Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 35 (2004) 247269 www.elsevier.

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The methodological origins of Newtons queries

Peter R. Anstey
Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia Received 6 August 2003; received in revised form 5 November 2003

Abstract This paper analyses the dierent ways in which Isaac Newton employed queries in his writings on natural philosophy. It is argued that queries were used in three dierent ways by Newton and that each of these uses is best understood against the background of the role that queries played in the Baconian method that was adopted by the leading experimenters of the early Royal Society. After a discussion of the role of queries in Francis Bacons natural historical method, Newtons queries in his Trinity Notebook are shown to reveal the inuence of his early reading in the new experimental philosophy. Then after a discussion of Robert Hookes view of the role of queries, the paper turns to an assessment of Newtons correspondence and Opticks. It is argued that the queries in his correspondence with Oldenburg on his early optical experiments are closely tied to an experimental program, whereas the queries in the Opticks are more discursive and speculative, but that each of these uses of queries represents a signicant Baconian legacy in his natural philosophical methodology. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Bacon; Experiment; Hypothesis; Method; Newton; Query

1. Introduction Among the most famous passages in all of Isaac Newtons writings are the queries appended to the Opticks. In fact, Query 31 from the second edition of the Opticks (1717) is one of the most widely quoted and discussed passages from Newtons whole oeuvre. Yet if the contents of this and others of Newtons queries
E-mail address: Peter.Anstey@arts.usyd.edu.au (P.R. Anstey). 0039-3681/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2003.11.001

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are well known and studied, their precise origins are rather less well understood. This paper aims to shed new light upon the methodological origins of Newtons queries; not simply the queries to the Opticks, but to all of his queries in natural philosophy. Why did Newton write queries? And what can his adoption of this methodological tool tell us about his connections with the natural philosophy of his day and his own methodological views? We will explore these questions rst, by examining the function of queries in the emerging natural philosophical methodologies of the early Royal Society; second, by an examination of the role and function of queries in the methodology of Robert Hooke; and third, by an analysis of Newtons own comments on the use of queries. Surprisingly, our analysis of Newtons adoption and deployment of queries will take us to the very heart of his methodological views about how one is to proceed in natural philosophy. Questions played an important role in each of the three chief scholastic exercises (lectures, disputations, and declamations) that prevailed in the universities of Cambridge and Oxford in the mid-seventeenth century.1 For example, in a typical disputation a question would be stated and then the armative or negative answer defended by the disputant. Furthermore, students frequently used queries or questions in common-placing to raise doubts or diculties in relation to the material under consideration or to introduce additional issues not addressed by the author under review. John Lockes commonplace books from the late 1650s provide very extensive examples of this use of queries. It is not surprising therefore, that a section in the young Newtons Trinity Notebook entered in the mid-1660s is headed Questiones qudem Philosoph[i]c (Certain Philosophical Questions)2 and contains a series of questions by which discussions of natural philosophical topics are introduced. These queries of the young Newton are indicative of the pedagogical tradition in which he had trained. A nice example is the rst entry which is entitled Of the rst matter. It begins Whether it be mathematical points, or mathematical points and parts, or a simple entity before division indistinct, or individuals, i.e., atoms.3 Newton rejects the rst three answers and in the second entry arms that rst matter is comprised of atoms.4 However, the queries found later in the Notebook and those in his published works, his correspondence and his manuscripts are of a somewhat dierent form and were developed in the theoretical and polemical context of the newly emerging experimental philosophy. In order to understand
For discussion of the scholastic exercises at Cambridge in the early seventeenth century see Costello (1958), pp. 1135. For further background on Restoration Cambridge see Gascoigne (1985), and on Oxford see Feingold (1997) (who also provides a corrective to Costello (1958)) and Frank (1997), pp. 526527. For general background see Chapter X of Lawn (1993), and for the American George Starkeys use of the scholastic method see Newman and Principe (2002), pp. 164174. 2 Reproduced with an extensive introduction and commentary by McGuire & Tamny (1983). Also available online at The Newton Project, Imperial College London, at http://www.newtonproject.ic. ac.uk/web_keynes/cul3996a_w.xml. 3 McGuire & Tamny (1983), p. 336/337. 4 Ibid., p. 340/341.
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this context we need rst to turn to the role of queries in the predominant natural philosophical method of the early Royal Society, the method of Francis Bacon.

