Descartes, Bacon and Newton, 
the three giants of science

 
Time Lines

Galileo	      1564...........1632.......1642	
Bacon:     1561...........1620..1626
Descartes:          1596............ 1637.....1650
Newton:                                 1642............1687..........1727



Rene Descartes wrote his Discourse on Method 50 years before 
Issac Newton published his Principia. The Principia stunned the 
world and quickly established Newton as the leading intellectual 
of his age. Everyone recognized it as epoch
making. But the Principia and the ideas it contained were built 
against a backdrop of feverish excitement that began well over a 
century before with Copernicus who had literally torn the 
cosmos from its foundations and hurled it into space. Aristotle's 
universe, Ptolemy's universe, had been overthrown. 

It took some time to sink in. But when it did, there began a 
concerted and feverish process of rebuilding the world on a new 
footing. The century and a half of reconstruction culminating in 
Newton's magnificent achievement.

"The book of nature, Newton's nature was seen in poetic terms 
as a divine romance -- a book written in disconnected 
corpuscular characters scattered throughout an infinite and 
empty void following the syntax of motion and the rule of 
attraction." 

This Newtonian cosmos was radically different from Aristotle's. 
Aristotle's cosmos had been closed, finite, 
and differentiated. This universe was open, infinite, and 
undifferentiated. It was mathematical, knowable, material and 
predictable.  It ran like a clock with such incredible precision
 that witnessed for most evidence enough of a divine clockmaker 
who took an active and omnipresent interest in the affairs of 
men. Newton did not require God as a first principle in his 
grand synthesis--but the product of his endeavors was evidence 
enough that God was. The optimism that this awareness 
inspired fueled the spirit of Newton's Age, the Age of 
enlightenment.

But Newton's achievements, catalyzed in the first instance by 
Copernicus, were produced through his fusing and synthesis of 
many others who took on the challenge of rebuilding the 
cosmos. These must have been exciting and nervous times. 
Tradition and authority were dead--but what would take their 
place? There were many actors in the drama that culminated in 
Newton's triumph, but three men in particular stood out: Galileo, 
Francis Bacon, and Rene Descartes: Italian, English and 
French.  

Before looking at the distinctions amongst these three it is 
important to recognize, that in the grand scheme of the age in 
which they worked, and that although their strategies differed, 
they had much in common. They would have made a grand 
teaching team. All three were optimistic. All three were 
individualistic and egalitarian. All three were 
anti-traditionalist and actively about the business of 
getting on with the business of forging a new cosmos. 
All three held views that ignorance came from error.

The synthesis that Newton produced could be represented as a 
line drawn from Galileo to Newton with Descartes and Bacon 
standing on either side. Bacon is the proponent of a method 
of empiricism, induction, experiment and observation--a
 gatherer of particulars. Descartes is 
seen as the champion of deduction, the rational thinker. 
Newton, is seen as the harmonizer of these two contrasting 
approaches, claiming, correctly, that induction and particulars 
are primary, but, in fact, relying heavily on a system of
 grand intellectual constructions--space and time especially 
- which are very much from the tradition of Descartes. 

Notice that while the "language of Newton" is very much
 Baconian in tone and intent:

RULE IV	In experimental philosophy we are to look upon 
propositions inferred by general induction from 
phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, 
notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may 
be imagined, till such time as other phenomena 
occur by which they may be made more accurate 
or liable to exception. (Rules of reasoning).

...that it was Descartes who had the greatest influence on 
Newton's method through his "Analytic Geometry," which was 
Descartes' crowning intellectual achievement.

For more, please read the entries for Descartes, Bacon and 
Newton. (Newton is on my age of reason page - next page)


(Yes, I need an entry on AVERROES!  He and 
other Muslims will be coming soon.)