Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

by Simon Blackburn

Even Newton thought that it was clear that gravitational attraction could not be a case of action at a distance. He thought that any idiot could see that if the Sun exerts an attraction on the Earth this must be because of a chain of some kind between them. Causation had to be a matter of pushes and pulls: That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Surely it ‘stands to reason or is ‘clear and distinct’ or ‘a priori’ that a body cannot act somewhere where it is not! We still reason like this when, for instance, we attempt to show by pure reason that the Universe must be the creation of a god. We are supposing that we know what kind of thing must cause some effect, and what could not cause it. Hume blows this rationalism right out of the water: I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition, which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises entirely from experience, when we find, that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other. Let an object be presented to a man of ever so strong natural reason and abilities; if that...