What was important in the Opticks from the point of view of the Newtonian synthesis was that Newton elaborated there the most comprehensive public statement he ever made of his experimental method:Īs in Mathematics, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition It was rather a brilliant display of the art of experimentation, and it was often cited as a model of how to approach a difficult problem by experiment and how to conduct precise quantitative experiments. The Opticks was not a revolutionary work in the sense the Principia was. A reason for this was its deceptive accessibility. The Opticks was a far more widely read work. To this purpose, they proceeded with the compilation of comprehensive treatises where they presented an outline of Newtonian mechanics and experimental philosophy. At the same time, quite a few nonmathematical philosophers made a systematic attempt to bring Newton's message to the general reader. The reputation of the Principia was based primarily on the authority of very few competent readers. Even in the early eighteenth century influential philosophers like John Locke (1632 –1704) and Voltaire adopted its message without having read or understood its technical part. Historians assume that the Principia is one of the least read documents in the history of ideas. Having been nourished by the Cartesian rationalistic tradition, Huygens and Leibniz found that the adoption of attraction by natural philosophers would bring about a reversion to the "occult qualities" of Scholasticism. Along a similar line, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 –1716) accused Newton of turning the entire operation of Nature into a perpetual miracle. At the same time, however, Christiaan Huygens (1629 –1695) was astonished by the fact that such an elaborate synthesis in mechanics was founded upon the notorious notion of universal attraction. Followers like Edmond Halley (1656 –1742) and Voltaire (1694 –1778) were so excited by Newton's achievements that they placed him in the highest position of the philosophical firmament of the time. It is equally clear, though, that Newton's contemporaries differed significantly in the appreciation of his magnum opus. The publication of the Principia clearly marked the establishment of a new spirit in European natural philosophy. In the successive editions of the work he enriched it with a number of "queries" where he developed his theoretical and metaphysical contemplations about the nature of matter, the various instances of attractive and repulsive force, and the theoretical grounding of experimental induction. He introduced his experimental method and he elaborated the atomistic model of matter. The latter work was a study in the spirit of mechanical philosophy, where Newton investigated the phenomena of light. Accordingly, he aimed to explain Kepler's laws through the use of universal attraction and to discard the Cartesian theory of vortices. The former was a work in rational mechanics where Newton aimed to study "the motion that results from any force whatever and of the forces that are required for any motion whatever." His major stake was to overcome the model of impact that dominated the mechanical philosophy of his time and to introduce the notion of attractive force as a proper dynamic factor of motion. The authority of Newtonian philosophy was established through the publication of the two major works of Sir Isaac Newton (1642 –1727) in natural philosophy, The Principia ( Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 1687) and the Opticks ( Opticks or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light, 1704). Newton" (Newtonianism or Newtonian philosophy: the theory of the mechanism of the universe, and particularly of the motion of the heavenly bodies, of their laws, their properties, as delivered by Mr. A standard definition of Newtonianism or Newtonian philosophy found in early eighteenth-century dictionaries such as John Harris's Lexicon Technicum (5th ed., 1736) is: "The doctrine of the universe, and particularly of the heavenly bodies their laws, affections, etc., as delivered by Sir Isaac Newton." An almost identical definition appears around thirty years later in the Encyclop édie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert: "Newtonianisme ou philosophie Newtonienne: c'est la th éorie du m échanisme de l'univers, & particulierement du mouvement des corps c élestes, de leur lois, de leur propri ét és, telle qu'elle a ét é enseign ée par M.
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