Abstract
The history of the eighteenth-century Newtonianism is not about the spread of the “original” Newtonian ideas across Europe. It is rather about the intersection of a locally produced set of natural philosophical ideas with knowledge traditions immanent in a variety of intellectual environments across the continent and beyond. Accordingly, what later came to be known as Newtonian physics is not the straightforward implementation of Newton’s Principia, but the outcome of this long and multifarious process. The aim of this paper is to place the Greek intellectual life on the map of the intellectual exchanges that shaped eighteenth-century Newtonianism. Contrary to the claims of the received historiography, the Greek-speaking scholars of the time did not perceive Newton’s ideas as a powerful achievement contributing to the unquestionable progress of natural knowledge, but as a challenge to the character of their contemporary philosophy. Like many other European scholars they tried to answer the question of how could Newtonian natural philosophy be integrated into the philosophical discourse without breaking with metaphysics. To this end, they involved a number of intellectual traditions and knowledge claims to produce a local synthesis, which reflected their ambition to perpetuate the philosophical inquiry of Nature through a metaphysically grounded version of the Newtonian philosophy.
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Notes
- 1.
Veniamin of Lesbos (1762–1824) studied mathematics and physics in Pisa and Paris. In Paris, he made the acquaintance of Adamantios Korais (1748–1833), the patriarch of the Greek Enlightenment, and was influenced by his political views. He directed the school of Kydonies (Ayvalık) from 1802 to 1812. During his service, the school acquired a reputation as the best school for the sciences. He promoted the teaching of the heliocentric system, and introduced the concept of Πανταχηκίνητον (Pantachikiniton: The All-Mover), an ethereal agent that accounts for all celestial and natural kinetic phenomena (Dialetis et al. 1999, 62–64).
- 2.
A self-repellent substance that was considered the bearer of heat in the context of the widespread imponderable fluids theories of the eighteenth century.
- 3.
Eugenios Voulgaris (1716–1806) was a Corfu-born Greek-speaking Orthodox clergyman and scholar. He decisively contributed to the revival of Greek philosophy as teacher and director of some of the most influential Greek schools of the time. His intellectual itinerancy took him to places such as Venice, Constantinople, Bucharest, Leipzig and finally Saint Petersburg, where he became Catherine II’s courtier and archbishop of Slavensk and Kherson. He authored books on metaphysics, logic, literature, theology, history and politics as well as some of the most influential scientific treatises of his time, in which he attempted to merge neo-Aristotelian philosophy with the attainments of modern European thought (Patiniotis 2013b).
- 4.
In De Regressu, Zabarella follows Averroes in a slightly different division. “Demonstrative induction” represents demonstratio ab effectu, and handles necessary matters that have an essential relationship to each other. “Dialectical induction” represents inductio and handles contingent matters, which can lead to firm knowledge only if all particulars are enumerated. In demonstrative induction, the examination of a limited number of cases provides evidence for the essential connections, and thus our mind can securely infer the universal (Mikkeli 1992, 95).
- 5.
A precursor of this attitude can be found in Bacon’s statement of 1620: “Natural philosophy is not yet to be found unadulterated, but is impure and corrupted; by logic in the school of Aristotle, by natural theology in that of Plato, by mathematics in the second school of Plato, (that of Proclus and others,) which ought rather to [= which is rather likely to] terminate natural philosophy than to generate or create it. We may, therefore, hope for better results from pure and unmixed natural philosophy” (Bacon 1854 [1620], 362 [aphorism 96]).
- 6.
Cf. Bacon’s statement: “Those who have treated of the sciences have been either empirics or dogmatical. The former like ants only heap up and use their store, the latter like spiders spin out their own webs. The bee, a mean between both, extracts matter from the flowers of the garden and the field, but works and fashions it by its own efforts. The true labour of philosophy resembles hers, for it neither relies entirely or principally on the powers of the mind, nor yet lays up in the memory the matter afforded by the experiments of natural history or mechanics in its raw state, but changes and works it in the understanding. We have good reason, therefore, to derive hope from a closer and purer alliance of these faculties, (the experimental and rational) than has yet been attempted” (Bacon 1854 [1620], 362 [aphorism 95]).
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Patiniotis, M. (2020). Shaping Newtonianism: The Intersection of Knowledge Claims in Eighteenth-Century Greek Intellectual Life. In: Feichtinger, J., Bhatti, A., Hülmbauer, C. (eds) How to Write the Global History of Knowledge-Making. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 53. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37922-3_7
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