The Reception of Isaac Newton in Europe
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The Reception of I THE RECEPTION OF ISAAC NEWTON IN EUROPE LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES, REGIONS AND COUNTRIES: THE GEOGRAPHY OF NEWTONIANISM Edited by Helmut Pulte and Scott Mandelbrote BLOOMSBURY ACADEM I C LO:-IDON • NEW YORK• OXt"ORD • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Pie 50 Bedford Square, London, WC 1B 3DP. UK 1385 Broadway, NewYork, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Pie First published in Great Britain 2019 Reprinted in 2019 Copyright© Helmut Pulte, Scott Mandelbrote and Contributors, 2019 Helmut Pulte, Scott Mandelbrote and Contributors have asserted their rights under the Copyright. Designs and Pat~nts Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. xv, 199 constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Eleanor Rose All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Pie does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB : 978-1-3500-9792-6 Set 978-0-8264-7970-9 Series: The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. CONTENTS 1 LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES, REGIONS AND COUNTRIES: THE GEOGRAPHY OF NEWTONIANISM. List of Illustrations xi Series Editor's Preface Elinor Shaffer xii Acknowledgements xv List of Contributors xvii Timeline: European Reception of Isaac Newton, 1642-1900 XXV Editors' Introduction Scott Mandelbrote and Helmut Pulte 1 I The Reception of Newton in the French-Speaking Lands John Bennett Shank 13 2 Newton in the German-Speaking Lands Thomas Ahnert 41 3 Newton's Reception in the Low Countries Eric Jorink and Huib Zuidervaart 59 4 The Reception of Newtonian Natural Philosophy in Scandinavia Helge Kragh 101 ' 5 The Reception of Newton in Finland and the Baltic States Maija Ka/linen 117 6 Newton in the Iberian Peninsula Antoni Malet 129 7 Newton in Italy Massimo Mazzotti 159 8 The Hungarian Reception of Newton Gabor A. Zemplen 179 9 The Reception ofNewtonianism in the Greek-Speaking Regions in the Eighteenth Century Kostas Gavroglu and Manolis Patiniotis 201 Contents 10 Better than a Samoyed: Newton's Reception in Russia Simon Werrett 217 Bibliography (Volume 1) 231 2 THEMES AND AREAS OF STUDY: THE CONTENT OF NEWTONIANISM 11 The Reception of Newton's Method of Series and Fluxions in Eighteenth-Century Europe Niccolo Guicciardini 281 12 Newton's Algebra Jaqueline Steda/1 295 13 Influence of Newton's Principia on the Development of Continuum Mechanics and Rigid Body Dynamics on the Continent Gleb K. Mikhailov 311 ' 14 Newton's Celestial Mechanics and Gravitational Theory Michael Nauenberg 325 15 The Reception of Newton's Principles of Mechanics and Concept of Force Eric Watkins 341 16 'Tis Much Better to do a Little with Certainty': On the Reception of Newton's Methodology Helmut Pulte 355 17 Newton's Work in French Mathematics and Mathematical Physics, 1780-1830 Ivor Grattan-Guinness 385 18 The Reception of Newton's Optical Work Alan E. Shapiro 403 19 The Reception of Newton's Theory of Matter and his Atomism Catherine Wilson 433 20 Newton, Newtonianism and the Roles of Experiment Friedrich Steinle 451 21 The Persistence of Mechanical Imagery: Electricity and Magnetism in a Newtonian World Roderick W Home 479 22 Chemistry and Alchemy Lawrence M. Principe 501 viii Contents 23 The Impact of Newton on Biology on the Continent in the Eighteenth Century Peter McLaughlin 513 24 Newton and the Evidences of the Christian Religion Scott Mandelbrote 531 25 Newton in Poetry Simone De Ange/is 561 26 Newtonian Biography 1727-1822 Robert Iliffe 579 Bibliography (Volume 2) 595 3 RIVALS, FRIENDS AND CRITICS: INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP RESPONSES TO NEWTON IANISM 27 Newton's Impact on the Enlightenment Mordechai Feingold 649 28 The Popularization of Newtonianism in the Eighteenth Century Andreas Kleinert 697 29 Newton and Huygens Rienk Vermij 711 30 Newton and Leibniz Herbert Breger 723 31 Newton's Influence on the Mathematicians and Physicists of the Bernoulli Family and on Jacob Hermann David Speiser-Biir and Diarmuid 6 Mathuna 735 32 Newton and Wolff Thomas Ahnert 749 33 Maupertuis and Newton Mary Terrall 759 34 Emilie du Chatelet Sarah Hutton 769 35 Voltaire and Newton Franrois De Gandt 777 36 Newton in the Encyclopedie of Diderot and d' Alembert: Perceptions and Debates over Newton's Theories during the French Enlightenment Koffi N. Maglo 791 37 Newton in the Collegio Romano: Borgondio to Boscovich (1713-45) Ugo Baldini 813 ix Contents 38 Women Readers of Newton in Eighteenth-Century Italy Marta Cavazza 841 39 Newton and Euler Sebastien Maronne and Marco Panza 861 40 Lavoisier and