Schiff 1

The Formation of a Masterpiece:Newton’s Theory of UniversalGravitation

Professor Paul Berman

December 14

, 2005 Tyrone Schiff

Physics 111

Schiff 2The Formation of a Masterpiece: Newton’s Theory of Universal GravitationThroughout the evolution of scientific thought, there have been numerous published articles, essays, and books that have touched on a variety of scientific mattersthat ultimately contour the public’s image of their surrounding universe. Scientificfindings most definitely have a forceful impact on society. People are generally interestedwith how their environment is constructed around them, and further, how they fit into thisframework. Scientists, ever since antiquity, have had a knack at stirring controversy viawritten word. For hundreds of years it has been common for scientists in their particular field to organize their data and present it in a neat unified form as written text. Ptolemycompiled one of the most extensive collaborations of information in his book the

Almagest

. Ptolemy’s book persisted for a long while with its theory of a geocentric, or Earth-centered, solar system. Society looked very favorably upon the analysis thatPtolemy had presented. He had kept their ideas consistent with the church, even thoughthe method to prove that Earth was in the center was a tedious and convoluted procedure.However, the general public looked happily upon Ptolemy’s findings.A lot of time passed before a maverick to the idea of geocentricism arose. Nicolaus Copernicus made his statement in his finest effort,

De Revolutionibus

, whichadvocated a solar system that was heliocentric, sun-centered, and ran directly counter tothe ideas that Ptolemy had contended. This started an uproar that was to persist for thenext 200 years. Copernicus was so aware that the groundbreaking findings that he was toconvey in his book were going to shock the world that he wouldn’t allow its publicationuntil he had passed away. Apparently, he clasped it in his hands while lying in his death

Schiff 3 bed. Written word has a great deal of power. Not only did this shake everyone’s idea of the solar system, but it also started a trend of brilliant scientists working towards figuringout a correct answer regarding this dispute. Shortly thereafter, astronomers like TychoBrahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galili started their work trying to decipher this code by collecting data and organizing their ideas in a succinct manner. Most noticeably,Kepler developed his famed three laws, which impacted the future of planetary motionforever. He was lucky enough to inherit an overwhelmingly accurate record of raw datathat his predecessor and teacher, Tycho Brahe, had left for him. Kepler’s laws werewidely regarded and were still in the process of being carved into the stone of scientifictruth when a fellow by the name of Isaac Newton came along and changed the face of physics, mathematics, and the philosophy forever. Isaac Newton was able to amalgamatethe concepts, data, and observations of those before him and developed one of the mostconcrete images of our universe, which only has come into dispute very recently withAlbert Einstein’s theory of relativity.The medium in which Sir Isaac Newton, who was knighted by Queen Anne in1705, conveyed his inventive ideas regarding the motion of planets was via the

PrincipiaMathematica

. This document can easily be considered his most influential work. Though Newton had written other books prior to the

Principia

Method of Fluxions

and

De MotuCorporum in Gyrum

, there is no document that compares to the weighty arguments andexplanations that are so prevalent in the

Principia

. It is clear that the slow, systematicevolution of ideas related to the universe reached a new pinnacle of understanding with Newton’s finest product,