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Title page of Isaac Newton's Opticks. Newtonianism is a philosophical and scientific doctrine inspired by the beliefs and methods of natural philosopher Isaac Newton.While Newton's influential contributions were primarily in physics and mathematics, his broad conception of the universe as being governed by rational and understandable laws laid the foundation for many strands of Enlightenment ...
The Enlightenment was preceded by and overlaps the Scientific Revolution and the work of Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, and Isaac Newton, among others, as well as the rationalist philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and John Locke.
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27 [a]) was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher. [5] Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. [6]
Newton was born into an Anglican family three months after the death of his father, a prosperous farmer also named Isaac Newton. When Newton was three, his mother married the rector of the neighbouring parish of North Witham and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough. [9]
Newton was able to demonstrate that a vast range of observational data could be explained on the basis of a set of universal principles. Newton's successes in explaining terrestrial and celestial mechanics led to the rapid development of the idea that nature and the universe could be thought of as a great machine, operating according to fixed laws.
His A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy was published by subscription. Extant records of subscribers show that women from a wide range of social standings purchased the book, indicating the growing number of scientifically inclined female readers among the middling class. [65]
This idea was very popular among deists during the Enlightenment, when Isaac Newton derived his laws of motion, and showed that alongside the law of universal gravitation, they could predict the behaviour of both terrestrial objects and the Solar System.
The Age of Enlightenment was a broad philosophical movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The traditional theological-political system that placed Scripture at the center, with religious authorities and monarchies claiming and enforcing their power by divine right, was challenged and overturned in the realm of ideas.