Isaac Barrow on the Mathematization of Nature: Theological Voluntarism and the Rise of

Geometrical Optics
Author(s): Antoni Malet
Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 265-287
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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Isaac

Barrow

on

the

of Nature:
Mathematization
the
Theological Voluntarism and
Rise
of Geometrical Optics

Antoni Malet

Introduction
Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy embodies a strong program of mathematization that departs both from the
mechanical philosophy of Cartesian inspiration and from Boyle's experimental philosophy. The roots of Newton's mathematizationof nature, this
paper aims to demonstrate, are to be found in Isaac Barrow's (1630-77)
philosophy of the mathematical sciences.
Barrow's attitude towards naturalphilosophy evolved from his earnest
interest in medicine of around 1650, when a young Cambridge graduate,to
natural philosophy (apparently under Henry More's influence); from his
thesis on the insufficiency of the Cartesian hypothesis to geometrical
optics and the strong programof mathematizationof naturalphilosophy of
the middle 1660s; from Lucasian professor of Mathematics to Chaplain of
his Majesty and eminent Restoration divine. Contemporary accounts of
Barrow's life suggest that he grew ever more skeptical about the worth of
naturalphilosophy and mathematics.' In his last years he became a prolific
Financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Educaci6n (Research Project
PS89-0060), and travel grants from it and from the Catalan CIRIT are gratefully
acknowledged. My research on this paper benefited from a two-month visit in the
summer of 1991 to the History of Science Research Institute of the Deutsches Museum,
Munich. Many thanks are due to E. Sageng, D. Quesada, X. Roque, and A. Dou for their
comments on a first draft of this paper, and especially to Professor Charles C. Gillispie
and John Henry.
' See the "Life" which prefaces The Worksof Isaac Barrow (4 vols.; London, 168387), and A. Hill, "Some Account of the Life of Dr. Isaac Barrow," in The Theological

265
Copyright1997by Journalof the Historyof Ideas,Inc.

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266

Antoni Malet

author of sermons and theological works. Published shortly after his death
by John Tillotson (1630-94), later archbishop of Canterbury,they occupy
over two thousand folio pages. Overloaded with involved philosophical
arguments, Barrow's sermons were apparently not very popular, but they
were highly regarded by scholars and the Anglican hierarchy.2It is on
certain of his sermons, as well as on the philosophical discussions contained in the Mathematical Lectures that our account of Barrow's philosophy of the mathematical sciences will rest.3Barrow's understandingof the
mathematical sciences will allow us to discuss together three issues often
analyzed independently: the theological background to English natural
philosophy, the changing notion of mixed mathematical sciences during
the seventeenth century, and finally the philosophical foundations of
modern geometrical optics.
It has long been recognized that significant relationships exist between
theological voluntarism or intellectualism and views on natural philosophy. In particular Robert Boyle's theological voluntarism is seen as
grounding his experimentalist approach to natural philosophy. It is not
quite so clear, however, how well theological voluntarism may relate to a
strong programof mathematization such as the one embodied in Newton's
Principia Mathematica. In fact it has been suggested that the relationship
is a negative one. This is derived from the necessary character of mathematical laws, which would put unwanted restrictions on God's absolute
dominion over nature, and also from the notion that theological intellectualism is conducive to a deductive, a priori science-the paradigmof which
is of course geometry. However, Barrow's theological voluntarism lead
him to heighten the role of mathematics within naturalphilosophy.
During the seventeenth century the so-called mixed or subalternate
mathematical sciences changed profoundly. In the Enlightenment mixed
mathematics-meaning above all rational mechanics-became one of the
most prestigious and influential disciplines. The mixed mathematics of the
Enlightenment, however, was markedly different from the Aristotelian

Works of Isaac Barrow, ed. A. Napier (9 vols.; Cambridge, 1859), 1, xxxvii-liv. For
recent biographical studies, see M. Feingold and J. Gascoine in Before Newton: The life
and times of Isaac Barrow, ed. M. Feingold (Cambridge, 1990).
2 J.
Gascoigne, "Isaac Barrow's academic milieu: Interregnum and Restoration
Cambridge," in Before Newton, 279-81.
3 Barrow's three main scientific
works, written between 1664 and 1669, are Mathematical Lectures (1683), Optical Lectures (1669), and Geometrical Lectures (1670);
quotations are from The Mathematical Works of Isaac Barrow, ed. W. Whewell (Cambridge, 1860). Unless otherwise stated, English quotations from Mathematical Lectures
will come from John Kirkby's translation, The Usefulness of Mathematical Learning
explained and demonstrated (London, 1734), and Optical Lectures from Isaac Barrow's
Optical Lectures, eds. A. G. Bennett, D. F. Edgar, tr. H. C. Fay (London, 1987).

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Isaac Barrow

267

mixed mathematical sciences. The differences are noticeable both in the

subject matter and in the substitution of mathematical infinitesimal analysis for geometrical synthesis, but also in the way of grounding mathematical theory on empirical evidence. Barrow's Mathematical Lectures (delivered at Cambridge from 1664 to 1666) offer a fresh insight into the
metamorphosis of these sciences just when Newton's "mathematicalprinciples" were in the making. Not the least interesting feature of Barrow's
discussion is that God's omnipotence allows an evaluation of the truth of
mathematical theories that do not apply to this world. Therefore, Barrow is
led to introduce the distinction between the internal consistency, or mathematical truth, of a mathematical theory and its physical truth. This, in
turn, leads him to the notion that theories need testing.
Barrow on Matter and God
Recent literaturehas established significant correlations between theological voluntarism and empiricism, as well as between theological intellectualism and rationalism. As E. B. Davis writes, "the Christian doctrine
of creation is a dialogue between God's unconstrained will, which utterly
transcends the bounds of human comprehension, and God's orderly intellect, which serves as the model for the human mind." Intellectualist
theology considers God's omniscience His primary attribute. He can do
whatever He pleases, but He only acts according to His infinite wisdom
and goodness. His omniscience guides His omnipotence, and the laws of
nature express the order and perfection God's works necessarily have.
Voluntarist theology considers omnipotence to be God's primaryattribute.
His actions know no constrains short of logical contradiction. His creation
needs not to express a unique, perfect order. God might have created a very
different world, endowed with other natural laws-the voluntarist has no
qualms about the existence of worlds different from our own. The voluntarist is also prone to stress the non mediated character of the relationship
between God and His creation and to dispense with mediating agencies
between both.
Taken to the limit, this view leads to radical supernaturalism,that is,
to denying that secondary causes work at all. This view understands
miracles to be unusual manifestations of God's will, rather than Godinduced modifications of nature's causal chains.4 The role of theological
4 See F. Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order: An Excursion in the History
of Ideas from Abelard to Leibniz (London, etc., 1984); and "Christian Theology and the
Newtonian Science: The Rise of the Concept of the Laws of Nature," Church History,
30 (1961), 433-57; K. Hutchison, "Supernaturalism and the Mechanical Philosophy,"
History of Science, 21 (1983), 297-333; E. B. Davis, "The uses of voluntarist theology

