Resumen

SAPUNARU, Raquel Anna. A construção lógica do “estilo newtoniano”. Ciência educ. [online]. 2008, vol.14, n.01, pp.55-66. ISSN 1516-7313.

The science historian, Isaac Bernard Cohen named the new method of “making science” created by Isaac Newton by the name of “newtonian style”. The central point of this “newtonian style”, according to the definition of Cohen himself is the successive adaptation from “mental constructions” - to mathematical - to comparisons with nature. This means that, according to Cohen, a direct dynamic between “mental constructions” - mathematical - and physical systems should exist. For this reason, one of the most important characteristics of the “newtonian style” would be, first, mathematics and, afterwards, a series of experiments - and not the other way round. Newton would have brilliantly concluded, while writing the “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”, that, to describe with absolute precision the movement of planets and satellites, or movement in general, was immensely more complicated than his contemporaries and ancestors would have thought. In this way, the solution found by Newton was to start from simple idealized cases, passing progressively to other also idealized but more complicated cases and finally to go to the opposite way, that means, to prove the most simple cases through divisions of more complicated cases, although always in the direction of truth.

Palabras clave : Newton; Method; Mathematics; “Newtonian Style”.

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