italics added).

Ibid., 129.

Boyle , Works (ref. 15), iii, 274 (italics added).

Shapin Schaffer , Leviathan (ref. 5), esp. pp. 110–282.

Ibid., 194 (italics added).

Boyle , Works (ref. 15), iii, 275.

Ibid., 274.

Dear P. , “Narratives, anecdotes, and experiments: Turning experience into science in the seventeenth century”, in Dear (ed.), The literary structure (ref. 4), 135–63, p. 161.

The ninth paragraph, in Newton , Correspondence (ref. 2), i, 95.

Ibid., 96.

Ibid., 97.

Ibid., 100.

Locke J. , An essay concerning human understanding, ed. by Nidditch Peter H. (Oxford, 1975), IV.xviii.2, 689.

In his third lecture Newton presented the experiment which later on, in his 1672 article, he labelled the “experimentum crucis”. On the sources of the 1672 paper in Newton's lectures see Bechler Z. , “Newton's 1672 optical controversies: A study in the grammar of scientific dissent”, in Elkana Y. (ed.), The interaction between science and philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, 1974), 115–42; Westfall R. S. , Never at rest: A biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1980), 155–75; Newton I. , Certain philosophical questions: Newton's Trinity notebook, ed. by McGuire J. E. Tamny M. (Cambridge, 1983), 262–74; Shapiro A. E. , “Introduction”, in Newton I. , The optical papers of Isaac Newton, ed. by Shapiro A. E. (Cambridge, 1984), and “The gradual acceptance” (ref. 1); Schaffer , “Glass works” (ref. 48).

Desaguliers J. T. , “Optical experiment…”, Philosophical transactions, xxxv (1728), 596–629, p. 597.