“Robert Boyle & Isaac Newton” – Modern Philosophy, Video 21

Robert Boyle, he lived from 1627 to 1691, so we're still in the middle of the 17th century. He was a friend of Locke. He insisted on the experimental method. He effectively put an end to alchemy. Alchemy, do you remember that when we thought we were going to take different things and turn them into gold? The experimental method tells us that we're probably not going to get gold from another substance. He formulated Boyle's law, which is mainly that the pressure and volume of gas are inversely proportionate. Boyle sympathized with Galileo and Descartes' view of the mathematical structure of nature. Wow, how it is that everything is mathematical. Notice it in the sun? I mean, everything is like a big machine we live in here, a big clock we're living inside. He said, no satisfactory account of creation can be given without reference to an intelligent author who adapts means to ends. How do you explain this world? It had to come from something. That something had to have a good idea in its mind, so it must be some intelligent designer or author, if you will, who created this world. He was very religious, a very deeply Christian person. He believed that Christianity enlarges our knowledge. He saw his experimental work as a service to God. He founded the Boyle Lectures to resolve difficulties between Christianity and the scientific and philosophical developments of the time. So, we probably couldn't pass this course without at least mentioning Robert Boyle for his role in all of this as well. Isaac Newton, since we're talking about scientists, have we all heard of Newton? Newtonian physics? Up until the birth of the discovery of quantum physics, Newton's physics were the physics that we all studied, that explained our universe. Isaac Newton, now we're getting into a thinker who died in the 1700s, so finally we're coming up to the 18th century. Isaac Newton achieved the completion of the worldview prepared by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, and his physics dominated until the dawn of quantum physics. He brought the motion of the planets, comets, the moon, and the sea under mathematical law, which simply meant that for the first time, Aristotle believed that the heavens had one set of laws, and the earth had another set of laws. Newton overcame that. It's not two separate sets of laws. Did you ever notice that the time goes in and out based on the moon? They're connected. The heavens and the earth are connected. Newton enunciated the universal law of gravitation, that different bodies are attracted to different other bodies. Newton was an empiricist. We talked about that last week a bit, right? We often see these pictures up, or cartoons of Newton. How did he discover gravity? An apple fell on his head. Whether or not it really happened, which probably isn't likely, at least it leads to that empirical observation. Whoa, he just noticed how that apple fell down to the ground. Did you ever notice that? If you pick anything up, let go of it, it falls down. It's empirical. Your senses are giving you that information. So as an empiricist then, he believed we start with phenomena, the things that we see, the things that come to us through our senses, and we discover the laws or causes by induction. He called it gravity. He had this idea of why it is that everything seems to have the same, same thing happens. The results of our deduction stand in need of experimental verification. So just because I saw one apple fall to the ground, wait a minute, that doesn't mean that all apples fall to the ground. It's time to experiment here. Let's pick a few apples and see if they all fall to the ground. Okay, let's try it in a few different places. Did they fall off the top of buildings that we went to? Experimentation leads us to these larger ideas that we have. Newton suggested that all propositions should be accepted until experiment shows that they are not accurate, and that unverifiable contrary theories should be discarded. If you have a theory that has been proven wrong, get rid of it, people. Get rid of the theories that you can't prove. Hold on to the theories that are proven to be true. Science, this is the dawn of science now. Before we called it natural philosophy, now with persons like Newton, we are stepping into the age of science where it's going to divorce from natural philosophy. Newton was a good Christian, a religious man. He wrote various theological treatises. What did he say about things like God? He said, the cosmic order provides evidence for the existence of God. Look at the world. What more evidence do you need that God exists? That was Isaac Newton. He said, it appears from phenomena that there is a being, incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent. Essentially, there is a God. How do we know that? From phenomena, from the world. Look at the world. He said, the movement of the planets around the sun, look at it. That's an argument for God's existence. He suggested, as opposed to the deists, the deists said God created the world like a clock, and then just sets it in motion, and God can go off on vacation and the world will continue spinning. No, that was not Newton. Newton suggested that God is more active in it. In fact, the stars, what keeps the stars the distances that they are, because did you ever notice that the stars, they're always the same. What keeps them that way? God. A very interesting explanation for a man who believed in science as it is, but he believed that God didn't just make the world and let it go. God continues to maintain all the stars in their place. And so, Newton is important because his view of the world influenced generations, and he's found at this same time, during this time of modern thought, of modern philosophy.