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Chapter 6 - NEWTON'S LAWS AND EQUILIBRIUM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2013

Steven C. Frautschi ,
Richard P. Olenick ,
Tom M. Apostol  and
David L. Goodstein
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Summary

Then from these forces, by other propositions which are also mathematical, I deduce the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea. I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of Nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles, for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some cause hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards one another, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from one another. These forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to this or some truer method of philosophy.

Isaac Newton, Principia (1686)

THE END OF THE CONFUSION

In 1543 Copernicus published his book, and a tremor rocked the foundations of the Aristotelian world. A century later the Aristotelian world lay in ruins, but nothing had risen to replace it. Galileo and Kepler had made mighty discoveries, but there was no central principle that could organize the world. The unified harmony of the Aristotelian view had been replaced by buzzing confusion.

Galileo was concerned not with the causes of motion but instead with its description. The branch of mechanics he reared is known as kinematics; it is a mathematically descriptive account of motion without concern for its causes.

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The Mechanical Universe
Mechanics and Heat, Advanced Edition
 , pp. 113 - 140
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1986

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