The Impact of Mathematics on the Physical Sciences

He found that one single force, called gravity, kept all of the planets in their orbit around the sun. One day, as an apple fell from a tree to the ground, Isaac Newton wondered if the same force that made the apple fall to Earth, had anything to do with the movements of the planets.Through mathematics, over the next 20 years, he refined his new theory. Isaac Newton even published a book explaining gravity, along with other things about the universe. He says uniform laws are followed by nature, and that all of the motion the the entire universe can be described and measured mathematically. Throughout his life, he discovered three laws of motion, and titled them Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. The first law is the Law of Inertia. This basically states that an object in motion, will retain its state of motion. The second law is force equals mass times acceleration. So, the more mass to an object, more force is needed to accelerate it. Finally, the third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This means that when you push an object, it pushed back equally as hard in the opposite direction. In conclusion, Isaac Newton still impacts us today because we still use all of his laws, and he also partly discovered a branch of mathematics called calculus, in which we still use

Newton along with Galileo had a huge impact of Scientific Revolution because he helped shape it in powerful ways. Newton developed a physical law that has become known as Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. In scientific jargon, the law states, ‘any two bodies in the universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them’ Another major contribution made by Newton was the formulation of the Laws of Motion. Newton created three of them. Newton's’ first law recognized Galileo’s concept, this law is often referred to as the term of inertia. ELABORATE AND

The general and widespread acceptance of Sir Isaac Newton’s models and laws may often be taken for granted, but this has not always been so. Throughout history, scientists and philosophers have built on each other’s theories to create improved and often revolutionary models. Although Newton was neither the first nor the last to bring major innovations to society, he was one of the most notable ones; many of his contributions are still in use today. With the formulation of his laws of motion, Sir Isaac Newton contributed to the downfall of Aristotelianism and provided a universal quantitative system for approximating and explaining a wide range of phenomena of space and the physics of motion, revolutionizing the study and understanding

the heliocentric solar system. Johannes Kepler further modified the heliocentric system, by mathematically showing that the planets’ orbits are elliptical. With his invention of the telescope, Galileo made new observations about the solar system and found mathematical laws that described the movement of the planets. Later, Isaac Newton established a universal law of gravity. With the new scientific discoveries, the gap between religion and science increased. Science revolutionized the human though and its understanding of the universe.

Isaac Newton is considered one of the most important philosophies (scientist) in history. One of the biggest accomplishments the newton created was discovering the theory of gravity. Defined in the Principia, his theory about gravity helped to explain the movements of the planets and the Sun. This theory is known today as Newton's law of universal gravitation. Also Newton's created the laws of motion were three fundamental laws of physics that laid the foundation for classical

Newton’s most important work, titled Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica contained his famous laws of motion, as well as new types of maths. Newton

Newton was the Englishmen who formulated the modern laws of motion and mechanics. It remained unchallenged until the twentieth century. The core of his thinking was the concept of the universe. He declared that all bodies whatsoever are endowed with the principle of mutual gravitation. He was the grand unifying idea of early modern science. (Ways of the World, 557)

He discovered the laws of planetary motion, explained how gravity works, and invented calculus, a new branch of mathematics that proved invaluable to modern scientists and mathematicians.

Before Newton talked about gravitation the main knowledge of scientists was a elementary knowledge of optics, mechanics and astronomy.Copernicus Kepler and Galileo provided the background knowledge of the stars and planets, but Newton used their data to discover the whole gravitational system.10Newton reasoned that the planets and all other physical objects in the universe moved through mutual attraction of gravity.Newton said that every other object in the universe affected every other object through gravity.This explained why the planets move in an orderly fashion. Newton found that “the force of gravity towards the whole planet did arise from and was compounded of the forces of gravity towards all it’s parts, and towards every one part was in the inverse proportion of the squares of the distances from this part.”Newton proves all of this mathematically. This was known to be the single most important contribution to physics that ever has been made.11

At its climax the scientific revolution would bring enormous change with the revolutionary contributions made by Isaac Newton. Newton, building on previous works produced the concepts of gravity, and he developed the three laws of motion which could be accurately proved through mathematical calculations. These discoveries about the natural world would serve to mend past uncertainties which in turn gave people real hope. It was the beginning of an end of Europe’s dark times and the birth of many new innovations and developments that were to come in the eighteenth century. It was truly a new age where through reason one could become fully become enlightened.

One of the most well known is, “To every action there is always an opposed and equal reaction”.2 These three basic theories are the most widely known theories that Newton proposed. The development of these theories founded what is now modern physics. These theories also gained Newton attention and credibility in the scientific community, which further helped spread his accomplishments.

Isaac Newton was a scientific genius who helped the world understand many concepts. Isaac Newton is probably most famous for his discovery of the laws of motion which describe gravity for the first time. The laws of motion also described the force of an object depended on two things, mass and acceleration. With Newton’s help the modern world has been able to innovate and invent many things some that during Newton’s time was thought of as impossible. Isaac Newton was a scientific genius who was the first to describe gravity, he wrote three laws of motion, and finally helped modernize the world with the understanding of gravity.

Sir Isaac Newton is one of the most important scientists in history with Albert Einstein, Aristotle, and Galileo. He was born in Woolsthorpe, England on January 4, 1643 and died March 31, 1727 in London, England. During his lifetime Newton discovered and invented many things, while also studying lots of classic philosophers and astronomers. Newton’s wide range of discoveries formed the basis for modern physics. Not only did he give us the three laws of motion, but he also gave us the origins of color and calculus. These discoveries play big roles in our world today.

In order for Newton to have discovered the mathematical genius of calculus, he first tried to understand the world around him through physical science. As a result he formulated the famous and well-known Three Laws of Motion, which looked to explain the effect of gravity on falling objects and how objects react with each other. To explain his theories of motion and gravity, Newton came up with calculus, which provided a method to find the change in an objects position and velocity with respect to time. Furthermore, Newton studied a vast amount of work by past prominent mathematicians. Through his extensive research and brilliance he realized that the earlier approaches to finding tangents to curves and to find the area under curves were actually inverse operations of each other and through seeing this relation, he formed the basis of calculus to answer his thoughts about the natural world. Differential calculus was one of his most important findings and is described by the Funk & Wagnall’s New World Encyclopedia as providing a, “method of finding the slope of the tangent to a curve at a certain point; related rates of change, such as the rate at which the area of a circle increases (in square feet per minute) in terms of the radius (in feet) and the rate at which the

Alan Francis Chalmers is an associate professor who works extensive in the history and philosophy of science (physical). Alan Chalmers has taught at the University of Sydney since 1971, first in the School of Philosophy, and from 1987 at the Unit for the History and Philosophy of Science. He attained a B.Sc. in physics at the University of Bristol, and his M.Sc. in physics from the University of Manchester. His Ph.D. on the electromagnetic theory of J.C. Maxwell was granted by the University of London. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Humanities in 1997. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Flinders Philosophy Department since 1999.