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Antoni Malet

voluntarism in fostering empiricism and experimentalism in some authors,

including Boyle, Charleton, Gassendi, and Newton, is well established.5
Barrow's voluntarism also played a key role in his conceptualization of a
strong program of mathematization of natural philosophy that entails
radical changes in the very notion of "mathematical science." The many
thinkers who grounded their natural philosophies on the invocation of
various attributes of God were just responding to the principle explicit in
Newton's fragmentaryhistory of science-that "knowledge of Gods works
thrived in those epochs in which there was a true conception of the Deity;
and conversely...."6
Barrow takes for grantedthat scientific demonstrationrequires "necessity" while he critically explores the notion of causality, eventually denying that scientific knowledge about the secondary or efficient causes is
attainable. In contradistinction, formal causality, identified with mathematical demonstration, is held to be most proper to natural philosophy,
for only mathematical demonstrations establish necessary connections
between principles and results.
Barrow's attack on the notion of efficient causality introduces a supernaturalistic understandingof nature's physical effects. Given God's decisive role in the day-to-day working of his creation, his "free-will and
power" preclude us from attributing necessity to any would-be efficient
causal connection:
For there can be no such connection of an external, ex. gr. efficient
cause with its effect, (at least none such can be understood by us)
through which, strictly speaking, the effect is necessarily supposed
in 17th-century science," Proceedings of the International Conference on Science and
Belief (Pascal Centre for Advanced Studies in Faith and Science, Lancaster, August
1992, forthcoming), quotation comes from p. 3.
5 J. E. McGuire, "Boyle's Conception of Nature," JHI, 33 (1972), 523-42; J.
Henry,
"Henry More versus Robert Boyle: The Spirit of Nature and the Nature of Providence,"
in Henry More (1614-1687), ed. S. Hutton (Dordrecht, 1990), 55-76; S. Shapin, "Robert
Boyle and Mathematics: Reality, Representation, and Experimental Practice," Science
in Context, 2 (1988), 32-58; M. Osler, "The Intellectual Sources of Robert Boyle's
Philosophy of Nature: Gassendi's Voluntarism and Boyle's Physicotheological Project," in Philosophy, Science and Religion in England 1640-1700, eds. R. Kroll, et al.
(Cambridge, 1992), 178-98; "Providence and Divine Will: Gassendi's Views on Scientific Knowledge," JHI, 44 (1983), 549-60; "Fortune, Fate, and Divination: Gassendi's
Voluntarist Theology and the Baptism of Epicureanism," in Atoms, Pneuma, and Tranquillity, ed. M. J. Osler (Cambridge, 1991), 155-74; "Eternal Truths and the Laws of
Nature: The Theological Foundations of Descartes's Philosophy of Nature," JHI, 46
(1985), 349-62; J. E. Force, R. H. Popkin, Essays on the Context, Nature and Influence
of Isaac Newton's Theology (Dordrecht, 1990); D. Kubrin, "Newton and the Cyclical
Cosmos: Providence and the Mechanical Philosophy," JHI, 28 (1967), 325-46.
6
F. E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford, 1974), 42.

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269

by the supposition of the efficient cause; or any determinate cause

by the supposition of the effect. Nay there can be no efficient cause
in the nature of things of a philosophical consideration which is
altogether necessary. For every action of an efficient cause ...
depends upon the free-will and power [liberrima voluntate,
summaquepotestate] of Almighty God, who can hinder the influx
and efficacy of any cause at his pleasure; neither is there any effect
so confined to one cause, but it may be produced by perhaps
innumerable others. Hence it is possible that there may be such a
cause without a subsequent effect, or such an effect and no peculiar
cause to afford any thing to its existence. There can therefore be no
argumentation from an efficient cause to the effect, or contrarily
from an effect to the cause, which is lawfully necessary.7
In Barrow's intellectual context "external, efficient" causality meant
mechanical causality-the direct action of matter in motion upon matter.
Barrow's position is illustrated with "that most celebrated and trite example," taken from Aristotelian textbooks, of the earth's body being the
efficient cause of a moon's eclipse. Barrow disagrees. There is no necessary causality involved here, he says,
for, if God please, the solar rays may pass through the body of the
earth, or reach the moon by an indirect passage without touching
the earth; or otherwise the moon may be enlightened some other
way: nay the sun itself does not infer light; for at the death of our
Lord ... the sun as if struck with fear and confounded with shame,

drew in his rays, and hid his face, and even at noon-day suffered an
eclipse, without any moon to intercept his light.... A defect of light
then cannot be concluded from the interposition of an opaque
body, nor this from that.8
Since we cannot know how God takes care of the world, true explanations of the real mechanisms behind the works of nature are impossible:
Because therefore the efficacy of agents may be stopped, or
changed, and every effect may proceed from various causes, there
can be no demonstration from an efficient cause, or from an effect.
Barrow allows that regularities in naturemay suggest that efficient second
causes do actually work. Yet regularities do not imply real causal connec7

Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, 88-89.

8 Ibid., 89-90.

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Antoni Malet

tions.9 God's direct influence on physical effects also ensures the "constancy" of nature. When propositions are confirmed by a few repeated
experiments, they can be taken to be universally true, and not suspect that
Nature is inconstant, and the great Author of the Universe unlike himself.'0
Barrow's God pervades so intimately the world that his action upon it
is Barrow's illustration for the union of human soul and body-a metaphor
Newton used as well:
As He, in a manner beyond our conception ... doth coexist with,

penetrates, and passeth through all things; So is [the soul], in a

manner also unconceivable, every where present within her
bounds, and penetrates all the dimensions of her little world."I
God's catholic intervention in this world takes Barrow to the brink of
blurring the distinction between general and special providence-a prominent feature, James Force has found, of early eighteenth-century Newtonian apology. Because providence is difficult to recognize, Barrow
devoted one sermon to describe its action. "The special Providence of
God," says Barrow, "is indeed commonly not discernible without good
judgment and great care;... the tracts [of the special Providence] are too
fine and subtile to be descried by a dimme sight."12As Barrow says
elsewhere,
divine and humane agency are so knit and twisted one with the
other, that it is not easie to discriminate them, so as to sever the
bounds of common and special providence....'3
Barrow mentions, among God's properties, "insensibility," "coexisting with matter," and "penetrating body."14There is nothing material in
9 Ibid., 90.
1' Ibid., 74. Newton will secularize this idea in his famous remark about nature
being "wont to be simple and always consonant to itself"; cf. E. McMullin, Newton on
Matter and Activity (Notre Dame, 1978), 13-20.
" "The Being of God Proved from the Frame of Human Nature," Works, II, 105.
Newton set forth the notion that God can move bodies in infinite space as souls move
human bodies in his De gravitatione; see, Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac
Newton, eds. A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall (Cambridge, 1962), 141-43. E. B. Davis,
"Newton's Rejection of the 'Newtonian World View': The Role of Divine Will in
Newton's Natural Philosophy," Science and Christian Belief, 3 (1991), 103-17, shows
that the metaphor reappears in many places in Newton's papers.
12 "A Sermon on the Gunpowder Treason," Works, I, 144. See Essays on Newton's
Theology, 144-49.
13 "The unsearchableness of God's Judgments," Works, III, 263. See also "The
Being of God Proved from Supernatural Effects," ibid., II, 128-29.
14Ibid., II, 130.

