Levitin Dmitri
*All Souls College,Oxford,OX1 4AL,UK. Email:
Br J Hist Sci. 2016 Mar;49(1):53-77. doi: 10.1017/S0007087415000667. Epub 2015 Nov 23.
This article examines Isaac Newton's engagement with scholastic natural philosophy. In doing so, it makes two major historiographical interventions. First of all, the recent claim that Newton's use of the concepts of analysis and synthesis was derived from the Aristotelian regressus tradition is challenged on the basis of bibliographical, palaeographical and intellectual evidence. Consequently, a new, contextual explanation is offered for Newton's use of these concepts. Second, it will be shown that some of Newton's most famous pronouncements - from the General Scholium appended to the second edition of the Principia (1713) and from elsewhere - are simply incomprehensible without an understanding of specific scholastic terminology and its later reception, and that this impacts in quite significant ways on how we understand Newton's natural philosophy more generally. Contrary to the recent historiographical near-consensus, Newton did not hold an elaborate metaphysics, and his seemingly 'metaphysical' statements were in fact anti-scholastic polemical salvoes. The whole investigation will permit us a brief reconsideration of the relationship between the self-proclaimed 'new' natural philosophy and its scholastic predecessors.
本文考察艾萨克·牛顿与经院自然哲学的关联。在此过程中，它做出了两项重大的史学干预。首先，基于文献学、古文字学和思想史证据，对近期认为牛顿对分析与综合概念的运用源自亚里士多德回归传统的说法提出质疑。因此，针对牛顿对这些概念的运用给出了一种新的、基于语境的解释。其次，将表明，如果不理解特定的经院术语及其后来的接受情况，牛顿一些最著名的论断——来自《原理》第二版（1713年）附录的《总释》以及其他地方的——简直难以理解，而这在相当大的程度上影响着我们更全面地理解牛顿的自然哲学。与近期史学界几近一致的观点相反，牛顿并没有一套详尽的形而上学，他那些看似“形而上学”的表述实际上是反经院的论战性言辞。整个研究将使我们能够简要重新审视自称“新”的自然哲学与其经院前辈之间的关系。
