ABSTRACT
And I am the more fully convinced, that the patrons of proportion have transferred their
artificial ideas to nature, and not borrowed from thence the proportions they use in
works of art; because in any discussion of this subject, they always quit as soon as
possible the open field of natural beauties, the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and
14.1 CLEARING THE GROUND OF THE OBSTACLES TO
KNOWLEDGE
The publication of Newton’s Principia in 1687 marks a turning point. The corpuscular-
kinetic explanation of the external world, initiated by Galileo and Gassendi at the
beginning of the century, was now essentially complete. For the next two hundred years it
would stand up against all opposition, until finally overthrown by Einstein in 1915. For
Immanuel Kant, according to Karl Popper, ‘Newton s theory was simply true, and the
belief remained unshaken for a century after Kant’s death.’2 It was not merely a
provisional hypothesis, but a final truth, an absolute knowledge at which the human
intellect must inevitably arrive: ‘Thus the problem is no longer how Newton could make
After 1687, therefore, the burning question is no longer ‘What is the nature of the
external world?’ but ‘How does the human understanding acquire its knowledge of that
world?’ The titles alone of the new philosophical treatises reflect this: John Locke’s
Essay Concerning the Human Understanding (1690); George Berkeley’s The Principles
of Human Knowledge (1710); David Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature (1739-40) and
his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). The conclusion of Newton’s
Principia itself shows the urgency of these investigations. His mathematical laws
‘saved’ the appearances, but they did not explain them; they did not help us to understand
the underlying causes. Newton admits that he has so far ‘not been able to discover the
To frame no hypotheses, and to reject all answers that cannot be deduced from
phenomena, is all very well; but what is the precise nature of phenomena? The more the
grounds of human knowledge were investigated, the less solid and knowable the ‘real’
world, as distinct from the world of appearances that could be experienced, began to
appear. Plato’s distinction between the products of pure thought and the products of
sensation was as relevant as ever, but the empiricist philosophers drew the opposite con-
clusion: that only that which could be experienced by the senses was a proper object of
knowledge. This had a profound impact on the cosmological foundations of order in art.
