Non-Mechanistic Ideas in Physics and Philosophy: From Newton to Kant

Abstract

The evolution of the world picture after the appearance of Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy is remarkable for many reasons. Without any doubt this work of Newton became the source for all further investigations in mechanics, physics and astronomy which created modern science. However, the process of mastering the heritage of Newton was so closely connected with social, political and cultural factors that some important features of Newton’s understanding were distorted in order to satisfy them. As Leon Rosenfeld aptly remarked, not before the middle of the XVIIIth century there “emerged a somewhat streamlined newtonianism, from which all the deeply significant hesitations of the creator’s thought, arising from his intimate insight into the difficulties of the subject, had been ironed out by less subtle epigons”.¹ These “deeply significant hesitations” concerned, as a rule, fundamental notions in physics as space, time, matter and force as well as concepts and ideas closely connected with them.