Article ID: CBB001213357

Newton's “satis est”: A New Explanatory Role for Laws (2013)

unapi

In this paper I argue that Newton's stance on explanation in physics was enabled by his overall methodology and that it neither committed him to embrace action at a distance nor to set aside philosophical and metaphysical questions. Rather his methodology allowed him to embrace a non-causal, yet non-inferior, kind of explanation. I suggest that Newton holds that the theory developed in the Principia provides a genuine explanation, namely a law-based one, but that we also lack something explanatory, namely a causal account of the explanandum. Finally, I argue that examining what it takes to have law-based explanation in the face of agnosticism about the causal process makes it possible to recast the debate over action at a distance between Leibniz and Newton as empirically and methodologically motivated on both sides.

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Authors & Contributors
Miller, David Marshall
Radin Dardashti
Schliesser, Erick
Schliesser, Eric
Harper, William
Brading, Katherine
Concepts
Philosophy of science
Methodology of science; scientific method
Physics
Natural philosophy
Explanation; hypotheses; theories
Natural laws
Time Periods
17th century
18th century
20th century, early
16th century
Places
England
Great Britain
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