Sample essay topic, essay writing: Galileo And Newton - 1100 words

Galileo and Newton2/4/97 Galileo believed the physical world to be bounded. He says that allmaterial things have 'this or that shape' and are small or large in relation toother things. He also says that material objects are either in motion or atrest, touching or not touching some other body, and are either one in number, or many. The central properties of the material world are mathematical andstrengthened through experimentation. Galileo excludes the properties of tastes, odors, colors, and so on when describing the material world. He states thatthese properties 'reside only in the consciousness.' These latter propertieswould cease to exist without the living creature so the mathematically definedproperties are the most accurate in describing the material world.

Galileoseems to test his beliefs through experimentation and mathematical reasoning. He sites examples in life that support his hypothesis. His argument is of ascientific nature because he is making a hypothesis on a distinctive type ofconcept. The conclusions that Galileo made relate directly to the work inphysics for which he is so well known. His conclusions put emphasis on shapes, numbers, and motion which are all properties that lend themselves to supportthrough 'reasoning back and forth between theory and experiment.' I feel thatGalileo's argument is a valid one because it explains relations in nature andthe physical world through mathematical analysis. This allows him to define aworld outside of human existence that can be logically calculated and explained. His view describes the world in which living creatures live and not contrasts itto the world within living creatures. The problem with Galileo's view is thatit pioneers a scientific outlook but never actually fulfills it

Newton believes the world is ultimately made up of hard particles thatcan retain different properties. The central properties are solid, massy, impenetrable, and movable particles. He believes God created matter in thebeginning in such a way to allow the particles to take on mathematical forms. His approach is a scientific one because he practices the continual interactionof experiment and theory. It is the hard particles that move in such a way thatcan be assigned certain mathematical principles that clearly explain theinteraction of bodies. Newton's conclusion seems to be a strong one because itdeals with the world being made up of particles and shows how these particlesact with each other in a way that can be explained scientifically.

I like theidea of organized flow in the world and God being the creator of it all. Themathematical/scientific approach offers explanation to how the particles aremoving. Galileo and Newton differ in certain aspects of their understanding ofthe physical world. Galileo doesn't put much emphasis on the role of creativityin science. Newton believes in the mathematical and experimentation outlook ofscience pioneered by Galileo but he believed that new concepts are the productof creative imagination. He felt that math should explain the concepts imagined. Newton extended ideas pioneered by Galileo on issues of forces, masses, shapes, and forms. Newton didn't feel that the scientific theory needed to answer everyquestion asked about a phenomenon in order to be useful. Galileo and Newton make a strong argument for the lack of purposes orvalues in nature.

Their scientific minds sought answers on a logical scale. They could analyze the material world through calculations and in this math wassuitable explanation. In the study of physics, purposes are irrelevant. Physics looks for the mathematical explanation of concepts and doesn't need toanalyze the purpose behind such. It is concerned simply with what happens andhow it is happening. The philosophy of physics could extend the concepts toincorporate purpose. The world is the product of the chance concourse of atoms. Everything is comprised of atoms and it makes up the known world to whichmathematical principles analyze. If there are no purposes in the universe andthis fact is supported through scientific study, then there is purpose in thatscience works to break down the material world to series of facts that areconstantly adapting to one another.

The world view introduced by seventeenth century mechanists is science. Science became the answer or way to the answer. Aristotelian view is concernedwith the final state whereas as the scientists thought the important informationwas the entire process, or efficient causes. It is also concerned with thepurposes and values that are at work in nature while mechanists see nature as amechanism that operates blindly, and the forces of nature are in themselvesentirely indifferent to purposes or values. Newton, in opposition to Aristotle, didn't believe in unknown causes. He wanted answers that were or could beproven. I feel that Newton has the stronger view because his deals withobservable facts and not just concepts.

Newton's ideas about the world extendthe concepts of Democritus. Newton strengthens the mechanistic view byproviding it with mathematical reasoning. Aristotle's argument of Democritusweakens when dealing with Newton. He had scientific evidence that backed up hisclaims. However, Newton still doesn't concern mechanism with the answer of'why' but rather looked to understand the immediate 'how.' Newton would agreethat Democritus didn't support his arguments with fact and that they are mostlyconceptual views. Newton would have to support Democritus for initiating theatomic theory and would probably say that his ideas are relevant and not oversimplified.

Form in the world is the effect of other causes in a long, scientific chain of efficient causes by the interactions of atoms. In a way Newton's cosmological ideas are better because he was able tosupport interactions within the universe with mathematical reasoning. Heeventually came to the belief that 'there is no scientific explanation for thepattern of the planets,' holding that coplanar orbits with velocities in thesame direction cannot be accounted for by natural causes. This lead him to theanswer that God prevents the universe from collapsing. I feel this is betterthan Timaeus's view of patterns in the cosmos because he has to discard certaininformation because he himself can't find mathematical proof for these theories. Later, Laplace will be able to account for the coplanar character of the solarsystem by showing inadequacies in Newton's science. This is a credit to Newtonin that if he couldn't back a theory with mathematical reason and experiment, hewasn't just going to assume it to be true. Galileo and Newton along with Platobelieved in atoms or particles as the material of which all things are made of. I also infer that they would somewhat agree on how truth can be perceiveddifferently in the same manner that opinion is different from knowledge (thisidea was illustrated by Plato in his divided line analogy). For the mechanists, opinion is a perception of truth but an incorrect one because it is notsupported with mathematical reasoning and experimentation, which would then makeit knowledge.

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