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271

God's way of acting upon matter, which is utterly passive and acted upon
by God in inscrutable ways. He acts "by mere will and command"-a key
notion as well in Newton's De gravitatione. "He incomprehensibly by a
word of his mind, or by a mere act of will doth move the whole frame or
any part of nature."'5 God therefore performs miracles with the same
actions that He takes care of the world:
without any preparatory dispositions induced into the suscipient
matter, in the same manner by mere willing, saying, or commanding.... God uses no other means, instruments or applications in
these productions, than his bare word or command.'6
Barrow's miracles do not imply breaking any material, causal connection
in nature. This notion, which played a key role in the Leibniz-Clarke
correspondence, coincides with Newton's views on miracles.'7
The actions, works, and aims of Barrow's God are hopelessly beyond
our grasp. His power, which "is incomprehensibly great, and exceedeth all
definite limits,"'8 cannot be measured by the limited compass of our
experience:
[T]here may be for all that we ... can by any means know, agents of
another sort, and powers in manner of efficacy much differing
from all those which come within the narrow compass of our
observation. Especially to imagine, that the supreme Being ...
cannot himself act otherwise than we see those inferiour things ...
do act, is grosly vain and unreasonable: It is impossible (says S.
Chrysostome well) for man's nature by curious inquiry to penetrate the workmanship of God.... In fine, nothing is more reasonable than to confess, that our reason can no-wise reach the extent
of all powers, and all possibilities; and that we much ... do trans-

15"The

Being of God Proved from the Frame of Human Nature," ibid., II, 105.
Heaven and Earth," ibid., II, 178-79. Barrow insists on this notion on
page 184. Compare with Newton, Unpublished Scientific Papers, 138-41. For instance:
"it must be agreed that God, by the sole action of thinking and willing, can prevent a
body from penetrating any space defined by Certain limits" (ibid., 139).
17 See E. B. Davis's "Newton's
Rejection of the 'Newtonian World View,'" 11416. From a manuscript of Newton's kept at the Lehigh University library, Davis quotes
the following fragment: "For Miracles are so called not because they are the works of
God but because they happen seldom and for that reason create wonder...." See also, Sir
Isaac Newton Theological Manuscripts, ed. H. McLachlan (Liverpool, 1950), 17-18;
and H. Guerlac and M. C. Jacob, "Bentley, Newton, and Providence (The Boyle
Lectures Once More)," JHI, 30 (1969), 307-18.
18"The Father Almighty," Works, II, 157.
16 "Maker of

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272

gress our measures and bounds, if we pretend to know what things

God is able to produce, or how he does produce any.19
Barrow's matteris utterly passive, completely devoid of any "power of
moving itself," and a fortiori of any "knowledge, or appetite or passion."
The properties of "thing corporeal are extension...; aptness to receive
motion from, or to impart motion unto each other...; to divide, and unite,
or to be divided, and united and so they are altogether different from the
properties of the soul, which refer to "ways of knowledge..., of willing...,
of passion...,

of avTOKivrLata or self-moving

(the power and act of

moving without any force extrinsecal working upon it.)"20Whence it

comes their irreducibility:
Let any part of this corporeal mass be refined by the subtlest
division, let it be agitated by the quickest motion, let it be
modell'd into what shape or fashion you please, how can any man
imagine either knowledge, or appetite, or passion thence to result?
or that it should thence adquire a power of moving itself...? Even
... this inferior locomotive faculty is too high for matter by any
change it can undergo to obtain.21
God, says Barrow, can "produce, and insert an active principle into
matter ... distinct from matter, which disposeth, and determineth it to the
production of such effects [as the seminal propagation and nutrition of
plants, and the generation, motion, sense, fancy, appetite, passion of
animals]."22As opposed to "plastic natures," which were explicitly defined as immaterial substances, "active principles" could be used without
clarifying their ontological status. Barrow used "active principles" both to
highlight matter's passivity and as a way to separate himself from the
Cambridge Platonists. Barrow's God did create "immaterial beings, or
simple, and uncompounded substances distinct from matter, such as Angels, and the souls of men."23 Yet there is no suggestion that spirits
(always identified with angels and human souls) or a "plastic nature"cause
physical effects. On the contrary it is strongly suggested in many places
that God is directly responsible for them. God, Barrow said in one of the
few instances where he used mechanical analogies,

'9 "Maker of Heaven and Earth," ibid., II, 175-76 (Barrow's emphasis).
"The Being of God Proved from the Frame of Human Nature," ibid., II, 103.

20
21
22

23

Ibid.
Ibid., 178.
Ibid.

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273

by a nod of his head, by a whisper of his mouth, by a turn of his

hand, he doth effect his purposes: winding up a close spring, he
setteth the greatest wheels in motion, and thrusting in an insensible
spoke he stoppeth the greatest wheels in their carriere; injecting a
thought, exciting a humour, presenting an occasion..., he bringeth
about the most notable events.24
Barrow's words sound like a reply to the Cambridge Platonist's thesis
that a hylarchic spirit does act as "God's vicegerent" on passive matter.
They might have been intended as such-a reply both to a thesis Henry
More still embraced, and to a notion Barrow himself had entertained
twenty years before. In the early 1650s Barrow embraced More's views on
Descartes, criticized Cartesianism's materialistic implications, and suggested that a "spirit of nature" was the source of change in Cartesian
matter. Over a decade later Barrow's views must have already been
different from More's, still teaching at Cambridge his own version of the
Cartesian philosophy. Barrow and More shared, however, a concern for
offering a "Body of Natural Philosophy" as an "effectual antidote" to
mechanicism.25
In the background to Barrow's views on matter and God we may
discern at least two intellectual developments. On the one hand, as John
Henry has recently argued, seventeenth-century English natural philosophy was largely innocent of the philosophical bias which ignored all
physical causality not reducible to the transmission of motion by direct
material contact between inert matter, and which came to dominate Continental natural philosophy in the wake of Descartes.26

24

"The Unserchableness of God's Judgments," ibid., III, 263.

