Newton, Creation, and Perception – M. Tamny.pdf

7/29/2019 Newton, Creation, and Perception M. Tamny.pdf

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N e w t o n , Crea t ion , a n d Percep t i onBy Martin Tamny*

JOHN OCKE, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, considers whythere are those who maintain that matter has always existed but who arenonetheless not atheists. Their reason for holding such a view, he believes, is theirinability to conceive of the creation of matter from nothing. Locke asks them if they,as thinking things and not material bodies, had not themselves been created fromnothing. For if they had not been created, then they must have existed as thinkingthings from eternity, which is clearly absurd. If minds have not always existed, thenthey must have been created from nothing; and if they were created from nothing,why not admit "a material being to be made out of nothing by an equal power?"'

Concerningthe possibility of our attaining a knowledge of how such creation couldhave taken place, Locke writes, "if we would emancipate ourselves from vulgarnotions and raise our thoughts as far as they would reach to a closer contemplation ofthings, we might be able to aim at some dim and seeming conception how mattermight at first be made and begin to exist by the power of that eternal first being."2Although the foregoing clearly leaves us with the impression that Locke has sometheory of creation ex nihilo in mind, he does not supply us with the theory itself;instead he proceeds to tell us that our inability to conceive of creation ex nihiloshould not convince us that such creation is beyond the power of an infinite being.Locke goes on to argue, apparently by analogy, that although we cannot conceiveof how a body may be moved but by the "impulse"of another body, we are nonethe-less familiar with the fact that our minds can move our bodies: "For example, myright hand writes whilst my left hand is still. What causes rest in one and motion inthe other? Nothing but my will, a thought of my mind.... Explain this and make itintelligible, and then the next step will be to understand creation."3Unfortunately, there the matter is dropped. The strangeness of these passages fromLocke did not escape his readers. Leibniz sarcastically writes of Locke's "too scrupu-lous prudence" which has prevented him from giving his theory "in its entirety."Leibniz goes on, "It would be a great wrong if he should suppress it and leave usthere, after having made our mouths water, I assure you ... that I believe there issomething beautiful and important concealed behind this enigmatical manner."4We are told by Pierre Coste in the third edition of his translation of Locke's Essayinto French that "many persons, imagining that he must have communicated to methis mode of explaining the creation of matter, requested, when my translation firstappeared, that I would inform them what it was."'5Coste was unable to tell them,

*Department of Philosophy, The City College of the City University of New York, New York, N.Y.,10031.'John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. John Yolton, 2 vols. (London: Dent,1974), Vol. II, p. 226.2lbid.3Ibid., p. 227.4Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, trans. A. G. Langley(Chicago: Open Court, 1916), p. 510.5John Locke, Essai philosophique concernant l'entendement humain, trans. M. Coste (Amsterdam,1735), p. 521.ISIS, 1979, 70 (No. 251) 48

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NEWTON, CREATION, AND PERCEPTION 49since Locke had divulged nothing to him, but he then goes on to tell us a curiousstory concerning Isaac Newton, whose Opticks Coste had also translated:

Finally a long time after Locke's death, the Knight Newton, with whom I was talking,by chance, about that part of Mr. Locke's book, solved all the mysteryfor me. Smiling hefirst told me that he was the one who had found out this manner of explaining how matterhad been created, that he had thought of it one day when he happened to come upon thatquestion with Mr. Locke and Lord Pembroke. He explained his thought as follows. In away, he said, we could get an idea of how matter was created if we supposed that God, byvirtue of his might, had prevented anything from entering a certain section of pure space,which is, by its very nature, penetrable, eternal, necessary, infinite, for immediately thatsaid section of space would have impenetrability, one of the essential qualities of matter;(a) since pure space is absolutely homogeneous, all we have to suppose is that God wouldhave extended this sort of impenetrability to another identical section of space, (b) thatwould give us an idea of the mobility of matter, another quality that is also essential tomatter.6In reality, Newton had arrived at this theory of creation long before he kneweither Locke or Pembroke, for it can be found in a manuscript he wrote sometimebetween 1666 and 1669-"De gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum." Ostensibly atreatise on the gravity and equilibrium of fluids and solid bodies in fluids, it quicklybecomes a polemic against Descartes' views on motion and body in which Newtonattempts to show that pure extension characterizes space and not body. Regardingtheories of body in general he writes,

