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In the history of science, the clockwork universe compares the universe to a mechanical clock. It continues ticking along, as a perfect machine, with its gears governed by the
''The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World''
HarperCollins. * David Brewster (1850) "A Short Scheme of the True Religion", manuscript quoted in ''Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton'', cited in Dolnick, page 65. *
The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick
',
"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
In the history of science, the clockwork universe compares the universe to a mechanical clock. 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) ...
, making every aspect of the machine predictable.
History
This idea was very popular amongdeists
Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin ''deus'', meaning " god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that empirical reason and observation of ...
during the Enlightenment, 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 grea ...
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 mathem ...
, a prominent supporter of the theory, in the Leibniz–Clarke correspondence, 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 ...
(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 ...
.
See also
*Mechanical philosophy
The mechanical philosophy is a form of natural philosophy which compares the universe to a large-scale mechanism (i.e. a machine). The mechanical philosophy is associated with the scientific revolution of early modern Europe. One of the first expo ...
* Determinism
*Eternalism (philosophy of time)
In the philosophy of space and time, eternalism is an approach to the ontological nature of time, which takes the view that all existence in time is equally ''real'', as opposed to presentism or the growing block universe theory of time, in whi ...
*Orrery
An orrery is a mechanical model of the Solar System that illustrates or predicts the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons, usually according to the heliocentric model. It may also represent the relative sizes of these bodies ...
*Philosophy of space and time
Philosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology and epistemology of space and time. While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time wa ...
* Superdeterminism
References
Further reading
* E. J. Dijksterhuis (1961) ''The Mechanization of the World Picture'',Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
* Dolnick, Edward (2011''The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World''
HarperCollins. * David Brewster (1850) "A Short Scheme of the True Religion", manuscript quoted in ''Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton'', cited in Dolnick, page 65. *
Anneliese Maier
Anneliese Maier (; November 17, 1905 in Tübingen, Germany – December, 1971 in Rome, Italy) was a German historian of science particularly known for her work researching natural philosophy in the middle ages.
Biography
Anneliese Maier was th ...
(1938) ''Die Mechanisierung des Weltbildes im 17. Jahrhundert''
* Webb, R.K. ed. Knud Haakonssen (1996) "The Emergence of Rational Dissent." ''Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain'', Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Cambridge University Pre ...
page 19.
* Westfall, Richard S. ''Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England''. p. 201.
* Riskins, Jessica (2016) The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick
',
University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...
.
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