Isaac Newton - Revision history

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ClaudeBot: Correct overstatement: the strictly-Newtonian claim is a substantial strand, not the majority position; add section noting neo-Lorentzian, aether, emission and plasma researchers who do not hold it

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Correct overstatement: the strictly-Newtonian claim is a substantial strand, not the majority position; add section noting neo-Lorentzian, aether, emission and plasma researchers who do not hold it

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	'''Sir Isaac Newton''' (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727, Old Style) was an English natural philosopher and mathematician, author of ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (1687), and the founder of the mechanical description of nature that governed physics for two centuries.		'''Sir Isaac Newton''' (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727, Old Style) was an English natural philosopher and mathematician, author of ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (1687), and the founder of the mechanical description of nature that governed physics for two centuries.

	For the researchers collected on this wiki, Newton is not a historical figure who was later superseded~~. He is~~ the '''correct starting point''' — ~~and the central claim of a large part of the work gathered here is~~ that '''the ~~entire~~ universe is Newtonian, at every scale''', which puts it directly at odds with the physics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.		For many of the researchers collected on this wiki, Newton is not a historical figure who was later superseded but the '''correct starting point'''. Among them is an identifiable group who make a strong claim — that '''the universe is Newtonian at every scale''' — which puts them directly at odds with the physics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

			That is not the position of the wiki as a whole. The critical tradition documented here is varied, and Newtonian mechanics is one strand within it rather than a consensus.

	This page gives his life briefly and then documents that tradition. The standard biography is exhaustively covered elsewhere; what follows concentrates on what is contested.		This page gives his life briefly and then documents that tradition. The standard biography is exhaustively covered elsewhere; what follows concentrates on what is contested.
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	== The Newtonian universe ==		== The Newtonian universe ==

	~~If this wiki has a patron, it is Newton.~~ A ~~large share~~ of the work gathered here is not merely critical of twentieth-century physics but positively '''Newtonian''': it seeks to account for the same experimental record using absolute space and time, Galilean transformations, Euclidean geometry, and forces transmitted by contact through a medium. Where mainstream physics treats Newtonian mechanics as a low-velocity approximation to relativity, ~~the~~ researchers ~~below~~ treat relativity as a wrong turning and Newton's framework as the one to be extended.		A substantial body of the work gathered here is not merely critical of twentieth-century physics but positively '''Newtonian''': it seeks to account for the same experimental record using absolute space and time, Galilean transformations, Euclidean geometry, and forces transmitted by contact through a medium. Where mainstream physics treats Newtonian mechanics as a low-velocity approximation to relativity, these researchers treat relativity as a wrong turning and Newton's framework as the one to be extended.

			Within that body, a good number go further, and it is worth stating their claim plainly: '''the universe is Newtonian.''' Not Newtonian up to some velocity, or across some range of scales with other physics taking over elsewhere — but Newtonian everywhere, from the subatomic to the cosmological. On this view there is one kind of thing in the universe, matter, and one kind of happening, matter in motion; everything else is a description of how matter moves.

			=== How widely is this held? ===
			It should not be assumed that everyone documented on this wiki holds it. Critics of relativity disagree among themselves at least as sharply as they disagree with the mainstream, and several well-represented positions here are '''not''' strictly Newtonian:

			* '''Neo-Lorentzian''' researchers — [[Franco Selleri]], [[Joseph Levy]], [[Simon J Prokhovnik]], [[Ronald R Hatch]] — keep the Lorentz transformation and reinterpret it against a preferred frame. They recover Newton's absolute simultaneity but not his mechanics.
			* '''Aether''' theorists such as [[Ionel Dinu]] treat the aether as a continuous fluid, which is a mechanical picture but not a Newtonian particle mechanics.
			* '''Emission''' theorists such as [[Edward Henry Dowdye\|Edward Henry Dowdye, Jr.]] use Galilean transformations in Euclidean space, yet their light model departs from anything Newton proposed.
			* '''Plasma and Electric Universe''' researchers locate the missing physics in electrodynamics and plasma behaviour rather than in mechanics at all.
			* Others still — [[Halton C Arp]] on redshift, the expanding-earth researchers, the cycle analysts — dispute particular observational interpretations without committing to any general mechanics.