2. Queries and the Baconian method of natural history Francis Bacon proposed a systematic renovation of natural philosophy. His works were widely read and his prescriptions adopted by many members of the early Royal Society. Bacon proposed that natural philosophical knowledge could only be arrived at after the construction of natural histories. These natural histories were to be vast collections of matters of fact pertaining to particular objects or qualities. Bacon stressed that the most protable contributions to natural histories will come from the manipulation of nature by the mechanical arts and this, according to Bacon, will involve the speculative sciences of mathematics and mechanics.5 They were to be assembled not only by natural philosophers, but by travellers, by merchants, and others, because the project of the construction of these histories was too large for any one person. Once assembled, these histories were to be the foundation of natural philosophy, the subject upon which Bacons inductive method was to be applied.6 Bacon also oered a severe critique of alternative traditional approaches to natural philosophy, especially the idle speculations spun by philosophers which were divorced from matters of fact or which only appealed to natural histories or experiments when convenient or merely to bolster ones speculations. Now while there were important dierences of emphasis among the Baconianisms of the early Royal Society,7 the salient features of Bacons prescriptions were widely adopted and put into practice. The method of natural history became a particularly prominent part of the new experimental philosophy. This is illustrated in Oldenburgs numerous statements of the Societys agenda as well as in the research projects pursued by the Societys leading experimentalists such as Boyle and Hooke.8 It is also perhaps the most prominent methodological motif to be found in the notes from the meetings of the Society, in its ocial publication, the Philosophical Transactions, and in the eyes of its propagandists such as Joseph Glanvill and Thomas Sprat.9 This approach was even endorsed in Paris by Huygens in his recommendation for the newly created Academie royale des sciences that The principal work and most useful occupation of this Assembly should
See Parasceve, V & VII, Bacon (18571874), Vol. IV, pp. 257259, and De augmentis scientiarum, ibid., pp. 369371. 6 Descriptio globi intellectualis, Bacon (1996), p. 104/105. 7 See Hunter & Wood (1989). 8 See for example, Oldenburgs comment that A considerable piece of the grand Design of the Modern Experimental Philosophers being, to procure and accumulate Materials for a good Natural History, whence to raise in progress of time a solid Structure of Philosophy, Philosophical Transactions, 19, 19 November 1666, p. 344. See also Oldenburg (19651986), Vol. II, pp. 143144, Vol. III, p. 537, Vol. IV, p. 315. 9 Glanvill (1668), p. 9, and Sprat (1667), passim.
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be, in my opinion, to work on the Natural History, somewhat according to the plan of Verulam.10 Now the salient point of all this background discussion of the Royal Societys commitment to Baconian natural history is that within it queries played a very important role. When Bacon set out his various schemes for the prosecution of natural philosophical knowledge in works such as the Descriptio globi intellectualis and the Parasceve (appended to the Novum organum), he advised the assembling of queries as a specic step and he appended lists of heads or queries that were to be pursued.11 This method of listing queries pertaining to particular topics was adopted and promoted with gusto by Boyle and others to such an extent that there was in the 1660s and beyond, a proliferation of queries. There are literally scores of lists of queries spread across the Philosophical Transactions, the published works of the leading experimental natural philosophers, in the Royal Society archives and in other manuscript collections. Indeed, so many queries had appeared in the early issues of the Philosophical Transactions that in October of 1667 Oldenburg clearly felt obliged to keep readers abreast of them and to provide answers to some of them. To that end he tells his readers in issue 28: That the Queries, scattered up and down in these Tracts, may not seem lost, or left un-regarded, the Publisher intends to impart at convenient times such of the Answers shall be sent in by observing men, as may be thought acceptable to the Reader.12 There follows a list of answers to queries about the Mendip mines. These answers are in response to a list of over one hundred queries about mines by Robert Boyle published in a previous issue.13 Interestingly, Boyles long list is a sequel to his General heads for a natural history of a countrey14 which itself sets out the heads for a kind of generic questionnaire of the kind frequently found in the Philosophical Transactions for particular countries. The relevance of this use of queries to Newton will become apparent below. Furthermore, it should be pointed out that Bacon maintained a tripartite division of the subject matter of natural history comprising generations or natural species, pretergenerations or aberrations such as monsters, and arts by which nature is manipulated. The lists of queries mentioned above sit well with the method of constructing natural histories for natural objects, that is, Bacons generations and pretergenerations, and they nd their most natural application there. IndicaQuoted from Sabra (1967), p. 171. There are also some things which may be usefully added to the natural history . . . First, questions . . . should be added, in order to provoke and stimulate further inquiry (Parasceve, Bacon, 18571874, vol. IV, p. 261). For Descriptio globi intellectualis see Bacon (1996), pp. 114/115 . 12 Philosophical Transactions, 28, 21 October 1667, p. 525. 13 Ibid., 19, 19 November 1666, pp. 330343. These queries are followed by a list of queries chiey about cold (pp. 344346). 14 Ibid., 11, 2 April 1666, pp. 186189.
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tive of this are the comments of the natural historian Martin Lister, who in 1670 when listing a series of observations on colours says in passing: It would have been a much safer way, to have put these Inferences in the fashion of Quris; but besides that I arm no more but matter of fact, it is lawful for our encouragement (as my Lord Bacon advises) to set up rests by the way . . . [in the construction of natural histories].15 The naturalness of the reference to the fashion of Quris and the appeal to Bacon are again illustrative of how widespread this use of queries was amongst members of the early Royal Society. But it is also important to note that the method of queries is not the sole province of the promoters of natural histories of natural objects and qualities, but was also practised and applied in the domain of arts or experiments. This is signicant not only for our understanding of the practice of natural history in general, but more particularly for our analysis of Newtons queries. With one (slightly ambiguous) exception, Newton never appears explicitly to have endorsed the method of natural history and yet he clearly employed one of the central components of this method, the query. The young Newton was aware of this natural historical programme for the advancement of natural philosophy since he took notes, some very detailed, on a number of the most important early productions of this approach to natural philosophy. These included Boyles Spring of the air (1660) and Colours (1664), and Hookes Micrographia (1665). Boyles Spring of the air was the rst instalment in an ongoing history of the air which continued unabated even beyond his death in the capable hands of John Locke who saw his General history of the air through the press in 1692. His Colours, which was a stimulus to Newtons early optical experiments, was conceived as a Beginning to a History not hitherto, that I know, begun by any.16 Likewise, Hookes Micrographia was conceived in Baconian terms as contributing the meanest foundations whereon others may raise nobler Superstructures.17 Newton also took notes on the rst twenty-four issues of the Philosophical Transactions which reveal an awareness of the role of queries in the new natural philosophy.18 Further evidence of Newtons knowledge of the method of natural history is found in his letter to Francis Aston of 18 May 1669.19 This letter has long been
Some observations, touching colours, ibid., 70, 17 April 1671, p. 2135. Boyle (19992000), Vol. IV, p. 7. 17 Hooke (1665), Preface, sig. b1rb1v. 18 Newtons Out of Philosophicall Transactions summarises the contents of the rst twenty-four issues. See Cambridge University Library, Additional Manuscript 3958, fols. 9r15r. Evidence of Newtons awareness of the use of queries is seen in the following comments: Mr Boyls copious inquiries about Mines (fol. 13v); Num 22. Mr Boyles Querys about changes wrought by transfusion of blood . . . Num 23. Inquirys for Suralt & other parts of the East Indys . . . Others for Guaiana & Brasil . . . Some enquirys about Magnetisme. Inquirys about seeds & plants growing in eahrith or water (fol. 14v). See also Sprat (1667), pp. 155157, for a discussion of the use of queries. Newtons notes on Sprat are in Additional Manuscript 3958, fols. 5r7v. 19 Newton (19591977), Vol. I, pp. 911.
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thought to have been inspired by an abridgement of Robert Southwells Concerning travelling which gives advice to gentlemen for travelling abroad and which survives among Newtons papers.20 Southwells advice contains a number of suggestions as to inquires that might be made about foreign lands, but it does not bear a distinctively Baconian stamp. By contrast, Boyles more generic General heads for the natural history of a countrey which Newton would have read in the eleventh issue of the Philosophical Transactions of April 1666 is a classic statement of a natural historical approach to gleaning facts from overseas travel.21 The methodological background of this document is summed up in one of Oldenburgs numerous statements of the aims of the Royal Society. He claims we shall even appoint philosophical ambassadors to travel throughout the world to search and report on the works and productions of nature and art, in order to compose in time a Natural and Articial History which will be perfect, and which can provide materials sucient to build an unshakeably rm system of philosophy.22 Robert Southwells travel correspondence with Oldenburg shows not only that he followed his own advice, but that he did so with Oldenburgs agenda in mind, for he sent back numerous natural historical observations.23 We should note in Newtons letter therefore, the repeated references to mines,24 the lists of generall heads for Inquirys, the recommendation that the travellers discourse bee more in Qurys & doubtings . . . it being ye designe of Travellers to learne not teach and the word play, popular at the time, on Bacons luciferous experiments. Newton advises: if you meet wth any transmutations out of one species into another [of metals or salts] . . . those above all others will bee worth your noting being ye most luciferous & many times lucriferous experiments too in Philosophy.25 Whatever we are to make of the intent of this letter,26 it is clear from its contents that Newton was very familiar with some of the central elements of the Baconian method as practised by members of the early Royal Society. This then is the natural philosophical context in which we should view many of the questions in Newtons Trinity Notebook and also the queries at the end of his
20 Kings College Library, Cambridge, Keynes MS 152. For verbal parallels see Newton (19591977), Vol. I, p. 12 n. 1. 21 Philosophical Transactions, 11, 2 April 1666, pp. 186189. In Cambridge University Library, Additional Manuscript 3958, fol. 11r Newton writes Boyls directions for the generall History of a country. 22 ` Oldenburg to Sorbiere, 3 January 1663/1664, Oldenburg (19651986), Vol. II, p. 142/144. See also Hookes Preface to Knox (1681), sig. a2v-a3r. 23 See Oldenburg (19651986), Vol. I, pp. 323325, 355356. 24 For Newtons own notes on mines from this period see University Library, Cambridge Additional Manuscript 3958, fols 25r26r. 25 Newton (19591977), Vol. I, p. 10. Boyle used the word play in Forms and qualities (1666), Boyle (19992000), Vol. V, p. 418, and William Petty in his The advice of W. P. to Mr. Samuel Hartlib (1647), p. 20. The Baconian connection in Newtons use of the terms was noted by Blay (1985), p. 373 n. 66. 26 Westfall nds the letter itself more ludicrous than eloquent (1980, p. 193).

