METALOGIC TECHNOLOGY

Symposium: The Seventeenth Century Origins of Absolute Space and Time

Like many metaphysical doctrines of the seventeenth century, the concepts of absolute space and time served both an important scientific function and also fostered vigorous and productive philosophical exchange. The preeminent instances of these dual roles are, respectively, Newton's Principia and the Clarke-Leibniz Correspondence. Consequently these texts have been the main focus for early modern scholars of space and time. The papers in this symposium, while recognizing the centrality of these texts, aim in a number of specific ways to broaden and enrich our understanding of 'the absolutes' in seventeenth century natural philosophy of space and time. First, several of the papers (Dunlop, Gorham, Slowik) investigate anticipations of the Newtonian absolutes in authors known to Newton, especially Gassendi, Barrow, and the Cambridge Platonists, and explore crucial but lesser known Newtonian texts such as the unpublished tract, De Gravitatione. The concern in these papers is not only with the influence on Ne wton, but also with the intrinsic nature and justification of the particular forms of absolute space and time proposed in the work of these influential authors. A second major theme of the papers (Dunlop, Futch, Gorham) is the epistemic or methodological status of absolute space and time. A major issue for Newton, and for his contemporary and subsequent critics, was the relation between the absolutes and their 'sensible measures' (bodies and motions). This symposium will show how this epistemic concern was at work in the