Atom and Individual in the Age of Newton: On the Genesis of the Mechanistic World View(88 Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science)

In this stimulating investigation, Gideon Freudenthal has linked social history with the history of science by formulating an interesting proposal: that the supposed influence of social theory may be seen as actual through its co­ herence with the process of formation of physical concepts. The reinterpre­ tation of the development of science in the seventeenth century, now widely influential, receives at Freudenthal's hand its most persuasive statement, most significantly because of his attention to the theoretical form which is charac­ teristic. of classical Newtonian mechanics. He pursues the sources of the parallels that may be noted between that mechanics and the dominant philosophical systems and social theories of the time; and in a fascinating development Freudenthal shows how a quite precise method - as he descriptively labels it, the 'analytic-synthetic method' - which underlay the Newtonian form of theoretical argument, was due to certain interpretive premisses concerning particle mechanics. If he is right, these depend upon a particular stage of con­ ceptual achievement in the theories of both society and nature; further, that the conceptual was generalized philosophically; but, strikingly, Freudenthal shows that this concept-formation itself was linked to the specific social relations of the times of Newton and Hobbes.

Table of Contents:
1. Problems and Methods of Analysis.- 2. Science and Philosophy; Newton and Leibniz.- 3. ‘Absolute’ and ‘Relative’ Space.- 4. Newton’s Theory of Space and the Space Theory of Newtonianism.- 5. The Leibniz-Newton Discussion and the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence.- One/Element and System in Classical Mechanics.- I. Newton’s Justification of the Theory of Absolute Space.- II. Leibniz’s Foundations of Dynamics.- III. The Discussion Between Leibniz and Newton on the Concept of Science.- Two/Element and System in Modern Philosophy.- IV. The Concept of Element in 17th Century Natural Philosophy.- V. The Concept of Element in the Systematic Philosophy of Hobbes.- VI. The Concept of Element in 18th Century Social Philosophy.- VII. The Relationship Between Natural and Social Philosophy in the Work of Newton, Rousseau, and Smith.- Three/On the Social History of the Bourgeois Concept of the Individual.- VIII. England Before the Revolution.- IX. The Antifeudal Social Philosophy of Hobbes.- X. The Rise of Civil Society in England.- XI. Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society.- XII. Civil Society and Analytic-Synthetic Method.- Four/Atom and Individual.- XIII. The Bourgeois Individual and the Essential Properties of a Particle in Newton’s Thought.- XIV. Element and System in the Philosophy of Leibniz.- Afterword.- Notes.- Bibliography of Works Cited.- List of Abbreviations.- Name Index.