Two Pious Newtonians on the Concept of Gravity: Why Andrew Baxter and Colin Maclaurin Disagreed about Divine Causation and the Limits of the Mind

This article shows how and why two Scottish ‘Newtonians’, Andrew Baxter (1686/7–1750) and Colin Maclaurin (1698–1746), disagreed about the concept of gravity. Scholars have acknowledged their disagreement and emphasised their contrasting philosophical styles and preferences, but here it is argued that Baxter’s and Maclaurin’s differences of opinion on Isaac Newton’s natural philosophy followed from epistemological views bound up with their religious sympathies. As gravitation was taken to arise and flow from God, one’s view on the origin of gravitation was one’s view on how God acts in nature. Baxter was more optimistic about our capacity to know God through philosophy and believed gravitation was an example of ‘constant and universal providence’, an extreme form of voluntarism. Maclaurin’s more pessimistic view characterised gravitation as the end of a ‘great causal chain’ originating in God, since we cannot directly identify divine volition. These positions on the limits of the mind and divine causation are illuminated in the context of a debate within the Church of Scotland over the importance of written doctrine for a godly society. Baxter’s and Maclaurin’s views reveal how Newton’s eighteenth-century admirers disagreed on fundamental conceptual questions and understood his philosophy in line with their religious convictions.