Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae
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Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae
''Quaestiones quaedam philosophicae'' (''Certain philosophical questions'') is the name given to a set of notes that Isaac Newton kept for himself during his earlier years in Cambridge. They concern questions in the natural philosophy of the day that interested him. Apart from the light it throws on the formation of his own agenda for research, the major interest in these notes is the documentation of the unaided development of the scientific method in the mind of Newton, whereby every question is put to experimental test. Introduction The Quaestiones are contained in an octavo notebook, currently in the Cambridge University Library, which was Newton's basic notebook in which he set down in 1661 his readings in the required curriculum in Cambridge and his later readings in mechanical philosophy. He entered notes from both ends. The initial notes, in Greek, were on Aristotle's logic at one end and his ethics, at the other. But following this, he drew a line across the page, bel ...
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Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed. His book (''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy''), first published in 1687, achieved the Unification of theories in physics#Unification of gravity and astronomy, first great unification in physics and established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy, shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating calculus, infinitesimal calculus, though he developed calculus years before Leibniz. Newton contributed to and refined the scientific method, and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science. In the , Newton formulated the Newton's laws of motion, laws of motion and Newton's law of universal g ...
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Joseph Glanvill
Joseph Glanvill (1636 – 4 November 1680) was an English writer, philosopher, and clergyman. Not himself a scientist, he has been called "the most skillful apologist of the virtuosi", or in other words the leading propagandist for the approach of the English natural philosopher Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe, while ignoring any supernatural influence. It was dominant before the developme ...s of the later 17th century. In 1661 he predicted "To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic conveyances may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence." Life Born in 1636 at Plymouth, he was raised in a strict Puritan household, and educated at University of Oxford, Oxford University, where he graduated B.A. from Exeter College, Oxford, Exeter College in 1655, M.A. from Lincoln College, Oxford, Lincoln C ...
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Richard S
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic language">Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'strong in rule'. Nicknames include " Richie", " Dick", " Dickon", " Dickie", " Rich", " Rick", "Rico (name), Rico", " Ricky", and more. Richard is a common English (the name was introduced into England by the Normans), German and French male name. It's also used in many more languages, particularly Germanic, such as Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Dutch, as well as other languages including Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Finnish. Richard is cognate with variants of the name in other European languages, such as the Swedish "Rickard", the Portuguese and Spanish "Ricardo" and the Italian "Riccardo" (see comprehensive variant list below). People named Richard Multiple people with the same name * Richard Ander ...
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Opticks
''Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light'' is a collection of three books by Isaac Newton that was published in English language, English in 1704 (a scholarly Latin translation appeared in 1706). (''Opticks'' was originally published in 1704). The treatise analyzes the fundamental nature of light by means of the refraction of light with prisms and lenses, the diffraction of light by closely spaced sheets of glass, and the behaviour of color mixtures with spectral lights or pigment powders. ''Opticks'' was Newton's second major work on physical science and it is considered one of the three major works on optics during the Scientific Revolution (alongside Johannes Kepler's ''Astronomiae Pars Optica'' and Christiaan Huygens' ''Treatise on Light''). Overview The publication of ''Opticks'' represented a major contribution to science, different from but in some ways rivalling the ''Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Principia ...
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Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western, Arabic–Persian, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the spiritual problem of how to reach enlightenment with the exploration of the nature of reality and the ways of arriving at knowledge. Chinese philosophy focuses principally on ...
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Aristotelian Physics
Aristotelian physics is the form of natural philosophy described in the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC). In his work ''Physics'', Aristotle intended to establish general principles of change that govern all natural bodies, both living and inanimate, celestial and terrestrialincluding all motion (change with respect to place), quantitative change (change with respect to size or number), qualitative change, and substantial change (" coming to be" existence.html" ;"title="oming into existence">oming into existence, 'generation'or "passing away" [no longer existing, 'corruption']). To Aristotle, 'physics' was a broad field including subjects which would now be called the philosophy of mind, sensory experience, memory, anatomy and biology. It constitutes the foundation of the thought underlying many of his works. Key concepts of Aristotelian physics include the structuring of the cosmos into concentric spheres, with the Earth at the centre and celestial spher ...
