Newton e la filosofia scozzese

Abstract

This article sets out to analyse briefly the influence of Newtonian thought on the work of four Scottish thinkers — Colin MacLaurin, George Turnbull, David Hume and Thomas Reid. In MacLaurin's fundamental work ( On the Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, 1748) the article examines the section dealing with the problem of Method in Natural Philosophy. MacLaurin develops organically the Newtonian school's criticism of Cartesianism and extends it to more recent philosophers (Locke, Berkeley and perhaps Hume), strongly stressing the scientific method of “experimental philosophy” founded by Newton. In Turnbull's principal work ( The Principles of Moral Philosophy, 1740) a study is made of the parts in which the author is admittedly influenced by Newton, and proposes the great attempt at a scientific treatment of moral principles and human conduct. Turnbull arrives at the general conception of a strict analogy between the order and symmetry which exist in the physical world, and those in the human mind. Only one providential and rational adminstration, he concludes, governs both sets of acts. An analogous attempt is present in Hume's Treatise (1739–40), although the providential conception is completely absent. On the contrary, we find a sceptical conception of the general problems of the world's fate. Hume believes that in the “gentle force” which determines the association of ideas he has found a force similar to the gravitational one which, in Newton's theory, determines the motion of material objects; and this discovery was made, according to Hume, by applying in philosophy an experimental method akin to that used by Newton in natural philosophy. By contrast with Hume's attempt, Reid develops his theory in Philosophical Orations (1753–62) and especially in his Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764). He gives a radical criticism of Hume's sceptical conclusions and affirms that these are a coherent and natural conclusion from wrong premises; and that such premises are represented by the acceptance of the “theory of ideas” which is common to Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. Reid thinks that to confute the validity of this theory it is necessary to follow Bacon and especially Newton (“ ideas are viewed as idols or hypotheses ”), and this means adopting a correct experimental method. Reid believes that on the basis of such a method one can arrive at the first principles of common sense, which have the same function as the regulae philosophandi in Newton. By starting from such principles in the philosophical analysis of human mind it is possible, he asserts, to confute scepticism and reconcile the conclusions of philosophy with the traditional ones of religion.