Newton Innovation And Controversy

Unique among celebrated scientists, Newton was equally gifted at theoretical physics, experimental physics and pure mathematics. He was also exceptional in another, less well-recognised sense. No one has come near to equalling his extraordinary analytical power.Analytically-derived truths are controversial because such truths can only be established by extended experimental verification or by their success in generating further truths by systematic development. While Newton's optics was ultimately established by the first method and his theory of gravity by the second, much of his work on other subjects, though equally powerful and innovative, has never been totally established as part of this analytical context. This book discusses why the innovations matter today and why they were, and sometimes still are, controversial.Published as the third of a three-part set for Newtonian scholars, historians of science, philosophers of science and others interested in Newtonian physics.All Titles: 1.Newton and Modern Physics 2.Newton and the Great World System 3.Newton — Innovation and Controversy

Surveys the message, homiletical method, and the effect of Newton's preaching during the Olney and London periods, along with Newton as hymnwriter and the influence of his Olney hymns. Includes many previously unpublished photographs and new data. --Publisher (mellenpress.com).

"A shrewd and compelling examination of how political figures throughout history have used scientific findings to achieve their objectives--just as scientists have often put political forces to work to achieve their own goals"--

Joseph W. Dauben, a leading authority on the history of mathematics in Europe, China, and North America, has played a pivotal role in promoting international scholarship over the last forty years. This Festschrift volume, showcasing recent historical research by leading experts on three continents, offers a global perspective on important themes in this field.

This book demonstrates the way in which William Blake aligned his idiosyncratic concept of the Selfhood – the lens through which the despiritualised subject beholds the material world – with the atomistic materialism of the Epicurean school as it was transmitted through the first-century BC Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. By addressing this philosophical debt, this study sets out a threefold re-evaluation of Blake’s work: to clarify the classical stream of Blake’s philosophical heritage through Lucretius; to return Blake to his historical moment, a thirty-year period from 1790 to 1820 which has been described as the second Lucretian moment in England; and to employ a new exegetical model for understanding the phenomenological parameters and epistemological frameworks of Blake’s mythopoeia. Accordingly, it is revealed that Blake was not only aware of classical atomistic cosmogony and sense-based epistemology but that he systematically mapped postlapsarian existence onto an Epicurean framework.

In my early years I was constituted in the exacting imperatives of philosophical analysis. That stern face is present in the composition of the Newton essays chosen here for republication. It is my hope that potential readers will be patient with the old Adam of analysis, and seize the portrait of Newton's intellec tual world presented in these essays. It is gratifying for me to acknowledge the encouragement of Robert Butts and John Nicholas of the University of Western Ontario, intellectual comrades in arms. It was at Western that I began my intellectual journey, and many of the present members of the Philosophy Department remain my friends and mentors. I thank also Marta Spranzi Zuber who long ago believed in the merit of my Newton scholarship. But most important to me is the sustaining encouragement of Professor Barbara Tuchanska, who shares my vision of the historicity of scientific thought. It is a pleasure to express my gratitude for membership, over twenty years, in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. It is the mecca for one who seeks to understand. J. E.

The age-old debate between science and faith invites more players to the fore in this book. Proponents of the origin of life as a natural process and natural selection as a mechanism of evolution come face to face with advocates for the intervention of a creator, while other scholars believe that the gulf between science and religion should be bridged.At turns disconcerting, revelatory, and profound, readers are invited to leave their preconceived notions at the door and join these writers in this curious journey of discovery.