Could Newton have arrived at Newtonian mechanics without the invention of the telescope?
Copernicus rediscovered the heliocentric theory without the telescope. Galileo invented the telescope a few years later. Kepler and Brahe used it. Newton created his version of it, but whether he or someone else could have come up with the idea without the telescope — SURE! Galileo found symmetry in position and velocity. Newtonian found symmetry acceleration. These are just thought experiments, perhaps more based on canon trajectories than planetary motions.