. . . it remains to give an explanation of the nature of body. Of this, however, theexplanation must be more uncertain, for it does not exist necessarily but by divine will,because it is hardly given to us to know the limits of the divine power, that is to saywhether matter could be created in one way only, or whether there are several ways bywhich different things similarto bodies could be produced. And although it scarcelyseemscredible that God could create beings similar to bodies which display all theiractions andexhibit all their phenomena and yet are not in essential and metaphysical constitutionbodies; as I have no clear and distinct perception of this matter I should not dare to affirmthe contrary, and hence I am reluctant to say positively what the nature of bodies is, but Iratherdescribe a certain kind of being similar in every way to bodies, and whose creationwe cannot deny to be within the power of God, so that we can hardly say that it is notbody.7The following possibility is then put forward:

If he [God] should exercise this power, and cause some space projecting above theEarth, like a mountain or any other body, to be impervious to bodies and thus stop orreflect light and all impinging things, it seems impossible that we should not consider thisspace to be truly body from the evidence of our senses (which constitute our sole judges inthis matter); for it will be tangible on account of its impenetrability,and visible, opaqueand coloured on account of the reflection of light, and it will resonate when struckbecausethe adjacent air will be moved by the blow.... and I do not see that it would not equallyoperate upon our minds and in turn be operated upon, because it is nothing more than theproduct of the divine mind realized in a definite quantity of space. For it is certain thatGod can stimulate our perception by his own will, and thence apply such power to theeffects of his will.8

6Ibid.7Isaac Newton, "De gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum,"in UnpublishedScientific Papers of IsaacNewton, ed. and trans. A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1962), p. 138.81bid., p. 139.



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50 MARTIN TAMNYAlthough this theory is presentedat firstas only a possibility, it quickly becomes clearthat Newton believes in its truth. He writes, "Thusthe preconception just mentioned[that bodies have a complete, absolute and independent reality in themselves] must belaid aside, and substantial reality is rather to be ascribed to these kinds of attributeswhich are realand intelligible things in themselves and do not need to be inherent in asubject. . . ."9The concept of material substance as an underlying substratum that causes or canexcite "various perceptions of the senses" is dismissed and replaced by God's will.Matter, as a substance, is termed "the vulgar notion . . . of body," "a certainunintelligible reality," and "a path to Atheism."10When he considers the nature ofbody and the power of God, it becomes clear to him that bodies are

. . .determined quantities of extension which omnipresent God endows with certainconditions. These conditions are, (1) that they be mobile . . .; (2) that two of this kindcannotcoincideanywhere;hat is, thatthey maybe impenetrable, ndhence thatwhentheirmotions causethem to meetthey stopand arereflected n accordwithcertain aws;(3) thattheycan excitevariousperceptions f thesensesand thefancy n createdminds,andconverselybe movedbythem,noris it surprising ince hedescription f theorigin sfounded n this."