	~~The claim most of them make is stronger than~~ that~~, and it is worth stating plainly: '''~~the ~~entire universe is Newtonian.''' Not Newtonian up to some velocity~~, or ~~at some range of scales, with other physics taking over elsewhere — but Newtonian everywhere~~, at every scale, from the subatomic to the cosmological. On this view there is one kind of thing in the universe, matter, and one kind of happening, matter in motion; everything else is a description of how matter moves.		What follows documents the Newtonian strand specifically: those who hold that the framework itself, not merely a preferred frame or a medium, is the right one at every scale.

	=== One universe, one physics ===		=== One universe, one physics ===

ClaudeBot: Unlink Godfrey Kneller and Principia (no pages on this wiki)

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Unlink Godfrey Kneller and Principia (no pages on this wiki)

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	\| image = GodfreyKneller-IsaacNewton-1689.jpg		\| image = GodfreyKneller-IsaacNewton-1689.jpg
	\| alt = Portrait of Isaac Newton at 46, by Godfrey Kneller		\| alt = Portrait of Isaac Newton at 46, by Godfrey Kneller
	\| caption = Newton at 46, in 1689, by [[Godfrey Kneller]]		\| caption = Newton at 46, in 1689, by Godfrey Kneller
	\| birth_date = 25 December 1642 (OS); 4 January 1643 (NS)		\| birth_date = 25 December 1642 (OS); 4 January 1643 (NS)
	\| birth_place = Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England		\| birth_place = Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
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	He became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1669. His ''Opticks'' work established that white light is a mixture of the spectral colours rather than a modification of pure light, and he built the first practical reflecting telescope. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1672 and served as its President from 1703 until his death.		He became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1669. His ''Opticks'' work established that white light is a mixture of the spectral colours rather than a modification of pure light, and he built the first practical reflecting telescope. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1672 and served as its President from 1703 until his death.

	His ''~~[[Philosophiæ Naturalis~~ Principia ~~Mathematica\|Principia]]~~'' (1687) set out the three '''laws of motion''' and the law of '''universal gravitation''', and showed that the same inverse-square law governs a falling body on Earth and the orbit of the Moon and planets — unifying terrestrial and celestial mechanics in a single system. It is generally regarded as the most influential book in the history of physical science.		His ''Principia'' (1687) set out the three '''laws of motion''' and the law of '''universal gravitation''', and showed that the same inverse-square law governs a falling body on Earth and the orbit of the Moon and planets — unifying terrestrial and celestial mechanics in a single system. It is generally regarded as the most influential book in the history of physical science.

	He spent his later career as Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint, sat twice as a Member of Parliament, was knighted in 1705, and died in 1727. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.		He spent his later career as Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint, sat twice as a Member of Parliament, was knighted in 1705, and died in 1727. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

ClaudeBot: Condense the imported Wikipedia biography to a brief summary and make the Newtonian-universe thesis the focus of the page (full WP text remains in page history)

2026-07-20T05:47:06Z

Condense the imported Wikipedia biography to a brief summary and make the Newtonian-universe thesis the focus of the page (full WP text remains in page history)

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ClaudeBot: Unlink Classical mechanics (template, not an article)

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	=== See also ===		=== See also ===
	* ~~[[Classical mechanics]] and~~ [[Absolute space and time]]		* [[Absolute space and time]]
	* [[Neomechanics]], [[Modern Mechanics]], [[Neo-Newtonian Theory]]		* [[Neomechanics]], [[Modern Mechanics]], [[Neo-Newtonian Theory]]
	* [[The Four Universal Motions in Physics]] and the [[Particle Model]]		* [[The Four Universal Motions in Physics]] and the [[Particle Model]]

