Harper W.L. Isaac Newton’s Scientific Method: Turning Data into Evidence about Gravity and Cosmology

Oxford: Oxford Univenity Press, 2011. — 222 p.Isaac Newton’s Scientific Method examines Newton’s argument for universal gravity and its application to cosmology. William L. Harper shows that Newton’s inferences from phenomena realize an ideal of empirical success that is richer than prediction. To achieve this rich sort of empirical success, a theory must do more than predict the phenomena it purports to explain; it must also make those phenomena accurately measure the parameters that explain them. Harper shows how Newton’s method turns theoretical questions into ones that can be answered empirically by measurement from phenomena. With this method, propositions inferred from phenomena are provisionally accepted as guides to further research. Informed by its rich ideal of empirical success, Newton’s concept of scientific progress does not require construing it as progress toward Laplace’s ideal Unlit of a ‘final theory of everything’ and is not threatened by the classic argument against convergent reaUsm. Harper argues that Newton’s method supports the revolutionary theoretical transformation from Newtonian theory to Einstein’s general relativity and continues to illuminate work in gravity and cosmology today.