Isaac Newton and the Study of Chronology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelis Schilt
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Richard S. Westfall
Keyword(s):  

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-139
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Shrock

Thomas Reid often seems distant from other Scottish Enlightenment figures. While Hume, Hutcheson, Kames, and Smith wrestled with the nature of social progress, Reid was busy with natural philosophy and epistemology, stubbornly loyal to traditional religion and ethics, and out of touch with the heart of his own intellectual world. Or was he? I contend that Reid not only engaged the Scottish Enlightenment's concern for improvement, but, as a leading interpreter of Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, he also developed a scheme to explain the progress of human knowledge. Pulling thoughts from across Reid's corpus, I identify four key features that Reid uses to distinguish mature sciences from prescientific arts and inquiries. Then, I compare and contrast this scheme with that of Thomas Kuhn in order to highlight the plausibility and originality of Reid's work.


Author(s):  
Jed Z. Buchwald ◽  
Mordechai Feingold

Isaac Newton’s Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, published in 1728, one year after the great man’s death, unleashed a storm of controversy. And for good reason. The book presents a drastically revised timeline for ancient civilizations, contracting Greek history by five hundred years and Egypt’s by a millennium. This book tells the story of how one of the most celebrated figures in the history of mathematics, optics, and mechanics came to apply his unique ways of thinking to problems of history, theology, and mythology, and of how his radical ideas produced an uproar that reverberated in Europe’s learned circles throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. The book reveals the manner in which Newton strove for nearly half a century to rectify universal history by reading ancient texts through the lens of astronomy, and to create a tight theoretical system for interpreting the evolution of civilization on the basis of population dynamics. It was during Newton’s earliest years at Cambridge that he developed the core of his singular method for generating and working with trustworthy knowledge, which he applied to his study of the past with the same rigor he brought to his work in physics and mathematics. Drawing extensively on Newton’s unpublished papers and a host of other primary sources, the book reconciles Isaac Newton the rational scientist with Newton the natural philosopher, alchemist, theologian, and chronologist of ancient history.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Galileu Galilei Medeiros de Souza

