Knowra Newtonianism Newtonianism Newtonianism is the intellectual tradition built around Isaac Newton’s physics and mathematical methods. It shaped accounts of nature, scientific practice, and political and religious thought.
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica : Isaac Newton’s 1687 work that presents the laws of motion and universal gravitation in mathematical form. The Principia supplied Newtonianism’s foundational account of motion and gravitation.
Classical mechanics : The branch of physics describing motion and forces at speeds far below light speed and scales larger than atoms. Newtonianism became the historical foundation of classical mechanics.
Isaac Newton : English mathematician and natural philosopher whose laws of motion and universal gravitation transformed physics. Newton’s works and reputation gave the tradition its name and authority.
Enlightenment : An eighteenth-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, inquiry, and criticism of inherited authority. Newton’s success encouraged Enlightenment confidence that nature could be explained through general laws.
Cartesian physics : René Descartes’s natural philosophy, which explained physical phenomena through matter, motion, and vortices. Newtonian celestial mechanics displaced the Cartesian vortex account of planetary motion.
Newton's laws of motion : Three principles relating bodies’ motion to inertia, applied forces, and action-reaction pairs. These laws became the standard framework for explaining mechanical motion.
Newton's method of fluxions : Isaac Newton’s approach to calculus, treating changing quantities as generated by continuous motion. Fluxions supplied Newton’s own mathematical language for changing quantities.
Voltaire : French Enlightenment writer who promoted Newtonian science and philosophy in France. Voltaire helped make Newtonian ideas accessible to French intellectual life.
French Newtonianism : The eighteenth-century adoption and adaptation of Newton’s science by French scholars and writers. French advocates recast Newton’s work within local debates about science and philosophy.
Leibniz–Clarke correspondence : A published exchange debating Newtonian space, time, motion, and the relation between God and nature. The correspondence exposed philosophical disputes beneath Newtonian claims about absolute space and divine action.
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