Newton’s Philosophy and the faux-‘Mechanisation’ of nature
Part 7 in this series. Mechanisation is false and Force = mass x acceleration is also wrong :)
Ancient Greeks -> Schoolmen -> Copernicus -> Kepler -> Descartes - > Galileo -> Newton
Introduction
We are concerned in this series with the philosophical foundations of science. Science is the discovery about how the natural, physical world operates. ‘Science’ however, interprets data based on its worldview. If the underlying philosophy is changed the interpretation must change. We know for example, that the mathematical and observational ‘proofs’ for heliocentricity, apply equally as well if not better, for the geo-and helio-geo-centric models. We also know that Relativity has been disproven through observational experience. Yet both are ‘consensus’ ‘science’. They are philosophies not ‘science’.
In the last 2 posts we discussed Descartes and the malevolent effects of Cartesian philosophy. Cartesian ‘rationality’ has been abused by interpreters to become irrational and unprovable. First it has led to hyper-rationalisation and a belief that solipsistic (egocentric) nominalism (no reality) is valid and reasonable. Second, Cartesian deductive mathematics, which negates experiential proof, were the foundations for the elevation of models and abstract maths over experimental induction. Descartes’ philosophy had led to the destruction of common sense and has informed Rousseau, Comte, Marx, Nietzsche and Einstotle’s Relativity.
Following from Descartes, it is necessary to turn to Newton (1642-1727) who was a Cartesian. Many posts here discuss issues with Newtonian physics and why it has distorted modern physics. This short post will look at the philosophical impact from Newtonian theory, including how it supplied the assumptions undergirding Relativity and modern cosmology. In summary, Newton’s mechanisation of nature and the universe is along with Descartes’ ideas, one of the great destructive theologies of common sense in Western civilisation.
Newton and heliocentricity
Let’s start with Newton’s postulate that Copernicanism was valid. As posted previously, the claim that Newton’s laws of motion ‘prove’ that the smaller sized Earth, must rotate around the far larger Sun, is simply false. Newton never said this, and he certainly never proved it.
All that Newton proposed was that within a closed system, all bodies will revolve around the centre of ‘mass’. He also called this the ‘centre of gravity’ in his most influential work the ‘Principia’: ‘That the centre of the system of the world is immovable: this is acknowledged by all, although some contend that the Earth, others that the sun, is fixed in that centre.’ (Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Book 3: The System of the World, Proposition X, Hypothesis I).
The modern refrain is that Newton ‘proved heliocentricity’. This is a lie. Newton himself wrote that he could not prove if the Earth or the Sun were at the centre of our solar system (ibid, IV Theory XI). Physicists such as Fred Hoyle have written that Newton never proved Copernicanism.
“Although in the nineteenth century this argument (Newton’s argument that smaller objects orbit larger masses) ….on the accuracy of calculation by including mutual gravitational interactions between planets, we find – again in order to calculate correctly – that the center of the solar system must be placed at an abstract point known as the “center of mass,” which is displaced quite appreciably from the center of the Sun. And if we imagine a star to pass moderately close to the solar system…It appears, then, that the “center” to be used for any set of bodies depends on the way in which the local system is considered to be isolated from the universe as a whole. If a new body is added to the set from outside, or if a body is taken away, the “center” changes.” (Hoyle, p. 85)
Hoyle is clearly stating that Newtonian mechanics is only relevant for closed systems. Our solar system and universe are, however, open systems. It stands to reason therefore that the ‘centre of mass’ or the ‘barycentre’ cannot be our Sun, but must be some distance removed from the Sun. In fact, modern cosmology is slowly coming to terms with the realisation that the universal barycentre is our solar system and lies between the Earth and Sun.
This would mean that the Tychonic system or indeed even the Ptolemaic can be validated using existing scientific principles and observations. [At the end of the post there is a n.b. on how we can amend Newton’s equation F=ma, which is wrong, with the more accurate universal matter calculation which supports the above claim].
Newton’s Worldview
Newton was not a Christian. He was a typical 17th century Copernican, Rationalist and Deist. His beliefs were akin to those of Descartes (1596-1650) the ‘father of philosophy’. Newton desired a materialist-mechanical explanation for natural phenomenon. He viewed God as the great designer, architect and machine maker.
Unlike the Catholic Descartes, Newton believed in a God who was the immanent divine mind and organiser, but not one contained within the Christian Trinity. Newton did not believe in Christ or the New Testament. God was not an interventionist, personal spirit. He was remote from humanity.