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notes on Hookes Micrographia made in 1665.27 It was noted above that the Notebook begins with some instances of the scholastic disputational style. However, as the notebook develops, the disputational format quickly drops away and the queries recorded begin to take the familiar form of the lists of queries found amongst the natural philosophers of the early Royal Society. For example, the notes on Of water and salt are really a set of observations and queries arising from a close reading of Chapters I & III of Descartess Meteora. Here is an excerpt: Why water is clearer than vapors? Whether burning waters and hot spirits be of small spherical or oval gured parts, and have many such globuli as re is of. . . . Why does hot water rst contract itself (viz., in cooling), and then dilate itself before and as it freezes? Why does salt and snow freeze other water? Why is heated water sooner frozen than raw water? Whether there be more vapors when air is clearest? How salt hinders corruption, but fresh water helps it. Why, though salt be heavier, yet it will mix with water and gather into grains at the top of it?28 If one compares this excerpt with a typical list of queries from, say, an excerpt from Boyles lists of queries on elasticity from the 1660s, the parallels are striking. What Bodys are Naturally endowd with elasticity. What Bodys Naturally want Springs. What Bodys there are that have Springs under some Dimensions, & not under others . . . What Bodys Naturally Elasticall may be deprivd of their Spring (to this belongs the Glasse of Lead & other Minerales per se, & the reductions of that Minerall. By what operations & meanes Elasticity may be introducd into Bodys, as fusion hammering, wire drawing &c. By what operations & meanes the Elasticity of a Body may be destroyd, as nealing, melting &c. What are the cheif & most usual Concomitants of Elasticitie, & of the absence or losse of it.29 Note the piling up of queries, the prominent position of the interrogative particle, and the attempt more or less systematically to cover outstanding issues pertaining to the topic at hand. Clearly during his course of reading, Newton had begun to imbibe one of the prominent literary forms of the new philosophy.
Newton (1962), p. 413. McGuire & Tamny (1983), p. 374/375. 29 Royal Society Boyle Papers, Vol. 10, fol. 132. The transcription is quoted from Michael Hunter (forthcoming).
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What is interesting from such lists is that the queries are used as series of pointers by which experimental programmes might be pursued or as checks to interpretations of experimental results, and so on. Another Boyle list found among Lockes manuscripts asks, Whether there be ames that will really continue under water without being extinguishd by it & whether the same ames or some others would not burn without aire. Whether Aire by any degree of agitation how high soever be capable of being inamd. Whether a great heat can be given by ame alone or by coles &c. without ame. How great a part of a Combustible body may be supposd to be burnt into ame, exemplifyd in Alcole of wine.30 Thus the humble query served two functions. First, it delineated the domain or scope of a natural history that needed to be prosecuted, and second it also served to direct experimental inquiry. This tted well with the Baconian agenda for pursuing mechanical or experimental knowledge as a form of natural history and was a natural and easy application of the Baconian method. 3. Hooke on queries This brings us to the case of Robert Hooke who is a nice example of a natural philosopher who was able to dovetail the two uses of queries in natural philosophy. He develops lists like those of Boyle, modelled on Bacon, which are for the development of natural histories and yet he also deploys queries about, say, the nature of earthquakes31 or comets32 which are directly related to experiments, observations and hypotheses. Now what is particularly useful for our purposes is that Hooke did not merely practise the Baconian method of queries, he reected on the role of queries in his methodological lectures. And it will repay us to briey examine Hookes prescriptions for the assembling and application of queries in natural philosophy. This is particularly relevant, because it is in the context of Newtons conict with Hooke on the nature of colour and light that Newton himself rst publicly deploys queries. In his Method of improving natural philosophy, published posthumously but written around 1668, Hooke develops a neo-Baconian natural philosophical methodology in the spirit of the Parasceve, rst expostulating upon the necessity of and structure of natural histories and then providing a very elaborate reticulated
Bodleian Library, MS Locke c. 42, pp. 266267. I would like to thank Michael Hunter for the transcription of these folios. 31 A discourse of earthquakes, Hooke (1705), p. 345. 32 Cometa and Hooke (1678), sig. A3r.
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schema of heads for the composition of natural histories.33 Hooke clearly regards this as a universally applicable method which can be used for any natural philosophical inquiry. He then introduces an extended discussion of the uses of queries. First he tells us how we should go about setting down queries and then he examines their function within the natural history itself: And having set down these Queries, he ought in the next place to consider what things seem requisite to attain those ends; what means he can imagine may be conducive to the solving or answering those Questions, that is, what Observations, Examinations, or Experiments would seem conducive thereunto, and accordingly under every such Query or Question, he ought to set down the things requisite to be known for the obtaining the full Knowledge of a compleat and full Answer to it; afterwards with Care and Diligence he ought to make Examination and Tryal of what he has propounded, one thing after another, with much Circumspection . . . The Tryal of these Experiments, tis very likely, will much further his Knowledge, and shew him perhaps the Solution of some of his Queries, as well as the Error and Insignicancy of others . . . 34 Once the queries are set down the natural philosopher sets about contriving experiments and observations that will provide answers to them. Elsewhere Hooke emphasises that queries should only be set down if they are solvable and that it is preferable that they be devised by those who are strangers to the phenomenon under investigation, though not anyone is capable of devising them.35 Furthermore, once the project of prosecuting queries is undertaken with due thoroughness, the natural philosopher will nd that it has a ow on eect for other inquiries: Thus the nding out the Cause of Fluidity, Heat, Gravity, Brittleness, &c. in one Body, will much facilitate the Inquiry after the like Properties in any other Body.36 It is important to stress here that queries for Hooke are to be dierentiated from hypotheses. Even as early as the Micrographia Hooke can be found to dierentiate the two. He claims in his dedicatory epistle to the Royal Society that with respect to the use of hypotheses in this work, there may perhaps be some Expressions, which may seem more positive then YOUR Prescriptions will permit: And though I desire to have them understood only as Conjectures and Quries (which YOUR Method does not altogether disallow) . . . 37 It is easy with the benet of hindsight to see that in some cases the functional role of queries is equivalent to what we would call working hypotheses, but it
The method of improving natural philosophy, Hooke (1705), pp. 2226. Ibid., p. 28. 35 A discourse of earthquakes, ibid., p. 429, and The method of improving natural philosophy, ibid., pp. 62, 27. 36 Ibid., p. 29. 37 Hooke (1665), To the Royal Society, sig. A2v.
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would be anachronistic to foist this equivalence upon the early moderns. The formation and testing of queries in Hooke, Boyle, and others is a distinct step in the neo-Baconian methodology of experimental natural philosophy. To be sure, queries might explicitly be deployed in the testing of a theory, but this remains a clearly dened step in a well articulated process that originates from the method of constructing natural histories.

