QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

influence both inside the world of physics, and extensively outside it, for more than two hundred
years. 231
Newton, who studied and worked at the University of Cambridge in England, was both an
experimenter and a mathematical genius. In Newton’s time, university teaching focused on the
masters of antiquity, above all Aristotle. Instruction in mathematicians and the thoughts of
modern philosophers such as Descartes, Bacon and Galilei was inadequate, but Newton became
acquainted with their writings independently. He also studied higher mathematics on his own for
a period of two years and developed differential and integral calculus at the same time. 232 In this
work he was influenced by the analytical geometry of Descartes, which revealed the link
between algebraic equations and geometry. In his younger days, Newton was also interested in
Descartes’ philosophy, but he later began to regard it as overly atheistic. Deeply religious,
Newton conducted a dialogue with Henry More, the leading light of the Cambridge Platonists,
who was attempting to unite Atomism with Platonism in his mystic natural philosophy and who
was convinced that matter was guided by the mind. 233
The new understanding of the motion of bodies made a new concept of force essential. Changes
in the state of motion were evidence of the influence of a force, even though neither a state of
rest or motion in a straight line required the assumption of any force. In his synthesis, Newton
postulated the concepts of absolute time and space and differentiated them from relative time and
space. Absolute time and space were infinite and independent of matter, and they provide the
foundation for the mathematical description of the motions of material bodies. 234 Bodies in
empty space were under the influence of gravitational force, i.e. every piece of matter in the
universe attracted every other body with a force proprotional to the square of the distance
between them. This interaction defined the orbits of bodies with absolute inevitability. If the
location and state of motion of bodies in this system are known at a specific point in time in
relation to a stable system of reference, Newtonian dynamics provide a basis for the accurate
prediction of their behaviour.
Verification of the idea of gravitation was not simple, even though Newton was able to
231
Dijksterhuis 1986, 463-464. Tarnas 1998, 269-271.
232
Newton and Leibniz were in dispute over who was the first to invent differential and integral calculus. The
notation used nowadays actually originates from Leibniz.
233
White 1998, 53-62, 233.
234
Newton appeared to be ignorant about the philosophical problems related to these basic differentiations. Motion
and space had been considered to be relative for a long time. Collingwood, 1960, 108.
89