1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

11.7 Newton’s Natural Philosophy 321
abided by the Inquisition’s sentence. 114 But this should not obscure the
fact that his scientific works were read with attention by other scientists of
the early modern age, in England more than anywhere else.
11.7 Newton’s Natural Philosophy
In analyzing the links between Hellenistic and modern science we must
perforce dwell on Newton, often considered the primary founder of the
latter. We start by recalling how Newton talks about space in the Principia
mathematica:
All things are placed . . . in space as to order of situation. It is from
their essence or nature that they are places; and that the primary
places of things should be movable, is absurd. These are therefore
the absolute places; and translations out those places, are the only
absolute motions.
But because the parts of space cannot be seen, or distinguished from
one another by our senses, therefore in their stead we use sensible
measures of them. . . . And so, instead of absolute places and
motions, we use relative ones; and that without any inconvenience
in common affairs; but in philosophical disquisitions, we ought to
abstract from our senses, and consider things themselves, distinct
from what are only sensible measures of them. For it may be that
there is no body really at rest, to which the places and motions of
others may be referred. 115
Newton’s ideas, though seemingly close to and inspired by Aristotle’s,
differ from them in an essential respect. Aristotle’s absolute space was
simply that of everyday experience, fixed with the earth, and thus directly
linked to empirical data. We have already seen how it was incompatible in
substance with the assumption that the earth moves. 116 It is not an accident
that Ptolemy, who reverted to an Aristotelian notion of space, rejected
the earth’s motions, or that Galileo, embracing heliocentrism, repudiated
absolute space and arrived at the principle of relativity. In Newton, by
contrast, absolute space coexists with Aristarchan heliocentrism (which
114 There is no literature on de Dominis’ scientific writings, other than the already cited [Ziggelaar]
and some allusions to his theory of the rainbow, made inevitable by Newton’s references to it (see
page 303). A recent scientific history of tides ([Cartwright]) makes no mention of the Euripus — nor,
for that matter, of Dondi’s work, while Crisogono’s is mentioned in a note (on p. 23) as if it had
never been printed.
115 Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia mathematica, Definitions, scholium, at 35%, Motte trans-
lation (as revised by Cajori).
116 See page 74.
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