The article establishes the following narrative: In De Gravitatione (circa 1668-84), Newton claimed he had direct experimental evidence for the work's central thesis: that space had "its own manner of existing" as an affection or
emanative effect.
The spread of current technologies is more
emanative at all stages of research, development, diffusion, and use.
Another ingredient of Dietrich's conglomeration, that is, Neoplatonism, ties his project of intellectual immediacy to the Neoplatonic gradation of being: however, in Dietrich's interpretation, each soul possesses, despite its being placed in the
emanative hierarchy of being, an option for a coniunctio with God because it contains in its secret depth a piece of agent intellect that is truly God and that constitutes in fact the human soul at the bottom.
This idea is opposed to the traditional notions of a transitive cause and an
emanative cause, in which a cause leaves itself in order to produce, and what it produces, namely its effect, is outside of itself and remains inferior to itself.