ABSTRACT
The relationship between Locke and Newton, two giants of early modern philosophy, has long been wondered at. To explore the connections between their work, this chapter considers a case study: their views on space and time. Many scholars believe Locke early defended ‘relationism’ about space and time before adopting Newton’s ‘absolutism,’ and this shift provides evidence of Locke’s mature Newtonianism. In addition to surveying these scholarly debates, I explore Locke’s posthumous role in disputes around Newtonian absolutism. We’ll see that Edmund Law developed a new, anti-Newtonian position on space and time, inspired by Locke’s work on abstraction. Although early modern space and time theorists were deeply versed in the work of Locke and Newton, Lockean relationism and Newtonian absolutism were not the only positions available to them.
