Dynamics and Intelligibility: Bernoulli and Maclaurin

Abstract

This essay discusses the role of metaphysical argument in the vis viva controversy. The debate between Johann Bernoulli and Colin MacLaurin over the vis viva concept and Leibnizian dynamics is reviewed. Special emphasis is placed on Bernoulli’s appeal to the Leibnizian metaphysical principles of causality and continuity in supporting his theory of motion, and to the special status he accords the principle of the conservation of vis viva in dynamics. MacLaurin’s critique of Bernoulli is reviewed, with special emphasis on his discussion of the law of continuity, and his defence of Newton’s concept of fluxions and his disparagement of the status of infinitesimal quantities in Leibniz’s mathematics and Bernoulli’s dynamics. The physical and metaphysical arguments he deploys in criticising the principle of the conservation of vis viva are discussed, his approach being essentially Newtonian in inspiration.