Author Bio- Sir Isaac Newton ( 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/7) was an English physicist and mathematician (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), first published in 1687, laid the foundations for classical mechanics. Newton made seminal contributions to optics, and he shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus.
Date and Context- The time when this article is written up is the time when queen Anne is in the power when the revolution is going in England and between the scientific revolution.
Summary- Newton write about the basics of the world in his book Principlia he mentioned his three most important laws and the way the solar system works. He showed how his inverse square law worked perfectly with Kepler's elliptical orbits; how planets are deflected into orbit around the sun by the pull of the sun's gravity, and how the same principle can be used to explain the orbit of the moon and of Jupiter's moons; he demonstrated that Descartes' theory of vortices lacked the same explanatory power. Working from Halley's research on the subject, he declared that comets transcribed orbits around the sun just as planets did; he calculated the mass of each planet; he used the pull of the sun's gravity to account for the flattening of the Earth at the poles and the bulge at the equator; he used the gravitational pull of the moon and sun to explain the ocean tides. In his account, the entire universe was held together in a web of gravitational pulls, acting on every star, planet, moon and comet; thus Newton rendered the whole universe explainable by a law--subject to the insight of mathematics and the human mind.
Key Quotaion- " And yet we are not to consider the world as the body of god, or several parts thereof, as the parts of God . He is a uniform being, void of organs, members or parts, and they are his creature subordinate to him and subservient to his will..."
Newton lived through the Glorious Revolution and, on a broader scale, is part of the Scientific Revolution. During this period, individuals throughout Europe set out to study and observe nature in an attempt to better understand the world and God. Newton was committed to his studies and is credited with creating calculus.
ReplyDeleteIn this document, Newton seems to capitalize seemingly random words.
"As in Mathematics, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition."