Even in antiquity, during the time of Plato, repeated attempts were made to comprehend and understand the processes taking place outside of man and in himself. Due to lack of knowledge and understanding, a lot was attributed to supernatural manifestations. Over time, the accumulated knowledge has led to a more complete understanding of existing processes and relationships in nature.
The history of the formation of a mechanistic picture of the world
The path to knowledge formation was thorny. A major role was played by a universal understanding of the laws of being and the readiness of humanity of that time to accept or reject a certain view of the world.
Religion played an important role in the Middle Ages, suppressing any attempts at a scientific approach to the knowledge of the world. All actions contrary to the dogmas of the church were anathematized and eradicated. A huge number of great minds were burned at the stake in the Roman Inquisition. And only in the 17-18th century, under the pressure of real evidence, the mechanistic picture of the world began to be seriously enough popularized. During this period, the first serious attempts were made to systematize and process the accumulated research and works of past eras of humanity. Thanks to a new understanding of the organization of the world, the widespread use and implementation in the production and everyday life of the knowledge gained at a practical level has become possible.
Society and understanding of nature
The formation of a mechanistic picture of the world contributed to the rapid technological development of society. However, its implementation took a long time.
This was primarily due to the psychological readiness of society to accept a new way of understanding the foundations of the universe. The creation of a mechanistic picture of the world and its complete formation lasted about two hundred years, until the mid-nineteenth century.
Under the influence of philosophers, thinkers and naturalists of previous eras, such as Democritus, Aristotle, Lucretius and Epicurus, understanding and adoption of a materialistic approach gradually came.
The accumulated knowledge in the field of mathematics, physics, chemistry showed differences and features of the mechanistic picture of the world from the existing understanding of the laws of the Universe for that period.
The works of Aristotle and Ptolemy at that time were not accurate. However, these were the first attempts to comprehend and understand what constitutes a mechanistic picture of the world.
The beginning of the era of the mechanistic picture of the world
A little later, in the 16th century, another surge of scientific thought and resonance in society caused the works "On the Rotation of the Celestial Spheres" by Nikolai Copernicus. His followers saw rationality and relevance in the scientific approach to the study of the world. Subsequently, on the basis of the works of Copernicus and Galileo, a new era of worldview was born.
The process of creating a mechanistic picture of the world and its formation was greatly influenced by the French scientist Rene Descartes. The field of his knowledge was quite wide, he worked in the field of physics, mathematics, philosophy and biology. The religious education of young Rene did not become an obstacle in the development of knowledge, and he was able to become one of the creators of a new understanding of the structure of the world.
A philosopher and scientist spent about seven years traveling around Europe in the seventeenth century, accumulating life impressions and reflecting on the philosophical and mathematical problems of that era.
Descartes made significant progress in the field of mathematics. His achievements are reflected in the famous work "Geometry", published in 1637. It was this scientific work that laid all the foundations of modern geometry. Rene also owns the introduction of symbolism into algebra. His works had a key influence on the development of mathematics in the future. In 1644, the French scientist and philosopher gave his definition of the origin and further development of the world and the surrounding nature.
In his opinion, the solar system and planets formed from material vortices revolving around the sun. He believed that the separation of the body from the environment requires the presence of various speeds of movement. And the boundary of the body becomes real if the body moves, and this determines its shape and size. He reduced all formulas and definitions to mechanical movement of bodies. A strange definition, given the knowledge that is now available to us, isn't it? But such was the view of some scientists of that time.
Newton's opinion on processes in nature and the universe
The creator of the mechanistic picture of the world, Isaac Newton, had a somewhat different opinion. He was a mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer. This pundit made all his conclusions on the basis of the experiments, carefully studying them. His main credo was the phrase “I do not invent a hypothesis!” An important scientific achievement of Newton was the creation of a theory of the motion of planets and celestial spheres.
The discovery of universal gravitation associated with this work formed the basis for a complete substantiation of the
heliocentric system. Newton's mechanistic picture of the world turned out to be more accurate and effective.
In 1688, a glorious revolution took place in England . The country during this period experienced powerful political unrest from the monarchy to the full analogue of communism. However, despite the vicissitudes of life, the great scientist and philosopher continued to work on philosophical works on the structure of the world.
Philosophy and science of the past
Newton's mechanistic picture of the world went through a thorny and complex path. In the process of writing the last part of his work, he said: "I intend to eliminate the third part now, philosophy is the same impudent lady, to deal with which is tantamount to involvement in a lawsuit." In the end, his "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" (in 1687) came out. This system has been universally approved and has become a solid accepted theory.
Newton’s work substantiates the work of Copernicus on the motion of planets around the sun. The final work of the scientist was three laws that completed the work of Descartes, Galileo and Huygens and other great minds of that time, thereby determining the further creation of a mechanistic picture of the world and understanding of processes in nature.
In general, the ideas about the world in the seventeenth century were a picture of the once created and unchanging world of the universe.
Newton considered space the container of all objects, and time as the duration of the processes in it. Space was considered infinite and unchanging in time.
Three Newton's laws in the modern world
The scientist conducted many experiments on physical processes between bodies. In the course of his work, he inferred three laws that we still use today.
The first says that it is precisely the force that acts as the cause of the acceleration of the body. All processes in the world are prone to accelerate objects and are the cause of the interaction of bodies.
The second law determines that the action of force on an object at a certain moment and at a given point changes its speed, which can be calculated.
The third law states that the action of bodies on one another is equivalent in strength and opposite in direction.
That was precisely the Newtonian mechanistic picture of the world. Space, time did not interconnect, existed as separate phenomena. However, I. Newton’s definitions prompted a change in worldview and a complete transition to a full-fledged picture of the relationship space-time.
Is the understanding of the nature of space and time true?
Two hundred years later, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein noted that the Newtonian mechanistic picture of the world about matter and space can be interpreted only within the limits of the usual world familiar to us.
On a cosmic scale, the laws presented do not work and require rethinking. Subsequently, the scientist developed the theory of relativity, which combined space and time into a single system.
However, this is not the only area where Newton's laws do not have their application. With the advent of the era of studying elementary particles and the features of their behavior, it became clear that completely different rules apply in this area. They are extremely peculiar, sometimes unpredictable and can violate our usual understanding of time and space.
The expression in scientific circles that quantum physics is impossible to understand, you can only believe in, remarkably explains the discrepancy between the ideas about the world and all the processes occurring in it at the subatomic level.
Cause and investigation
In the process of developing a materialistic understanding of nature, the Newtonian mechanistic picture of the world determined the further course of the history of the development of mankind. Technology and the development of civilization are closely connected with previous experience and are indebted to the past for their strong present and formed picture of the perception of the world.