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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 ...
According to Mach, Newton's examples simply illustrate relative rotation of spheres and the bulk of the universe. [8] When, accordingly, we say that a body preserves unchanged its direction and velocity in space, our assertion is nothing more or less than an abbreviated reference to the entire universe. —Ernst Mach [9]
The clockwork universe is a concept which compares the universe to a mechanical clock. It continues ticking along, as a perfect machine, with its gears governed by the laws of physics , making every aspect of the machine predictable.
Taken in isolation (rather than as an approximation to quantum mechanics), Newtonian physics depicts a universe in which objects move in perfectly determined ways. At the scale where humans exist and interact with the universe, Newtonian mechanics remain useful, and make relatively accurate predictions (e.g. calculating the trajectory of a bullet).
Newton's laws are often stated in terms of point or particle masses, that is, bodies whose volume is negligible. This is a reasonable approximation for real bodies when the motion of internal parts can be neglected, and when the separation between bodies is much larger than the size of each.
Philosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology and epistemology of space and time.While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a central aspect of early analytic philosophy.
The Newtonian arguments of this theory, particularly those concerned with the ontological status of space and time, had been related to the existence of God through the concepts of absolute space and absolute time. [3] It was proposed that the universe was finite in extent and was said to have begun in time. [3]
Newtonian telescope, a type of reflecting telescope; Newtonian cosmology; Newtonian dynamics; Newtonianism, the philosophical principle of applying Newton's methods in a variety of fields; Newtonian fluid, a fluid that flows like water—its shear stress is linearly proportional to the velocity gradient in the direction perpendicular to the ...