St. John's College Spring Lecture Series: Reading Newton, Reading Rule 3: How Gravity gets Universalized in the Principia

April 7, Mary Domski, professor of philosophy at the University of New Mexico, will present “Reading Newton, Reading Rule 3: How Gravity gets Universalized in the Principia.”

Domski will present a new and unexplored reading of Newton’s Third Rule for the Study of Natural Philosophy, according to which the rule expresses two sufficient (but not necessary) conditions for establishing that a quality of bodies belongs to all bodies universally. She will also show how this reading illuminates the way that Newton uses empirical, “experimental” evidence to establish that gravity is a universal quality of bodies.