Historische en filosofische perspectieven op de ontwikkeling van de mechanica en gravitatiefysica van Newton tot Lagrange en Laplace

This project aims to show that the disentanglement of metaphysics and physics and the corresponding mathematization of physics took much longer, and was much more complex, than is commonly assumed. Reconsidering thechanging relationship between metaphysics, physics, and mathematics in the wake of Newton's Principia (1687-1788), the project challenges the view that the Scientific Revolution immediately gave birth to physics as we know it today. During the seventeenth metaphysical and scientific questions were often intertwined inseparably, and it was only during the eighteenth century that the strong conviction grew that the pursuit of physics must be separated from metaphysical questions. This decline of meatphysics was, as the story goes, inversely proportional to the increased belief in the power of mathematics. However, the geometrical approach ofGalileo, Huygens or Newton hardly looked anything like mathematical physics today, and it was only in virtue of the eighteenth-century development of the calculus that physics gained its more formal character. My project aims to examine this evolution from both a historical and philosophical point of view.

Trefwoorden:Newton, Lagrange

Disciplines:Filosofie

Project type:PhD project