on. In 1666 Newton’s main idea was that the Earth’s gravity influenced the moon, therefore counterbalancing it’s centrifugal force. From this and Kelpler’s law of planetary motion, Newton came up with the inverse-square law (O’Connor & Robertson 5). Newton made many accomplishments to the physics field. Newton wrote many books during his time. One of his most famous was Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Newton had a mental breakdown in 1675 and was still recovering in 1679. His friend, a man by the name of Halley, was interested in orbits and; therefore, he convinced Newton to publish his works. From August 1684 to the spring of 1686, Newton devoted his time into doing this. Finally, in 1687, a book was published called Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. There were three parts to this book. The first contained definitions and talked about the three laws of motion. The three laws that were discussed are the law of inertia, the law of action and reaction, and the theory of how acceleration was proportion to force. The second part contained Newton’s new scientific theory, and the third part included an explanation for why tides occur and the theory of lunar motion. The book also contained his set of four rules for scientific reasoning. The first one is “we are to admit no more causes of natural things such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.” The second rule was “the same natural effects must be assigned to the same causes.” The third rule stated, “ qualities of bodies are to be esteemed as universal,” and the fourth rule stated, “ propositions deduced from observation of phenomena should be viewed as accurate until other phenomena contradict them,” (Weinstein 1-2). Newton followed these four rules when conducting experiments and investigating. Newton wrote another famous book in 1704 calle...
