6/21/2023 0 Comments Isaac newton discovered gravity![]() ![]() Newton deduced them from gravitational dynamics with his laws of motion. Laws of falling bodies were known from Galileo. The same force that makes solar system work, is responsible for apple falling. ![]() This was perhaps the most crucial insight. Most importantly, Isaac Newton postulated the universality of gravity. Halley, completely flabbergasted, wondered, ‘here is a man, solved the age old mystery of solar system, lost his notebook!’ Newton then promised Halley to send the proof by calculating again from scratch and he did. Newton, for some time, searched his tables and drawers but didn’t find. A surprised Halley asked Newton, ‘how do you know?’ Again the casual reply came ‘I have calculated it’!! No guessing, no conjecture! A super stunned Halley immediately asked Newton to show him the proof. When Halley asked Newton, what would be the orbit of a particle under inverse square law of force, satisfying certain energy condition, Newton casually replied ‘an ellipse’. Isaac Newton invented this whole branch of calculus to sort out these central force problems (well, Leibniz also did independently)! He then discovered that if the force field is inverse square the orbit would be a conic section!ĭuring a casual discussion with Halley, Newton informed him about all these. But since differential calculus was not discovered then, these problems were extremely difficult to solve. Central force problems were known to the then specialists like Edmond Halley, Robert Hooke or Isaac Barrow. ![]() Newton showed that the problem of solar system was a central force problem. Christiaan Huygens made some modifications. People, genuine experts, were struggling with the problem. It was to explain Kepler’s laws of planetary motions. Newton’s motivation came from a scientific requirement. Would you say, he discovered gravity? Even if you do, I ask you what value it added? Can you calculate the orbit of a comet? Does it predict seasonal changes? Can it explain why the orbits of heavenly bodies are conic sections? You can’t. ![]() These were various random/astrological speculations without any empirical foundations.įor example, in the 6th century, a philosopher (probably ‘Dionysius the Areopagite (pseuodo)’) wrote something like this: ‘All bodies should attract every other bodies since they are all filled with God’s love’. None of their ideas or thoughts were motivated by causal requirements. People, before the time of Newton or Galileo, had no/foggy understanding of causality. Even older than Bhaskara! These speculations had nothing to do with science or gravity. That material bodies can influence one another at a distance, is a much older thought. This was totally new and there was no precedence whatsoever. Never before Isaac Newton, anybody in their wildest dreams thought that there could be a single mathematical law which would unite heavenly bodies and earth and it would quantitatively describe tides, seasonal changes, lunar size variations, motion of comets… list is endless., all expressed in a simple mathematical package, which you can use to predict a HUGE class of phenomena up to incredible precision! Never before, anything remotely similar, had happened!įrom almost a total nothing, Isaac Newton, single-handedly, changed the face of knowledge for ever and ever. Gravity is a unique insight in the history of human thought. ![]()
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