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Newton's Contribution to Science

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was one of the greatest scientists in history and, after an initial period of resistance, his discoveries, theories, and methods proved to be a major force in the emergence of modern science. Newton became the best-known scientist in the world and, even though most of the eighteenth-century public understood little of his work, his fame eventually provided the impetus to elevate scientific research to a new level of respectability. Other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientists participated in the general move away from the Aristotelian paradigm of science that had dominated the Western world for two millennia. But Newton's inspired work resulted in what has justly been called the Newtonian Revolution in science. Ironically, however, Newton's progress in mathematizing science and opening it up to the full play of scientific method meant that his own revolution only reigned for about 200 years. Though much of his work remains vital to scientists today a great deal of it has subsequently been replaced by scientists who proceeded along the innovative path where he had been the first to lead. Newton was "the great synthesizer," as one of his biographers put it, "everything we do--riding in a car, sitting in a plane--operates within the Newtonian universe" and only when "we approach the speed of light [do] we have to turn to Einstein."

One of the basic ideas in the Aristotelian view of the world was that the behavior of physical objects "is dictated by the 'qualities' they possess . . . a stone [for example] falls because its 'nature' necessitates that it move toward the center of the universe" or the planets moved in circular orbits because the circle was a divinely perfect form. But, by the seventeenth century, scientists had become disillusioned by the Aristotelian approach. They began to assume that since, "after centuries of investigation, nothing solid had been established," there must...

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Newton's Contribution to Science. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 18:07, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1694328.html