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History 181B:  Modern Physics
Class 2 (1/19/01)
Natural philosophy and mechanical explanation
Navigation
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Outline Defining disciplines
When physics came to be
Natural history vs. natural philosophy
The Scientific Revolution:  introduction
Mathematical astronomy, terrestrial mechanics, gravity and celestial mechanics
A terminological detour
The significance of Newton
The Principia
The Opticks
Mechanical philosophy
Framing hypotheses
Newton's complications:  theology and alchemy
The post-Newtonian program (begin)
Rational mechanics
Laplacian physics (next time)
Names and terms
Primary Secondary
natural history, natural philosophy
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Philosophia naturalis principia mathematica (1687)
Opticks (1704)
mechanics, dynamics, kinematics
mechanical (corpuscular) philosophy
ontology, epistemology, methodology
"I frame no hypotheses"		 orrery
3-body problem
John Locke, Thomas Hobbes
Aristotle
aether
Jean Le Rond d'Alembert (1717-1783)
Leonhard Euler (1707-1783)
Joseph Louis Lagrange (1763-1813)
continuum mechanics, fluid dynamics
Copyright © Cathryn Carson 2001