Annals of Science | 2019
Standing colossus: Newton and the French
Abstract
Shank in this book aims to recount an infant stage in the growth of what he calls ‘Newtonian mechanics.’He does so in three parts, adding up to eleven chapters. Part I sets the stage, with French science in the 1690s as the backdrop. Part II seeks to uncover the ‘intellectual roots’ of his topic; he claims them to be Newtonian, Leibnizian and Malebranchist. Part III is the longest, but also oblique to the history of any mechanics. It is a blend of externalist history (of institutional politics at the French Academy around 1700) and intellectual history centred on foundational debates in early calculus. The book’s main figure is the mathematician Pierre Varignon, from whose output, spanning forty years, Shank picks eight papers (hereafter MV, for convenience). He concludes that ‘ultimately, the contingencies of history produced what we now call classical Newtonian mechanics’ (p. 370). Unfortunately, this book misses the mark, by much. It combats a defunct view, and it ignores key sources. It fails on three counts: evidential – his project is unmotivated, he makes false promises and his facts are thin; methodological – his interpretive categories are inadequate, and he distorts Newton’s legacy; and explanatory – his choice of context does not explain his topic, and he ignores better-supported explanations. I move now to defend my charges.