On a Non-In-Incompleteness Theorem

 JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2726

This is a short bit about incompleteness, the discharge of connection and of knowing. And no, I'm not talking about The Incompleteness Theorem, the big revolutionary one...just a little incompletelness, the small “i” incompleteness, that sometimes doesn't even make it to the first “e”. It is the sort of frustrating incompleteness that holds you hard when you think you know something, but you really don't—and then you wonder if you knew it at all, once the connections are made and the analysis done, when the answer is more surprising and insightful than you thought you knew.

A big Incompleteness set in the two days ago, thumbing through a volume Jean Le Clerc's mini-massive journal, Bibliotheque Universelle et Historique, which was printed in Amsterdam in the late 1680's and early 1690's, and in its 25 volumes or so covers only about five years in the history of ideas (covering 1688-1792). The books are as stubby as they are lovely, standing a little over 5” high, they are only about 3” wide, and generally about an inch-and-a-half thick. Pocket-sized.

I did not recall this journal, though it does sound like a lot of other book titles that I've bumped into—so I thought I may have known it, but it turns out I didn't. That was interesting because as it turns out it is a fairly significant publication, with Le Clerc (and other contributing writers and editors¹) publishing works on and by some leading figures in the sciences and philosophy. I found out further that the journal was reprinted a number of times, here and there, over a 30-year period or so, which means it achieved some popularity. 

The first thing I did with the volumes was to check the tables of contents for the biggest name in the sciences that would've been covered by this journal for the years 1687 and 1688. 1687 is one of the biggest years in the history of science, and the name that goes with it is Isaac Newton, as this is when he publishes his fully articulated theory of universal gravitation (and etc.) in Principa mathematica philosophiae naturalis [Mathematical principles of natural philosophy]. I worked my way through the volumes, finding interesting entries for Leeuwenhoek (in vols 1 and 5), but didn't come across Newton until vol 7, where there is an entry for the book but no pagination for it--and then, looking through the volume, I couldn't find any sight of it, even after finding a digital version and cruising that under the expected words. The big break came in volume 8², with an article on Newton and the book sitting there on page 436-450 (though running about 2000 words for the 14 pp). 

The Principia was mostly universally well-received from inception, though there were very highly notable exceptions, with Leibniz and Huygens among others criticizing the work. The troubling part, though, for me in my memory, was that this conversation on the book didn't seem to take place in print within a few years of publication. This is where the incompleteness comes in—I just couldn't remember why I had this lingering thought about the scarcity of seeing this “review” of the book in print, and this within a year or so of the book's publication, and why I was shocked to see one.

When I researched the earliest records of published receptions or reviews or comments on the Principia, I was stunned to see that after Edmund Halley's  notice of the work (which was published in July 1687) in Philosophical Transactions in September 1687, there were only three other notices made in the first year following publication. In that following year, 1688, there were articles in the Bibliotheque (which appeared in March);  the Acta Eruditorum  (in June) and the Journal des Scavans in (a one-page review in August), which makes it appear that the Bibliotheque published first on the Principia following its editor Edmund Halley's piece in the Phil Trans. The other big surprise is that not only are there significant contributions by John Locke³ appearing in this same volume 8, but I found that the entry on the Principia had been edited by Locke himself^4,5.  I have since found out that this is well known to scholars, though I was pretty happy to find this out in my poke-and-hunt operation.  In spite of it all, Locke was probably not the person to undertake the article, and the journal was not terribly science-y, but there it is--the author of the Acta paper, on the other hand, was Christoph Pfautz (1645-1711), who may have been as qualified to address the book, and the journal in which the review appeared was perhaps the most important of its kind at that time.  (This reference to Pfautz comes from Bernard Cohen, who also points out that although Newton seems not to have read any of the four reviews, there is some slight evidence that he may have seen Pfautz's. The interesting piece here is that Pfautz seems to have been excited by a passerby reference to God the creator of the universe and presented it as important; in the next edition of the Principia, the book's one reference to God is removed.) But it does seem that the Bibliotheque and Mr. Locke were the first on the continent to publish on the book. (I should note that the Journal des Scavans anonymous review was "hostile and derisive".7)

