In the

history of science The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal. Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Meso ...

, the clockwork universe compares the universe to a

mechanical clock A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and the ...

. It continues ticking along, as a perfect machine, with its gears governed by the

laws of physics Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) a ...

, making every aspect of the machine predictable.

History

This idea was very popular among deists during the

Enlightenment Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to: Age of Enlightenment * Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...

, when

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the g ...

derived his laws of motion, and showed that alongside the law of universal gravitation, they could predict the behaviour of both terrestrial objects and the

Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

. A similar concept goes back, to John of Sacrobosco's early 13th-century introduction to astronomy: '' On the Sphere of the World''. In this widely popular medieval text, Sacrobosco spoke of the universe as the ''machina mundi'', the machine of the world, suggesting that the reported eclipse of the Sun at the crucifixion of Jesus was a disturbance of the order of that machine. Responding to

Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mat ...

, a prominent supporter of the theory, in the

Leibniz–Clarke correspondence The Leibniz–Clarke correspondence was a scientific, theological and philosophical debate conducted in an exchange of letters between the German thinker Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, an English supporter of Isaac Newton during the ...

Samuel Clarke Samuel Clarke (11 October 1675 – 17 May 1729) was an English philosopher and Anglican cleric. He is considered the major British figure in philosophy between John Locke and George Berkeley. Early life and studies Clarke was born in Norwich ...

wrote: :"The Notion of the World's being a great Machine, going on without the Interposition of God, as a Clock continues to go without the Assistance of a Clockmaker; is the Notion of Materialism and Fate, and tends, (under pretence of making God a Supra-mundane Intelligence,) to exclude Providence and God's Government in reality out of the World."Davis, Edward B. 1991. "Newton's rejection of the "Newtonian world view" : the role of divine will in Newton's natural philosophy." Science and Christian Belief 3, no. 2: 103-117. Clarke quotation taken from article. In 2009, artist Tim Wetherell created a large wall piece for

Questacon Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre is an interactive science communication facility in Canberra, Australia. It is a museum with more than 200 interactive exhibits relating to science and technology. It has many science p ...

(The National Science and Technology centre in Canberra, Australia) representing the concept of the clockwork universe. This steel artwork contains moving gears, a working clock, and a movie of the

lunar terminator A terminator or twilight zone is a moving line that divides the daylit side and the dark night side of a planetary body. The terminator is defined as the locus of points on a planet or moon where the line through the center of its parent star i ...

References

External links

"The Clockwork Universe".
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200214215544/http://physicalworld.org/restless_universe/html/ru_2_11.html , date=2020-02-14 ''The Physical World''. Ed. John Bolton, Alan Durrant, Robert Lambourne, Joy Manners, Andrew Norton. History of physics Isaac Newton Astronomical hypotheses Anthropic principle Physical cosmology Determinism

History

See also

References

Further reading

External links