Mechanical Philosophy I: - University of Toronto



Mechanical Philosophy I:

Material properties as the correlates of social qualities?

( Periods in the 17th century development of the mechanical philosophy

( Construction (ca. 1590 - 1650)

( Institutionalization (ca. 1650 - 1690)

Galileo on why Heat is not in an object, as a virtus caloritiva, but in the relationship between the mind and the hot object:

“I suspect that people in general have a concept of this which is very remote from the truth. For they believe that heat is a real phenomena, or property, or quality, which actually resides in the material world by which we feel ourselves warmed. Now I say that whenever I conceive any material or corporeal substance, I immediately feel the need to think of it as bounded, and as having this or that shape; as being large or small in relation to other things, and in some specific place at any given time; as being in motion or at rest; as touching or not touching some other body; and as being one in number, or few, or many. . . . But that it must be white or red, bitter or sweet, noisy or silent, and of sweet or foul odor, my mind does not feel compelled to bring in as necessary accompaniments. . . . Hence I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in the consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated . . . I believe that . . . no . . . solid existence belongs to many qualities . . . To excite in us tastes, odors, and sounds I believe that nothing is required in external bodies except shapes, numbers, and . . . movements. I think if ears, tongues, and noses were removed, shapes and numbers and motions would remain, but not odours, tastes, or sounds.”

Galileo, The Assayer (1623)

Locke on the primary v. secondary quality distinction

“…it being essential in our present Enquiry, to distinguish between the primary and real Qualities of bodies, which are always in them, (viz. Solidity, Extension, Figure, Number and Motion, or Rest; and are sometimes perceived by us, viz. when Bodies they are in, are big enough simply to be discerned) from those secondary and imputed Qualities, which are but the Powers of several combinations of those primary ones, when they operate, without being distinctly discerned . . . (II, viii.22)” [On secondary qualities . . . ] “… 2ndly, Such Qualities, which in truth are nothing in the Objects themselves, but Powers to produce various Sensations in us by their primary Qualities, i.e. by the Bulk, Figure, Texture, and Motion of their Insensible parts, as Colours, Sounds, Tastes, etc. These I call secondary Qualities. (II, viii.10)

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

*** The Idiots Guide to 17th Century Mechanism ***

( Strip matter of as much of its internal power as possible

( Minimal characteristics = extension, shape, motion,

impenatrability

( The ‘primary v. secondary quality’ distinction

( Primary qualities (size, shape, motion, etc) explain and cause

Secondary qualities (tase, colour, heat, etc)

( A minimal number of internal properties (Universal causes)

explains a large number of directly observable qualities/effects

( Optimistic = reductionistic explanation?

( Reductionistic (explain the whole in terms of the parts;

explain the many in terms of the few)

( Pessimistic = more holistic explanation?

( Relational nature of attributes

( Christian Aristotelian

( ‘Experiment’ = thwarting nature & hiding its processes

( Artificial devices = inappropriate for modelling nature

( Mechanist

( Experiment = uncovering secrets of nature and revealing

the power of God

( Clocks built by purposive, intelligent agent, but not purposive

& intelligent in themselves

( Mechanists: ‘Experience’ must be ‘properly interpreted’

( No such thing as ‘manifest experience’ (Aristotelians)

( Not experience alone, but experience ‘properly interpreted’

( Do not contest sense experience, just what sense experience is

taken to support

( Sensation = Interactions between external object, medium,

sense organs, the nerves and brain, & the mind

( Occult causes

( Aristotelians said the occult was unintelligible (insensible)

( Mechanists said the unobservable are knowable

( All causes = ‘occult’, because they are inferred from effects

( ‘Strict Mechanism’: ‘passive’ matter & motion via contact

( Atomism indivisible atoms (vacuum)

( Non-atomism divisible corpuscles & particles (no vacuum)

*** Sample Mechanist Explanations ***

( The relational nature of activities and attributes

E.g.: Nothing to ‘husband’ other than relation to other things

E.g.: Nature like a lock and key

E.g.: A body could lose its characteristics in a different environment

e.g.: the solubility of gold in acid (Locke)

e.g.: the property of a body alone in space (lonely corpuscle)

E.g.: A body not ‘white’ without the eye

E.g.: Magnetism as screw-like bodies in a Vortex (Descartes)

E.g.: The pin & pain (Boyle, Locke, Cudworth)