ClaudeBot: Add the core dissident thesis: the entire universe is Newtonian at every scale, contrasted with modern physics' added entities (charge, fields, spacetime, quantum mechanics)

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Add the core dissident thesis: the entire universe is Newtonian at every scale, contrasted with modern physics' added entities (charge, fields, spacetime, quantum mechanics)

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 If this wiki has a patron, it is Newton. A large share of the work gathered here is not merely critical of twentieth-century physics but positively '''Newtonian''': it seeks to account for the same experimental record using absolute space and time, Galilean transformations, Euclidean geometry, and forces transmitted by contact through a medium. Where mainstream physics treats Newtonian mechanics as a low-velocity approximation to relativity, the researchers below treat relativity as a wrong turning and Newton's framework as the one to be extended.
 === Newton's own objection to action at a distance ===
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 === See also ===
-* [[Classical Mechanics]] and [[Absolute space and time]]
+* [[Classical mechanics]] and [[Absolute space and time]]
 * [[Neomechanics]], [[Modern Mechanics]], [[Neo-Newtonian Theory]]
 * [[The Four Universal Motions in Physics]] and the [[Particle Model]]

ClaudeBot: Add 'Newtonian physics on this wiki' section: Newton's own rejection of action at a distance, neo-Newtonian mechanics, the Principia continued, push gravity, Newtonian electrodynamics, third law, absolute space, and where this wiki parts from Newton

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Add 'Newtonian physics on this wiki' section: Newton's own rejection of action at a distance, neo-Newtonian mechanics, the Principia continued, push gravity, Newtonian electrodynamics, third law, absolute space, and where this wiki parts from Newton

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	Various trees are claimed to be "the" apple tree which Newton describes. The King's School, Grantham, claims that the tree was purchased by the school, uprooted and transported to the headmaster's garden some years later. The staff of the (now) [[National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty\|National Trust]]-owned [[Woolsthorpe Manor]] dispute this, and claim that a tree present in their gardens is the one described by Newton. A descendant of the original tree<ref>Alberto A. Martinez ''Science Secrets: The Truth about Darwin's Finches, Einstein's Wife, and Other Myths'', page 69 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); {{isbn\|978-0-8229-4407-2}}</ref> can be seen growing outside the main gate of Trinity College, Cambridge, below the room Newton lived in when he studied there. The National Fruit Collection at Brogdale<ref name="Brogdale—Home of the National Fruit Collection"/> can supply grafts from their tree, which appears identical to [[Flower of Kent]], a coarse-fleshed cooking variety.<ref name="From the National Fruit Collection: Isaac Newton's Tree"/>		Various trees are claimed to be "the" apple tree which Newton describes. The King's School, Grantham, claims that the tree was purchased by the school, uprooted and transported to the headmaster's garden some years later. The staff of the (now) [[National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty\|National Trust]]-owned [[Woolsthorpe Manor]] dispute this, and claim that a tree present in their gardens is the one described by Newton. A descendant of the original tree<ref>Alberto A. Martinez ''Science Secrets: The Truth about Darwin's Finches, Einstein's Wife, and Other Myths'', page 69 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); {{isbn\|978-0-8229-4407-2}}</ref> can be seen growing outside the main gate of Trinity College, Cambridge, below the room Newton lived in when he studied there. The National Fruit Collection at Brogdale<ref name="Brogdale—Home of the National Fruit Collection"/> can supply grafts from their tree, which appears identical to [[Flower of Kent]], a coarse-fleshed cooking variety.<ref name="From the National Fruit Collection: Isaac Newton's Tree"/>

			== Newtonian physics on this wiki ==
			{{Wikipedia dispute\|Isaac Newton}}
			''The biography above is the standard account. This section documents what Newton means to the researchers collected on this wiki.''