Whereas the bodies God creates in space are products and indeed embodiments ofhis will, the space in which they are created is not a product of his will. Space andtime are concomitants of God's existence; they simply and necessarily exist becausehe does. Thus all the properties of space and time are solely dependent on God'snature and are for that reason necessary properties.Space is a dispositionof beingqua being. No beingexists or can exist which is notrelated o space n someway. God is everywhere,reatedmindsaresomewhere,nd bodyis in thespacethat it occupies;andwhatevers neither verywhereoranywhere oes notexist. And hence t follows thatspace s an effectarising rom thefirstexistenceof being,becausewhenanybeing s postulated, pace s postulated.And thesamemay beassertedof duration: or certainlybotharedispositionsof beingorattributes ccording o whichwe denominatequantitativelyhepresenceanddurationof anyexisting ndividualhing.So thequantityof theexistenceof God waseternal, nrelation o duration, nd infinite n

relation to the space in which he is present;and the quantity of the existence of a createdthing was as great, in relation to duration,as the durationsince the beginningof itsexistence,andin relation o thesize of its presenceas greatas thespacebelonging o it.12It is therefore not surprising that the properties of such a space and time are verymuch like those attributed to God himself. Space and time are not a part of God, ashas been often suggested, but are a necessary consequence of his nature as a being.God's creation of the universe as an act of will is then indeed creation fromnothing, though it does have a time and place, a scene of creation. The bodies Godcreates are contingent in the sense that they are products of his will and as such donot have necessary existence, but their existence as spatio-temporal entities is in noway contingent. Any world Newton's God could create would be necessarily one inspace and time.

9Ibid., p. 144.'DIbid., p. 143. It is interesting to note that Newton wrote "De gravitatione" at least 15 years beforeBerkeley was born."1Ibid., p. 140.l2Ibid., pp. 136-137.



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NEWTON, CREATION, AND PERCEPTION 51When Newton writes of "acts of God's will," however, he is not merely pointing tothe fact that God could have done otherwise. He is indicating the method and natureof God's act of creation as well. Newton argues that God creates bodies in and "of'space through an act of will in the same way that we can move our bodies through an

act of will. Although we do not know the mechanism whereby we accomplish this, weclearly believe that we do it. In the same way we can be assured that God createsobjects in and "of' space, despite our inability to conceive of any mechanism wherebythis is done. Newton writes,ThusI havededuceda description f this corporealnature rom our facultyof movingourbodies,so that all the difficulties f theconceptionmayat lengthbe reduced o that;andfurther, o that Godmay appear to our innermost onsciousness)o havecreated heworldsolely by the act of will, just as we move ourbodiesby an act of will alone;and,besides,so that I mightshowthat theanalogybetweenhe Divinefacultiesand ourownis

greater han has formerlybeen perceivedby Philosophers.'3These products of God's will are themselves, however, given the creative power of

will, their creations being our sensations. Of these bodies Newton writes, ". . . I do notsee that it would not equally operate upon our minds and in turn be operated upon,because it is nothing more than the product of the divine mind realized in a definitequantity of space. For it is certain that God can stimulate our perception by his ownwill, and thence apply such power to the effects of his will."''4

Bodies, then, as the embodiments of will, are conceived of by Newton as activerather than passive. In "De gravitatione" Newton has replaced the passive matter ofDescartes with an active matter that derives its activity from the power of will: "Thusyou see how fallacious and unsound this Cartesian argument is, for when theaccidents of bodies have been rejected, there remains not extension alone, as heimagined, but also the faculties by which they can stimulate perceptions in the mindand move other bodies."15Though we have seen that in "De gravitatione"Newton'sargument for God's will as the origin of the power of bodies to produce sensationsrests on the power of the mind to move the body, I would like to suggest anothersource for this notion.When Newton went up to Cambridge in 1661 he began a commonplace book inwhich he would keep notes of his readingsand observations. The book was kept until1665 and thus represents a record of his reading during what were-perhapsthe mostimportant years of his development. A part of this book was organized by topic,given an index, and titled "Quaestiones quaedam philosophicae." It contains directreferences to Boyle, Galileo, More, Glanvill, Hobbes, and Descartes. One of thereferencesto Joseph Glanvill occurs in a section headed, "Immagination& Phantasia& invention," where Newton writes, "A man by heitning his fansie & immaginationmay bind anothers to thinke what hee thinks as in ye story of ye Oxford scollar inGlanvill Van of Dogmatizing."'6The story of the gypsy scholar as told by Glanvill runs as follows. A student atOxford University was forced by his financial condition to join a "company ofVagabond Gypsies, whom occasionally he met with, and to follow their Trade for a

13Ibid., p. 141.'4Ibid., p. 139.l5Ibid., p. 147.16"Quaestionesquaedam philosophicae," part of the commonplace book of 1661-1665, CambridgeUniversity Library (Add. 3996 fols. 87r-135r), fol. 109r.



