“No variation of things arises from blind metaphysical necessity, which must be the same always and everywhere.” [A cæca necessitate metaphysica, quæ utique eadem est semper & ubique, nulla oritur rerum variatio.]--Isaac Newton, General Scholium (1713), Principia.
This week we're celebrating three hundred years since Newton published the General Scholium, attached to the second edition of the Principia. The passage above was only inserted in the final (1726), third edition. The argument of the sentence seems to be something like this:
- A1: (Metaphysical) Necessity <--> Homogeneity
- A2: Homogeneity and Variety are disjunctive alternatives (suppressed premise)
- P: We observe variety
- Therefore, no metaphysical necessity
From textual context it is very clear that Newton wants to defend the legitimacy of final causes. In particular, in circles around Newton it was common to refer to Spinoza as having defended the system of “Blind and Unintelligent Necessity” (S. Clarke (1705) Demonstration, 12.102); or “A Blind and Eternal Fatality” (S. Clarke, Demonstration, Intro.8);
or "blind mechanical necessity” (H. More, Confutation of Spinoza, 91). In fact, More refers to Spinoza as that “completely blind and stupid philosophaster” (H. More, 91; recall!) So, because Spinoza's denies final causes, the necessity he defends is unguided and undirected, that is, "blind." In the quoted passage above, Newton is, thus, offering an empirical argument against a metaphysical thesis: observed variety is not compatible with Spinoza's proposed system of nature. Moreover, the General Scholium argues more generally that we do not just observe variety, we observe quite determinate and peculiar variety (of the sort that leads Newton to offer his famous argument to a designer).
The idea that Spinoza's system of necessity would have to produce homogeneous universe is not silly. Just as there are famous pressures internal to Spinoza's system to deny the reality of the modes, there are also pressures to eliminate arbitrary variance (due to PSR). In particular, to get observed variety it would seem that there would have to be variety from any given 'start' of the universe going back to eternity. But if one assumes a homogeneous plenum (as Spinoza does), then no variance should be produced. So, it seems that Spinoza has to assume some kind of arbitrariness in 'initial conditions' (even though Spinoza clearly thinks the universe is eternal); but given PSR he has no right to that assumption. Incidentally, the argument of this paragraph helps explain why informed readers often confounded Spinoza's system of 'blind' necessity with Epicurean chance (both offer law-governed systems of nature, with some element of chance/arbitrariness).
Spinoza, of course, claimed that "From the necessity of the divine nature must follow an infinite number of things in infinite ways" (Ethics 1, P16; see also E1p17dem.) So, whatever Newton is criticizing it is not Spinoza's own understanding of his system. So, in the past I understood Newton's position as a kind of burden-shifting argument against Spinoza: Spinoza might think he has sufficient explanation for variety, but he has no account of why we would observe particular variety. Moreover, given Newtonian mechanics, any story Spinoza would have to tell would have to be very constrained and it is not obvious that he has resources to generate it. As Spinoza's earliest friendly (Tshirnhaus) and hostile (More) readers discerned Spinoza's treatment of motion is very unsatisfactory (including, recall, Samuel Clarke).
Even so, given the text of Spinoza's Ethics, it is puzzling that Newton treats the Spinozistic argument as being committed to the idea that metaphysical necessity implies homogeneity. Now, as Newton's earliest critics realized (here's Jonathan Edwards) the argument of the General Scholium is very indebted to Clarke's (1705) A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (first given as a so-called Boyle lectures in 1704). Clarke's Demonstration is as the sub-title helpfully explains offered "in answer to Mr. Hobbes, Spinoza, and their followers." Clarke's arguments against Spinoza probably attracted the attention of Hume, and have had a surprising afterlife in the origin of analytical philosophy.
As it happens a few years after Clarke's Demonstration appeared in the same year as the second edition of the Principia, a then relatively unknown young clergy-man, Joseph Butler, initiated a friendly and very insightful correspondence over Clarke's arguments. In Clarke's third response, he writes: "Necessity absolute and antecedent in the order of nature to the existence of any subject has nothing to limit it; but if it operates at all (as must needs do), it must operate (if I may so speak) everywhere and at all times alike….” (Dec 10, 1713) Clarke explains what we mean by metaphysical (or absolute) necessity. He interprets this kind of modality as requiring the same impact everywhere and all times and as producing the same consequence everywhere and all the time. (It is, thus, a perfect principle to deploy when discussing the nature of substance or god and it helps, in fact, to explain why such necessity rules out other god-like substance(s) of the sort that Leibniz wished to press against Spinoza. I leave working that out as an exercise of the reader.) Absolute necessity is, thus, unfriendly not just to arbitrariness, but to variety in general. So, here (and elsewhere) Clarke edges very close to Spinozism. Clarke, of course, famously appeals to God's will to introduce the right sort of variety.
Even so, we're still left with a puzzle why Clarke would have associated the target with Spinoza. The answer to that question can be discerned in the rest of the same paragraph in the letter to Butler:
The argument is likewise the same in the question about the origin of motion. Motion cannot be necessarily existing because, it being evident that all determinations are equally possible in themselves, the original determination of the motion of any particular body this way rather than the contrary way could not be necessary in itself, but was either caused by the will of an intelligent and free agent, or else was an effect produced and determined without any cause at all, which is an express contradiction: as I have shown in my Demonstration. (Clarke to Butler, Dec 10, 1713)
In fact, here Clarke is recycling his argument against John Toland, who is the only named "follower" of Spinoza in the Demonstration. Toland's brilliant Letters to Serena appeared in 1704 (the same year as Clarke's Boyle lectures) [recall here]. Toland explicitly appeals to the authority of Newton's Principia to criticize Spinoza's account of motion while promoting Spinozistic doctrines (eternity of the world, identification of God and nature). Moreover, Toland goes out of his way to criticize Newton's account of the vacuum and space [recall].
Now, the target of the quoted passage from Clarke is Toland's doctrine that motion is essential to matter. This plugs the whole that the critics of Spinoza had discerned in Spinoza's system in Spinozistic fashion (in the spirit of the Conatus doctrine). Clarke claims that this still leaves unexplained the origin of observed motion in the universe. In particular, Toland's Spinozism can [A] neither explain rectilinear motion (that's an arbitrary restriction on the nature of motion) nor [B] explain the observed variety in the motions given the fact that necessity requires homogenous effects.* So, Newton's target in the General Scholium is a Toland's Spinozism as interpreted by Clarke.
In the Clarke and Toland debate both sides agree that active matter (Toland's position) entails a kind of Spinozistic, immanent God, while a passive matter (Clarke's position) opens the door to a more activist God. We can see, then, that as Newton alligns his position with Clarke's criticism of Spinozism, he gets pushed into a position that seems to entail a passivity of matter.
Yet, as is well known, in the published version of the first edition of the Principia, Newton left the status of matter open even if to most discerning readers he clearly flirts with active matter. As debates over action at a distance intensified and Newton's religious views come under scrutinity, he keeps a studied agnosticism about it most famously, in fact, in the General Scholium (recall this post). So, does the General Scholium entail an embrace of passive matter (as Kochiras has argued)? I think not because despite the many resemblances between the General Scholium and Clarke's Demonstration, Newton could count on readers projecting onto Newton's text the familiar Lockean idea that God had superadded gravity to matter.
*I should note that [A] is an authentic Spinozistic insight because Spinoza drops the rectilinear requirement as he moves away from Descartes' account of motion (see here).
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