As J.R. Milton writes on Locke's work on the Principia:

“This is anonymous, and has generally been assigned to Locke on the basis of a considerable overlap with the notes Locke himself made while reading the Principia. Some writers on Locke and Newton have firmly attributed it to Locke, while others have been rather more cautious. The question of its authorship is, however, settled by a remark – hitherto overlooked – that was made by Le Clerc in 1714 in his own review of the second edition of the Principia: ‘The first edition of this book appeared in 1687 and we published a small extract, composed by Mr Locke, in volume VIII of the Bibliotheque universelle.' “8

And so this little journey into incompleteness ends, and I think I've figured out a tiny aspect of what I didn't know and when I didn't know it.

Notes

1. Editors and contributors included: Jean Le Clerc et Jean Cornande de al Crose, vols 1-9; Jean Le Clerc, 10, 12, 14-19; Jean Cornand de La Crose, vol 11; Charles le Cene and Jean Le Clerc, vol 13; Jacques Bernard and Jean Le Clerc, vol 20; Jacques Bernard, vols 24-5. The journal was published every 4 months in vols 1-3; every 3 in 4-19, and then twice a year for 20-25.
2. According to Hans Botts, volume 8 appeared in January 1688.--Hans Bots, “Bibliotheque Universelle et Historique (1686-1693)” entry in Dictionnaire des journaux, 1600-1789  The article on Newton's Principia has been established as March, 1688. 
3. “Indeed the reports or extracts of books are the most numerous, but at the same time there are original contributions from some correspondents, such as The Philosophical Essay Concerning the Mind of John Locke, inserted in this journal two years before publication of the book same (v. VIII, Jan. 1688, pp. 49-I42)”--translated from Hans Bots, “Bibliotheque Universelle et Historique (1686-1693)” entry in Dinctionnaire des journaux, 1600-1789.  
4.  "The publication in July 1687 of Newton's Principia mathematica gave rise to only four reviews in the European periodical press. The first was Edmond Halley's pre-publication notice in the Philosophical Transactions. Then a year elapsed before the Bibliotheque Universelle, the Acta Eruditorum, and the Journal des Scavans, approached the book. Of these reviews that which appeared in Jean Leclerc's widely read Bibliotheque Universelle has received least attention from historians. This is unfortunate because, of several merits, two in particular are important for the intellectual history of the period: it was written specifically for the large and growing intellectual class of western Europe who for the most part were interested in the new physical sciences, but were untrained in the mathematics necessary to understand many of the newest advances in them. And the author of this review, which was the first independent account of Newton's book to reach this Continental (largely French-speaking) audience, was John Locke, then a voluntary political exile..."--James L. Axtell, "Locke's Review of the "Principia", Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Dec., 1965).   
5. “(Bibliotheque Universelle...) was the only journal only journal in the Dutch Republic that had published a review of the Principia, anonymously written by John Locke.”--“Newton through the eyes of an amateur”, University of Utrecht website
     The Locke Digital Bibliography project also attributes this review as a work of Locke's.
6.  Bernard Cohen, "Reviews of the First Edition of the Principia", in Peter M. Harman, Alan E. Shapiro (eds), The Investigation of Difficult Things: Essays on Newton and the History of ... p 325.
7. The University of  Florida Newton Timeline makes the following note: “1688 - An anonymous reviewer for the Journal des scavans (Paris 1688) raises objections concerning Newton's Principia, suggesting quite pointedly that the Englishman should now write a second book where he finally addresses the 'true motions [of the planets] instead of those that he [merely] assumes' [JS, August 1688: 128].”-- http://users.clas.ufl.edu/ufhatch/pages/13-NDFE/newton/05-newton-timeline-m.htm 

   Bernard Cohen remarks that this anonymous person may have been Pierre Silvain Regis, “a strict Cartersian” and “a hostile critic” (Cohen, Newtonian Revolution, p 96.

   Martin Schonfeld in his The Philosophy of the Young Kant: The Precritical Project notes the JdS review as “critical and derisive” (pg 254).

8. J.R. Milton, “Locke's Publications in the Bibliothèque Universelle et Historique”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 05/2011, Volume 19, Issue 3.