Abstract
Forty-five years passed between the death of Galileo in 1642 and the publication in 1687 of Newton’s greatest work, the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or the Principia (Principles) for short. In those years, major changes occurred in the social organization of scientific studies. The new philosophy of experimental science, applied with enthusiasm and imagination, produced a wealth of new results. Scholars began to work together and to organize scientific societies in Italy, France, and England. One of the most famous, the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, was founded in 1662. Through these societies, scientific experimenters exchanged information, debated new ideas, argued against opponents of the new experimental activities, and published technical papers. Each society sought public support for its work and published studies in widely read scientific journals. Through the societies, scientific activities became well defined, strong, and international.
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Further Reading
G. Holton and S.G. Brush, Physics, The Human Adventure,(Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), Chapters 12–14, is especially helpful on the structure and method in physical science, as is Chapter 11 on Newton’s law of universal gravitation.
D.H. Levy, More Things in Heaven and Earth: Poets and Astronomers Reed the Night Sky, (Wolfville, Nova Scotia: Wombat Press, 1997 ).
I.B. Cohen, Science and the Founding Fathers,(New York: Norton, 1995.)
I. Newton, The Principia: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a new translation by I.B. Cohen and A. Whitman, assisted by J. Budenz ( Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999 ).
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Cassidy, D., Holton, G., Rutherford, J. (2002). Newton’s Unified Theory. In: Understanding Physics. Undergraduate Texts in Contemporary Physics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-7698-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-7698-0_4
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