Positives from Newtonian physics include:
Aether: Newtonian theories including that of gravity, absolute space and the aether, dominated physics until the late 19th century until replaced by Relativity (where no absolutes including an aether, exist). The aether, as Einstein admitted in General Theory, does exist of course. Space is full of material, charges, energy, radiation and particles. This vibrancy is what Newton termed ‘the aether’, and Descartes called ‘bodies’. There is a materiality to space.
Universal Forces: Newton’s theories allowed for action at a distance between masses. These forces were rejected by most including Leibniz and Huygens and many others up to the modern period. They are however real and are known as the aether, Coriolis and Euler forces. They are replaced in modern cosmology by constants such as ‘dark energy’ or ‘dark matter’ which ignore the Coriolis and Euler forces.
Many negatives exist within Newtonian physics however and are seriously flawed. By default, so are Einstotle’s theories. Neither philosopher-mathematician can explain the macro-micro universes, nor reality at large. The underlying premises and calculations are incorrect and do not comport with observable evidence. Yet both Newtonian mechanics and Einstein’s fantasy world of Relativity are taught as facts and principles. As one physicist complains:
“…Newtonian gravity is known to be seriously flawed, and so ipso facto, by using this postulate [“In the limit of low speeds the gravity formalism should agree with Newtonian gravity”] Einstein and Hilbert inadvertently developed a flawed theory of gravity….Newtonian gravity failed because it was expressed in the limited formalism of the gravitational acceleration field g” (R. Cahill, pp. 131, 135).
Newton’s mechanical universe does not include accelerated frames, a mistake that Einstein tried, but failed to remedy. Neither he nor Einstein could account for universal gravitation or forces including the Euler and Coriolis, so they invented fudges and constants. Neither theorist had anything to say about the atomic world which in the guise of quantum mechanics negates both Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, as do Plancktons and positrons.
Newton also tried to prove the Earth’s diurnal Rotation against an absolute aether with his ‘bucket experiment’ which failed. This was analysed and criticised here. The bucket experiment does not prove diurnal rotation, but it did provide those who seeking such proof, an ‘appeal to authority’ argument and is often used (for some obscure reason), by heliocentrists as ‘proof’.
Newton’s Impact on the philosophy of Science
The Principia’s most important influence on the eighteenth century was to create a branching within natural philosophy that led to the development of mathematical physics on the one hand, and philosophy on the other (Cohen and Smith, 2002, 1-4). Obviously, Newton’s calculus (and that of Leibniz), gravity (though no one knows what gravity actually is), the laws of motion and his cosmological-mathematical calculations have been greatly influential, even if they were wrong or unproven. We can list the effects of Newton’s ideas and how they helped formed both modern philosophy, science and Scientism.
1. Copernicanism: As discussed above, Newton never proved heliocentricity though false claims to the contrary are still used today. He was a staunch anti-Aristotleian as was common in the 17th century. His promotion of Copernicanism is exaggerated and embellished.
2. Rationalism: Newton was a Cartesian philosopher and took the rationalist, dualist theories of Descartes very seriously and promoted the same (his unpublished manuscript De Gravitatione is proof of this).
3. Solipsism: Or the ‘rational’ belief in the supposed God-like powers of our reason. However, rather awkwardly, Newton admitted that he himself stood on the shoulders of (medieval) giants, but he never condescended of course to reference who they were, or their works (a common problem within ‘The Science’). He could probably have started with Thierry of Chartres in 1140 and gently worked his way through Albertus Magnus in the 13th century and beyond.
4. Mechanisation: Newton fully supported the mechanical and eternal operations of natural phenomena without interventions. Gravity is a part of this system. Your body, the planets, all material objects are, pace Newtonian-Cartesian philosophy, ‘simple machines’ animated by ‘natural forces’.
5. Induction: Newtonianism did give rise to ‘experimental philosophy’, associated with figures such as Boyle, Newton and Locke. This hearkened back to Francis Bacon’s ideas on induction and experimentation and was in opposition to Cartesian deduction. Newton’s view of motion, his understanding of space and time, and his approach to achieving knowledge of natural phenomena, did form the agenda of British philosophy well into the 18th and 19th centuries.
(see: Dobbs 1995; Domski 2010; Garber & Roux 2013; Ed Grant 2007)
Galileo myth
The English farm-boy Newton’s philosophical impact on science was to further embed the concepts of Copernicanism, Rationalism and mechanical Materialism into the culture and ‘experimental philosophy’ of science. These comport with the Catholic Galileo’s heliocentric defence and his ‘rationalism’. The Galileo myth is explained here. Suffice it to say that Galileo was a polemical figure who provided no proof to support Copernicanism.