Newton Marco Beretta 879 41 Newton and Kant on Absolute Space: From Theology to Transcendental Philosophy Michael Friedman 891 42 No Longer the Focal Point: Goethe and Newtonianism Myles W Jackson 909 43 Hegel and Newton Wolfgang Bonsiepen 919 44 Fruitful Misinterpretations: Mach and Einstein on Newton Klaus Hentschel 931 Bibliography (Volume 3) 941 Index (Volumes 1, 2, 3) 981 X CHAPTER 9 THE RECEPTION OF NEWTONIANISM IN THE GREEK-SPEAKING REGIONS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Kostas Gavroglu and Manolis Patiniotis The aim of this essay is to describe the ways in which Greek intellectual life during the eighteenth century came into contact with the ideas of the Newtonian natural philosophy. Since most Greek-speaking populations of the time were part of the Ottoman Empire, instead of a geographical reference we are going to use a cultural one. A number of communities dispersed in the Balkans, Asia Minor and central Europe and connected through extended commercial and migration networks comprised the ground upon which the basic traits of an emerging Greek society were shaped. Christian Orthodox religion and Greek-speaking education played a significant role in this process. The former served to identify a particular millet within the predominantly Islamic Ottoman Empire and, also, to separate these populations from the Catholics, with whom they came in contact during their travels and migration. The latter offered a common linguistic and cultural reference unifying a great variety of localities, but also promoted the incorporation of many Hellenized inhabitants of the Balkans into the commercial networks dominated at the time by Greek-speaking merchants (Stoianovich 1960; Roudometof 1998). Intellectual developments, which took place in this context, reflected the fluid and transitory character of such social formations. From the outset of the eighteenth century, a number of social groups sought to assert themselves in the context of a new distribution of power resulting from the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The traditional authority of the Ecumenical Patriarchate over educational, religious and civil matters had been shaken and various local communities attempted to reconfigure their political and economic ties within the broader European space. In what follows, we shall try to examine how the particular type of intellectual activity deriving from such developments interacted with Newtonian ideas and how these ideas contributed to the shaping of certain intellectual trends. To do so, we shall first describe the encounter of the Greek intellectual life with Newtonian ideas by means of the traces this encounter left in the works of the period. Then, we shall present some common historiographical questions and will examine how current historiography tackles them. Finally, we shall try to reformulate these questions in the light of a contextual study of the works presented and to show how such a reformulation may help us to learn more about both the Greek intellectual activity of the time and the history ofNewtonianism itself, within the broader European context. The Reception of Isaac Newton in Europe Newtonianism in the Greek Intellectual Context The introduction of Newtonian ideas into the Greek intellectual space took place basically in the second half of the eighteenth century. During that period, a great number of textbooks were written and published for the use of high school students. Many of them were devoted to such practical issues as arithmetic, geography and 'commercial science'. But a significant number also considered more theoretical and contemplative issues, like metaphysics and natural philosophy. With only a single exception, all these works could be more or less characterized as 'Newtonian'. 1 For the purpose of this research, we reviewed twenty-two such textbooks, especially those which, according to all the evidence, had the greatest impact on the intellectual life of the time. In this section, we shall try to reconstitute the main Newtonian motifs these textbooks employed, in order to establish a certain view of nature. But before doing so, we need to say a few words about the origin and the sources of these works. Many of the Greek-speaking scholars of the eighteenth century had spent significant time at important European universities. Since the seventeenth century, the dominant tradition was to attend the University'6LPadua and, to a much lesser extent, other Italian universities. As the decades went by, though, one can observe a shift towards German universities, as well as a turn of the intellectual focus towards German-speaking centres: Vienna, Leipzig and Jena (Patiniotis 2003).