Materialism, Chomsky elaborated, presupposes that the world consists of objects that interact through direct contact with each other. But Newton, by discovering gravity - action at a distance - showed that materialism doesn't work even for a phenomenon as simple as a ball rolling down a plane. The world consists not of material objects influencing each other through direct contact but of immaterial *properties*. These properties include gravity, electomagnetism,....
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The problem with this argument is that gravity as an attractive force is what brings matter together so that it can interact by direct contact in a mechanical way and form more complex material systems. For example, gravity is the primary engine of stellar evolution where more complex elements are formed through direct and violent contacts and interactions.
At the macro level there is no escape from a materialism that has a dualistic conception since matter and gravity are always co-existent. On the other hand a related problem arises on a micro level where several other forces or immaterial properties and their associated material particles are always conjoined i.e. the quantum particle-wave duality of electromagnetic and nuclear phenomenon.
The only materialism that I can think of at the moment that depends completely on direct contact and excludes other means is that of Rene Descartes. Descartes developed a physical theory of motion based on direct material contact which he called the theory of vortices. It was his explanation of `what' gravity was. It is an elaboration of the ancient Greek idea of atomism, of a world composed of material particles and only material particles that interact with each other.
Newton in contrast denied the ability of physical science to explain what gravity was, saying only that whatever it was, it could be described accurately with mathematical expressions, and that those expressions in themselves would have to do. The effect was to supplant metaphysical explanation with mathematical description.
In any event, the materialism of Descartes was derived from the identification of physical space with geometric space in which all material points could be assigned coordinates. The algebraic manipulation of these coordinate pairs of numbers was the basis for algebraic geometry, which was Descartes primary contribution to physical science. In this mathematical system there is no such thing as empty space since the entire space is composed of points with their alias as ordered coordinate number pairs. Descartes argued that the essential quality of a material point was its pure extension.
Not to diss Chomsky, but he was careless in claiming Newton abolished materialism, since Newton had proposed the corpuscular theory of light in his optics. Newton assumed light was the product of material particles and their interactions.
In the historical perspective, the shift away from a purely mechanical and materialist system of the physical world took place in the 19thC and early 20thC in the developing theories of electromagnetic fields, particularly the theory of light. This followed roughly Faraday, Maxwell, and Einstein.
Chuck Grimes