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52 MARTIN TAMNYmaintenance." He was soon taught their "Mystery,"at which he grew very proficient.Having met two former friends, he "told them, that the people he went with were notsuch Impostours, as they were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind oflearning among them, and could do wonders by the power of Imagination, and thathimself had learnt much of their Art. .. ." To convince them of the truth of this he leftthem to talk together and then returned to tell them what they had said in hisabsence. He then explained that "what he did was by the power of Imagination, hisPhancy binding theirs; and that himself had dictated to them the discourse, they hadheld together, while he was from them: That there were warrantable wayes ofheightening the Imagination to that pitch, as to bind others.... 17Newton's mention of Glanvill's story is made the more interesting by its juxtaposi-tion to Newton's report of some after-image experiments he had conducted. Thisreport begins immediately below the reference to Glanvill and under the sameheading but appears later in time, judging by the open handwriting with which itbegins. Newton describes various after-images he had after looking at the sun. Whenthe effects of these appeared to end he closed his eyes and imagined the sun. Uponopening his eyes he found that the after-images had returned. It was as if " . . . I hadnewly looked on ye Sunne whence I gather yt my Phantasie & ye (? had ye sameoperation uppon ye spirits in my optick nerve & yt ye same motions are caused in mybraines by both."18Both the gypsy scholar and the after-imageentries emphasize Newton's belief in thepower of the will to produce thoughts, actions, and sensations. Most importantly,Newton claims that the imagination or fancy can produce exactly the same sensationsas the observation of an external object-by similarlyaffecting the spirits of the opticnerves. Although it is unlikely that Newton actually believed that the events re-counted by Glanvill had ever occurred, I think that the possibility of one mindimposing sensations on another was suggested to him by the story taken in conjunc-tion with his interpretation of his after-image experiment. This possibility of onemind binding others to its will is a matter of "heitning ... one's fansie & immagina-tion." The imagination, we are told by Newton, is "helped by good aire fastingmoderate wine but spoiled by drunkennesse, gluttony, too much study....."19 Thusthe power of imagination can be strengthened or weakened. From here it is a shortstep to the positing of the infinite power of God's imagination and the possibility ofall our sensations having their causes in God's imaginings; or as Newton wrote, "it iscertain that God can stimulate our perception by his own will. . ."20 Newton doesnot, as we now know, leave the matter there. God has the power to impart this abilityto cause sensations, and this he does, thereby creating physical bodies.A kind of unity thus emerges. God can produce sensations, physical bodies canproduce sensations, and we can produce sensations (as in the after-image case). Theworld of God's creation forms a unity of active powers all of which point back totheir creator as the wellspring of activity. Even the Cartesian problem of the interac-tion of mind and body is thought to be solved by this unity. As Newton writes,

'7Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing: The Three Versions,ed. and comp. Stephen Medcalf(Hove, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1970), p. 198.18Newton, "Quaestiones," fols. 109r, 125r. Newton's after-image experiments are also described in aletter he wrote to John Locke, June 30, 1691, item 365 in The Correspondenceof Isaac Newton, ed. H. W.Turnbull, Vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), pp. 152-154.19Ibid.,fol. O9r.20"Degravitatione," p. 139-



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NEWTON, REATION,NDPERCEPTION 53... the usefulness of the idea of body that I have described is brought out by the fact that itclearly involves the chief truths of metaphysics and thoroughly confirms and explainsthem. For we cannot postulate bodies of this kind without at the same time supposing thatGod exists, and has created bodies in empty space out of nothing, and that they are beingsdistinct from created minds, but able to combine with minds.2'