4. Newtons optical queries in 1672 Having examined Robert Hookes methodological reections on the use of queries, we now turn to Newtons rst deployment of queries in relation to his optical experiments. They are found in his rejoinder of 11 June 1672 to Hookes Considerations and in his letter to Henry Oldenburg of 6 July 1672. The broader context of these letters is perhaps worth briey summarising. On 6 February 1672 Newton sent to Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society, his paper on colours. It was read at the Societys next meeting and was soon published in the Philosophical Transactions. Responses quickly came from Hooke, Pardies, and Huygens. Hooke penned a rather hurried report for the Royal Society, the Considerations, which Newton received by 20 February. It is in his rejoinder to this paper by Hooke that we nd Newtons rst use of queries. The second use of queries comes just four weeks later in Newtons reply to Oldenburgs question about refractions and the properties of glass, though the theoretical and experimental considerations of this letter are continuous with those of the rejoinder to Hooke. We will examine this second letter rst. Newtons letter of 6 July is, in fact, best seen as part of his ongoing correspondence with Hooke, Pardies, and Huygens and mediated by Oldenburg, over his theory of the nature of coloured light. It is important to get clear on the immediate methodological issues that the letter addresses. These issues pick up points that Newton has already made both to Hooke and to Pardies. Newton begins: I cannot think it eectuall for determining truth to examin the severall ways by wch Phnomena may be explained, unlesse where there can be a perfect enumeration of all those ways.38 Newtons point arises from the controversy with Hooke who claims his alternative, mechanical theory could equally explain the optical phenomena discovered by Newton in the experiments related to Oldenburg in his letter of 6 February 1672. Newton is addressing the problem of underdeterminationtoo many hypotheses save the same phenomenaand is claiming that it is only worth examining all of the alternative explanations together. Then Newton claims that his theory was not inferred as a possible explanation of the phenomena, but by deriving it from Experiments concluding positively & directly. He clearly believes that the relation
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Newton (19591977), Vol. I, p. 209.