E.g.: No heat without living creatures to feel it (Galileo)

E.g.: The sharpness of an axe (Boyle)

E.g.: Descartes ‘wax near a fire’

E.g.: Galileo on tickling

|Mechanical Philosophers & the Properties of Bodies |

|Galileo |Being bounded; having shape; having a relative size; being spatio-temporal; having motion or being at |

| |rest; being in contact or not being in contact with other bodies and number. |

|Descartes |Extension, Motion, Shape |

|Boyle |Local motion, rest, bulk, figure, texture |

|Locke |Solidity, extension, motion, figure |

|Newton |Extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility, inertia |

*** Aristotelianism ***

( Teleology & Internal Causation [See Lec. 3 & 4]

( Manifest experience & Ocular demonstration

( Manifest qualities/qualitates = evident to the senses

E.g.: taste, colour

( Occult qualities/qualitates = hidden from the senses; could only

be detected through its effects

E.g.: magnetic virtue, dormitive virtue of opium

( Intellect operates via abstracted sense images [See Lec. 3&4, p. 4]

( [On Cause/Effect relations, See Lec. 10, table on p. 1]

( Causes of Effects (Occult virtues) outside senses = outside scientia (insensible, unintelligible)

( The doctrine of substantial forms, or ‘real qualities’

( Locate attributes within material bodies [See Lec. 5&6, p. 6 & 11]

( Qualitas = real [but not a ‘substance independent of body’?]

E.g.: Difference between an adult & a child; Whiteness

E.g.: Aristotle on the possibility of other worlds, the ‘doctrine of

the slave’, & the ‘social instinct’

*** Christian/Scholastic Aristotelianism ***

( Aquinas on God’s ‘absolute power’ and His ‘ordained power’

( Not all causation should be located in God

( Matter (passive) & Form (activities, attributes, powers)

( ‘Forms’ = Scholastic ‘hierarchy of powers, delegated by God’

( Insensible = unlikely God wished ordinary men to know of it

( Aquinas: no animal can exist below the threshold of our senses

( Genesis 2:19-20… Adam gives names to all animals in a parade

( ‘Epistemic Impairment’ as punishment after the fall?

( Locate properties within material objects (Secondary Causation)

( Individual Causes for Individual Effects

( Individualist Social Philosophy & Theories of Matter

1. Aristotle & Aquinas . . . [See Lec. 5&6]

( Aristotle’s dictum ‘man is by nature a social animal’

( Aquinas & the Medieval virtus sociativa in mankind: society arises

from below (the needs & abilities of its members), so government has

no absolute authority (humans do not need external supervision)

( Community members and Aristocrats had genuine rights

which could not be removed from them

2. St. Augustine: Social life creates temporal peace needed to achieve individual salvation

3. ( Individuals belong to society because it is good for the individual,

allowing the satisfaction of individual personal needs, and the

activation of individual innate potential

( The community is superior to the individual, but social life is

commended because of the good it bestows on its components

*** Mechanism & Proto-Liberal Social Philosophy ***

( Humans do not have an intrinsic social instinct (social dispositions result from interaction of social circumstances + internal selfishness)

E.g. 1: Machiavelli (1469-1527) or Hobbes (1588-1679)

No (Aristotelian/Scholastic) qualitates sociabiles

( Humans as self-centred, egotistical, selfish, naturally sinful

( We behave as if we have qualitates sociabiles only because of

the communal situation we find ourselves in (Hobbes)

( Society an artificial construction, built upon relatively sparse

innate characteristics

E.g. 2: Early Utilitarianism (later: Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832)

( Social inclinations = pursue pleasure and avoid pain

( Revival of Epicurean claim that friendship = self-interest

( Hobbes, The Leviathan (1651): social dispositions would disappear if man found in a ‘state of nature’

( Matter has mininal characteristics (extension, shape, motion, impenatrability)

( Matter acquires its attributes, or properties, from its

relationship with an external environment

( God supplies activity?

( God acts to sustain motion (Descartes)

( God set things up perfectly, so intervention not required;

besides, God is constrained by Reason (Leibniz)

( Supernaturalism: God supplies all activity (More)

( God implants some powers, and supplies activity (Boyle,

Newton); God’s omnipotence

( Matter & People have minimal characteristics

( Centralization of government in individual nation-states

( God-given (internal) rights of Medievals = ‘seditious’

( Social order requires an Absolute authority?

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