Constituting the ‘object’ of science in Newton's Principia: the many faces of Janus

Abstract

An interpretation of the opening sections of Isaac Newton's Principia is offered, in support of my contention that what is introduced there is a conceptual framework, constituting the object and formulating the task of rational mechanics, thus mediating a synthesis of mathematics and experiment/observation. I compare this view with the ‘law-constitutive’ solution of Brading (2012) to the ‘problem of bodies’. On this basis, I comment on one of the ‘tensions’ Biener and Schliesser (2017) discern in Newton's writings.