Leibniz, Clarke, Newton, and Reformation of the Solar System

Thanks to Leibniz, there is a common reading of Isaac Newton in which Newton is committed to the idea that God periodically restores the solar system. I do not mean to suggest Leibniz is solely responsible for this; Clarke's response to Leibniz fails to disabuse clearly the reader of this. And since for a long time Clarke's response was taken to be authoritative of Newton's views the idea has persisted.  

Here is Leibniz's charge right at  the start of the Correspondence:

Sir Isaac Newton and his followers also have a very odd opinion concerning the work of God. According to their doctrine, God Almighty needs to wind up his watch from time to time, otherwise it would cease to move. He did not, it seems, have sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. No, the machine of God's making is so imperfect, according to these gentlemen, that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as a clockmaker mends his work; he must consequently be so much the more unskillful a workman as he is more often obliged to mend his work and to set it right. Leibniz to Clarke (November 1715), Letter 1, par. 4 (copied from the Ariew edition).

The charge is curious because [A] Newton never claims that God needs to rewind the universe (or solar system) and [B] Newton never compares, I think, God's work and his creation to a watchmaker and watch. Newton's favored analogy is God as the perfect geometer. There are subtle similarities and differences between the two analogies, but I will explore these in a future post.

In his response Clarke comes very close to noting [B], but he fails to do so unambigiously and simultaneously muddies the waters: "the notion of the world's being a great machine, going on without the interposition of God as a clock continues to go without the assistance of a clockmaker, is the notion of materialism and fate, and tends (under pretence of making God a supramundane intelligence) to exclude providence and God's government in reality out of the world." Clarke's first response, par. 4 (copied from the Ariew edition). It is quite natural to read Clarke as accepting [B] and endorsing [A].

As an aside, that Clarke actually rejects [B] (the clock analogy) only becomes clear indirectly. In the fourth response to Leibniz, in the context of explaining that gravity does no fit the mechanist's conception of causation by contact, Clarke writes: "If the word natural forces means here mechanical, then all animals, and even men, are as mere machines as a clock. But if the word does not mean mechanical forces, then gravitation may be effected by regular and natural powers, though they are not mechanical." (par. 46) The natural powers that Newton has really shown to exist make it impossible, ipse facto, to conceive the universe as a (mechanical) clock. (See also Clarke's fifth reply ad 110-116, which also seems to assume this kind of argument.)

Notice, too, in his first response to Leibniz, Clarke does not actually concede the mending charge. All he wants to insist on is God's "providence and God's government." And this he is opposes opposes to "materialism" (Epicurean/Hobbesian system) and "fate" (Spinozism).  The key here is their denial of (general) final causes and the idea that there is really a three-way debate among the systems of fate, materialism, and mind/providentialism. Of course, this also turns on what he might mean by 'government.' I also think Kenny Pearce (whose tweets on the topic prompted this post) is right to claim that "Clarke's response to Leibniz's allegation that Newton's God is an incompetent watchmaker depends essentially on Clarke's view that there are no absolute miracles, only relative ones." I'll let him explain why this is so.

As it happens, in my own work on Newton (following Ted McGuire and Howard Stein) I am not inclined to treat Clarke as authoritative on Newton. So, it is worth explaining why I think Leibniz's charge shouldn't have gotten off the ground at all.

It is, I believe, agreed by all that the following passage from Query 31 of Newton's Opticks gave rise to Leibniz's original charge:

For while comets move in very eccentric orbs in all manner of positions, blind fate could never make all the planets move one and the same way in concentric orbs, some inconsiderable irregularities excepted which may have arisen from the mutual actions of comets and planets upon one another, and which will be apt to increase until this system needs a reformation. Such a wonderful uniformity in the planetary system must be allowed the effect of choice.

I included the final sentence in the quote because I think this helps explain Newton's reasoning. Notice, first that Newton does not mention clocks or watches here. Second, the argument is directed against the system of blind fate and in favor of the system of God's (providential) choice. I think this nobody would deny. 

Now, it is natural to assume that [C] Newton is here anticipating the eighteenth century debate over the stability of the solar system. And that [D] his answer is negative. And if one thinks Newton is committed to [C&D] then it's quite natural to assume that Newton thinks that God needs to rewind the solar system regularly. But I don't think Newton should be taken here to be committed to be thinking about [C-D.]

For, notice, that the claim about the system requiring a reformation is offered as a reductio of the system of fate. And the underlying claim is that the particular patterns of motions we see in the solar system, must be the product of intelligent choice.  That is to say, rather than being worried about the stability of the solar system, Newton is interested in cosmogony (the origin and evolution of the system). And the underlying claim is that from the perspective of the system of necessity one cannot device a system of laws that can account for the simultaneous origin and evolution of the irregular motions of the comets and the regular motions of the planets (and their moons) and their interactions. So, the charge is that Spinozism (which, as Clarke and Newton argue elsewhere, lacks a compelling physics) does not provide an account of the particular motions we observe and would be internally inconsistent if it tried. In my view (see here for details) variants of this argument are trotted out by Newton in his exchange with Bentley and in the General Scholium, and by Clarke in his Demonstration (also directed against Hobbes and Spinoza).