ASTRONOMY AND CULTURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: ISAAC NEWTON’S INFLUENCE ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND POLITICS

Abstract

This paper explores the influence of Isaac Newton‟s astronomy on European culture. More than any other astronomer, Isaac Newton gave the 18 th century its cosmology of unity, predictability and order. Newton‟s discovery of the law of gravity, published in 1687 in his Principia, provided a single universal „rule‟ for the entire universe (Cassirer, 1951 [1979]: 9). The application of Newton‟s theories to wider culture is known as Newtonianism (Schaffer, 1996: 610-26). Newtonianism emphasised order, stability, regularity and the rule of a law under which all men were equal. It held out the possibility that the current state of political disharmony could be replaced by peace, freedom and harmony. This paper will explore three consequences of Newtonianism. The first is Natural Rights theory: the argument that just as one single law governs the entire universe, so human society must also be governed by the same single law (Becker, 1958). The second is progress theory: the idea that history moves in an ordered pattern, gradually improving until it reaches a final, benign, end point (Condorcet, 1955). The third is sociology, which originated in the attempt to find evidence for the operation of Newtonian law in human society (Comte, 1875). The paper will conclude that an understanding of important cultural developments at the beginning of the modern world requires an understanding of developments in astronomy.