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Isaac (1642-1727). Autograph manuscript fragment, comprising part of Query 31, added to the second English edition of Opticks (published 1717), containing a reflection upon the philosophy of modern scientific inquiry as opposed to the "occult qualities" of the Aristoteleans. N.p., n.d. [ca. 1717]. 1 page, a narrow oblong slip (2 x 71/2 in.). A brief but most provocative passage from Newton's visionary Queries appended to his Opticks, comprising approximately 90 words in Newton's highly compact cursive hand, with several corrections. In his Principia (1687) Newton developed his laws of universal gravitation, his greatest contribution to physics. (Over two hundred years later, Albert Einstein would become Newton's intellectual successor by his development of a theory of gravity that improved upon Newton's laws: the General Theory of Relativity.) Here, in a late addition to his Opticks, Newton draws a critical distinction between the traditional Aristotelean idea of occult qualities (forces or qualities, like gravity, which are manifest, but outside the realm of human knowledge and understanding) and the modern spirit of scientific inquiry, exemplified by Newton's own work, which held that all processes or forces in nature may be explained by man if subjected to rational observation and experimentation. As one historian writes, Newton's Opticks "became a veritable handbook for experimenters of the eighteenth century, a 'vade mecum' of the experimental art and a primary textbook for those who saw that progress in science could be made by direct questioning of nature in the laboratory. For these investigators...Newton's Opticks became the primary guide. The expanded 'Queries' introduced into the later editions came to constitute a reserach program for the century" (I. Bernard Cohen, "The Principia, the Newtonian Style, and the Newtonian Revolution in Science," in Action and Reaction Proceedings of a Symposium to Commemorate the Tercentenary of Newton's Principia, ed. P. Theerman & A.F. Seef, 1993, p.75). The crucial portion of the text of Query 31 is excerpted here, with the text of the present passage italicized to illustrate the context in which it occurs: "All these things being consider'd, it seems probable to me, that God in the Beginning form'd Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable 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 form'd 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 entirem 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 a Vis inertiae, accompanied with such passive Laws of Motion as naturally result from the 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 Qualities, supposed to result from the specifick Forms of Things, but as general Laws of Nature, by which the Things themselves are form'd; their Truth appearing to us by Phenomena; though their causes be not yet discover'd. For these are manifest Qualities, and their Causes only are Occult. And the Aristoteliens gave the Name of occult Qualities only as they supposed to lie hid in Bodied, and to be the unknown Causes of manifest Effects: such as would be the Causes of Gravity, and of magnetick and electrick Attractions, and of Fermentationsm if we should suppose these Forces or Actions arose from Qualities unknown to us, and uncapab of being discover'd & 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 endow'd with an occult specifick 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 Phaenomena, 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 discover'd: and therefore I scruple not to propose the Principles of Motion above-mention'd, they being of very general Extent, and leaves their Causes to be found out..." The Third Book of Newton's Opticks (1704) contained eleven "Observations" and 16 queries. Two years later, in a Latin version of the work prepared with Newton's approval, seven new queries were added, and in the second English edition (1717) they were expanded to 31. These speculative discourses embrace a wide range of scientific topics, some, particularly the later ones, and the last, Query 31, "go far beyond any simple questions of physical or geometrical optics. In them he even proposed tentative explanations of phenomena" (DSB, 80). Query 31, in addition to discussing the nature of "natural philosophy" (science) and the illimitable nature of scientific inquiry, boldly anticipates later atomic theory and the notion of charged particles. In it, Newton speculates on the "solid, massy, hard, impenetrable Particles," which he considered irreducible and without structure, and writes that these particles were "moved by certain active Principles." In other late Queries (number 28, for example), Newton argued that "the main business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses," rather, "we are to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which is surely not mechanical..." In the present passage of Query 31, Newton carefully enumerates the natural forces that Aristotelians classified as occult qualities, listing gravity, magnetism, electricity and fermentation, and states his conviction that no processes or forces in nature could be classified as unknowable or beyond the understanding of men; while the explanation may not yet have been discovered "these are manifest Qualities, and their Causes only are not yet known" (our italics). Such attitudinal impediments to open inquiry, in his view, "put a stop to" improvement or progress in science; for this reason the occult classification, he states, has "of late years been rejected." For a resume of Newton's queries, see DSB, pp.79-81. For Newton's Correspondence and Mathematical Papers, see lot 185.
