The Clockwork Universe




Newton Physics Emerges

BACKGROUND & TIMES

1. By the time Isaac Newton entered college, the scientific revolution of the 17th century was well underway.

2. Men like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes had all helped develop a new view of nature.

and what is a brief summary of this new view?

3. When Newton went to Cambridge, everyone was still studying the old nature.

4. Newton studied it too—but in his notebook he had written: "Amicus Plato; amicus Aristoteles; magus amica veritas." "Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my best friend is truth."

THE PERSON

1. Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day, 1642, the same year Galileo died.

2. He did much of his greatest work during a two year period from 1665 to 1667 when he was at the village of Woolsworth to escape the Great Plague which was ravishing London.

3. His life was troubled by angry conflicts and bitter feuds with colleagues and friends.

4. Twice these feuds led to breakdowns; other times they led to bursts of brilliant new achievements.

5. He died in 1727, at the age of 85. Years later it was discovered that much of his erratic behavior may have been caused by mercury poisoning. Recent samples of his hair showed he had forty times the level of mercury considered normal.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

1. Newton discovered the origin of color.

2. He discovered the nature of gravity.

3. He invented calculus.

4. He invented the first reflecting telescope.

5. He wrote and published the book Mathematica Principia, which provided a detailed explanation of the laws of gravity and motion, particularly as they applied to astronomy.


6. He was knighted as Sir Isaac Newton and became president of the Royal Society, a post he held until his death.

UNIQUE INFLUENCE

1. He was one of the most creative geniuses the world has ever seen and to many people the greatest scientist who ever lived.

2. While Galileo's discoveries brought humankind to the brink of a new age, Newton took it the rest of the way.

3. He unified the work of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler into one scientific theory that has stood the test of time.

4. Principia Mathematica is still considered by many to be the greatest scientific book ever written. It is the fundamental work for all of modern science.

5. Newton was the integrator, the unifier, the organizer, of all the scientific knowledge available at the time. He established a solid platform on which all modern science could be built.

Newton:

Newton's Explanation of Kepler's Laws

Newton expanded on the work of Galileo to better define the relationship between energy and motion. In particular, he developed the following concepts:

Descarte's previous interpretation of what would be Newton's ideas was the so called Clockwork Universe model. A concept that states that the total momentum of the Universe is conserved, interactions redistribute the momentum, but the total never changes. In this model, God only starts the clock (initial cause), then it runs by itself for the rest of time.

Newton's laws of motion:

Well fine, if gravity is an attractive force, then how come the moon doesn't come crashing into the earth, or the earth into the sun. What causes an orbit to be stable?

An orbit is the balance between inertial and gravitational forces. That is, the earth is continually falling toward the sun, but inertia also wants the earth to keep moving in a straight line. When these two forces are in balance a stable orbit results:

Newton mathematized all of the physical sciences, reducing their study to a rigorous, universal, and rational procedure which marked the ushering in of the Age of Reason. Thus, the basic principles of investigation set down by Newton have persisted virtually without alteration until modern times.

It is therefore no exaggeration to identify Newton as the single most important contributor to the development of modern science. The Latin inscription on Newton's tomb, despite its bombastic language, is thus fully justified in proclaiming, "Mortals! rejoice at so great an ornament to the human race!" Alexander Pope's couplet is also apropos: "Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, Let Newton be! and all was light."

Calculus as a Language

This is a methodology known as "limits". There are two principle manifestations of this.

These two principles are graphically shown below:

Differentiation

Integration:

This procedure allows for a rigorous determination of physics using functions.

For example, how do I compute the area of a circle.

A circle is that which is enclosed by a surface which a line of radius r has been rotated through 360 degrees.

From the language of Calculus this means the following:

Language should evolve so that communication becomes more efficient; i.e. the language shown above derives the area of a circle using the least amount of characters.


Meanwhile, back to humanities!

Newton died in 1727 What is the state of european government/culture by this time? How is it reflective of this Age of Reason?

Relevant Notes