According to M. Nicholson, "The Early Stage of Cartesianism in England,"
Studies in Philology, 26 (1929), 362-64, More was teaching Descartes's Dioptrics and
Meteors in the 1670s; see also A. Gabbey, "Philosophia Cartesiana Triumphata: Henry
More (1646-1671)," Problems of Cartesianism, eds. T. M. Lennon, J. M. Nicholas, J.
W. Davis (Kingston, 1982), 171-250; "Henry More and the Limits of Mechanism,"
Henry More, 19-35; C. Webster, "Henry More and Descartes: Some New Sources,"
British Journal for the History of Science, 4 (1969), 359-77. On More's "antidote" to
mechanicism, see the More-Worthington correspondence, as quoted in A. R. Hall,
Henry More: Magic, Religion and Experiment (Oxford, 1990), 158.
26 John Henry, "A Cambridge Platonist's materialism: Henry More and the Concept
of Soul," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 49 (1986), 172-95; "Medicine and Pneumatology: Henry More, Richard Baxter, and Francis Glisson's Treatise on
the Energetic Nature of Substance," Medical History, 31 (1987), 15-40; "Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy: Active Principles in Pre-Newtonian Matter
Theory," History of Science, 24 (1986), 335-81; and "Matter in Motion: The Problem of
Activity in Seventeenth-century English Matter Theory" (Ph.D. diss., The Open University, 1983).
25

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Antoni Malet

Secondly, as we move into the Restoration period, a growing concern

with the dangers of atheism, materialism, and determinism is clearly
discernible-a concern answered by forceful attacks on two philosophical
theses. That matteris eternal and uncreated, was one of them (about which
more below). That a complete autonomy obtained between God and his
creation, was the second. That blind mattercould produce the whole range
of physical effects without God's intervention, was tantamount to the
notion of a Godless world. It was a dangerous philosophical notion bound
to promote moral relativism, religious indifference, and political instability.27As Henry More put it, one of the causes of atheism is "ignorance of
the scantness and insufficiency of second causes."28 Barrow's radical
supernaturalism was therefore an answer to the mechanical philosophy,
prompted by the perception that it threatened religious, moral, and political ideas deemed essential to the preservation of order and civilized
society. Hobbeseans and other atheists countenanced-or so it was perceived-a deterministic world, a clockwork wound up since creation in
which God's ordinary providence was reduced to his continuously willing
the world's existence.
In contradistinction, Barrow and most Restoration thinkers emphasized God's role in keeping this world working through continuously
infusing energy and activity into nature. Accordingly, they de-emphasized
the role of "second causes" and eliminated necessity from the workings of
nature. This left few options, the best known of them being Boyle's
experimentalism. Boyle could embrace the ontology of the mechanical
philosophy, but he would never attempt to build a system of natural
philosophy on mechanical hypotheses. On the contrary his experimental
program, it has been argued, was based on his conviction that attempts to
understandhow material particles work will probably fail.
There was, however, an alternative: Barrow's strong programof mathematization of natural philosophy, to which we now turn.

27

M. Hunter, "Science and Heterodoxy: An early modern problem reconsidered,"

Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, eds. D. C. Lindberg and R. S. Westman
(Cambridge, 1990), 437-60; " 'Aikenhead the Atheist': The Context and Consequences
of Articulate Irreligion in the Late Seventeenth Century," Atheism from the Reformation
to the Enlightenment, eds. M. Hunter and D. Wootton (Oxford, 1992), 221-54. See also
S. I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth-Century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge, 1970), 69-88; R. L. Colie,
Light and Enlightenment: A Study of the Cambridge Platonists and the Dutch Arminians
(Cambridge, 1957); J. Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion: The Age of the Enlightenment in England 1660-1750 (London, 1976); and 0. Mayr, Authority, Liberty &
Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe (Baltimore, 1986).
28 Antidote
Against Atheism (1712), 141, quoted in Mintz, Hunting of Leviathan, 88.

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The Changing Notion of "Mixed" Mathematical Sciences

Barrow's Mathematical Lectures offer a major reformulation of traditional views about the object and methodology of the mathematical sciences. Up to the seventeenth century an established tradition had dealt
successfully with the mathematization of a few facets of the natural world.
The mathematizations of astronomy, optics, mechanics, or hydrostatics
were known as "intermediate," "subordinate," "subalternate," or "mixed"
mathematical sciences.
In the context of studying the nature of science, Aristotle introduced
the notion of subordination to characterize those sciences using mathematics.29 Subordinate sciences, which were perceptual, as opposed to the
mathematical subordinating sciences (usually geometry or arithmetic),
borrowed from mathematics their proofs and (some) principles; and they
dealt with "knowledge of the fact" (oti), as opposed to the "knowledge of
the reasoned fact" (dioti) proper of the subordinating sciences.30 Medieval
and Renaissance commentators often qualified the notion of subordination
between sciences in different ways.31 The precise interpretation of this
notion and its role within Aristotelian gnosiology is still open to debateindeed many couples of subordinated and subordinating sciences mentioned in Aristotle's texts do not fit well in his own characterization of
subordination.
Yet, while it may not be easy to elucidate Aristotle's notion of subordination in general, it seems that Euclid's optics provides one of the best
examples of Aristotelian subordination. Kindred in spirit and style to his
Elements, Euclid's optics is organized synthetically. Geometrical objects
such as points, straight lines, and circles are substituted for physical

29

See J. G. Lennox, "Aristotle, Galileo, and 'Mixed Sciences,'" Reinterpreting

Galileo, ed. W. A. Wallace (Washington, D.C., 1986), 29-51; R. D. McKirahan Jr.,
"Aristotle's Subordinate Sciences," British Journal for the History of Science, 11
(1978), 197-220; W. A. Wallace, "Aristotelian Influences on Galileo's Thought,"
Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, ed. L. Olivieri (2 vols.; Padua, 1983), I, 34978; S. J. Livesey, "William of Ockham, the Subalternate Sciences, and Aristotle's
Prohibition of Meta-basis," British Journal for the History of Science, 18 (1985), 12745. The mixed mathematical sciences of the late seventeenth century have received
little attention, but see J. A. Bennett, "The Mechanics' Philosophy and the Mechanical
Philosophy," History of Science, 24 (1986), 1-28.
30 McKirahan, "Aristotle's Subordinate Sciences," 201.
31 See Theology and Science in the Fourteenth
Century: The Questions on the Unity
and Subalternation of the Sciences from John of Reading's Commentary on the Sentences, ed. S. J. Livesey (Leiden, 1989), 22-53; and N. Jardine, "Epistemology of the
Sciences," and W. A. Wallace, "Traditional Natural Philosophy," Cambridge History
of Renaissance Philosophy, eds. C. B. Schmitt et al. (Cambridge, 1988), 685-711 and
201-35.

