Many books that were well received when originally published ultimately fail the test of time and seem hopelessly outdated, or even silly to future generations. Occasionally, a book seen as a solid effort when it was written is found later to be the definitive work on the subject. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science by Edwin Arthur Burtt is such a book.

Burtt investigates the origins of the modern scientific world view, a view that today appears to be ancient but is, in fact, only a few centuries old. The concepts that we use to describe the modern world -- mass, velocity, energy, time etc -- form the substratum of so many modern ideas that their very ubiquity has made it hard to imagine that any other view ever existed. With these ideas woven into all of our thought how does one separate these ideas from all others in order to better appreciate and understand them? Burtt attacks this problem by tracing the evolution of modern scientific concepts from their origins in Copernicus and Kepler through to their highest development in Isaac Newton.

It may come as a surprise that Copernicus and Kepler were not motivated by empirical evidence. In fact, the empirical evidence was stacked against their view that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the planetary system. Anyone could see how solid the earth felt and how steady it was. If it were moving then its motion could be felt. The idea that something as large and solid as the earth could be flung through space was obviously ridiculous.

Nor were they motivated by a desire for greater accuracy since the Ptolemaic system that they would soon replace was every bit as accurate as their sun centered system with regards to predicting eclipses and positions of the planets in the sky.

Their motivation was essentially a desire for a mathematically elegant way to express planetary motion, a simpler way that could reduce the dozens of epicycles to a comparatively small number of circles. For these men, mathematics was not the key to nature, mathematics was nature and the simpler mathematical expressions that they found were true because nature was parsimonious and would not accomplish by complicated means (the epicycles) what could be accomplished more simply with circular orbits. A mathematical nature would reduce the phenomena much as a mathematician would reduce complex equations to a smaller number of simple equations.

Kepler's shock upon discovering that the planets did not orbit in circles, but in ellipses was genuine. The smooth constant motion of the planets was thought by Kepler to reflect the constancy of God himself. Only when Kepler discovered that equal areas were swept out by the planets in equal times was his faith restored in the mathematical universe that was held together by God.

In Galileo we see the beginnings of dualism. On one hand Galileo the empiricist laughs at his colleagues who refuse to look through his telescope and see the evidence of moons orbiting Jupiter. On the other hand we see the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities in which we do not perceive the world as it is, but rather as it affects our senses. This doctrine calls into question the validity of the senses which, presumably, are the source for Galileo's (and our) knowledge of the real world. With sense data either limited or distorted and hence, of questionable reliability, mathematical demonstration becomes the way past the senses to the ultimate nature of things. Descartes further mechanizes the senses and pushes consciousness farther away from reality thereby producing a full blown dualism in which man becomes a spirit trapped in a machine.

When we finally arrive at Newton, by way of Gilbert and Boyle, we have a new universe where the number of causes is reduced from the Aristotelian four, to only two. The formal cause has become mathematics which matter must obey in exacting detail. The efficient and substantial causes merge into a mechanical force compelling a passive matter to follow precise trajectories. Gone completely is the final cause as matter becomes the sole occupant of a universe whose future is completely determined by its past. The biological concept of goal directed action has no place in the billiard ball universe of unconscious motion. The irony is that one of man's greatest intellectual achievements, the formulation of the laws of motion, becomes a means to degrade man's intellectual status by reducing man's mind to matter in motion.

The above is a gross oversimplification of Burtt's work and cannot begin to convey the richness of his research and the clarity of his presentation. Burtt uses extensive quotes to show the reasoning used by the great mathematicians and physicists at the dawn of the Enlightenment and clearly demonstrates the shift in thinking that occurs over two centuries.

The only drawback to Burtt's work is that it was written nearly seventy years ago and the effects of these ideas on post-Newtonian thought are not covered. The author, in the revised 1932 edition, expressed regret that he could not incorporate these later developments into his revision of the original 1924 work. I too, feel regret that Burtt did not get around to another revision where he might shed some light on the effects of these ideas on quantum mechanics and relativity.

Anyone interested in the development of the modern philosophy of science will enjoy this intellectual journey through the minds of some of mankind's finest thinkers, those men who made possible the remarkable world that we live in today.