Abstract
It is rare nowadays to come across a scientific treatise which explicitly reveals the author’s method of reasoning alongside his or her experimental observations and conclusions. But this is just what Newton does at the outset of Book III of his Principia. Nor does he see this section as superfluous: just as he routinely invokes previous axioms and corollaries, so, too will he invoke the rules of reasoning which he here articulates—specifically in justifying his universal law of gravitation. As you study Newton’s four rules of reasoning, you might ask yourself, first, whether you agree or disagree with his rules; second, whether or not you typically employ his rules (notwithstanding your answer to the first question); and third, whether these rules are limited to the physical sciences, or if they apply just as well to other fields of inquiry such as biology, history, law, and theology.
Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.
—Isaac Newton
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Kuehn, K. (2015). Newton’s Rules of Reasoning. In: A Student's Guide Through the Great Physics Texts. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1366-4_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1366-4_25
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