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Antoni Malet

objects such as visible points, visual rays, and reflective or refractive

surfaces. It contains a set of postulates or determinations (oroi) couched in
mathematical terms-but embodying empirical content. The results were
theorems geometrically derived from the postulates.32
Now the Aristotelian notion of scientia requires that first principles
and postulates of mathematical sciences be self-evident facts-like the
rectilinear character of light rays or that the greater the apparent visual
angle subtended by an object, the greater the object appears.33To ensure
the universality and uncontroversial character of postulates, the plainer
and more straightforward their physical content, the better. Theorems
might be given empirical support; yet the idea that empirical observations
provided a crucial test for the truth of a geometrically deduced result was
alien both to the organization of the material and to the spirit of synthetical mixed sciences. The results deduced from the postulates were true in
two senses: mathematically, because they had been correctly deduced, and
physically, because they said something true about the physical world. The
two facets were inseparable because their mathematically true theorems
must also be physically true. Indeed one of the features of the classical
mathematical sciences is that the distinction between mathematical and
physical truth does not apply to them.
Two caveats are needed here. First, the foregoing characterization fits
particularly well the earliest extant examples of mixed mathematics, such
as Euclid's optics or Archimedes' mechanical and hydrostatical works, but
that is no longer the case with later works. The spirit of synthetical mixed
mathematics, however, was somehow regained in the late sixteenth century. It reappears in influential works such as Pascal's hydrostatics and
Huygens's De motu corporum ex percussione, and was widely adopted by
seventeenth-century Catholic writers of mathematical encyclopedias.34
Secondly, such characterization is not meant to apply to astronomy. As
recently stressed by Nicholas Jardine, the role of hypotheses in medieval
and Renaissance astronomy, still open to historiographical debate, cannot
be taken as representative of what was going on in the other mathematical
sciences. In this respect astronomy was a world of its own.35
32 McKirahan, "Aristotle's Subordinate Sciences," 199-201; A.
Lejeune, Euclide et
Ptolemee, deux stades de l'optique geometrique grecque (Louvaine, 1948).
33Euclide, L'optique et la catoptrique, ed. P. Ver Eecke (Paris, 1959), determination IV, 1. P. Dear, "Jesuit Mathematical Science and the Reconstitution of Experience
in the Early Seventeenth Century," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 18
(1987), 133-75.
34 See P. Dear, Mersenne and the
Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988), 6266. See A. Malet, "Mathematics and Mathematization in the Seventeenth Century,"
Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 22 (1991), 673-78.
35 N. Jardine,
"Epistemology of the Sciences," 709-10.

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277

Barrow introduced remarkableinnovations in synthetical mixed mathematics by changing the nature of principles and definitions, and the
relationship between mathematicaltheory and observations. Barrow's first
principles need not be self-evidently true-they only must be free from
contradiction. He modified the key notion of "true"mathematical hypothesis or result, allowing it to embrace propositions that were not true when
applied to "this world." Without providing a formal definition, Barrow
loosely identified mathematical truth with lack of contradiction.
Barrow also discussed the issue of the "scientific" status of mathematics-"scientific" making reference here to Aristotle's scientia. This
had been the subject of a raging debate, which took place mainly in Italy
during the second half of the sixteenth century. Barrow appears to be
perfectly acquainted with it, thanks probably to his long stay in Italy in the
late 1650s. He categorically asserted the scientific characterof mathematical demonstration. Moreover, arguing that mathematics dealt with formal
causality, he suggested that this was the only kind of causality with a
legitimate place in naturalphilosophy. We shall see that Barrow's remarkable innovations dovetailed perfectly with his voluntaristic theology.
Barrow on Definitions and First Principles
Barrow criticized the view that definitions "affirm nothing" but
merely give names, and he wanted definitions to be propositions. For instance, says Barrow, "rational animal" is said to be the definition of
"man," and this is incorrect. The definition is, "man is a rational animal."
The last sentence, a proposition about man, enables us to deduce something else about man. Barrow identified as Aristotelian the view that
definitions are labels, but it had been recently held by Roberval and
Hobbes, among others.36Were definitions mere labels, says Barrow, they
could not be "principles of demonstration"-to be so, they should express
an essential property. In his words, a definition "is really a compleat proposition predicating, concerning the proposed subject, some property of
itself which is useful for deducing other properties."37Anachronistically
put, Barrow dismissed tautological definitions.
As for postulates, Barrow no longer required them to be obviously
true-only that they be free from contradiction, and "reasonable" or
36
On Hobbesand definition,see Mintz,Huntingof Leviathan,24-25; S. Shapin,S.
Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Princeton, 1985), 100-101. See Roberval,
"Avant-propossur les mathematiques,"
publishedin V. Cousin,"Robervalphilosophe,"
Fragmentsphilosophiquespour servir a 1'histoirede la philosophie (5 vols.; Paris,
1866), III, 229-58, especially 236.
37 Usefulnessof MathematicalLearning,120-21.

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Antoni Malet

suggested by "plausible reasons." "[T]rue Hypotheses," says Barrow, are

those "such as imply no inconsistence in themselves"; and "the falsehood
of any hypothesis seems to be nothing but the conception or position of
things as effected or existing, which cannot be effected or exist."38This
broadens the field open to mathematical demonstration, for it may deal
now with non-existing things:
Hence also it follows, that demonstrations may be made of things,
which never had existence any where; because it is sufficient for a
demonstration to assume true hypotheses, i.e. such as imply no
inconsistence in themselves.39
What is then the status of results mathematically deduced from postulates not physically true? They, says Barrow, make up theories that,
though of no use in our world, describe "imaginary"worlds which God
might create. Mathematical conclusions may be physically true or falseit depends on the axioms being so-but they will always be "lawful"meaning mathematically unobjectionable. He supported his views with
two illuminating examples. Galileo, says Barrow, "thinks that he invented
a new science concerning motion" on the assumption that heavy things fall
with a motion uniformly accelerated.
But if it be false (as I think it not always true concerning many
causes) that there is such a motion in the present oeconomy of
nature;yet because such a motion may exist at the pleasure of God,
as implying nothing in it contrary to possibility, therefore the
conclusions, which result by a lawful inference from such a supposition, ought to be accounted for lawful demonstrations.40
In a second example Barrow takes to task astronomical hypotheses
advanced by "Ptolemy, Copernicus, and all other Astronomers." Barrow
thinks that true astronomical movements are unknown, but that astronomers are certainly entitled to construct imaginary worlds:
yet because nothing hinders, but God may create such a world,
where the stars will exactly agree with such motions; therefore the
demonstrations depending upon such hypotheses are most true,
and their astronomy true, not indeed of this world, but of some
38

Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, 109.

