Natural Philosophy: Including Mathematics, Optics, And Alchemy | I. Bernard Cohen (essay date 1980)
I. Bernard Cohen (essay date 1980)
SOURCE: "The Newtonian Revolution in Science," in The Newtonian Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1980, pp. 1-37, 290-99.
[In the following essay, Cohen offers an overview of the developments in the scientific community during Newton's time. Cohen then identifies the qualities of Newton's Principia that made the work so revolutionary.]
1.1 Some basic features of the Scientifc Revolution
A study of the Newtonian revolution in science rests on the fundamental assumption that revolutions actually occur in science. A correlative assumption must be that the achievements of Isaac Newton were of such a kind or magnitude as to constitute a revolution that may be set apart from other scientific revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At once we are apt to be plunged deep into controversy. Although few expressions are more commonly used in writing about science than...
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