Newton and the scientific revolution (1600–1800)

Newton and the scientific revolution (1600–1800)

The scientific revolution, which began to take hold in the 1600s, represented a sharp break from Aristotelian modes of inquiry. One of its principal advances was the use of the scientific method to investigate nature. Data was collected and repeatable measurements made in experiments. Scientists then formed hypotheses to explain the results of these experiments. The hypothesis was then tested using the principle of falsifiability to prove or disprove its accuracy. The natural sciences continued to be called natural philosophy, but the adoption of the scientific method took science beyond the realm of philosophical conjecture and introduced a more structured way of examining nature.

Newton, an English mathematician and physicist, was the seminal figure in the scientific revolution. Drawing on advances made in astronomy by Copernicus, Brahe and Kepler, Newton derived the universal law of gravitation and laws of motion. These laws applied both on earth and in outer space, uniting two spheres of the physical world previously thought to function independently of each other, according to separate physical rules. Newton, for example, showed that the tides were caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. Another of Newton's advances was to make mathematics a powerful explanatory tool for natural phenomena. While natural philosophers had long used mathematics as a means of measurement and analysis, its principles were not used as a means of understanding cause and effect in nature until Newton.

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Isaac Newton