39 Ibid., 110.
40

Ibid.

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279

other which God can create. For God has given us the power of
creating almost innumerable imaginary worlds in our thoughts,
which himself, if he please, can cause to be real.4'
The obvious corollary is that theories need testing to ensure that they
apply to this world. Barrow's "many worlds" are explicitly attached to
theological voluntarism. Because God's creation of our world was the
result of a "wise free-choice" and not a necessary emanation, "He ... could
have framed [the world] otherwise, according to an infinite variety of
ways."42The words are close to Newton's remark about the plurality of
worlds, already present in his early 1670s manuscripts.43
The principle that God can do "whatever involves no contradiction,"
with profound theological implications, is easily found in contemporary
theological literature, and also in Newton's papers and Boyle's works.44
Often discussed in connection with the existence of different worlds, it has
a long history stretching back to classical antiquity and forward to the
Enlightenment. In his sermons Barrow used it in a crucial context, to
dispel philosophical arguments against God's creating matter out of nothing.

Through the seventeenth century thinkers upheld widely different,

indeed contradictory, views on matter. Whether it was eternal or created
had serious theological implications. Most philosophers-Hobbes and
Spinoza being the exception among major thinkers-answered in keeping
with religious orthodoxy. The main argument against created matter was
the metaphysical principle that nothing can result from nothing. With
words reminding us of Stillingfleet's Origines sacrae (1662), Barrow
argued that this argumentrequires, in the first place, demonstrating that a
proposition such as "'something may be produced out of nothing,' or
something equivalent ... do involve a contradiction." But no philosopher
will be able to do so, says Barrow, because the notion of substance is not

41

Mathematical Works, 112 (my translation).

"Maker of Heaven and Earth," Works, II, 183. The "many worlds" debate has
been often boundup with theological discussions on God's omnipotence. Cf. S. J. Dick,
Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to
Kant (Cambridge, 1984), 23ff; A. Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination
from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1986), 163ff.
43 Dobbs, Janus Faces of Genius, 114. As is well known, eventually Newton
published it in Query 31 of the Opticks.
44 R.
Boyle, Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion, in Works, IV, 159 (quoted
by Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order, 88). On Newton's articulation of the
principle in the early 1670s, see Dobbs, Janus Faces of Genius, 113-14.
42

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280

inconsistent with the notion of being produced or with "novity of existence."45So there is no metaphysical argument against God's creation.
Redefining Mixed Mathematics
The changes Barrow introduced in the mathematical sciences substantially broaden their applicability. He reinforced this move by redefining
mixed mathematics as those sciences in which "consideration of quantity
intervenes." Stressing that in all sciences objects result from "mental
abstraction"(i.e., likewise mathematical objects), he opposed the old distinction-still alive in contemporary thinkers such as Herigone, Guldin,
and Biancani-between pure mathematics (purportedly dealing with
"things only perceptible to the understanding") and mixed mathematics
(dealing with "things sensible").
In reality every one of [the mathematical] Objects are at the same
time both intelligible and sensible in a different respect; intelligible as the Mind apprehends and contemplates their universal
Ideas, and sensible as they agree with several particular Subjects
occurring to the Sense.46
Since magnitudes appear everywhere, Barrow claims that geometry
will be required everywhere and the mathematical sciences will embrace
almost the whole of natural philosophy.47 Indeed, the mathematical sciences will be but the branches of physics: "there is no branch of natural
science that may not arrogate the [mathematical] title to itself; since there
is really none, from which the consideration of quantity is wholly excluded."48
Yea, because no local motion ... can be otherwise estimated in
itself, or compared with another motion, but from the spaces ... it
passes through, therefore most parts of physics ... are to be ac-

counted mathematical.... From whence accrues a plentiful crop of

sciences to the mathematics.... Hence I conceive it appears sufficiently plain (as I purposed to shew) that mathematics, as it is
45 "Maker of Heaven and Earth," Works, II, 174-76;
quotations come from page
176. Compare with Stillingfleet, Origines sacrae (London, 1662), 445, and 229-30, 36768.
46 Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, 13, 16, 19;
quotation comes from 19.
47 Barrow devoted the whole Lecture III to analyzing the relationship between
arithmetic and geometry.
48 Usefulness of Mathematical
Learning, 20-21; quotation comes from 21.

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281

vulgarly taken and called, is co-extended and made equal with

physics itself.49
That Barrow has in mind mixed sciences different from the synthetical
subalternate sciences is apparent when he deals with the relationship
between mathematics and his new mathematical sciences of vision and
sound. Mathematical optics, Barrow conceives as the science of the "appearances coming from rays reflected by an opaque body" or "infractedby
a different medium." Barrow's new "acoustics" is defined similarly:
And if the [mathematical] figure of the air's undulation could be
the same way discovered, by which sound is performed, and the
sense of hearing impelled, there would doubtless arise thence a
new part of mathematics to be celebrated by the name of acoustics,
or the science of sounds.
Barrow believes as well that mathematical sciences of "touches, tastes and
smells" could be achieved "if these sensations be performed by such
[mathematical] motions."50Barrow explicitly distinguishes his new mathematical sciences from the old mathematical sciences, perspective, harmonics (or music) or centrobarics (part of mechanics dealing with the
determination of centers of gravity). As he puts it,
that part of mechanics dealing with centers of gravity and that part
of optics called perspective are not unfitly numbered among the
parts of geometry, because they scarce require any thing which is
not granted and proved in that science, nor use any other principles
or reasonings than what are strictly geometrical.5'
Along with such "partsof geometry," however, there are other mixed
sciences that cannot be identified with geometry proper. Barrow considers
that different sciences may have different degrees of mathematization, in
the sense that they may be more or less close to geometry: "the more
simple and most evidently possible the hypotheses are, the nearerdo these
arts approach to geometry proper."52Barrow's mathematical science

49 "E quibus autumo satis liquido constare (quod mihi propositum fuerat ostendere)
Mathematicam, habitam dictamque vulgo, ipsi Physicae quasi coextendi et adaequari";
cf. Mathematical Works, 44 (I have modified Kirkby's translation).
50
Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, 24.

51
52

Ibid., 27.
Ibid.

