The clockwork universe is a concept which compares the

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents. It comprises all of existence, any fundamental interaction, physical process and physical constant, and therefore all forms of matter and energy, and the structures they form, from s ...

to a

mechanical clock A clock or chronometer is a device that measures and displays 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 ye ...

. 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. It evolved 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): ...

in parallel with the emergence of Newton's laws governing motion and gravity.

History

This idea was very popular among deists during the

, when

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 ...

derived his laws of motion, and showed that alongside the law of universal

gravitation In physics, gravity (), also known as gravitation or a gravitational interaction, is a fundamental interaction, a mutual attraction between all massive particles. On Earth, gravity takes a slightly different meaning: the observed force b ...

, they could predict the behaviour of both terrestrial objects and the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization 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 "Sola ...

. 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 Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in ad ...

, 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. Clarke's altered, Nontrinitarian revision of the 1 ...

wrote: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 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 related to science and technology. The National Science an ...

(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 daylight, daylit side and the dark night side of a astronomical object, planetary body. The terminator is defined as the locus (mathematics), locus of points on a planet or natural s ...

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