Newton and Galileo are usually taken together as ‘team genius’ and promoted as ‘lights of science and reason’. Before them was nothing but black darkness. The actual philosophies and analysis of their experiments and maths is rarely undertaken nor criticised. The propaganda should not be accepted at face value given that most of it is false.
We should never forget the impact of the printing press (1440), its ability to distribute ideas however tangential, its capability to persuade, browbeat and threaten. Whoever owns the dissemination of ideas will write the ‘victories’ of their ‘science’.
Keep in mind that literally tonnes of documents from the medieval and ancient world have been lost, or, quite incredibly, still sit in vaults awaiting someone to read and comprehend their contents. Settled ‘science’ and all that. I wonder how much information and knowledge has been either lost, or in our ignorance, remains unread.
As with Descartes, those promoting ‘Rationalist’ doctrines stripped away Newton’s deism, his aether and his uncertainty about the actual centre of our solar system and universe. Instead, they have wrongly and mendaciously plundered only those parts of Newton’s theorems and observations which support their chosen cults of Copernicanism, Rationalism and mechanical Materialism.
Bottom Line
Considering the above, there are probably 2 key philosophical distortions from Newtonianism which are still prevalent in ‘modern science’:
1. The blind belief in the mechanical operation of natural phenomena, using gravity, the ‘laws of motion’ and other forces, within a remorseless if not magical organisational and operational routine of planets, and indeed all material bodies including our own.
2. Newtonian ‘laws’ of attraction and motion which purportedly establish that the Earth must move around the Sun (no mechanical evidence for this has ever been produced between 2 objects in an open system!).
More than anything else, Newton’s theories, experiments and maths are used to support the 2 postulates above, even when Newton’s own work does not prove these to be true, and Relativists such as Einstein, attempted to align Newtonian models to observational evidence (eg the orbit of Mercury) or with the electromagnetic theories of Maxwell.
The problem is that ‘modern science’ is now more philosophical than empirical. Something Newton would never have supported.
So back we must go to the insights of Francis Bacon (16th c.) and Albertus Magnus (13th c.), namely, that science should be premised on inductive experimentation ! A postulate Newton fully endorsed, but one his mechanical-physics negates. Ineluctable progress and all that.
All hail.
In the next post we will consider the confusion of Kant and his attempt to make metaphysics into a ‘science’.
==NB – F= ma is wrong
Using Newton’s own equations for a closed system, we can express them in an open system.
1. Take the ‘Absolute Space’ in Newton’s F= ma and replace it with ‘Absolute Matter’
2. Absolute Matter is equal to Stars and their collective gravity
3. In Newton’s Absolute Space the centrifugal (Cf), Coriolis (Co) and Euler (E) forces are “fictitious” or secondary,
4. Since these are real, add them to the Absolute Matter model and we have F = ma + Cf + Co + E,
5. Cf, Co and E are caused by the gravity of the Stars (let’s call that GS),
6. We can now write F = ma + GS or F – ma = GS
7. This is more accurate than Newton’s equation of F=ma.
In essence, the gravity of the Stars acts precisely like the rigid Absolute Space that Newton wanted but could not find.
Sources
Cohen, I.B. and George E. Smith (ed.), 2002, The Cambridge Companion to Newton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter and Margaret Jacob, 1995, Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Domski, Mary, 2010, “Newton’s empiricism and metaphysics”, Philosophy Compass, 5: 525–534.
Garber, Daniel and Sophie Roux (ed.), 2013, The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy, Dordrecht: Springer.
Grant, Edward, 2007, A History of Natural Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hoyle, F. 1973, Nicolaus Copernicus
Janiak, Andrew and Eric Schliesser (ed.), 2012, Interpreting Newton: critical essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Newton, Isaac, 1972, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, A. Koyré and I.B. Cohen, with A. Whitman (ed.), the third edition, with variant readings, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
–––, 1999, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, I.B. Cohen and A. Whitman (trans.), Berkeley: University of California Press.
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==Series
Introduction: Science as an output of Philosophy
Part One: Science as Philosophy or Scientism
Part Two: Copernice the Confused (1473-1543). Copernicanism is Philosophy not ‘Science’.
Part Three: Kepler the Conniver (1571-1630). Philosophical choice over scientific veracity.
Part Four: Kepler the Conniver (part 2). Maths which could prove other models.
Part Five: Descartes the Dualist and his maths and cosmology (part 1)