Sir Isaac Newton's intellect and contributions eclipsed the scientific contributions of an entire generation of his colleagues. While there are numerous great minds recorded in human history, many come from periods where record keeping is questionable. We know that many ideas attributed to great ancient scientists and philosophers have been thought to be the work of other, lesser-known contributors. While there may have been a greater individual mind throughout history, the question of where facts end and historical freedom begins calls into question their entire legacy. Isaac Newton does not suffer from this historical ambiguity. Historians and scholars of his era rigorously recorded and verified every detail of his work. He possessed such a great intellect that in many ways he shifted the thrust of the humanities away from the focus of Aristotelian research and realigned it to the pursuit of his own research. At the same time it disproved centuries-old theories, provided new ideas that set science on an entirely new path, and unified multiple disparate concepts into a physical framework that would last hundreds of years. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Newton is seen primarily as a man who pioneered new theories. Equally important, however, was his ability to deconstruct other concepts and identify the errors they presented. Two of the most notable examples of this are his refutation of Aristotelian physics and his significant modifications to Copernican heliocentrism. While both theories offered valuable insights, they suffered from overly presumptuous leaps from proven science to wishful thinking. Aristotelian physics was a fundamental theory in itself. Aristotle is widely considered the greatest scientist of the classical Greek period, and his concepts of the construction and mechanics of the physical world persisted for over 1500 years. The achievement of a global system that unified the theories of the great minds of his period was tainted by bold assumptions and a pseudo-science that is still embarrassingly common even in our age of understanding. Aristotle's first factual deviation was his theory of what the universe was composed of. Aristotle taught that the area of ​​the universe inhabited by humans was the terrestrial sphere. This sphere was composed of 4 prime elements or spheres; earth, water, fire and air. Newton argued in Principia II that he believed that with appropriate microscopes we could see atomic corpuscles. Although we had no institutional knowledge of atoms or the periodic table, Newton understood that Aristotle's sphere of the earth was wrong. Aristotle also believed that the cosmos was made up of celestial spheres. Aristotle also argued that these celestial spheres were driven across the sky by “unmoved movers,” or ethereal objects that indirectly influence the celestial spheres along their perfectly circular paths. Newton's theory of gravity and calculations of planetary orbits removed the magic of prime movers and motionless movers from the cosmos and explained motion without requiring mystical forces. In the tradition of most scientific theories, Nicolaus Copernicus provided an elegant and comprehensive theory of the motion of the planets. Cosmos that modified and combined the efforts of countless great thinkers before him. The Copernican heliocentric model placed the Sun and not the Earth near the center of the universe, refuting the widely accepted Ptolemaic model that the entire universe revolved around a stationary Earth. However, while Copernicus opposed the central point of the theoryPtolemaic, incorporated some key explanations of the model that ultimately helped invalidate his theory. Ptolemy, Copernicus, and many other scientists still adhered to the Aristotelian concept of invisible objects in the sky. move celestial bodies. Ptolemy spoke in favor of epicycles. Rather than mystical forces in the sky, epicycles were systems of circular belts that pushed objects along their paths in perfect circles at constant speed. This idea was so widespread that over 1500 years later Copernicus incorporated the concept into his heliocentric model. Once again, Newton's measurements of elliptical orbits and the theory of gravity were needed to provide concrete evidence against epicycles and, ultimately, demonstrate the erroneous assumptions of the prevailing heliocentric models. While Newton was occasionally involved in overturning overly presumptuous science, his greatest contribution was by providing evidence for his revolutionary theories. It takes considerable intelligence to create an elegant theory, but it takes a unique genius to provide proof of that theory. We celebrate pre-Newtonian scientists for making the best of the information they had and filling in the gaps as they saw fit. Newton's academic rigor changed the scientific landscape. It is no longer sufficient to propose a model that incorporates a mix of observation and speculation. Now, to be considered a serious scientist you could only measure data and draw conclusions based on that evidence. The era of superstition and mysticism was coming to an end. One of Newton's fundamental discoveries was his 3 laws of motion. The 3 laws were mathematical concepts that provided formulas describing acceleration, force, and inertia. The first law concerns inertia, stating that “Every object remains stationary or in motion unless subjected to the action of an external force”. His second law concerns force, and states: “The force acting on a body is defined as the rate of change of its linear momentum, with time.” Finally, his third law concerns action and reaction: “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” Together, these 3 laws became the foundation for our understanding of modern physics. Newton also sought answers to the orbits of celestial bodies. The widely known story of Isaac Newton contemplating the nature of the universe under an apple tree and being hit on the head by a falling apple is probably apocryphal. Its law of gravitation, however, is certain. The law elegantly described how bodies are attracted to each other without requiring prime or equant movers. Newton's law of gravity states: “Each particle of matter attracts all other particles with a force along the straight line that joins them and is directly proportional to their mass, while inversely proportional to the square of the distance that separates them”. In essence, his law described the attraction between distinct bodies, taking into account changes in acceleration due to mass and distance between them. If the law of gravitation itself wasn't enough, Newton provided mathematical proof for John Kepler's 3 laws of planetary motion, which Kepler intuitively understood but failed to explain. Kepler's laws described the elliptical orbits of the planets, breaking with the age-old belief that the planets were attributed to perfect circular orbits. It is a true testament to Newton's genius that he was able to understand Kepler's laws more fully than Kepler himself. Newton was not satisfied with simply revolutionizing astronomy. He was also consumed by the desire to deepen human understanding of what light was. Before Newton, science believed that light was the absence of color and that color.