Related papers: Classical Thought in Newton's General Scholium

Isaac Newton is usually associated with the idea of absolute space and time, and with ballistic light-corpuscle arguments. However, Newton was also a proponent of wave/particle duality, and published a "new" variable-density aether model in…

In his Chronology, Newton uses astronomical "evidence" to support its extreme rejuvenation of ancient times. These elements, having a scientific varnish, provide some credibility to the work. They have been fiercely debated for a century,…

With his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein produced a revolution in our conception of reality and of the knowledge we can obtain from it. This revolution can be viewed from philosophy as leading to one of the great paradigms in…

Alan Turing's pioneering work on computability, and his ideas on morphological computing support Andrew Hodges' view of Turing as a natural philosopher. Turing's natural philosophy differs importantly from Galileo's view that the book of…

Gravity plays an important part in the experiments and discoveries of the modern world. But how was it discovered? Surely Newton and Einstein were not the only people to observe it and account for it. It had been a long path before the full…

This paper frames calculus as a global, centuries-long development rather than a subject that began only with Newton and Leibniz. Drawing on ideas from Greek, Indian, Islamic, and later European mathematics, it highlights how concepts like…

The manuscripts that presumably contained Newton's early development of the fundamental concepts that led to his Principia have been lost. A plausible reconstruction of this development is presened based on Newton's exchange of letters with…

A sketch of some of the fundamental notions related to the nature of knowledge is offered, with special focus on the role of mathematics and my own opinions. No single idea exposed here is entirely original; indeed, this topic has been…

I reflect on some of the basic aspects of present day Beyond the Standard Model particle physics, focusing mostly on the issues of naturalness, in particular on the so-called hierarchy problem. To all of us, physics as natural science…

Aristotle was the first to declare himself in the class of natural philosophers ({\em physiologoi}) and he was the first physicist because he spelled out the first definitions of some basic physical concepts. Moreover, he was the first…

Scientific communication is an essential part of modern science: whereas Archimedes worked alone, Newton (1676) acknowledged that "If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." How is scientific…

We attempt to provide a comprehensive model of evolution of science across millennia taking into account the contributions of other intellectual traditions, cultural value system and increasing in sophistication of humans in their study of…

Newton's Principia, when it appeared in 1687, was received with the greatest admiration, not only by the foremost mathematicians and astronomers in Europe, but also by philosophers like Voltaire and Locke and by members of the educated…

However, the observations encompassed by classical physics excludes the observer from the physical reality, yet the deep-down understandung of nature --{\it the quantum theory}-- can not avoid the intrusion of observer into the measurement…

The Goedelian approach is discussed as a prime example of a science towards the origins. While mere selfreferential objectification locks in to its own byproducts, self-releasing objectification informs the formation of objects at hand and…

Scientific communication is an essential part of modern science: whereas Archimedes worked alone, Newton (correspondence with Hooke, 1676) acknowledged that "If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."…

After Isaac Newton was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 he adopted an unusual coat of arms: a pair of human tibiae crossed on a black background, like a pirate flag without the skull. After some general reflections on Newton's monumental…

Each cognitive science tries to understand a set of cognitive behaviors. The structuring of knowledge of this nature's aspect is far from what it can be expected about a science. Until now universal standard consistently describing the set…

A number of elite thinkers in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries pursued an agenda which historian Paolo Rossi calls the "quest for a universal language," a quest which was deeply interwoven with the emergence of the scientific…

Scholars of the history and philosophy of science have asked what would decolonized science would look like. This paper develops an answer by interrogating the assumption that observations need to be recorded and communicated using the…