This concept of will never disappears from the Newtonian position. There areechoes of it in the General Scholium of the second edition of the Principia writtenalmost forty-fiveyearsafter "De gravitatione."There Newton writes of a "most subtlespirit which pervadesand lies hid in all gross bodies." It is by this subtle spirit'sactionthat particles attract each other, electric bodies attract and repel each other, light isemitted, reflected, refracted, inflected and heats bodies and "all sensation is excited,and the members of animal bodies move at the command of the will.... but these arethings that cannot be explained in a few words, nor are we furnished with thatsufficiency of experiments which is required to an accurate determination anddemonstration of the laws by which this electric and elastic spirit operates."22This unity of the world through will also marks Newton's views concerning religionin the narrower sense. Shall we worship God as an omnipotent, beneficent, andomniscient being, or as creator, or as ruler?At the heart of Newton's religion was thenotion of an active God, one who exerted dominion over his creation and whose willwas the primary active force in the world. God's essential properties were to beworshipped, but what was most to be celebrated were his actions.Although this doctrine was first publicly expressed by Newton in the GeneralScholium as a partial answer to the criticisms of Leibniz (and unnamed others), itwould be a mistake to think this theological position was merely constructed to meetthose objections.23In fact this doctrine is to be found throughout Newton's theologi-cal writings and is consistent with the position taken in "De gravitatione." Aparticularly eloquent statement is found in the following section of Newton's com-mentary on 2 Kings 17:15,16:

To celebrate God for his eternity, immensity, omnisciency, and omnipotence is indeedvery pious and the duty of every creatureto do it according to capacity, but yet this part ofGod's glory as it almost transcends the comprehension of man so it springs not from thefreedom of God's will but the necessity of his nature . . . the wisest of beings requiredof usto be celebratednot so much for his essence as for his actions, the creating, preserving,andgoverning of all things according to his good will and pleasure. The wisdom, power,goodness, and justice which he always exerts in his actions are his glory which he stands somuch upon, and is so jealous of . . . even to the last tittle.24

Newton sees God as an active being whose will is above all else to be praised. It isGod's will that created the universe's contents, which are indeed nothing more thanembodiments of that will, and in the end it is the unity provided by that fact thatmakes the world intelligible.21Ibid., p. 142.22Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. Andrew Motte, rev. and ed.Florian Cajori (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), p. 547. The spirit of which Newton herewrites is, of course, a material spirit, but he continues to link the account of how bodies interact with theaccount of how animal bodies move at the command of the will; i.e., a common cause is suggested.23Frank E. Manuel in The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974)makes agood case for this position based on his examination of Newton's manuscripts on religion (known as theYahuda Manuscripts) at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem.24Ibid., pp. 21-22. From Yahuda MS 21, fol. Ir.



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54 MARTIN TAMNYWhen Leibniz claimed that Newton's physics belittled God since it required thatGod from time to time "interfere" n the universe's operation so as to maintain order(thereby implying that God could not make the universe perfect and self-contained tobegin with), Newton answered both through the General Scholium and the good

offices of Samuel Clarke. The reply in the General Scholium rests on Newton's claimthat a God without a dominion is no God at all, any more than a king without adominion is a king. The word "God," he argues, does not designate the essentialfeatures of God but rather refers to him as a ruler. And to rule is to act, to havedominion. Leibniz's God is like a king in name only. He does not rule; he sits backand watches. Newton's God is the king of the universe and rules it as such through hiswill. God is of course not capricious; though free, he acts in accordance with laws thathe himself has chosen. It is these laws that Newton has sought to discover as a man ofscience.Newton's position finds its most beautiful statement in Samuel Clarke'sFirst Replyof the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, where he expresses a view that we can nowclearly recognize as Newton's:

