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Elements Of The Philosophy Of Newton
''Elements of the Philosophy of Newton'' (french: Éléments de la philosophie de Newton) is a book written by the philosopher Voltaire and co-authored by mathematician and physicist Emilie du Chatelet, Émilie du Châtelet in 1738 that helped to popularize the theories and thought of Isaac Newton. This book, coupled with ''Letters on the English'', written in 1733, demonstrated that Voltaire had moved beyond the simple poetry and plays he had written previously. A new edition was published in 1745 that contained an initial section on Newton's metaphysics, originally published separately in 1740. By 1745, when the edition of Voltaire's ''Éléments'' was published, the tides of thought were turning his way, and by 1750 the perception had become widespread that France had been converted from erroneous Cartesianism to modern Newtonianism thanks to Voltaire. Charles Coulston Gillispie says that "Voltaire explained Newtonian science to the educated public more successfully than any ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voltaire - Élémens De La Philosophie De Neuton
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—especially Criticism of the Catholic Church, of the Roman Catholic Church—and of slavery. Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including stageplay, plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and scientific Exposition (narrative), expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—especially Criticism of the Catholic Church, of the Roman Catholic Church—and of slavery. Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including stageplay, plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and scientific Exposition (narrative), expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 greatest mathematicians and physicists and among the most influential scientists of all time. He was a key figure in the philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment. His book (''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy''), first published in 1687, established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus. In the , Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Letters On The English
''Letters on the English'' (or ''Letters Concerning the English Nation''; French: ''Lettres philosophiques'') is a series of essays written by Voltaire based on his experiences living in Great Britain between 1726 and 1729. It was published first in English in 1733 and then in French the following year, where it was seen as an attack on the French system of government and was rapidly suppressed. A revised edition appeared in English in 1778 as ''Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais'' (''Philosophical Letters on the English''). Most modern English editions are based on the one from 1734 and typically use the title ''Philosophical Letters'', a direct translation of that version's title. In some ways, the book can be compared with ''Democracy in America'' by Alexis de Tocqueville, in how it flatteringly explains a nation to itself from the perspective of an outsider, as Voltaire's depictions of aspects of English culture, society and government are often given favourable treatment ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cartesianism
Cartesianism is the philosophical and scientific system of René Descartes and its subsequent development by other seventeenth century thinkers, most notably François Poullain de la Barre, Nicolas Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza. Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge. Aristotle and St. Augustine’s work influenced Descartes's cogito argument. Additionally, there is similarity between Descartes’s work and that of the Scottish philosopher, George Campbell’s 1776 publication, titled ''Philosophy of Rhetoric.'' In his ''Meditations on First Philosophy'' he writes, " t what then am I? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands, onceives affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels." Cartesians view the mind as being wholly separate from the corporeal body. Sensation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Coulston Gillispie
Charles Coulston Gillispie (; August 6, 1918 – October 6, 2015) was an American historian of science. He was the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History of Science, Emeritus at Princeton University. He was succeeded by Arno J. Mayer. Life The son of Raymond Livingston Gillispie and Virginia Coulston, Gillispie grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He attended Wesleyan University, graduating in 1940 with a major in Chemistry and gained his PhD from Harvard University in 1949. He also served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Gillispie joined the Department of History at Princeton University, establishing the Princeton Program in History of Science in the 1960s. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963. He was president of the History of Science Society in 1965–66. In 1972, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. He headed the editorial board of the ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography'', for which he received the Dartmouth Medal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sufficient
In logic and mathematics, necessity and sufficiency are terms used to describe a conditional or implicational relationship between two statements. For example, in the conditional statement: "If then ", is necessary for , because the truth of is guaranteed by the truth of (equivalently, it is impossible to have without ). Similarly, is sufficient for , because being true always implies that is true, but not being true does not always imply that is not true. In general, a necessary condition is one that must be present in order for another condition to occur, while a sufficient condition is one that produces the said condition. The assertion that a statement is a "necessary ''and'' sufficient" condition of another means that the former statement is true if and only if the latter is true. That is, the two statements must be either simultaneously true, or simultaneously false. In ordinary English (also natural language) "necessary" and "sufficient" indicate relations betw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Cheselden
William Cheselden (; 19 October 168810 April 1752) was an English surgeon and teacher of anatomy and surgery, who was influential in establishing surgery as a scientific medical profession. Via the medical missionary Benjamin Hobson, his work also helped revolutionize medical practices in China and Japan in the 19th century. Life Cheselden was born at Somerby, Leicestershire. He studied anatomy in London under William Cowper (1666–1709), and began lecturing anatomy in 1710. That same year, he was admitted to the London Company of Barber-Surgeons, passing the final examination on 29 January 1711. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1712 and the following year saw the publishing of his ''Anatomy of the Human Body'', which achieved great popularity becoming an essential study source for students, lasting through thirteen editions, mainly because it was written in English instead of Latin as was customary. In 1718 he was appointed an assistant surgeon at St Thoma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galileo
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the "father" of observational astronomy, modern physics, the scientific method, and modern science. Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of pendulums and "hydrostatic balances". He invented the thermoscope and various military compasses, and used the telescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. His contributions to observational astronomy include telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, observation of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, observation of Saturn's rings, and an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fixed Stars
In astronomy, fixed stars ( la, stellae fixae) is a term to name the full set of glowing points, astronomical objects actually and mainly stars, that appear not to move relative to one another against the darkness of the night sky in the background, unlike the few lights visible at naked eye, including comets, which appear to move slowly between those "fixed" stars along days, weeks or months on the foreground. Generally speaking, the fixed stars comprise all visible stars other than the Sun, plus the faint strip of the Milky Way. Due to their star-like appareance when sighted at naked eye, individual nebulae and other deep-sky objects also are counted among the fixed stars, despite the fact they are not true stars. The term is actually a misnomer due to the fact that those celestial objects are not really fixed with respect to one another; this is only a perceptual illusion, as stars and other extrasolar astronomical objects are so far away from Earth that human vision is unab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