Resumo: O artigo é um ensaio sobre como a atividade científica poderia ser influenciada por uma proposta ética voltada para a superação das desigualdades. A questão subjacente a este estudo tematiza a possível contraposição entre a ética, que parece ser inteiramente vinculada à liberdade humana e seus processos de escolha, e a lógica da pesquisa científica, que ainda, pelo menos em visão popular, parece se basear na posse de informações objetivas e na descoberta de leis de regulação da natureza. Será feita uma breve contextualização das aquisições teóricas sobre o sentido da ciência positiva dos últimos séculos, procurando extrair daí as indicações de uma estreita dependência dessa em relação às escolhas humanas, em virtude de sua metodologia dialética.   Palavras-Chave: Ciência positiva. Filosofia da ciência. Dialética. Ética.      Abstract: The article is an essay on how scientific activity could be influenced by an ethics proposal aimed at overcoming inequalities. The question underlying this study discusses the possible contrast between ethics, which seems to be entirely linked to human freedom and choice processes, and the logic of scientific research, which still, at least in a popular view, seems to be based on possession of objective information and discovery of regulatory laws of nature. Will be presented a brief background of theoretical acquisitions on the meaning of positive science of the last centuries, looking to extract the indications of a close dependence of this in relation to human choices, because your dialectic methodology.  Keywords: Positive Science. Philosophy of Science. Dialectic. Ethics. REFERÊNCIASARISTÓTELES, Tópicos. In: _______. Órganon. 2.ed. São Paulo: EDIPRO, 2010, p. 347-543.BLONDEL, M. L’Action (1893): essai d’une critique de la vie et d’une science de la pratique, Paris: Quadrige, 1993.CARNAP, R. A superação da metafísica por meio da análise lógica da linguagem. In: Cognitio, São Paulo, v. 10, n. 2, jul./dez. 2009, p. 293-309.DESCARTES, R. Discurso do Método. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2001.DILTHEY, W. Introdução às ciências humanas. Rio de Janeiro: Forense, 2010.FANNING, P. A. Isaac Newton e a transmutação da alquimia: uma visão alternativa da revolução científica. Balneário Camboriú (SC): Livraria Danúbio, 2016.GALILEI, G. Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Galileo Galilei. Antonio Favaro (ed.) Florença: Barbéra, 1928-38, 19 Vols.HESSE, Mary. Revolutions and Reconstruction in Philosophy of Science. Brighton, 1980.HUME, D. Investigações sobre o entendimento humano. In: BERKELEY, G.; HUME, D. Tratado sobre os princípios do conhecimento humano; Três diálogos entre Hilas e Filonous em oposição aos Céticos e Ateus; Investigação sobre o entendimento humano; Ensaios morais, políticos e literários. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1978.KUHN, T. La strututtura delle rivoluzioni scientifiche. Torino: [s.n], 1978.LEVINAS, E. Totalité et Infini. [sl]: The Hague, 1971.MACINTYRE, A. Dopo la virtù: Saggio di teoria morale. Milano: Feltrino, 1988.NEIMAN, S. O mal no pensamento moderno: uma história alternativa da filosofia. Rio de Janeiro: DIFEL, 2003.NIETZSCHE, F. Assim falou Zaratustra. 2.ed., Petrópolis: Vozes, 2008.ORTEGA Y GASSET, J. O que é Filosofia? Campinas: Vide Editorial, 2016.PAGANI, S.M.; Luciani, A. (org.) Os Documentos do Processo de Galileu Galilei. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1994.PLATÃO. Teeteto. Tradução de Edson Bini, Bauru/SP: EDIPRO, 2007.POPPER. K. A lógica da descoberta científica. São Paulo: Cultrix, 2001.WHITE, M. O grande livro das coisas horríveis: a crônica definitiva da história das 100 piores atrocidades. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 2013. 


Author(s):  
David D. Nolte

Galileo’s parabolic trajectory launched a new approach to physics that was taken up by a new generation of scientists like Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke and Edmund Halley. The English Newtonian tradition was adopted by ambitious French iconoclasts who championed Newton over their own Descartes. Chief among these was Pierre Maupertuis, whose principle of least action was developed by Leonhard Euler and Joseph Lagrange into a rigorous new science of dynamics. Along the way, Maupertuis became embroiled in a famous dispute that entangled the King of Prussia as well as the volatile Voltaire who was mourning the death of his mistress Emilie du Chatelet, the lone female French physicist of the eighteenth century.


Author(s):  
Erin Webster

The Curious Eye explores early modern debates over two related questions: what are the limits of human vision, and to what extent can these limits be overcome by technological enhancement? Today, in our everyday lives we rely on optical technology to provide us with information about visually remote spaces even as we question the efficacy and ethics of such pursuits. But the debates surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision have their roots in a much older literary tradition in which the ability to see beyond the limits of natural human vision is associated with philosophical and spiritual insight as well as social and political control. The Curious Eye provides insight into the subject of optically mediated vision by returning to the literature of the seventeenth century, the historical moment in which human visual capacity in the West was first extended through the application of optical technologies to the eye. Bringing imaginative literary works by Francis Bacon, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn together with optical and philosophical treatises by Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, The Curious Eye explores the social and intellectual impact of the new optical technologies of the seventeenth century on its literature. At the same time, it demonstrates that social, political, and literary concerns are not peripheral to the optical science of the period but rather an integral part of it, the legacy of which we continue to experience.


1768 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 156-169 ◽  

It is demonstrated by Sir Isaac Newton in the Principia , that it is not the Earth's center, but the common center of gravity of the Earth and Moon, that describes the ecliptic; and that the Earth and Moon revolve in similar ellipses, about their common center of gravity.


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