![]() Yet he prefigured the modern scientific approach by seeking a comprehensive, mechanical, rational interpretation of nature. Descartes assumed, like most earlier thinkers, that the universe can be explained by top-down reasoning from general first principles, with little or no need for particular experiments famously, he thought that all knowledge could proceed from the logical statement “I think, therefore I am” ( Cogito ergo sum in the original Latin).ĭescartes reasoned wrongly that neither atoms nor a vacuum could exist. The way was partly prepared for the new way of thinking that Newton and others called “experimental philosophy” or “mechanical philosophy” by French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596–1650). The word “algebra” itself is from the Arabic al-jabr, meaning “reunion.” Many tools, physical and intellectual, had to be in place before Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), Newton, and the other founders of modern physical science could achieve their triumphs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ![]() In the 1500s, stimulated by existing Arab work, algebra was developed by Italian mathematicians such as Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia (1499–1557). Scholars advanced knowledge in several branches of mathematics, recovering the long-forgotten or poorly copied works of the Greek mathematicians Euclid (born c.300 BC) and Archimedes (287–212) and making new discoveries of their own. Manual workers such as joiners, builders, navigators, and shipbuilders accumulated knowledge about practical methods and materials. For many centuries this mindset confounded efforts to unravel the physics of motion.ĭespite many preconceptions, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance did produce some significant scientific developments. For example, if an object were in motion, they assumed something must keep it in motion, whether a mysterious quality in the object called impetus, the surrounding air, or something else. ![]() This is because Aristotelians saw the universe and everything in it primarily in terms of their meaning, rather than cause and effect.Īristotelians also inherited flawed assumptions about specific physical questions. This did not rule out the investigation of events using experiment and mathematics, which are now the heart of the scientific method, but it did not particularly encourage them either. So great was Aristotle's influence, in fact, that the world-view held by most European scholars until the seventeenth century is termed Aristotelian. Without these earlier achievements, he could not have produced the four laws that are the foundation of Newtonian physics: his three laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation.įrom the at least the fourth century BC until Newton's time, European scientific thought was modeled largely on the theories of ancient Greek thinkers such as Plato (c.428–348 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC). Historical Background and Scientific FoundationsĪlthough Newton redefined the basic concepts of mechanics and devised his laws of motion and universal gravitation in the late 1600s, he based his work on important scientific discoveries about matter and motion that had already been established. Since Newtonian physics is also mathematically simple, it remains the standard for calculating the motions of almost all objects from machine parts, fluids, and bullets to spacecraft, planets, and galaxies. Although scientists have known since the early twentieth century that it is a less accurate description of the physical world than relativity theory and quantum physics, corrections required for objects larger than atoms that move significantly slower than light are negligible. Newtonian physics can explain the structure of much of the visible universe with high accuracy. ![]() Several ideas developed by later scientists, especially the concept of energy (which was not defined scientifically until the late 1700s), are also part of the physics now termed Newtonian. Second, these forces are acting on different bodies or systems: A’s force acts on B and B’s force acts on A.Newtonian physics, also called Newtonian or classical mechanics, is the description of mechanical events-those that involve forces acting on matter-using the laws of motion and gravitation formulated in the late seventeenth century by English physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727). First, the forces exerted (the action and reaction) are always equal in magnitude but opposite in direction. There are two important features of Newton’s third law. \): When the mountain climber pulls down on the rope, the rope pulls up on the mountain climber.
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