I show how Sir William Rowan Hamilton’s philosophical commitments led him to a causal interpretation of classical mechanics. I argue that Hamilton’s metaphysics of causation was injected into his dynamics by way of a causal interpretation of force. I then detail how forces are indispensable to both Hamilton’s formulation of classical mechanics and what we now call Hamiltonian mechanics (i.e., the modern formulation). On this point, my efforts primarily consist of showing that the contemporary orthodox interpretation of potential energy is the interpretation found in Hamilton’s work. Hamilton called the potential energy function the “force-function” because he believed that it represents forces at work in the world. Various non-historical arguments for this orthodox interpretation of potential energy are provided, and matters are concluded by showing that in classical Hamiltonian mechanics, facts about the potential energies of systems are grounded in facts about forces. Thus, if one can tolerate the view that forces are causes of motion, then Hamilton provides one with a road map for transporting causation into one of the most mathematically sophisticated formulations of classical mechanics, viz., Hamiltonian mechanics.

我将展示威廉·罗文·汉密尔顿爵士的哲学承诺如何引导他对经典力学进行因果解释。我认为汉密尔顿的因果形而上学通过对力的因果解释被注入到他的动力学中。然后，我详细说明力对于汉密尔顿的经典力学公式和我们现在所说的哈密顿力学（即现代公式）是如何不可或缺的。在这一点上，我的努力主要包括表明当代对势能的正统解释是汉密尔顿著作中的解释。汉密尔顿将势能函数称为“力函数”，因为他相信它代表了世界上起作用的力量。为这种势能的正统解释提供了各种非历史论据，并通过表明在经典哈密顿力学中，有关系统势能的事实基于有关力的事实来得出结论。因此，如果人们能够容忍力是运动原因的观点，那么汉密尔顿就为人们提供了一张路线图，将因果关系转化为经典力学中数学最复杂的公式之一，即汉密尔顿力学。