The notion of the world's being a great machine, going on without the interposition ofGod, as a clock continues to go without the assistance of a clockmaker; is the notion ofmaterialism and fate, and tends, (under pretence of making God a supra-mundaneintelligence,) to exclude providence and God's government in reality out of the world. Andby the same reason that a philosopher can represent all things going on from the beginningof the creation, without any government or interposition of providence; a sceptic willeasily argue still farther backwards, and suppose that things have from eternity gone on(as they now do) without any true creation or original author at all, but only what sucharguers call all-wise and eternal nature. If a king had a kingdom, wherein all things wouldcontinually go on without his government or interposition, or without his attending to andordering what is done therein; it would be to him, merely a nominal kingdom; nor wouldhe in reality deserve at all the title of king or governor. And as those men, who pretendthat in an earthly government things may go on perfectly well without the king himselfordering or disposing of any thing, may reasonably be suspected that they would like verywell to set the king aside: so whosoever contends, that the course of the world can go onwithout the continual direction of God, the Supreme Governor;his doctrine does in effecttend to exclude God out of the world.25

Newton's conception of an active God as the creator and participant in an activeuniverse is then a notion that can be found in his writings for a period of sixty years.* * *

Let us now turn to a consideration of how Newton's various views on God andcreation fit together with his views on perception and space. Newton's theory ofperception is quite characteristic of his period, though his own treatment of it issomewhat naive. He believed that external bodies causally produced motions in oursense organs, which were transmitted through the nerves to the brain, resulting in animage which was then "viewed"by the mind. That Newton held such a position fromvery early on is made clear by the following questions and answers:

25H. G. Alexander, ed., TheLeibniz-ClarkeCorrespondence (Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press,1956), p. 14. There exists strong evidence that Newton participated in the composition of Clarke's letters.Much of that evidence is presentedin Alexandre Koyre and I. BernardCohen, "Newton and the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, with Notes on Newton, Conti, and Des Maizeaux," Archives Internationalesd'Histoire des Sciences, 1962, 15: 63-126, and A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, "Clarkeand Newton,"Isis, 1961, 52: 583-585.



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NEWTON,CREATION,AND PERCEPTION 55Of ye Soule

Quae 1Why objects appeare not inverst, Resp:The mind or soule cannot judge ye imagein ye Braine to be inversed unlesse shee perceived externall things-wth wchshee mightcompare yt image2. Why doe [objects] appeare to bee w th out our body? -Resp: Because in y e image ofthings delineated in the braine by sight, ye bodys image is placed in ye midst of ye imagesof other things, is moved at oe command toward & from those other images, etc:3. But why are not these objects then judged to bee in the braine Resp: Becauseye imageof ye braine is not painted there, nor is ye Braineperceived by ye soule it not being in mo-tion & probably ye soule perceives noe bodys but by ye helpe of their motion. But were yeBraine perceived together wth those images in it wee should thinke wee saw a body like thebraine encompassing & comprehending our selves ye starrs & all other visible objects.26That this theory of perception continued to be held by Newton into his maturity canbe seen in Query 28 of the 1706 edition of the Opticks, where he wrote,

Is not the Sensory of Animals that place to which the sensitive Substance is present, andinto which the sensible Species of Things are carriedthrough the Nerves and Brain, thatthere they may be perceived by their immediate presence to that Substance? And thesethings being rightly dispatch'd, does it not appear from Phaenomena that there is a Beingincorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite Space, as it were in hisSensory, sees the things themselves intimately, and throughly perceives them, and compre-hendes them wholly by their immediate presence to himself: Of which things the Imagesonly carried through the Organs of sense into our little Sensoriums, are there seen andbeheld by that which in us perceives and thinks.27

