ISAAC NEWTON
Life
In 1642, the year Galileo died, Isaac Newton was
born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England on
Christmas Day.
 (Julian calendar = Dec. 25, 1642; Gregorian
calendar = Jan. 4, 1643)
 At age 3, his mother left; he stayed with
grandmother
 In 1661 he went up to Trinity College,
Cambridge
 Curriculum
 Isaac studied
 Aristotelian philosophy and its
commentaries
 Rhetoric of the ancient Greek
• On the side, read
• Thomas Hobbes, Henry More,
Rene Descartes, Kepler on optics, Galileo,
Gassendi, and more Descartes
• Career & Works
• Became a Lucasian Professor at the age
of 26 after his mentor, Isaac Barrow,
resigned.
• 1671 – created the reflecting telescope –
which became widely known – and
thereby ensured his election to the Royal
Society.
• Studied alchemy and theology
• 1687 – Philosophiae naturalis principia
mathematica (Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy)
• 1703 - Elected president of the Royal
Society, after its former president, Robert
Hooke, died.
• 1704 – Opticks published
• Death & Fame
• “Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was
light".
- Alexander Pope
• 1727 – died at 84.
• Let Mortals rejoice that there has
existed such and so great an Ornament to
the Human Race
Newton’s method
Inductive-deductive procedure = Method of
Analysis and Synthesis
Newton stressed the need of experimental
confirmation of the consequences deduced by
Synthesis
Emphasized the value of deducing consequences
that go beyond the original inductive evidence.
Newton applied this method in his study of light.
Newton on NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
Natural Philosophy consists in discovering the
frame and operations of Nature, and reducing
them, as far as may be, to general Rules or Laws –
establishing these rules by observations and
experiments, and thence deducing the causes and
effects of things.
Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy
RULE 1
1. No more causes of natural things should be
2. admitted than are both true and sufficient
to
3. explain their phenomena.
RULE 2
Therefore, the causes assigned to natural effects
of the same kind must be, so far as possible,the
same.
RULE 3
Those qualities of bodies that cannot be intended
and remitted [that is, qualities that cannot be
increased and diminished] and that belong to all
bodies on which experiments can be made should
be taken as qualities of all bodies universally.
RULE 4
In experimental philosophy. propositions
gathered from phenomena by induction should be
considered exactly or very nearly true
notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet
other phenomena make such propositions either
more exact or liable to exceptions.
• Newton’s part in the Copernican
Revolution
• New problem after Kepler and Galileo:
What moves the Earth (and other
planets)?
• New appreciation of older ideas
• Infinite universe – Nicolas of
Cusa, Thomas Diggs, Giordano
Bruno
• Atomism – Leucippus &
Democritus to Epicurus and
Lucretius (De Rerum Natura)
• Reality must consist of
indivisible atoms and void,
thereby motion is possible.
• Corpuscular Universe
• Rene Descartes: How would a single
corpuscle move in the void?
- A corpuscle at rest in the void will
remain at rest, and a corpuscle in
motion will continue to move at the
same speed in a straight line unless
it is deflected by another corpuscle.
- However, Descartes considers the
universe as full (plenum). Thus, his
corpuscular motion led to his
notion of VORTEX (a stream of
particles moving eventually, due to
pushes, over an approximately
circular path)
• Anima Motrix and Magnetism
• Kepler theorized that a certain force
emanating from the sun, the anima
motrix, provided the cause for the motion
of the planets.
• Kepler also employed William Gilbert’s
idea that the earth is a huge magnet.
• Robert Hooke:
• Inertial motion in straight line
(following Descartes) plus an
attractive principle or force
operating between the sun and each
planet.
• The result of all the conceptual
innovations was the breakdown of the
terrestrial-celestial dichotomy. The answer
to the problem in celestial motion can be
sought in mechanics (projectile, pendulum,
etc.)
• Falling
• Explanations about the “fall”
• Kepler: anima motrix and
magnetism (of Gilbert)
• Descartes: planets were pushed
toward the sun by corpuscular
impact
• G. A. Borelli: natural tendency to
move toward the sun
• Hooke: intrinsic mutual attraction
• Apple
• Newton (and perhaps Hooke, as well) got
an insight.
• The force which drew the planets
to the sun and the moon to earth was the
same gravitational attraction which caused
the fall of stones and apples.
• Cannon’s projectile and the moon
• Newton’s description of the cannon
ball as a satellite. As the velocity of the
ball is increased the length of its trajectory
also increases, so that it travels farther
around the curved surface of the earth.
When the velocity is great enough, the ball
does not fall to earth at all, but instead
revolves continually in an approximately
circular orbit.
• Inverse square law
• The force of gravitational attraction
between two bodies decreases with
increasing distance between them as the
inverse of the square of that distance, so
if the distance is doubled, the force is
down by a factor of four.
• Laws of motion

• Next problem: reconciling newtonian and
cartesian physics
• What is gravity, really? How could one
account for gravity itself? What is it that
causes the attraction of one body for
another?
 Newton wanted to abide by
the corpuscular
metaphysics of Descartes in
explaining the concept of
gravity.
 However, he seemed
unsuccessful.
- (Similar question: why is action-at-
a-distance possible?)
• Choices:
manifest qualities (the primary
qualities).
• Hypotheses – are statements about
terms that designate “occult
qualities’ for which no measuring
procedures are known.
• Since scientific knowledge must be
based on investigations that involve
invariant relations (and primary
qualities), so Newton claims that “I
do not feign hypothesis.”
• Absolute space and absolute time
• Newton maintained that the three laws of
motion specify how bodies move in
Absolute Space and Absolute Time.

• Cartesian answer: the universe is • Distinction: “true motion” – “sensible

full of material corpuscle moving measures” of this motion
in a whirlpool. [No way!] • Absolute Space & Time is an abstraction
• Gravity innate in things. [No way! (Platonic influence).
Very Aristotelian and medieval!
That’s accepting an “occult
• Conclusion
quality.”] • Newton had completed the revolution
initiated by Copernicus in 1543, and
• Newton left it unresolved:
formed a new world-view of the
universe, corpuscular, mechanical and
• That gravity should be innate, mathematical.
inherent, and essential to matter, so that
one body may act upon another at a
• Newton left much room for discovering
force laws to account for more
distance through a vacuum, without the phenomena.
mediation of anything else, by and through
which their action and force may be • E.g. heat, electricity, magnetism,
conveyed from one to another, is to me so cohesion, chemical combination
great an absurdity, that I believe no man
who has in philosophical matters a
competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall
into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent
acting constantly according to certain
laws; but whether this agent be material
or immaterial, I have left to the
consideration of my readers. (25 February
1 693, reprinted in Newton's
• Philosophy of Nature, edited by
Thayer. Emphasis added.)
• Hypotheses Non Fingo
• For Newton:
• Theory is applied to invariant
relations among terms designating