Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton, PRS (25 December 1642 (OS) – 20 March 1727 (OS) / 4 January, 1643 (NS) – 31 March 1727 (NS) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and alchemist. Recognised as a genius of the highest order, he is widely regarded as the most influential scientist in history. He wrote the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (published 5 July 16871), where he described universal gravitation and, via his laws of motion, laid the groundwork for classical mechanics. Newton also shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for the development of differential calculus. While they both discovered calculus nearly contemporaneously, their work was not a collaboration.

Newton's legacy

Newton's laws of motion and gravity provided a basis for predicting a wide variety of different scientific or engineering situations, especially the motion of celestial bodies. His calculus proved vitally important to the development of further scientific theories. Finally, he unified many of the isolated physics facts that had been discovered earlier into a satisfying system of laws. For this reason, he is generally considered one of history's greatest scientists, ranking alongside such figures as Einstein and Gauss.

Related Topics:
Laws of motion - Einstein - Gauss

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Also on a more practical level, to a large portion of households, Newton invented the cat flap. This was said to be done so that he wouldn't have to disrupt his optical experiments, conducted in a darkened room, to let his cat in or out.

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Britain went on to an unofficial gold standard in 1717 when Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the Mint, established a fixed price of £3.17.10 ½d per standard (22 carat) troy ounce, equal to £4.4.11 ½d per fine ounce. Under the gold standard the value of the pound (measured in gold weight) remained largely constant until the begining of the 20th Century.

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Religious thought

Newton and Boyle?s mechanical philosophy was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers as a viable alternative to the pantheists and enthusiasts, and was accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers clergy as well as dissident preachers like the latitudinarians.{{fn|8}} The clarity and simplicity of science was seen as a way in which to combat the emotional and metaphysical superlatives of superstitious enthusiasm, as well as the threat of atheism.{{fn|9}}

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The attacks made against pre-Enlightenment magical thinking, and the mystical elements of Christianity, were given their foundation with Boyle?s mechanical conception of the universe. Newton gave Boyle?s ideas their completion through mathematical proofs, and more importantly was very successful in popularizing them.{{fn|10}} Newton refashioned the world governed by an interventionist God into a world crafted by a God that designs along rational and universal principles.{{fn|11}} These principles were available for all people to discover, allowed man to pursue his own aims fruitfully in this life, not the next, and to perfect himself with his own rational powers.{{fn|12}} The perceived ability of Newtonians to explain the world, both physical and social, through logical calculations alone is the crucial idea in the disenchantment of Christianity.{{fn|13}}

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Newton saw God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation.{{fn|14}} But the unforeseen theological consequence of his conception of God, as Leibniz pointed out, was that God was now entirely removed from the world?s affairs, since the need for intervention would only evidence some imperfection in God?s creation, something impossible for a perfect and omnipotent creator.{{fn|15}} Despite waffling excuses made, God was philosophically removed from participation in his creation, and the understanding of the world is now brought down to the level of simple human reason.

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On the other hand, latitudinarian and Newtonian ideas taken too far resulted in the millenarians, a religious faction dedicated to the concept of a mechanical universe, but finding in it the same enthusiasm and mysticism that the Enlightenment had fought so hard to extinguish.{{fn|16}}

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Newton?s conception of the physical world provided a stable model of the natural world that would reinforce stability and harmony in the civic world.{{fn|17}}

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Enlightenment philosophes

Enlightenment philosophers chose a short history of scientific predecessors?Galileo, Boyle, and Newton principally?as the guides and guarantors of their applications of the singular concept of Nature and Natural Law to every physical and social field of the day. In this respect, the lessons of history and the social structures built upon it could be dispensed with.{{fn|18}}

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It was Newton?s conception of the universe based upon Natural and rationally understandable laws that became the seed for Enlightenment ideology. Locke and Voltaire applied concepts of Natural Law to political systems advocating intrinsic rights, the physiocrats and Adam Smith applied Natural conceptions of psychology and self-interest to economic systems, and sociologists critiquing the current social order fit history into Natural models of progress.

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