In existographies, John Witherspoon (1723-1794) (IQ:175|#225) (CR:12) was a Scottish-born American political philosopher, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence (1776), 6th president of Princeton University, interpreter of the Newtonian-based political philosophies of French theorist Charles Montesquieu, and mentor to American political theorist James Madison (1751-1836), the “father of the constitution”, who is said to have used the Newtonian-conceptualized theories of Witherspoon and or Montesquieu in the construction of the US Constitution.

Celestial mechanics | Orrery politics
In 1748, French political philosopher Charles Montesquieu, in his The Spirit of the Laws, notes that iron bars tend to contract when cooled, a phenomenon known as Boerhaave's law, and that by extrapolation such an effect may occur in human nerve endings, thus mediating different personal behaviors in love, sex, courageousness, and passions, etc., of people in lands of different heat.

In 1769, American political theorist James Madison (1751-1836), the so-called “father of the constitution”, and America’s fourth president, was said to be studying a primitive form of social physics a Princeton (see: political physics). [1]

Madison, according to John Q. Stewart, was a student of Witherspoon, who in turn was a noted interpreter of the political philosophy of French theorist Charles Montesquieu, notable for his “hot climates” / “cold climates” theory of human behavior, who in turn had been deeply influenced by the celestial mechanics work of Isaac Newton; Stewart, e.g., comments on this: [2]


A pen and ink drawing of David Rittenhouse, in 1771, showing his orrery to Princeton president John Witherspoon, an item he purchased for Princeton that year [3]

A pen and ink drawing of David Rittenhouse, in 1771, showing his orrery to Princeton president John Witherspoon, an item he purchased for Princeton that year [3]

“There can be no question of the fact that, in early Princeton, physics cooperated with politics in a sort of analogical double play, Newton to Witherspoon to Madison.”

In 1771, College President John Witherspoon purchasedan orrery, i.e. mechanical model of the solar system—regarded as essential teaching equipment for 18th-century lectures on “natural philosophy”—from American clockmaker, and self-taught astronomer David Rittenhouse, for approximately £220 and installed it in Nassau Hall. [3]

In these years, the Whig-Cliosophic Society, Princeton’s literary and debate club, formed, which had in its circle John Witherspoon, James Madison, and Irish-born American statesman William Paterson; the latter of which, in 1795, made explicit comparisons of the social and planetary realms. [4] American criminal justice professor Curtis Blakely cites this as the first recorded comparison of its kind by a criminal justice official. [5]

In 1912, Woodrow Wilson stated that the Madison-Witherspoon "political mechanics" amounted to something along the lines of the following: [6]

References
1. (a) Lear, John. (1957). “American Newsltter: The Laws of Social Relationship”, New Scientist, Jan 31.
(b) James Madison – Wikipedia.
2. Staff. (1955). “Research in Progress: Social Physics”, Princeton Alumni Weekly, 55:17.
3. Armstrong, April C. (2014). “The Rittenhouse Orrey” (Ѻ), Princeton blogs, Dec 23.
4. Commission on the Bicentennial of the United State Constitution. (1992). The Supreme Court of the United States: It’s Beginnings and its Justices, 1790-1991. U.S. Government Printing Office.
5. Blakely, Curtis R. (2014). “Applying Humanized Physics to Penology: Parallels Between Natural and Social Realms”, JHT submission, 12-pg draft preprint, received 6 Sep 2013.
6. Wilson, Woodrow. (1912). “What is Progress?” (Ѻ), second campaign speech; in: The New Freedom: a Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People (Ѻ) (§2:38-59). Bernard Tauchnitz , 1913.

External links
● John Witherspoon – Wikipedia.