Posted by Andrew McNab on December 26, 1999 at 07:27:45:
In Reply to: Newton's impact on modern science posted by JonBro on December 24, 1999 at 16:31:31:
: I need to
: specifically about how Newton's work affected
: that of the 20th century scientists.
The first thing I'd say is that in the 20th century,
Newton provided something to react against, and
to disagree with, more than anything else.
: I saw
: somewhere mentioned that he developed a research
: method that replaced the one that was currently
: used.
Sort of. Newton was often presented as advocating
the "Inductive Method" - that means making observations
here and then trying to make general theories from
that - for example, it would be inductive to say
that, since apples drop off trees in England,
apples will drop off trees _everywhere_ (and this
is false, since I could take an apple tree up in
the space shuttle and the apples won't drop off
it.)
Nevertheless, this method is at least rooted in
experiment and is an improvement on much of the
science of his time which was done by argument
rather than observation.
In the 20th century, Karl Popper's philosophy
of science (which is the dominant philosophy among
practicising scientists) is itself a reaction
to Induction. In brief, Popper views theories as
sources of testable predictions. We extract predictions
from theories under test, compare them with experiments and
observations and either (a) disprove the theory if they
disagree or (b) say that the theory has survived and is
corroborated (not proved) by the the successful prediction.
(It is interesting to note that some of Newton's behaviour
is quite Popperian: eg checking to see if there was indeed a
gravitational attraction between Saturn and Jupiter which was
a completely unexpected phenomenon before Principia.)
: If someone could flesh this out that would
: be greatly appreciated. Any other things about
: how he affected the work of 20th century
: scientists would be greatly appreciated.
Has anyone else got any more suggestions for 20th
century influence that Newton had?
Andrew