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between his theory and the experiments that support it dierentiates it from other possible theories. He regards this epistemic relation between his theory and the experiments as somehow unique and he suggests two methods for exploring this further: rst, by re-examining the relation between the original experiments and the theory; and second, by proposing new experiments suggested by the theory itself. This, he says, should be done in a due Method and he proceeds to spell this out: It may not be amiss to proceed according to the series of these Queries:. He goes on to list eight queries and concludes by claiming: To determin by experiments these & such like Queries wch involve the propounded Theory seemes the most proper & direct way to a conclusion. And therefore I could wish all objections were suspended, taken from Hypotheses or any other Heads then these two; Of showing the insuciency of experiments to determin these Queries or prove any other parts of my Theory, by assigning the aws & defects in my Conclusions drawn from them; Or of producing other Experiments wch directly contradict me, if any such may seem to occur.39 Newton is requesting that rather than focusing on other hypotheses, such as Hookes, and how they save the phenomena, one should focus on the adequacy or otherwise of experiments that are developed to pursue answers to his queries and on nding experiments that might directly contradict his theory. Clearly Newton conceives the queries as comprising part of due or proper method in resolving the problem at hand. Clearly too, Newton sees them as standing in important evidential relations to both the experimental programme and to the theory under examination. Note also that they are distinguished from hypotheses like Hookes wave theory of light. Rather they are subsidiary propositions that arise in the particular experimento-theoretical context. Thus for Newton, in the context of an ongoing controversy over his optical experiments and his theory of coloured lighta controversy that involved some of the leading purveyors of the natural historical method and the deployment of queriesqueries have a central role in his natural philosophical method. They are not hypotheses; they are not part of the theory. Rather they are propositions that function as heuristic devices that are derived in a specic experimental and theoretical context. Not surprisingly, the letter of 6 July was read to the Royal Society on the very next day and it was recommended there to prosecute experiments such as might determine the queries lately sent by Mr. NEWTON, which involve his theory of light.40 That Newton regarded his methodological comments as signicant is evident from his opening comment in his letter to Oldenburg of 13 July 1672. He says:
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Ibid., p. 210. Birch (17561757), Vol. III, p. 57.

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I am glad you are pleased to accept my answer to your inquiry, together with the following discourse about the properest Method of examining the truth of my proposalls; wch you may print when you think t.41 Oldenburg must have concurred, because he excerpted the queries of the letter 6 July and printed them in both English and Latin in the Philosophical Transactions of 15 July.42 They were introduced under the heading A Series of Queres propounded by Mr. Isaac Newton, to be determind by Experiments . . . and Oldenburg went on to speak of Newtons Method as appearing to be most genuine and proper to the purpose it is propounded for, and deserving therefore to be considered and put to trial by Philosophers, abroad as well as at home.43 Let us now turn to Newtons use of queries in his rejoinder of 11 June 1672 to Hookes Considerations. He begins the sixth section of his rejoinder with the following claim: You see therefore how much it is besides the buisinesse in hand to dispute about Hypotheses. For wch reason I shall now in the last place proceed to abstract the diculties involved in Mr Hooks discourse, & without having regard to any Hypothesis consider them in generall termes. And they may be reduced to these three Queries. Whether . . .; Whether there be more then two sorts of colours; & whether . . .44 Note rstly the eschewing of hypotheses and the clear dierentiation between queries and hypotheses. Hypotheses in this context, such as Hookes, merely muddy the waters. Throughout the exchanges Newton is adamant that his theory is not an hypothesis in so far as it stands in a unique evidential relation to the experimental observations, a relation not shared by the hypothesis of Hooke. Newton is very specic about this. Indeed, in the letter of 10 June 1672 (sent one day before this reply to Hooke) he takes umbrage at Pardiess calling his theory an hypothesis, afraid that it was being considered merely in a loose philosophical sense as anything expounded in philosophy [quicquid exponitur in Philosophia dicatur Hypothesis].45 Secondly, Newtons use of queries here is exactly as prescribed in the subsequent letter to Oldenburg which has already been discussed. Note thirdly that this use of queries is in reply to Hooke who we have also seen was committed to their deployment in a proper method of natural philosophy. Finally, we need to note that in the subsequent sections of his rejoinder to Hooke, Newton immediately applies his method by exploring the heuristic implications of each of the three queries he has proposed.
Newton (19591977), Vol. I, p. 217. Philosophical Transactions, 85, 15 July 1672, p. 5004 (misprinted as 4004). 43 Ibid., p. 5005. Elsewhere Oldenburg calls it ye genuine method of determining the truth of his Doctrine of Light and Colours, Newton (19591977), Vol. I, p. 211 n. 7. 44 Newton (19591977), Vol. I, pp. 177178. 45 Newton to Oldenburg for Pardies, 10 June 1672, ibid., p. 168.
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But Newton does not leave the method of queries there; he apparently drew up a series of Expts for determining ye Qures wch yt Letter conteined46 and forwarded them via Oldenburg to Huygens. A correspondence then ensued which revolved around the application of the second query concerning Whether there be more then two sorts of colours. Thus on 19 January 1672/1673 Huygens (via Oldenburg) comments that Il me semble, que la plus importante objection, quon luy fait en forme de Qure, est celle. Sil y a plus de deux sortes de couleurs?47 Newton replies on 3 April 1673, again construing the problem at hand in terms of queries: As to the contents of his letter I conceive my former answer to the Qure about the number of colours is sucient, wch was to this eect . . ..48 Not surprisingly, Newton concludes his letter for Huygens with a new set of queries.49 Queries here are clearly functioning not merely rhetorically as part of some newly formed methodological discourse, but as an eective heuristic device guiding the formation of new experiments and steering theoretical reection and debate. These are just the sorts of functions that one would expect queries to have in a broadly Baconian experimental natural philosophy. That Hooke, Huygens, and Oldenburg acquiesced in this heuristic method is entirely in keeping with what we know independently about their own methodological views. The deployment of queries is not the only methodological element in Newtons correspondence. It is clear that he was formulating a mathematico-experimental method that involved the statement of axioms in a quasi-mathematical style50 and that this was related to what he regarded as a demonstrative relation between experiment and theory. These latter features may have been inspired by Isaac Barrow, as some have suggested,51 and were to be articulated dierently in the domain of celestial mechanics. But the fundamentally Baconian strand in Newtons methodological thought is unambiguous. Or is it? Many years ago A. I. Sabra noted that Newtons letter to Oldenburg of 6 February 1672 had a Baconian ring to it and he implied that it had been tailored to the methodological prescriptions of the Royal Society. After quoting the crucial paragraph in which Newton claims [a] naturalist would scearce expect to see ye science of those [colours] become mathematicall, Sabra says that Newton proceeds in his paper as Bacon and members of the Royal Society would have required him to do.52 Two decades later Michel Blay took a similar line, claiming that once interpreted correctly, Newtons charade of Baconianism in this letter is evidence that in fact he was not a Baconian at all!53 More recently, Peter Dear has
Newton to Oldenburg, 21 September 1672, ibid., p. 237. Ibid., p. 255. 48 Ibid., p. 264. 49 Ibid., p. 266. 50 Ibid., p. 237. 51 See Dear (1995), pp. 222227, and Shapiro (1993), pp. 3140. 52 Sabra (1967), pp. 248249. 53 Blay (1985); les procedures du Novum Organum ne sont plus avec Newton que des gures de rhetorique, p. 373.
47 46

