How Did Newton Contribute To The Scientific Revolution

The scientific revolution lasted from the 15th-17th century. It replaced the Greek view that was dominating the scientific world for nearly 2,000 years. By the end of this revolution, science has replaced Christianity as the main focus of European civilization. It became a qualitative view and saw nature as a machine instead of an organism. The revolution began in astronomy, in which Nicholas Copernicus thought of a heliocentric universe, which turned the world upside-down and published in 1543. Different from platonic instrumentalism, Copernicus said that satisfactory astronomy must describe the real, physical world. Most of the world's professional astronomers were using his system by the time the church had largely opposed. In the
16th century, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was responsible for major changes in observation. Using better calibrated and stabler instruments, he observed regularly over extended periods of time, and his findings contradicted previous systems. In the beginning of the 17th century, Johannes Kepler discovered that the planets move in elliptic orbits. Galileo used a better developed telescope and found out planets shine by reflected light and that the moon is jagged, not smooth. Physics advanced, too. Removing Earth from the center wrecked the doctrine of natural motion and place, and ellipses became compatible. Galileo’s contributions directly defended Copernicanism, abandoning the traditional approach in favor of developing the foundation of a new physics. He also developed the Laws of Motion and figure out the mathematical equation for projectile motion. Finally, he used the phases of Venus to prove that that planet orbits the Sun, not the Earth, therefore proving a heliocentric universe. René Descartes was concerned with problems with the foundations of science, mainly concerned with the conceptions of matter and motion, also known as mechanical philosophy. He rejected the idea that one piece of matter could act on another through empty space, rather going with the idea that forces must be done by material substance. Matter cannot fill space that contains other matter, so the only motion could be a vortex. The disciple of Descartes Christiaan Huygens formulated kinetic energy and the laws of conservation of motion. Sir Isaac Newton's work represented the culmination of the Scientific Revolution at the end of the 17th century. His work provided a physical basis for Kepler’s laws. He was also able to synthesize mechanical philosophy and the mathematization of nature. He got these results from his three laws of motion, the second law being changed by a Swiss mathematician named Leonhard Euler in 1750. Its new formula became F=ma, a being acceleration. Newton had to go beyond the limits set awhile ago by Descartes to apply his laws to astronomy. He was unable to explain how it applies, but he propositioned a gravitational force acting between any two objects in the universe. Newton deduced Kepler's laws with his laws of motion and a gravitational force that is proportional to the inverse square of 2 bodies and the distance between them. Galileo's law of freefall complies with Newton's laws, finding that the same force applies to holding the planets and their moons in orbit also applies to the law of freefall. Newton's physics proved that the Earth is not completely spherical, but has a bulge around the Equator area that shows how the Earth rotates on its axis. In the 17th century, the science of optics, originally founded in Greece, combined the experimental approach with a quantitative analysis to convey fundamental outlook. Previously, in the 13th century the scientists were relying on the work of Ibn al-Haytham, but in the 17th century Kepler took the lead by introducing the point by point analysis of optical problems. Following mechanical philosophy, which was breaking the world into atomic parts, Kepler broke organic reality into what he considered to be ultimately real units. He also developed a geometric theory of lenses. By demonstrating how they can be explained completely from mass and motion, Descartes incorporated the phenomena of light into mechanical philosophy. He mathematically derived many known qualities of light using mechanical analogies. Many of the most important contributions to 17th century optics was Newton, specifically with the color theory.
Originally, color was considered a modification of white light. Newton was able to prove that white light is actually a mixture and, using different degrees of refrangibility with a different colored ray, he was able to explain the way prisms produce light through the white light. That experiment was characterized by a quantitative approach. His second important contribution to this time was a thing called “Newton’s Rings.” No one had attempted to quantify the colors of thin film, until now. Newton’s theory involved the periodicity and vibrations of ether, the fluid substance permeating all of Earth. Huygens was the second greatest optical thinker in the 17th century. Even though he was very important with the details of Descartes, he prefered to seek out purely mechanical explanation. He agreed with the fact that light is a pulse phenomena, but denies strongly that they have periodicity. He developed the concept wave front, driving the laws of his pulse theory, discovering double refraction. Chemistry originally derived from philosophy, alchemy, medicine, and metallurgy, only arriving as its own separate science in the 17th century. Transmutable each into the other, all four
elements were believed to exist in every substance. Alchemy contributed a wide variety of substances. 16th century Swiss natural philosopher Paracelsus put together an almost impenetrable Aristotelian theory of matter, alchemical correspondences, mystical forms of knowledge, and chemical therapy in medicine, his influence being widely felt in succeeding generations. There were few established doctrines that chemists generally accepted, and therefore very little cumulative growth was made. Chemists built ‘chemist philosophies’ to explain the entire universe in just one word. Most chemists either accepted the traditional 4 elements or the paraclesion side, or both. They exhibit a mark of tendency later to join the occult. Mechanical philosophy had successfully been used in other places, seeming consistent with experimental empiricism and rendering respectful by translating it into new science. Robert Boyle is a good example, working to understand chemical properties of matter to provide mechanical philosophy evidence, and to demonstrate how all chemical properties can mechanically be explained. He was a very excellent chemist, developing many important techniques, such as the color identification test.