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Single Idea 13470

[filed under theme 26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 7. Later Matter Theories / a. Early Modern matter ]

Full Idea

For Newton, mass is central to matter.

Gist of Idea

Mass is central to matter

Source

report of Isaac Newton (Principia Mathematica [1687]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 2

Book Ref

Hart,W.D.: 'The Evolution of Logic' [CUP 2010], p.38


A Reaction

On reading this, I realise that this is the concept of matter I have grown up with, one which makes it very hard to grasp what the Greeks were thinking of when they referred to matter [hule].


The 10 ideas with the same theme [general 17thC views on matter]:

Mass is central to matter [Newton, by Hart,WD]
I take 'matter' to be a body, excluding its extension in space and its shape [Locke]
Secondary matter is active and complete; primary matter is passive and incomplete [Leibniz]
Not all of matter is animated, any more than a pond full of living fish is animated [Leibniz]
Every particle of matter contains organic bodies [Leibniz]
Bare or primary matter is passive; it is clothed or secondary matter which contains action [Leibniz]
Leibniz struggled to reconcile bodies with a reality of purely soul-like entities [Jolley on Leibniz]
No one can explain how matter affects mind, so matter is redundant in philosophy [Berkeley]
We have no good concept of solidity or matter, because accounts of them are all circular [Hume]
In the 17th C matter became body, and was then studied by science [Pasnau]