Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was an English mathematician and natural philosopher who worked at Cambridge and later in London as Warden and then Master of the Mint and President of the Royal Society. His Principia (1687) set out the laws of motion and universal gravitation. In its Scholium on space and time he defended absolute space, independent of any bodies, and supported it with the rotating bucket argument; the view was later defended on his side by Samuel Clarke in the correspondence with Leibniz.

Key ideas

• Absolute space and absolute time exist independently of bodies and events, and differ from the relative measures we use.
• In the bucket argument, the curved surface of rotating water reveals true rotation that cannot be defined relative to nearby bodies.
• A single law of universal gravitation governs falling bodies on earth and the motions of the planets.
• Natural philosophy should proceed from phenomena by induction, without feigning hypotheses about hidden causes.

Major works

• Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687)
• Opticks (1704)
• General Scholium (added to the second edition of the Principia, 1713)

In the conversation

• Discussion “Because that’s how it works”: when is that an explanation and when is it a refusal? Joel D'Souza · 5 replies
• Question When I stir stock the surface dips. What did Newton’s spinning bucket prove? Joel D'Souza · 3 replies
• Reading group Reading group: Émilie du Châtelet’s Foundations of Physics, the opening chapters Valentina Ríos · 4 replies
• Debate Leibniz had the better of the argument with Clarke Abdulrahman Al-Bassam · 5 replies