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Excerpt from "Query 31," from Opticks
[First appeared in Latin edition as "Query 23," 1706]
...And thus Nature will be very conformable to herself and very simple,
performing all the great motions of the heavenly bodies by the attraction
of gravity which intercedes those bodies, and almost all the small ones
of their particles by some other attractive and repelling powers which
intercede the particles....
It seems probable to me that God in the beginning formed matter in solid,
massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures,
and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most
conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive
particles being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies
compounded of them; even so very hard as never to wear or break in pieces;
no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the
first creation. While the particles continue entire, they may compose
bodies of one and the same nature and texture in all ages; but should they
wear away, or break in pieces, the nature of things depending on them would
be changed. Water and earth, composed of old worn particles and fragments
of particles, would not be of the same nature and texture now, with water
and earth composed of entire particles in the beginning. And, therefore,
that Nature may be lasting, the changes of corporeal things are to be placed
only in the various separations and new associations and motions of these
permanent particles; compound bodies being apt to break, not in the midst
of solid particles, but where those particles are laid together, and only
touch in a few points.
It seems to me, further, that these particles have not only a vis
inertiae, accompanied with such passive laws of motion as naturally
result from that force, but also that they are moved by certain active
principles, such as is that of gravity, and that which causes fermentation,
and the cohesion of bodies. These principles I consider, not as occult
[hidden] qualities, supposed to result from the specific forms of things,
but as general laws of nature, by which the things themselves are formed;
their truth appearing to us by phenomena, though their causes be not yet
discovered. For these are manifest qualities, and their causes only are
occult.
And the Aristotelians gave the name of occult qualities, not to manifest
qualities, but to such qualities only as they supposed to lie hid in bodies,
and to be the unknown causes of manifest effects. Such as would be
the causes of gravity, and of magnetic and electric attractions, and of
fermentations, if we should suppose that these forces or actions arose
from qualities unknown to us, and incapable of being discovered and made
manifest. Such occult qualities put a stop to the improvement of
natural philosophy, and therefore of late years have been rejected.
To tell us that every species of things is endowed with an occult specific
quality by which it acts and produces manifest effects, is to tell us nothing;
but to derive two or three general principles of motion from phenomena,
and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal
things follow from those manifest principles, would be a very great step
in philosophy, though the causes of those principles were not yet discovered.
And, therefore, I scruple not to propose the principles of motion above
mentioned, they being of very general extent, and leave their causes to
be found out.
Now, by the help of these principles, all material things seem to have
been composed of the hard and solid particles above mentioned, variously
associated in the first creation by the counsel of an intelligent agent.
For it became Him who created them to set them in order. And if He
did so, it's unphilosophical to seek for any other origin of the world,
or to pretend that it might arise out of a chaos by the mere laws of Nature;
though, being once formed, it may continue by those laws for many ages.
For while comets move in very eccentric orbs in all manner of positions,
blind fate could never make all the planets move one and the same way in
orbs concentric, some inconsiderable irregularities excepted which may
have risen from the mutual actions of comets and planets upon one another,
and which will be apt to increase, till this system wants a reformation.
Such a wonderful uniformity in the planetary system must be allowed the
effect of choice.
And so must the uniformity in the bodies of animals, they having generally
a right and a left side shaped alike, and on either side of their bodies
two legs behind, and either two arms, or two legs, or two wings before
upon their shoulders, and between their shoulders a neck running down into
a backbone, and a head upon it; and in the head two ears, two eyes, a nose,
a mouth, and a tongue, alike situated. Also the first contrivance
of those very artificial parts of animals, the eyes, ears, brain, muscles,
heart, lungs, midriff, glands, larynx, hands, wings, swimming bladders,
natural spectacles, and other organs of sense and motion; and the instinct
of brutes and insects can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom
and skill of a powerful, ever-living agent, who being in all places, is
more able by His will to move the bodies within His boundless uniform sensorium,
and thereby to form and reform the parts of the Universe, than we are by
our will to move the parts of our own bodies.
And yet we are not to consider the world as the body of God, or the
several parts thereof as the parts of God. He is a uniform Being,
void of organs, members or parts, and they are his creatures subordinate
to him, and subservient to His will; and He is no more the soul of them
than the soul of man is the soul of the species of things carried through
the organs of sense into the place of its sensation, where it perceives
them by means of its immediate presence, without the intervention of any
third thing. The organs of sense are not for enabling the soul to
perceive the species of things in its sensorium, but only for conveying
them thither; and God has no need of such organs, He being everywhere present
to the things themselves. And since space is divisible ad infinitum,
and matter is not necessarily in all places, it may be also allowed that
God is able to create particles of matter of several sizes and figures,
and in several proportions to space, and perhaps of different densities
and forces, and thereby to vary the laws of Nature, and make worlds of
several sorts in several parts of the Universe. At least, I see nothing
of contradiction in all this.... |