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claimed that in this letter Newton presents his approach . . . as if it simply conformed to the logic of the Royal Societys experimental philosophy.54 What are we to make of these claims? There is no doubt that there is an element of rational reconstruction on Newtons part in his discussions of his optical experiments and the process by which he came upon his theory of coloured light in the rst of this sequence of letters.55 It should be pointed out, however, that the rst letter, that of 6 February 1672, contains only a minimal amount of methodological content comprising two sentences. However, if we take the clutch of letters from this episode in Newtons exchanges with Oldenburg, we can see that they are really part of the rst phase of the public presentation of Newtons experimental and theoretical work and therefore it is only natural that its presentation should include methodological reections. Furthermore, it must be stressed that Newton saw dierences between himself and the triad of Hooke, Pardies, and Huygensthe main theoretical antagonists in the correspondenceon matters of methodology. There is therefore no reason why we should not regard Newton here as articulating his newly formed natural philosophical method, albeit with something of a public edge to it.56 Indeed, already in the then unpublished Lectiones opticae, completed by October 1671, Newton had expressed similar sentiments.57 Moreover, the fact that Oldenburg excised the two aforementioned sentences from the version published in the Philosophical Transactions suggests, if anything, that the letter did not conform to the Societys, or perhaps Oldenburgs, supposed methodological prescriptions, rather than that it was tailored to do so. I suggest that we take Newtons methodological claims in all of these letters at face value. We have seen from Newtons letter of 13 July 1672 that he took his methodological prescriptions seriously and the implication of his suggestion that Oldenburg might print them in the Philosophical Transactions is that he considered them both novel and important. It is clear therefore, particularly in the light of the continuity of the methodological claims in these letters with Newtons later writings, that there is no evidence for the claim that the letter of 6 February has been tailored to the prescriptions of others and by implication does not represent Newtons true methodological views. The letters of 11 June, 6 July, 21 September 1672, and 3 April 1673 which contain or discuss queries serve to reinforce the honest though muted Baconianism of the letter of 6 February 1672, and together they show that (at least) from early 1672 Newton was in the process of becoming a neo-Baconian experimental philosopher, albeit with a particularly mathematical orientation.
Dear (1995), p. 235. Though Shapiro nds nothing historically inconsistent in Newtons account. See the Introduction by A. E. Shapiro to Newton (1984), pp. 1015. 56 Westfall says, the discussion of colors provided Newton with his rst serious occasion to explore questions of scientic method (1980, p. 243). 57 Lectiones opticae, Lecture 3, x29, although colors may belong to physics, the science of them must nevertheless be considered mathematical (Newton, 1984, p. 86/87).
55 54

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5. The queries of the Opticks By now the reader may well be asking, Why does Newton distance himself from hypotheses? Why this aversion to calling his theory of coloured light an hypothesis? What of Hookes apologetic tone with regard to hypotheses? Where do these attitudes come from? Much has been written on Newtons attitude to hypotheses, but the majority of it has focussed internally on the expression and development of his antipathy to them.58 Yet there is a crucial broader context in which Newton and Hooke were engaged and in which their methodological views developed. And while only a brief sketch of this context can be given here, it should be seen as central to our understanding not simply of Newtons attitudes to hypotheses, but also to his use of queries in the Opticks. Arguably the dominant methodological distinction in England in the latter half of the seventeenth century was that between experimental and speculative natural philosophy.59 Speculative natural philosophy proceeded by reason alone or with only a perfunctory appeal to observation and experiment. Instead of experimenting, speculative philosophers developed systems of natural philosophy from maxims and principles alone. The chief tool of the speculative or dogmatic philosopher was the hypothesis. Experimental philosophers, by contrast, eschewed hypotheses, maxims, and principles and turned to observation and experiment for the foundations of natural philosophy. And it was the experimental philosophy that was developed and promoted by the early members of the Royal Society. Thus we nd in Sprats History of the Royal Society (1667) the boast that: Experimental Philosophy will prevent mens spending the strength of their thoughts about Disputes, by turning them to Works . . . And indeed of the usual titles by which men of business are wont to be distinguishd, the Crafty, the Formal, and the Prudent; . . . The Formal man may be compard to the meer Speculative Philosopher: For he vainly reduces every thing to grave and solemn general Rules . . . the Prudent man is like him who proceeds on a constant and solid cours of Experiments.60 Hooke likewise claims in the Preface to the Micrographia (1665): the real, the mechanical, the experimental Philosophy, which has this advantage over the Philosophy of discourse and disputation, that whereas that chiey aims at the subtilty of its Deductions and Conclusions, without much regard to the rst ground-work, which ought to be well laid on the Sense and Memory; so
58 The most important early studies include Cohen (1956), pp. 127145, & Appendix I, pp. 575589; Cohen (1966); Koyre (1965). See also Hanson (1970); Pampusch (1974); Shapiro (1989, 2002); Achinstein (1990); McMullin (1990). 59 For a more detailed discussion of this distinction see Anstey (forthcoming). 60 Sprat (1667), p. 341, underlining added. See also p. 257 where Sprat claims the method of the members of the Royal Society to be chiey bent upon the Operative, rather than the Theoretical Philosophy. For Sprat on method see Wood (1980).

