Samuel Clarke is best known to historians of science for presenting Isaac Newton’s views to a wider audience, especially in his famous correspondence with G. W. Leibniz. Clarke’s independent writings, however, reveal positions that do not derive from, and do not coincide with, Newton’s. This essay compares Clarke’s and Newton’s ideas on the cause of gravity, with a view to clarifying our understanding of Newton’s views. There is evidence to suggest that Newton believed God was directly responsible for gravity, and this interpretation has been promoted by a number of scholars. By comparing Newton’s views with those of Clarke, however, it can be seen that Newton did not subscribe to the kind of occasionalist approach to gravity that Clarke developed. Clarke insisted that matter was categorically incapable of being endowed with powers or forces and that therefore what looks like gravitational attraction has to be performed directly by God or by angels. By comparing Clarke’s pronouncements with Newton’s, it becomes clear that Newton adopted the more standard line: that the first cause, God, operated in nature through secondary causes and that gravitational attraction was just such a secondary (albeit occult) cause.

中文翻译：

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塞缪尔·克拉克 (Samuel Clarke) 和艾萨克·牛顿 (Isaac Newton) 的重力理论中的主要和次要因果关系

塞缪尔·克拉克 (Samuel Clarke) 以向更广泛的受众展示艾萨克·牛顿 (Isaac Newton) 的观点而闻名于科学史家，尤其是在他与 GW Leibniz 的著名通信中。然而，克拉克的独立著作揭示的立场并非源自牛顿，也不符合牛顿的立场。本文比较了克拉克和牛顿关于万有引力成因的观点，以期阐明我们对牛顿观点的理解。有证据表明牛顿相信上帝对重力负有直接责任，这一解释得到了一些学者的推动。然而，通过将牛顿的观点与克拉克的观点进行比较，可以看出牛顿并不赞同克拉克发展的那种偶然的引力方法。克拉克坚持认为，物质绝对不能被赋予力量或力量，因此看起来像万有引力的东西必须由上帝或天使直接执行。通过将克拉克的声明与牛顿的声明进行比较，很明显牛顿采用了更标准的路线：第一因，上帝，通过第二因在自然界中运作，而万有引力正是这样的第二（尽管是神秘的）因。