How influential was Newtonian natural philosophy?
Newton had a huge influence on the progression of natural philosophy but his approach was different to that of Aristotle; particularly in its strong emphasis on the importance of the experiment and his explicit rejection of hypotheses. He was an architect of the mathematisation of nature and this write up attempts to show how this affected post-Newtonian natural philosophy. In addition, Newton’s obsession with alchemy played a substantial part in formulating his style which was a lot more ambiguous than it sometimes seems. Although in the twentieth century he is frequently dubbed “the great British physicist”, there are several other interpretations of the man and his work.
