Newton: Hypotheses non fingo

In 1543, Nicolas Copernicus died, legend has it, with one of the first copies of his book in his hands; De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres). Copernicus dedicated his book to Pope Paul III, perhaps out of concern that the ideas the pages contained would be ill received by the Roman Church; that the earth and other planets orbited around the sun.

It could be argued the Copernicus was one of the first of his kind - a group of academics and thinkers who would provide a new way of conceiving of the natural world and the place within it of human beings. This new way of thinking involved making many detailed and repeated observations of phenomenon and then working out systems of description of how and why the observed phenomenon interacted in the manner in which they did. Despite how this may sound obvious to us, looking through it from our perspective in the 21st century, we must remember that this change of ideas did not arrive overnight. All of the pioneers of early science held beliefs that would appear to be contradictory - in one instance, a mathematical proof and description of a phenomenon and simultenously an attachment to tradition, myth, metaphysics and theology in relation to the same subject.

By 1605 Johannes Kepler, a german astronomer, astrologer and mathematician had studied observations of planetary motion and determined that planets travelled in a manner that obeyed three relatively simple mathematical laws – notably, these dealt with planets travelling in ellipses. Despite being an accomplished mathematician, Kepler was greatly motivated by what he believed was God’s geometrical plan of the universe - and thus he made great efforts to correspond the motions of heavenly bodies with religious concepts.

Later in 1632, Galileo, a contemporary of Kepler’s got into trouble with the church due to his support of Copernicus. Actually, there was a bit more to it than that… Galileo was asked by Pope Urban VII personally to present arguments both for and against the sun being at the centre of our solar system. For some unknown reason, tempting the wrath of the church, in his book Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems Galileo created a ridiculous character who defended the old view of an Earth centred solar system. The character’s name was Simplicus, a person of less than stellar intelligence who was often confused and appeared foolish. As well, the fact that the book was published in colloquial Italian, not Latin allowed the general public to read it – and hence exposed the Pope directly to public ridicule.

Despite what we may now judge as spectacularly poor political choices in book publishing, Galileo was perhaps the first truly modern scientist – he performed extensive theoretical and experimental work on the motion of bodies and insisted on a mathematical description of these phenomenon. Among other achievements, Galileo determined the Principle of Inertia (A body moving on a level surface will continue in the same direction at constant speed unless disturbed); the first accurate mathematical description of acceleration and the basic principle of relativity (that the laws of physics are the same in any system which is moving at a constant speed in a straight line, regardless of it’s speed or direction – hence no absolute motion or absolute rest).

But what came next?