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Newton's Sensorium: Anatomy of a Concept Newton’s Sensorium: Anatomy of a Concept Archimedes NEW STUDIES IN THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 53 EDITOR Jed Z. Buchwald, Dreyfuss Professor of History, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA ASSOCIATE EDITORS FOR MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES Jeremy Gray, The Faculty of Mathematics and Computing, The Open University, UK Tilman Sauer, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany ASSOCIATE EDITORS FOR BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES Sharon Kingsland, Department of History of Science and Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA Manfred Laubichler, Arizona State University, USA ADVISORY BOARD FOR MATHEMATICS, PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY Henk Bos, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands Mordechai Feingold, California Institute of Technology, USA Allan D. Franklin, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA Kostas Gavroglu, National Technical University of Athens, Greece Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany Trevor Levere, University of Toronto, Canada Jesper Lützen, Copenhagen University, Denmark William Newman, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA Lawrence Principe, The Johns Hopkins University, USA Jürgen Renn, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany Alex Roland, Duke University, USA Alan Shapiro, University of Minnesota, USA Noel Swerdlow, California Institute of Technology, USA ADVISORY BOARD FOR BIOLOGY Michael Dietrich, Dartmouth College, USA Michel Morange, Centre Cavaillès, Ecole Normale Supérieure, France Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany Nancy Siraisi, Hunter College of the City University of New York, USA Archimedes has three fundamental goals; to further the integration of the histories of science and technology with one another: to investigate the technical, social and practical histories of specific developments in sci- ence and technology; and finally, where possible and desirable, to bring the histories of science and technol- ogy into closer contact with the philosophy of science. To these ends, each volume will have its own theme and title and will be planned by one or more members of the Advisory Board in consultation with the editor. Although the volumes have specific themes, the series itself will not be limited to one or even to a few par- ticular areas. Its subjects include any of the sciences, ranging from biology through physics, all aspects of technology, broadly construed, as well as historically-engaged philosophy of science or technology. Taken as a whole, Archimedes will be of interest to historians, philosophers, and scientists, as well as to those in business and industry who seek to understand how science and industry have come to be so strongly linked. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5644 Jamie C. Kassler Newton’s Sensorium: Anatomy of a Concept Jamie C. Kassler Northbridge, NSW, Australia ISSN 1385-0180 ISSN 2215-0064 (electronic) Archimedes ISBN 978-3-319-72052-4 ISBN 978-3-319-72053-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72053-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935952 © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Introduction In the writings that Newton intended for a public audience, he used the term senso- rium in relation to both God and humans. The first usage has attracted the notice of a number of commentators, whereas the second usage has had little serious atten- tion, so that, of course, there has been no systematic investigation into the relation- ship between the two usages. As a consequence, the divine sensorium has been glossed to mean the world, the mind of God, absolute space and, sometimes also, absolute time.1 But the human sensorium has been glossed more narrowly to mean either the nervous system, the brain or a particular, but unidentified, part of the brain.2 Now, the literal meaning of the Latin term sensorium, or its English equiva- lent ‘sensory’, is ‘thing that feels’. But this meaning offers little insight into Newton’s concept, because it is a construct, that is to say, a concept specially devised for a theory. In the following inquiry, I attempt to elucidate the meaning of his concept by discovering its underlying model, beginning in Parts II and III with the sensorium in relation to humans. This part of his concept is situated, first, in the context of his own writings and, then, in the context of certain seventeenth-century developments in anatomy and physiology. Only then is it possible to draw conclusions about the sensorium in relation to God. For, as will be evident in Part IV, what Newton called ‘the analogy of nature’ is a shorthand term for his method of reasoning from experi- ence; and this method requires that the second part of his concept is last in the order of knowledge, as will become evident towards the end of this inquiry.3 1 See, e.g., Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, p. 261: ‘Absolute space is the divine sensorium’. Hall, ‘Henry More’, XIII, p. 49: ‘God ... with the world as his sen- sorium’. Henry, ‘Voluntarist Theology’, p. 110 n.61: ‘phantasms in the mind (or “sensorium”) of God’. Holton, ‘Presupposition in the Construction of Theories’, p. 92: ‘space and time ... called the “sensory” of God’. Yolton, Thinking Matter, p. x: ‘space is ... the sensorium of God’. 2 See, e.g., Brook, ‘Beyond Everything’, p. 24: ‘sensorium (nervous system)’; Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, p. 235: ‘a particular part of the brain’ called ‘the sensorium’. Shapiro, Fits, Passions, and Paroxysms, p. 73: ‘the brain, or sensorium’. Yolton, Thinking Matter, p. x: ‘our brain is the sensorium of our ideas’. 3 More recently, Newton’s term ‘analogy of nature’ has been substituted by the term ‘transdiction’ v vi Newton’s Sensorium: Anatomy of a Concept I call my study ‘an inquiry’, because it involves a process of discovery, as well as an exploration of problems. Consequently, the summary below of each of its four parts is intended merely as a guide for the reader, rather than a revelation of what will be discovered along the way. Nevertheless (and by way of anticipation), I shall mention one discovery here, namely, that Newton’s construct involves a spectator, as well as a spectacle. But this should not be surprising, since as long ago as 1950 Henry Margenau pointed out that ‘the spectatorial doctrine has gone hand in hand with the rise of one special branch of physics, [namely,] mechanics, and is indeed its logical correlate’.4 In making this statement, however, Margenau imagined the spectator as a physicist and the spectacle as masses moving within a stationary ‘container’ of Newtonian absolute space. But in the course of this inquiry, the spec- tator will emerge as a principle of intellectual life, the hieroglyph for which is an intellectual eye. In the case of humans, the intellectual eye views the external spec- tacle indirectly as internal representations in the space of its sensorium, whereas in the case of God, the intellectual eye beholds directly the cosmic spectacle situated within a finite region of space, the whole of which is the space of its sensorium. The inquiry proper begins in Part I with twelve texts extracted from Newton’s writings, because they either mention or provide a context for his term sensorium in relation to both humans and God. Although this term is found in some of Newton’s personal papers, during his lifetime access to his papers was restricted to only a few of his inner circle, and after his death most of his papers remained unpublished until scholarly interest in them gradually increased after World War II.5 Accordingly, the texts presented here have been extracted from sources intended for a public audi- ence, since these sources laid the foundation for the reception of Newton’s concepts. Although the twelve texts themselves are provided with brief notes and com- ments, those related to the human sensorium are singled out for analysis in Part II, beginning with a text in which there is no mention of the term sensorium. But this text is important, not only because it presents a potential model for Newton’s theo- retical construct but also because it provides insight into the scope of Newton’s concept in relation to the sensory-motor system. From an analysis of this and other texts, some general conclusions are drawn, followed by a summary of what has been discovered thus far. But the summary also points to four questions that cannot be answered either from Newton’s texts or from an analysis of them.
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