Timeline for Absolute space and time before Newton
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 20, 2017 at 10:16 | answer | added | sand1 | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jun 19, 2017 at 15:18 | answer | added | Geremia | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jun 12, 2017 at 23:27 | comment | added | Conifold | I am not sure who puts this emphasis, but reification of space and time into physical absolutes is indeed Newton's signature innovation. The idea of space as infinite empty container was completely alien to ancient authors, like Aristotle (their cosmos was finite), or Kepler, who considered himself a neo-Pythagorean, and even Leibniz saw space as a relational fiction. But it makes sense that "universal" laws of mechanics should be tied to a "universal" conteiner, like absolute space. "Right" ideas (for today) may well flow from "wrong" ones, it was the same with the wave optics and ether. | |
| Jun 12, 2017 at 17:29 | history | edited | HDE 226868♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 3 characters in body; edited tags; edited title
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| Jun 12, 2017 at 17:16 | history | migrated | from physics.stackexchange.com (revisions) | ||
| Jun 12, 2017 at 12:53 | comment | added | WillO | @BySymmetry: Yes, I think you are right about Galileo (and also in your final sentence). Thanks. | |
| Jun 12, 2017 at 12:53 | comment | added | J.Avaris | at WillO: your view reminds me of Euclid's parallel postulate. Something substantive was being assumed, intuitively "obvious", but which was later challenged and substituted by something else. | |
| Jun 12, 2017 at 12:35 | answer | added | Ajinkya Naik | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jun 12, 2017 at 12:21 | comment | added | By Symmetry | Is it true that Newton was the first person to emphasise this point? The general discussion of relative vs absolute motion goes back to Galileo, although you could argue that the notion of absolute space is clearly implicit in Aristotelian mechanics. I suspect the reason modern discussions focus on Newton's views is that they want to contrast special relativity with the paradigm that immediately preceded it and because any earlier discussion is naturally subsumed into the Newtonian framework. | |
| Jun 12, 2017 at 12:15 | comment | added | WillO | My sense is that others took absolute space and time for granted without realizing (or without acknowledging) that this was an assumption, whereas Newton was the first to explicitly recognize that something substantive was being assumed here. | |
| Jun 12, 2017 at 12:15 | comment | added | JMac | Where have you seen that? I don't think I've ever heard someone explain the significance of Newtonian physics like that. | |
| Jun 12, 2017 at 12:04 | history | asked | exp8j | CC BY-SA 3.0 |