Newton as Philosopher [Paperback]

Andrew Janiak presents Newton as an original and sophisticated contributor to natural philosophy.Newton's philosophical views are unique and uniquely difficult to categorise. Newton as Philosopher presents Newton as an original and sophisticated contributor to natural philosophy, one who engaged with the principal ideas of his most important predecessor, Ren? Descartes, and of his most influential critic, G. W. Leibniz.Newton's philosophical views are unique and uniquely difficult to categorise. Newton as Philosopher presents Newton as an original and sophisticated contributor to natural philosophy, one who engaged with the principal ideas of his most important predecessor, Ren? Descartes, and of his most influential critic, G. W. Leibniz.Newton's philosophical views are unique and uniquely difficult to categorise. In the course of a long career from the early 1670s until his death in 1727, he articulated profound responses to Cartesian natural philosophy and to the prevailing mechanical philosophy of his day. Newton as Philosopher presents Newton as an original and sophisticated contributor to natural philosophy, one who engaged with the principal ideas of his most important predecessor, Ren? Descartes, and of his most influential critic, G. W. Leibniz. Unlike Descartes and Leibniz, Newton was systematic and philosophical without presenting a philosophical system, but over the course of his life, he developed a novel picture of nature, our place within it, and its relation to the creator. This rich treatment of his philosophical ideas, the first in English for thirty years, will be of wide interest to historians of philosophy, science, and ideas.Preface; Notes on text and translations; 1. Newton as philosopher, the very idea; 2. Physics and metaphysics: three interpretations; 3. Do forces exist? Contesting the mechanical philosophy, I; 4. Matter and mechanism: contesting the mechanical philosophy, II; 5. Space in physics and metaphysics: contra Descartes; 6. God anlóG