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this intends the right ordering of them all, and the making them serviceable to each other.61 And John Lockes opponent John Sergeant, in his The method to science (1696), sets the problem of the method of science in what by the end of the century were very familiar terms of reference: The METHODS which I pitch upon to examine, shall be of two sorts, viz. that of Speculative, and that of Experimental Philosophers; The Former of which pretend to proceed by Reason and Principles; the Later by Induction; and both of them aim at advancing Science.62 This is not to say that there were no methodological dierences or tensions within the experimental camp: far from it. Mordechai Feingold has documented the political fallout within the Society over the status and ecacy of the application of the natural historical method in natural philosophy. And in this dispute, Newton appears to have been opposed to the promoters of natural history, or at least the more descriptive and taxonomic histories of generations and pretergenerations.63 Yet throughout, the main opponent of natural philosophical progress was thought to be the speculative or dogmatic philosopher. As John Dunton put it in his student manual of 1692: We must consider, the distinction we have made of Speculative and Experimental [natural philosophy], and, as much as possible, Exclude the rst, for an indefatigable and laborious Search into Natural Experiments, they being only the Certain, Sure Method to gather a true Body of Philosophy, for the Antient Way of clapping up an entire building of Sciences, upon pure Contemplation, may make indeed an Admirable Fabrick, but the Materials are such as can promise no lasting one.64 Newton was clearly conceiving of his natural philosophical method within these terms of reference as early as 1671, for he says in his Lectiones opticae: I therefore urge geometers to investigate nature more rigorously, and those devoted to natural science to learn geometry rst. Hence the former shall not entirely spend their time in speculations of no value to human life, nor shall the latter, while working assiduously with an absurd method, perpetually fail to reach their goal. But truly with the help of philosophical geometers and geometrical philosophers, instead of the conjectures and probabilities that are now

61 62 63 64

Hooke (1665), sig. a2r, underlining added. Sergeant (1696), Preface, sig. b6r-v, underlining added. See Feingold (2001). Dunton (1692), pp. vivii.

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being blazoned about everywhere, we shall nally achieve a natural science supported by the greatest evidence.65 It appears that this opposition to speculative natural philosophy gathered force in the 1680s as Descartess vortex theory came to be seen as the paradigm speculative system divorced from experiment and observation. Furthermore, as I. Bernard Cohen has documented, an increasing antipathy towards hypotheses developed in Newtons thought in the last decade of the century.66 It is inconceivable that Newton could have expressed himself as he did in his 1675 Hypothesis of light by the end of the 1690s.67 Newtons antipathy was matched by that of Locke and others within the ambit of the Royal Society at the end of the century, irrespective of whether they were promoters of the method of natural history. Experimental natural philosophy was the rallying point for the anti-hypotheticalists even if they could not fully agree as to precisely what the new philosophy entailed. It is also important to note, in the light of this polemical context, that hypotheses of any kind came to be tainted by the dangers and indulgences of the speculative methodology. This is especially important in the case of Newton who clearly used the term hypothesis with a variety of dierent senses, some of which were, in fact, immune from the charge of speculation. It is symptomatic of the, at times, crude methodological polarisation within which Newton pursued his natural philosophy that the multifaceted nature and roles of hypotheses in his actual science were obscured by the predominant anti-hypothetical stance which he and the promoters of the experimental philosophy embraced. Needless to say, this has proven to be a major stumbling block for his later interpreters over the last ve decades as they have sought to reconcile the tensions within Newtons very numerous references to hypotheses. Aware of this background then, we turn now to the most famous of Newtons queries, the queries to the Opticks. They were appended to the rst edition of 1704 and expanded in the subsequent Latin translation of this edition (1706), and further augmented in the second edition of 1717. Happily Newton tells us why he included the queries in his Opticks of 1704 and the revised Latin queries of 1706. In his anonymous An account of the book entituled Commercium epistolicum (1715) Newton claims: The Philosophy which Mr. Newton in his Principles and Optiques has pursued is Experimental; and it is not the Business of Experimental Philosophy to teach the Causes of things any further than they can be proved by Experiments. We are not
65 Lectiones opticae, Lecture 3, x29, Newton (1984), pp. 86/8788/89. In his letter to Boyle of 28 February 1678/1679 Newton expresses that his reluctance to share his thoughts on certain physical qualities arose, in part, because in natural philosophy there is no end of fansying (Newton, 19591977, Vol. II, p. 288). 66 Cohen (1966), p. 179. 67 For Newtons An hypothesis explaining the properties of light discoursed of in my severall papers see Newton (19591977), Vol. I, pp. 362386.

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to ll this Philosophy with Opinions which cannot be proved by Phnomena. In this Philosophy Hypotheses have no place, unless as Conjectures or Questions proposed to be examined by Experiments. For this Reason Mr. Newton in his Optiques distinguished those things which were made certain by Experiments from those things which remained uncertain, and which he therefore proposed in the End of his Optiques in the Form of Queries.68 One cannot help but be struck by Newtons emphasis on the experimental philosophy. He goes on to contrast it with what he elsewhere calls the Hypothetical philosophy69 of Descartes, More, and, in particular, Leibniz. It was Leibnizs exchange with Nicolaus Hartsoeker, with its implicit criticism of Newtons method, that provided the polemical context that gave rise to these comments.70 Note too, the continuity with the methodological claims made in his correspondence with Oldenburg from the 1670s: the denial that he is seeking after causes;71 the claim that hypotheses have no place in natural philosophy; the claim that questions or conjectures were proposed for experimental investigation; and most importantly, the claim that theories made certain by experiments should be distinguished from that which remains uncertain and that the latter are put forward in the form of queries. One cannot help but recall Hookes claim some fty years earlier that what appear to be hypotheses should be understood only as Conjectures and Quries. Those things which remain uncertain in Newtons mind are not to be proposed as hypotheses unless as Conjectures or Questions. Thus, queries function in the Opticks as de facto hypotheses. A number of points need to be stressed from this explanation by Newton of his use of queries in the Opticks. First, it appears that the queries in the Opticks perform a dierent function to those in the letter to Oldenburg of 6 July 1672 and elsewhere. To be sure, when Newton introduces the queries in the Opticks (in the briefest of transitional sentences), he claims that they are proposed in order to a further search to be made by others.72 But this merely serves to underline their conjectural nature rather than to tie them to an experimental programme and to a particular theoretical discussion. Indeed, it is evident on even a cursory perusal of the texts that some of the queries appended to the Opticks are signicantly longer than those deployed in the controversy over the nature of coloured light in the 1670s. In the Opticks Newton does not simply state his queries, but in many cases adds observational considerations and explores their natural philosophical and methodological implications. Queries here sometimes function as launching pads into extended discussions of phenomena, method, and
68 An account of the book entituled Commercium epistolicum, p. 222, facs. reproduction in Hall (1980), p. 312. 69 See his letter to Roger Cotes of March 1713, in Newton (19591977), Vol. V, pp. 398390. 70 For the immediate polemical background to these comments see Westfall (1980), pp. 730731, and Newton (19591977), Vol. V, pp. 298301. 71 See Newton (19591977), Vol. I, p. 418. 72 Newton (1704), Book II, p. 132.