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Walter Charleton
Walter Charleton (2 February 1619 – 24 April 1707) was a natural philosopher and English writer. According to Jon Parkin, he was "the main conduit for the transmission of Epicurean ideas to England".Jon Parkin, ''Science, Religion and Politics in Restoration England: Richard Cumberland's De Legibus Naturae'' (1999), p. 149. Life He was the son of the rector of Shepton Mallet in Somerset, where he was born 2 February 1619. He received his early education from his father, and when sixteen entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford, under the tuition of John Wilkins. At the early age of 22 (1641) he received the degree of M.D. and in the same year was appointed physician to Charles I, who was then at Oxford. In 1650 Charleton settled in London, and was on 8 April admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians. A royalist, he was appointed physician to the exiled king Charles II but remained in London writing, in Russell Street, Covent Garden. :s:Charleton, Walter (DNB00) He was continue ...
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Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke (; 18 July 16353 March 1703) was an English polymath who was active as a physicist ("natural philosopher"), astronomer, geologist, meteorologist, and architect. He is credited as one of the first scientists to investigate living things at microscopic scale in 1665, using a compound microscope that he designed. Hooke was an impoverished scientific inquirer in young adulthood who went on to become one of the most important scientists of his time. After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Hooke (as a surveyor and architect) attained wealth and esteem by performing more than half of the Boundary (real estate), property line surveys and assisting with the city's rapid reconstruction. Often vilified by writers in the centuries after his death, his reputation was restored at the end of the twentieth century and he has been called "England's Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo [da Vinci]". Hooke was a Fellow of the Royal Society and from 1662, he was its first Curator of Experimen ...
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Law Of Reflection
Specular reflection, or regular reflection, is the mirror-like reflection of waves, such as light, from a surface. The law of reflection states that a reflected ray of light emerges from the reflecting surface at the same angle to the surface normal as the incident ray, but on the opposing side of the surface normal in the plane formed by the incident and reflected rays. The earliest known description of this behavior was recorded by Hero of Alexandria ( AD c. 10–70). Later, Alhazen gave a complete statement of the law of reflection. He was first to state that the incident ray, the reflected ray, and the normal to the surface all lie in a same plane perpendicular to reflecting plane. Specular reflection may be contrasted with diffuse reflection, in which light is scattered away from the surface in a range of directions. Law of reflection When light encounters a boundary of a material, it is affected by the optical and electronic response functions of the material to ...
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Law Of Refraction
Snell's law (also known as the Snell–Descartes law, the ibn-Sahl law, and the law of refraction) is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water, glass, or air. In optics, the law is used in ray tracing to compute the angles of incidence or refraction, and in experimental optics to find the refractive index of a material. The law is also satisfied in meta-materials, which allow light to be bent "backward" at a negative angle of refraction with a negative refractive index. The law states that, for a given pair of media, the ratio of the sines of angle of incidence \left(\theta_1 \right) and angle of refraction \left(\theta_2\right) is equal to the refractive index of the second medium with regard to the first (n_) which is equal to the ratio of the refractive indices \left(\tfrac\right) of the two media, or e ...
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Thomas Streete
Thomas Street (also spelled Streete) (1621–1689) was an English astronomer, known for his writings on celestial motions. He has sometimes been confused with Thomas Street the judge, who lived from 1626 to 1696. The crater Street on the Moon is named after him. Life According to '' Brief Lives'' by Street's contemporary John Aubrey, Street was born at Castle Lyons in Ireland on 5 March 1621, and died "in Chanon-row (vulgarly Channel-rowe) at Westminster, 17 August 1689, and is buried in the church yard of the new chapell there". Astronomy On 3 May 1661 Streete observed a transit of Mercury from Long Acre in London with Nicholas Mercator and Christiaan Huygens. Streete subsequently disputed Hevelius's observation of this event. The same year also saw Streete publishing ''Astronomia Carolina, a new theorie of Coelestial Motions''. An ''Appendix to Astronomia Carolina'' (including tables) followed in 1664. ''Astronomia Carolina'' was widely read, and used by students who later ...
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Kepler's Laws Of Planetary Motion
In astronomy, Kepler's laws of planetary motion, published by Johannes Kepler in 1609 (except the third law, which was fully published in 1619), describe the orbits of planets around the Sun. These laws replaced circular orbits and epicycles in the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus with elliptical orbits and explained how planetary velocities vary. The three laws state that: # The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci. # A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time. # The square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of the length of the semi-major axis of its orbit. The elliptical orbits of planets were indicated by calculations of the orbit of Mars. From this, Kepler inferred that other bodies in the Solar System, including those farther away from the Sun, also have elliptical orbits. The second law establishes that when a planet is closer to the Sun, it travels fa ...
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