Advances in Biolinguistics - The Human Language Faculty and Its Biological Basis

of the scientifi c revolution required a resolution of the tension between the
two dominant trends.”
It is interesting to note that while Galileo’s science of motion refrained
from explaining the cause of motion, the mechanical philosophy was closely
connected with the notion of “causation” as a part of explanation. From this
perspective, the essence of modern science might be interpreted to lie at least
partly in the integration of mathematical analysis with mechanical philosophy
through the introduction of some proper notion of “causality.” Viewed against
this background, Galileo’s science of motion without causality, or kinematics,
was a significant first step toward modern science of motion, although it was
not until the development of Newtonian dynamics that the fully developed
conceptual framework of modern science emerged.

2.5 Synthesis in Newtonian dynamics

Henry (2008: 31–32) conside rs the publication of Newton’s Principia as “the
completion of mathematization of natural philosophy:

The publication of Newton’s Principia marks the completion of the trend

towards the mathematization of natural philosophy which began in the

sixteenth century. But perhaps it is true to say that we make that judge-

ment about the Principia because Newton, unlike Galileo or Descartes,

succeeded in getting the mathematics and the physics substantially correct.

Westfall (1971: 159) explains how the tradition of mathematical description
and the tradition of mechanical philosophy were reconciled by the concept of
“force” in Newtonian dynamics as follows:^5

Newton believed that nature is ultimately opaque to human understand-

ing. Science cannot hope to obtain certain knowledge about the essences

of things. Such had been the program of the mechanical philosophy in

the 17th century, and the constant urge to imagine invisible mechanisms

sprang from the conviction that a scientifi c explanation is only valid when it

traces phenomena to ultimate entities. To Newton, in contrast, nature was

a given, aspects of which might never be intelligible. When they learned

to accept the same limitation, other sciences such as optics, chemistry, and

biology, likewise ceased to play with imaginary mechanisms and, describing

instead of explaining, they formulated a set of conceptions adequate to their

phenomena. Newton believed that the aim of physics is an exact description

of phenomena of motion in quantitative terms. Thus the concept of force

could be admitted into scientifi c demonstrations even if the ultimate reality

of force were not comprehended. In Newton’s work, it made possible the

reconciliation of the tradition of mathematical description, represented by

Galileo, with the tradition of mechanical philosophy, represented by Des-

cartes. By uniting the two, Newton carried the scientifi c work of the 17th

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