The theory is here stated in a somewhat more sophisticated form, but it is stillsubstantially the same. We are given the name- "sensorium"of that place "inthehead" where we see the images produced by the brain, but this is also meant toconstitute a kind of internal space of our perceptions. The passage also containsNewton's famous likening of absolute space to the sensorium of God. In what followswe will find that the theory of "De gravitatione"greatly clarifiesNewton's meaning inthis passage.In the Scholium to the "Definitions" of the Principia Newton introduces twoconcepts of space. The first he calls absolute, true, and mathematical; the second hecalls relative, apparent, and common. He goes on to describe them as follows:II. Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remainsalways similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure ofthe absolute spaces; which our senses determine by its position to bodies; and which iscommonly taken for immovable space; . . . Absolute and relative space are the same infigure and magnitude; but they do not remain always numerically the same.28

And several pages later he writes,But because the parts of space cannot be seen, or distinguished from one another by our

senses, therefore in their stead we use sensible measures of them. For from the positionsand distances of things from any body considered as immovable, we defineall places;andthen with respectto such places, we estimate all motions, considering bodies as transferredfrom some of those places into others. And so, instead of absolute places and motions, weuse relative ones; and that without any inconvenience in common affairs;but in philoso-26Newton, "Quaestiones,"fol. 130v.27lsaac Newton, Opticks (1730 ed., reprinted New York: Dover, 1952), p. 370.28Newton, Principia (Motte-Cajori ed.), p. 6.



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56 MARTIN TAMNYphical disquisitions, we ought to abstract from our senses, and consider things themselves,distinct from what are only sensible measures of them. For it may be that there is no bodyreally at rest, to which the places and motions of others may be referred.29

The first thing to note is that absolute space like external objects is not itselfperceivable. Just as we see at most "pictures"of the external objects "on view" in ourbrain, we perceive only the relations among those objects as space-that is, relationalspace. Similarly, just as our naive realism with regardto objects generally suffices forcommon discourse, so does our use of the notion of relational space. When we areconcerned with philosophical issues, however, Newton tells us that "we ought toabstract from our senses, and consider things themselves."What does Newton mean when he says that absolute space may or may not benumerically the same as our relational space? If the objects we regard as at resthappen really to be at rest-that is, with regard to absolute space-then therelational space which those objects define is numerically identical with absolutespace. If, however, those objects are not really at rest, then the space they define isnumerically different from absolute space and is in motion with respect to it. Thematter is far more complex if we take Newton's theory of perception into considera-tion.Relational space, insofar as we perceive it, is the relations that exist among the"pictures" n our brains. When we consider those "pictures" o be representations ofexternal objects we project those objects and their relations outside of ourselves. Itlooks to us, of course, as if they are outside to begin with. We become aware of this

"projecting" only upon theoretical reflection as to the nature of perception. Now, itis clearly this external relational space that either is or is not numerically identical toabsolute space. The relations that exist among the "pictures"in our brains couldnever be numerically identical to absolute space. The matter is yet further compli-cated when we consider that according to the theory of "De gravitatione" those"pictures"in our brains are caused by regions of space endowed by God with thepower to produce sensations in created minds. It is clear that the regions of space thatGod so endows are regions of absolute space, and since these cannot move andobjects clearly do, it must be that cases of absolute motion are cases in whichdifferent regions of space are endowed with the same powers in orderly succession.Thus to say that the objects move is to say that the powers "move." God is then veryactive indeed. It is not. sufficient for him to endow a given region of space with thepower to produce sensations in us; he must also, in the case of moving bodies, endowsuccessive regions of space with that same power while withdrawing it from theprevious regions. This has an extremely interesting consequence, of which I cannothelp but wonder if Newton was aware: no matter how quickly God managed thesesuccessive endowments and withdrawals, they would still remain successive and thusdenumerable, which means that these bodies would not have spatio-temporal conti-nuity. But more of this later.

We can now ask the interesting question: Are the objects we see numericallyidentical to the "things themselves"? As in the case of relational space, we are notasking if the "pictures"in our brains are ever numerically identical to the thingsthemselves, for clearly they are never so. We are asking whetherthe objects we see asbeing "out there" are numerically identical to those regions of space that have beenendowed with the power to make us see objects.29Ibid., p. 8.