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clearlyannouncesthe mixedmathematicsof the Enlightenment-sciences

that providedmathematicalmodels groundedon definitionsand hypotheses the truthof whichderivedfromthe agreementbetweenthe modeland
observations.
During the second half of the sixteenth and the early seventeenth
centurythe status of mathematicalknowledgewas the object of intense
debate.Those who denied "scientific"statusto mathematicsrelied upon
Aristotle's notion of scientia. According to it, "scientific"knowledge
proceedsfrom trueprinciples,establishesnecessaryconnectionsbetween
the principlesand their consequences,and is causal-that is, it explains
why somethingis as it is and not otherwise.Now mathematicalknowledge, it was objected,deals with the accidentsratherthanthe essences of
things, and most importantly,it is not causal.53In the Italiancontext, as
MarioBiagioli has shown, these attacksare best understoodas partof an
institutionalstrugglefor social statusbetweenphilosophersandprofessors
of mathematics.54
Barrowused the old debateto set forthhis claim thatmathematization
was the only way to achieve scientia. He reelaboratedthe notion of
causalityin two fundamentalrespects.First,as we have alreadyseen, he
attackedthe notion of efficient causality. Secondly, taking up an idea
alreadypresentin sixteenth-centuryItaliandiscussions,he redefinedformal causalityby assimilatingit to mathematicaldemonstration.55
Barrowintroducedthe distinctionbetween characteristicproperties
(passio propria) of an object, and properties common to other objects
(passio communis). For instance, it is not a characteristic property of an
53 A. C. Crombie, "Mathematics and Platonism in the
sixteenth-century Italian
Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy," Prismata: Naturwissenschaftsgeschichtliche, eds. Y. Maeyama and W. G. Saltzer (Wiesbaden, 1977), 63-94; G. C.
Giacobbe, "II Commentarium de certitudine mathematicarum disciplinarum di Alessandro Piccolomini," Physis, 14 (1972), 162-93; "La riflessione metamatematica di Pietro
Catena," Physis, 15, (1973), 178-96; "Epigoni del seicento della 'quaestio de
certitudine mathematicarum': Giuseppe Biancani," Physis, 18 (1976), 5-40; "Un gesuita
progresista nella 'Quaestio de certitudine mathematicarum' rinascimentale: Benito
Pereyra," Physis, 19 (1977), 51-86; A. Carugo, "Giuseppe Moleto: Mathematics and the
Aristotelian Theory of Science at Padua in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century,"
Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, 509-17; P. Mancosu, "Aristotelian Logic and
Euclidean Mathematics: Seventeenth-Century Developments of the Quaestio de Certitudine Mathematicarum," Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci., 23 (1992), 241-65; M. R. Davi Daniele,
"Bernardino Tomitano e la quaestio de certitudine mathematicarum," Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, 607-21.
54 "The Social Status of Italian
Mathematicians, 1450-1600," Hist. Sci., 27 (1989),
41-95; "The Anthropology of Incommensurability," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 21 (1990), 183-209. See also his "Galileo's System of Patronage,"
History of Science, 28 (1990), 1-62.
55See M. R. Davi Daniele, "Bernardino
Tomitano," 615ff; Mancosu, "Aristotelian
Logic," 261.

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283

isosceles triangle that its three angles are equal to two right ones, for this is
true of all triangles. But it is a characteristic propertyof a circle "thatevery
two right lines that can be drawn from the extremities of the diameter to
any point in its circumference will make a right angle"-for this agrees
with a circle, "and reciprocally every figure with which this affection
agrees will be a circle." Characteristic properties determine their object to
the point that "any of these [properties] may be rightly supposed or
assumed in defining the subject, since they are connected with such an
essential, close and reciprocal tie, that if any one be supposed, the rest
must necessarily follow."56
As McKirahan stressed, according to Aristotle the mathematical sciences "deal with forms-not of course Platonic forms, whose existence is
strongly denied in the Posterior Analytics ...-but form in the sense of
what remains when abstraction is made of the material substrate."57By
taking "forms" to be the characteristic properties of mathematical objects,
Barrow could claim to be just following Aristotle's views and could
identify mathematical demonstration with formal causality. Indeed Barrow took characteristic properties to be causes:
If any one such [proper] affection be taken ... for the definition of

its subject, it so far supplies the place of a cause, in respect of the

rest; because by the intervention of it, as a mean, the rest do
necessarily follow and become known.58
Barrow thereby concluded that the "causality and dependence of the
terms of a mathematical demonstration ... may be called a formal causality, because the remaining properties do result from that one property,
which is first assumed [as definition or principle], as from a form (ex
forma)" (Barrow's emphasis).59Furthermore,"all other causality, which is
here applicable, besides this [mathematical] connection ... is mere fiction,
supported by no argument, nor confirmed by any example."60
The foregoing philosophical background illuminates the structure of
Barrow's geometrical optics and shows that it was a deliberate answer to
fundamental shortcomings Barrow perceived in the mechanical philosophy.

56
Barrow, Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, 85. Anachronistically speaking, a
passio propria is a necessary and sufficient condition.
57 McKirahan, "Aristotle's Subordinate Sciences," 204.
58 Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, 86.
59Ibid., 88.
60
Ibid., 99.

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Antoni Malet
Barrow's Geometrical Optics

Barrow set up his geometrical optics in explicit contrast to the optics

inspired by the mechanical philosophy. Under the influence of Cartesianism, many Continental authors looked for explanations of the properties of
light in terms of mechanical models. The rectilinear motion of light, the
laws of reflection and refraction, double refraction, etc., they deduced
from the mechanical properties of pulses transmitted through an ether.
Huygens, Pardies, and Malebranche are among the foremost contributors
to this line of thought, and Huygens's Traite de la lumiere its most
accomplished product.61 Barrow's 1669 Optical Lectures, however, made
a point of downplaying any mechanical understanding of light.62 While
emphasizing the merely hypothetical character of both corpuscular and
undulatory theories of light, Barrow stressed that this sort of "mechanical,
hypothetical physics" was inconsequential: "I shall make no effort to
prove what I have said [about the nature of light], since ... it seems clearer
than light itself that such proofs cannot be given."63 In contradistinction to
the (to him) useless task of elucidating the mechanical nature of light,
Barrow's optics rested on a mathematically construed notion of optical
images, tested it, and pursued the description of their mathematical properties.
Let us assume (see Figure 1), that rays sent forth by A are reflected in
the mirror in such a way that those reaching the eye, E, if prolonged
backwards, gather in some point A'. Then, A' is taken to be the image of A.
The eye E should see A in A' because it is assumed that the rays coming
from A reach the eye as if they came from A'. This is a truly geometrical
definition in the sense that A' is determined by the positions of A, the eye
E, and the position and shape of the reflecting surface. I shall call it the
"Gregorie-Barrow principle of image location" and "geometrical images"
the objects it determines. James Gregorie grounded on it the first mathematical theory of optical devices (in his 1663 Optica promota), but it
became widely known through Barrow's 1669 Optical Lectures.64
61
See A. I. Sabra, Theories of Light from Descartes to Newton (London, 1967); A.
E. Shapiro, "Kinematic Optics: A Study of the Wave Theory of Light in the Seventeenth
Century," Archive for the History of Exact Sciences, 11 (1973), 134-266; P. Duhem,
"L'optique de Malebranche," Revue de metaphysique et de la morale, 23 (1916), 37-91.
In Restoration England, Hooke was essentially alone in embracing an undulatory theory
of light.
62 See R.
Kargon, Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton (Oxford, 1966), 78-79
and 118-21; and A. E. Shapiro, "The Optical Lectures," in M. Feingold (ed.), Before
Newton, 105-78.
63 Mathematical
Works, 18. There are many declarations to the same purpose in the
first two lectures.
64 On Gregorie's
optics, see A. Malet, "Studies on James Gregorie (1638-1675)"
(Ph.D. Diss., Princeton University, 1989), 99-173; and "Gregorie, Descartes, Kepler,