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natural philosophy in a manner that is unprecedented in their earlier uses. This is especially the case in the second edition of 1717, as evidenced, for example, in the famous thirty-rst query. Having said this however, it is important to stress that some of the early queries to the Opticks do read like contributions to an experimental natural history with new observations being added to the second edition as supplementary observational evidence. For example, in the second edition, Newton adds a subsidiary query followed by a substantial number of examples of shining bodies to Query 8, a query which concerns bodies emitting light. Queries such as these are closer to the use that Bacon himself advocated, where they are to stimulate the gathering of observational evidence. Furthermore, Query 28 of the second edition (which is Query 20 of the 1706 Latin edition, but is absent from the rst edition) ends with a methodological comment on feigning hypotheses followed by a list of a further fourteen queries set out as desiderata for natural philosophical inquiry.73 This reinforces the fact that in spite of the novel discursive nature of some of the queries to the Opticks, Newton is still very much wedded to this facet of the Baconian method. Finally, the passage from An account is of importance because it explicitly states a methodological continuity between the Principia and the Opticks on the question of the conjectural. Newton is at pains to point out those passages in the Principia which are analogous to the queries of the Opticks in so far as he is unable to give experimental support to various phenomena.74 The continuity here is not, of course, in the deployment of queries, for queries are not used in the Principia. Rather the continuity lies in the manner in which in both works Newton is at pains to stress when he makes the transition from that which is certain or demonstrated from the phenomena of nature to that which is speculative. Thus, for example, Newton cites passages from the Preface and the General Scholium of the second edition of the Principia in which he states his ignorance of the nature of the forces such as gravitational attraction.

6. Conclusion From the foregoing discussion we are able to glean that Newton found three different, though not entirely discrete, uses for his queries. First, he employed queries as general questions arising from reection on problems on natural philosophy. This use is evident in his early reading notes on the natural philosophy of Hooke and Descartes. The queries written out in response to his reading in turn became the stimulus for further reection. That he continued to employ this use of queries until late in his life, though not in natural philosophical inquiry, is evidenced, for example, by a list of twenty-three queries on the word homoousios datable to
Newton (1717), pp. 344345 = Newton (1706), pp. 314315. For discussion of the place of the queries in the overall project of the Opticks and the reception of the queries by Desaguliers and Hales, see Cohen (2001), pp. 2122.
74 73

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post-1715.75 Second, he employed queries as intermediate heuristic devices for steering an established experimental programme. This is the function of the queries listed in his letter to Oldenburg of 6 July 1672. Third, in the Opticks he used queries as de facto hypotheses on which he elaborated in a discursive, even speculative manner. Thus for Newton the query proved to be a multi-purpose methodological tool. No longer do queries function merely as an issue or locus for debate and reection as they did in the scholastic disputation. Rather, from the mid-1660s, queries for Newton increasingly became the stimulus for empirical inquiry. Yet, somewhat ironically, in the latter decades of his life when the experimental philosophy had become more rmly established, Newton appears to have widened the scope of his use of queries to include speculations. The discursive pursuit of natural philosophical problems that we nd in the nal queries to the second edition of the Opticks is wholly absent in his use of queries in the 1670s. This is a really quite radical change in Newtons use of queries76 and it may even represent a return to a more scholastic-like deployment of queries, albeit within the domain of the new natural philosophy. Of more importance, however, is what his use of queries reveals to us about his methodological views and their context. Newtons use of queries represents a signicant Baconian legacy in his scientic methodology. This is not simply a matter of continuity in the employment of a literary form, but rather it is indicative of a deeper methodological continuity with the Baconian programme for natural philosophy. The formulation of queries for Newton, as for Hooke, Boyle, and others, comprised a discrete stage in a heuristic programme designed to explicate natural and experimental phenomena.77 However tempting it may be rationally to reconstruct their role in specic contexts of deployment in terms of hypotheses, this should be resisted. For, in the case of Newton (and Hooke), queries were employed explicitly as alternatives to hypotheses. Finally, even if as a result of a very negrained analysis of the actual methodology that Newton employed in the Principia (such as that recently provided by George Smith78) it can be shown that its methodology is dierent to that of the Opticks, this should not diminish their impor75 They are to be found in Kings College Library, Cambridge, Keynes MS 11, SL269 18. A transcription is available at The Newton Project, Imperial College London, http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac. uk/web_keynes/keynes011.xml. Another set of questions among Newtons theological papers is entitled Paradoxical Questions concerning the morals & actions of Athanasius & his followers and is datable to the early 1690s. It is Kings College, Cambridge, England, Keynes MS. 10 SL268 18 and a transcription is available at The Newton Project, Imperial College London, http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk/ web_keynes/keynes010w.xml. Rob Ilie drew my attention to these questions. 76 Michael Hunter stressed this point to me in a private communication. 77 That Westfall completely missed the methodological origins of Newtons queries is summed up in his comment on the Trinity Notebook that [p]erhaps it was not wholly coincidence that in his nal formulation some fty years later . . . the word Query echoed the earlier word Quaestio (Westfall, 1962, p. 178). 78 Smith (2002). There is some disagreement in the secondary literature over the relation between the methodologies employed in the Principia (Newton, 1999) and the Opticks. See for example Cohen (1980); McGuire (1970), and Achinstein (1990), pp. 171172 n. 28.

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tance within the broader framework of Newtons methodological views and the context in which they arose. Nearly fty years ago I. Bernard Cohen claimed that [t]he BaconBoyle approach to natural philosophy did inuence Newtons speculative experimental science.79 Apart from the expression speculative experimental, which to early modern ears would have been an oxymoron, Cohen was basically right. Newtons use of the method of queries is arguably the best proof of Cohens claim.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Mordechai Feingold, John Gascoigne, Michael Hunter, and Rob Ilie for their constructive comments on this paper.

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