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NEWTON, CREATION, AND PERCEPTION 57There is an initial inclination to respond that the case is just like that of relationaland absolute space; that is, that they may or may not be numerically identical,because we are after all speaking of regions of space. But this would not be correct.Newton definitely gives us to believe that the extension of the region of space and the

"sensory extension" of our sense of sight and touch are so related that the latterinforms us of the former. But when we say that the object projected into space isidentical to a region of absolute space, do we mean the object with all its properties isthus identical? We identified the boundaries of that region with the visual and tactileboundaries of the object as perceived. The object as extended and as the locus of thecause of our perceptions was what we took to be identical to the region of space. Inshort, it is just those qualities that Newton considers as primary,including his notionof powers, that we take as being so identical. The region is not red, though it may be areflector of red-making rays of light, and so for all the secondary qualities, none ofwhich are identical with the region of absolute space, but which are caused in us bythe powers that reside, no matter how briefly, in a region of absolute space.In this way we can be assured that when we see an object "out there," and we arenormal observers, we are "seeing"a region of absolute space.30We cannot, however,reidentify the region of absolute space we are seeing, although we can, of course,reidentify the object we are seeing.The above is a consequence of Newton's theory of motion. If an object is in aninertial state, we can in no way tell if it is in fact moving or in a state of rest. In thecase of such objects, although we can be assured that whenever we see them we areseeing a region of absolute space, we cannot be assured that we are seeing the sameregion through time or different regions at each instant.If an object is in a noninertial state, then we can be assured that we are seeing adifferent region of absolute space each instant, since such an object is truly moving,but we may or may not be seeing the same region at different times. To help clarifythis last remark consider an object moving noninertially in what is apparently acircle. It would appear that every 3600 the object is in the same place again-that is,that the "powers"have been once again given to the same region of space. Despite theabsolute character of noninertial motion in the Newtonian theory, however, theremay be an inertial component in the motion which is shared by the observer andwhich is, in principle, undetectable. Thus we can never tell whether the placeoccupied by the object is the same place or a different place from the one occupied3600 before. Thus whenever I successfully see an object as out there, it is numericallyidentical with a region of absolute space at every instant that I see it, but the regionmay or may not be a different region at each instant.A somewhat perplexing consequence of this fact should be noted. If we consider amoving object A which occupies region x at t, and region y at t2,we can see that A isnumerically identical to region x at t, and to y at t2, but that regions x and y are at notimes numerically identical. Since A is numerically identical to itself at all times, wehave as a consequence of the foregoing that two things (x and y) numerically identicalto a third (A) need not be numerically identical to each other.It is not difficult to discern the root of this unhappy consequence. We haveidentified bodies with regions of space, but these regions are not themselves entities

301t should be noted that Newton's theory of creation taken together with his views on perceptionprovides us with a possible foundation for his claim of the existence of absolute space. Whereas allprevious argumentsdrawn from Newton concerning this claim have been purelymetaphysical or theologi-cal, we have seen that there may well have been epistemological considerations as well.



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58 MARTIN TAMNYafter all but abstracted parts of a continuous whole. At the same time we have deniedbodies spatio-temporal continuity. This in itself sounds paradoxical, but the sense ofparadox is removed when we realize that the identity of a body and a region of spaceholds at any given instant in time but not necessarily through time. The realproblemwe are left with is the sense in which a body retains its identity through time eventhough it is not a spatio-temporally continuous entity.All of this, of course, has a familiar ring, for it is quite close to the problems raisedby the quantized bodies of modern physics dwelling in the plenum of space-time. Butwhereas we can blame Bohr, Schrodinger, and Einstein for our problems, Newtonhas only God to blame for his.

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Newton, Creation, and Perception – M. Tamny.pdf