Sir Isaac Newton's Role In The Scientific Revolution

Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton, an English physicist and mathematician, who was most famous for his law of gravitation, played a significant role in the scientific revolution of the 17th century. He was born on January 4, 1643, in Woolsthorpe, England. Isaac Newton was a well-known physicist and mathematician, and is credited as being one of the great minds of the 17th century Scientific Revolution. Isaac Newton was the only son of a flourishing farmer who died three months before he was born. During his birth, Isaac Newton was not expected to survive because he was a tiny and weak baby born premature. When Newton was three years old his mother remarried a minister, Barnabas Smith, and went to live with him, leaving Newton to his grandmother. As a result, this experience impacted

The heliocentric view of the universe theorized by astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler, and later refined by Galileo was well known in most European academic circles. Yet, like most universities in Europe, Cambridge was steeped in Aristotelian philosophy and a view of nature, resting on a geocentric view of the universe, dealing with nature in qualitative rather than quantitative terms. During his first three years at Cambridge, Newton was taught the standard curriculum, but was charmed with the most advanced science. He spent all his spare time reading from the modern philosophers. The result was a less-than-stellar performance, but one that is understandable, given his dual course of study. “Like thousands of other undergraduates, Newton began his higher education by immersing himself in Aristotle’s work” (Westfall). During this time Newton kept a second set of notes, entitled "Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae.” “The "Quaestiones" reveal that Newton had discovered the new concept of nature that provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution”