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An account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries (1748) (Anglistica & Americana)

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This is a very predictable book which there is little point in reading today. However, on one point I think it differs significantly from standard histories. Today it is often said that Newton's followers quickly forgot the imperfections that Newton had seen in his theory (action at a distance, etc.) and adopted his world view unconditionally. This is no doubt true but its emphasis is somewhat altered by Maclaurin's insistence that the greatness of the Principia is its *imperfection* and the fact that it is *not a system*:

"They who have indulged themselves in inventing systems and compleating them, tho' they have sometimes set out in a manner that has appeared plausible, yet, in pursuing those schemes, such consequences have arisen as could not fail to disgust all but such as were intoxicated with the deceit." (p. 95). "We may also learn ... from the bad success of so many fruitless attempts, to be less fond of perfect and finished schemes of natural philosophy; to be willing to stop when we find we are not in a condition to proceed farther; and to leave to posterity to make greater advances, as time and observation shall enable them." (p. 91).

A historical digression is intended to show how geometry grew only gradually; an example will convey the spirit: "one, we are told, discovered that the three angles of an equilateral triangle were equal to two right ones; another went farther, and shewd the same thing of those that have two sides equal and are called isosceles triangles; and it was a third who found that the theorem was general, and extended it to triangles of all sorts." (p. 92, with reference to Proclus).

"From what we have observed concerning the history of natural philosophy, it may easily be understood why its progress has been so different; and whence it proceeds that we seldom have found in it, as in geometry, that pleasing gradual rise from small beginnings to grater heights. Instead of searching into nature, men retired to contemplate their own thoughts; ... where they ought to have hesitated, they decided; and where there was no difficulty, they doubted." (p. 93). "One ill-grounded maxim was imagined, to support another, and fiction was grafted upon fiction. Hypotheses were invented, nor for reducing facts or observations of a complicated nature to rules and order, (for which purpose they may be of service) but as principles of science. These were of so great authority as not to be overturned by contradictory observations, or by the extravagant consequences that arose from them; but the author, charm'd with his rhapsody, proceeded, without minding these, to the conclusion of his fable. Thus one age or sect could not but destroy, for the most part, the labour of another." (p. 94).

"But it has appeared sufficiently, from the discoveries of ... Sir Isaac Newton, that the fault has lain in the philosophers themselves, and not in philosophy. A compleat system indeed was not to be expected from one man, or one age, or perhaps from the greatest number of ages; could we have expected it from the abilities of any one man, we surely would have had it from Sir Isaac Newton: but he saw too far into nature to attempt it." (p. 96).