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Isaac Barrow

E473

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Figure 1
Reprinted with permission from the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections,
Cornell University Library

The Gregorie-Barrow principle of image location relies on a debated

interpretationof a well-established phenomenon, ocular accommodation.
Ocular humors change their shapes as the distance between the eye and the
object the eye is focusing on changes. It was deduced from here, as
Gregorie put it, that the eye E (Figure 1) accommodates itself as if the rays
came from A'. From this act of ocular accommodation the observer should
conclude that the rays come actually from A'. To sum up, the GregorieBarrow principle assumes that the eye locates objects in physical space by
means of the divergence of the light rays received-a hypothesis with
some empirical basis in the "accommodation"of ocular humors. Taken to
be equivalent to assume the ability of ascertaining the distance separating
and the Law of Refraction," Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 40
(1990), 278-304. On the Keplerian pre-history of the mathematics of focal points, see A.
Malet, "Keplerian Illusions: Geometrical Pictures versus Optical Images in Kepler's
Visual Theory," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 21 (1990), 1-40. For
a discussion of the technicalities of Barrow's Optical Lectures and its reception through
the eighteenth century, see A. E. Shapiro, "The Optical Lectures," in M. Feingold (ed.),
Before Newton, 105-78.

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objects from the eye, this hypothesis was widely discussed in the philosophical literature.65
The Gregorie-Barrow principle of image location describes mathematically where the object A should be perceived. Now A may be actually
perceived there, or it may not. What the principle says about images may
be true or false. Therefore it is a proposition rather than a definitionwhich agrees with Barrow's understanding of definitions. The theoretically derived location of the image, A', will change as A is removed to
another location, or the shape of the reflecting surface is changed, or the
eye gains a new situation, or the light is refracted instead of reflected. This
provides innumerable occasions to test the "definition" of images, and that
is what we find in Barrow's Optical Lectures. He highlighted results that
explained observational facts, particularlythose concerned with the working of lenses and telescopes, but it was one of Barrow's main concerns to
show that the geometrical image agrees with the observed image.66 He
allowed that some evidence did not supporthis mathematical characterization of images, but dismissed it as being inconsiderable vis-a-vis the
evidence supporting it.67
George Berkeley's 1709 New Theory of Vision, its most recent commentator emphasizes, was meant to counter "the geometric theory" of
vision and its naive solution to the problem of distance perception.68
Indeed, prior to the publication of Berkeley's sharp criticism geometrical
optics flourished in Britain-all major British optical writers, including
James Gregorie, David Gregory, William Molyneux, and the great optical
compilers of the early eighteenth century contributed to it, not to mention

65
See L. S. Joy, Gassendi the Atomist (Cambridge, 1987), 123-24; O. R. Bloch, La
philosophie de Gassendi (La Haye, 1971), 15ff. J. Locke, Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (2 vols.; Oxford, 1894), I, 219-25. R. Boyle, A Discourse of Things
above Reason, in Works (London, 1772), IV, 406-69, p. 414. R. Descartes, La
Dioptrique, in C. Adam, P. Tannery (eds.), Oeuvres de Descartes (12 vols.; Paris, 18971910), VI, 144. On Roberval and Huygens, see below.
66 See, for instance, Mathematical Works, 118, where he corrects Galileo, and 101,
where he explains a phenomenon "of substantial advantage in the making of telescopes." For instances of observations and experiments adduced as corroboration of his
theory, see Mathematical Works, Lecture IV, ?21, 53; V, ?20, 61; V, ?22, 63-64; VI,
?19, 69; VII, ?21, 76; X, ?26, 93-94; XV, appendix, 133-36; XVI, ?14, 140-41.
Barrow's handling of observations and experiments ranges from the trivial to the
sophisticated. I have analyzed in full and technical detail this facet of Barrow's optics in
"Studies on James Gregorie (1638-1675)," 158-62, to appear in "The SeventeenthCentury Mathematization of Optical Images," forthcoming.
67 Mathematical Works, 152-53. See "Studies on James
Gregorie (1638-1675),"
162-63, to appear in "The Seventeenth-Century Mathematization of Optical Images,"
forthcoming.
68 M. Atherton,
Berkeley's Revolution in Vision (Ithaca, 1990), 77-86, and passim.

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Isaac Barrow

287

such seminal works as Barrow's Lectures and Newton's Cambridge optical lectures.
We cannot analyze here the factors-including inconclusive empirical
support-which during the first decades of the eighteenth century undermined the status of geometrical optics as it was originally conceived.
Suffice it to say that natural philosophers (mostly from the Continent)
opposing the Gregorie-Barrow principle eventually prevailed, and from
the middle of the eighteenth century it was no longer assumed that geometrical images truly described the images perceived through lenses and
telescopes. Thus geometrical optics lost the physical content it had had in
the seventeenth century, and Barrow's Optical Lectures has ever since
been considered primarily a mathematical work-a series of beautifully
difficult mathematical results produced for their own sake, independently
of the empirical knowledge they might contain. But this is an anachronistic reading of his work, because Barrow was deeply concerned in establishing the truth of his results on observations. He gave optics new
philosophical foundations-and everything suggests that theological convictions were crucial in shaping his approach to it.
The eventual failure of the seventeenth-century attempt to mathematize optical images makes it all the more interesting that Gregorie,
Barrow, and Newton, among others, committed themselves to geometrical
images and the science of optics that hinges on them. Against the background of theological voluntarism, geometrical optics was a promising
enterprise, attractive both because it embodied a new understanding of
what is a mathematical science and because it offered an alternative to the
search for mechanico-deterministic explanations. It was a philosophical
enterprise neatly answering to key theological and philosophical concerns
of Restoration England.
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

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