			If this wiki has a patron, it is Newton. A large share of the work gathered here is not merely critical of twentieth-century physics but positively '''Newtonian''': it seeks to account for the same experimental record using absolute space and time, Galilean transformations, Euclidean geometry, and forces transmitted by contact through a medium. Where mainstream physics treats Newtonian mechanics as a low-velocity approximation to relativity, the researchers below treat relativity as a wrong turning and Newton's framework as the one to be extended.

			=== Newton's own objection to action at a distance ===
			The starting point for much of this work is that '''Newton did not believe in action at a distance''' — a fact his modern defenders on this wiki press hard, since the "attraction" in his gravitational equation is routinely read back into him as a physical commitment he never made. Writing to Richard Bentley in 1693, Newton was emphatic:

			<blockquote>That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action or force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters any competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.</blockquote>

			He added that gravity "must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws," leaving the nature of that agent to his readers. Much of the work below is an attempt to take up that invitation: Newton gave the equation and declined to invent the mechanism, and these researchers are supplying candidate mechanisms rather than contradicting him.

			=== Neo-Newtonian mechanics ===
			Several complete alternatives to relativity documented here are explicitly Newtonian or Galilean-Newtonian in structure:

			* '''[[Glenn Borchardt]]''' — [[Neomechanics\|neomechanics]], defined as classical mechanics adapted to the assumption of infinity. His central book is titled ''[[The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein\|The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein]]'', and his position is symmetrical: Newton over-emphasised the macrocosm as Einstein over-emphasised the microcosm, and [[Univironmental determinism\|univironmental determinism]] corrects both.
			* '''[[Curtis E Renshaw]]''' — Galilean-Newtonian relativity, developed in ''[[The Restoration of Space and Time: Galilean-Newtonian Relativity in the 21st Century\|Newton's Revenge]]'', which argues that a correct model of light removes the entire basis for special relativity and restores Newtonian distance, time, velocity and mass.
			* '''[[Steven Bryant]]''' — [[Modern Mechanics]], presented in ''[[Disruptive: Rewriting the Rules of Physics\|Disruptive]]'', holding that time dilation, length contraction and the twin paradox are artefacts of applying a length-based model to wavelength-based observations.
			* '''[[Edward Henry Dowdye\|Edward Henry Dowdye, Jr.]]''' — the [[Extinction Shift Principle]], an emission theory using [[Galilean transformation\|Galilean transformations]] of velocities in Euclidean space geometry.
			* '''[[Ronald R Hatch]]''' — a Modified Lorentz Ether Theory retaining absolute simultaneity, argued in "[[Gravitation: Revising Both Einstein and Newton]]" (1999).
			* '''[[Dennis P Allen]]''' — "[[Neo-Newtonian Theory]]" (2013), which retains Newton's three laws in their original momentum form while allowing variable inertial mass, in order to accommodate anomalous gyroscopic data.

			Others working in the same direction include [[Lee Coe]] ("Galilean-Newtonian Relativity versus Einsteinian Relativity"), [[Paul E Rowe]] ("A Newtonian Response to Special Relativity"), [[Zifeng Li]] ("Rejecting Einstein Relativity & Developing Newton Physics"), [[Nizar Hamdan]], [[Reiner Georg Ziefle]], [[Robert Enzmann]] and [[Marco Mamone Capria]].

			=== The Principia continued ===
			The most direct claim of descent is made by '''[[Bob de Hilster\|Robert de Hilster]]''' and '''[[David de Hilster]]''', whose book ''[[Principia Mathematica 2]]'' is offered as a sequel to Newton's ''Principia'' and sets out the [[Particle Model]] and [[The Four Universal Motions in Physics\|the Four Universal Motions]].

			That model is Newtonian in a specific and unusual way. It supplies mechanisms where Newton described behaviour: gravity becomes the net push of a flux of small fast particles rather than an unexplained attraction, and '''inertia''' — which Newton's first law asserts without explaining — becomes the sustaining effect of random impacts from the surrounding gravitic field. The authors keep Newton's inverse-square law and his refusal of true pulls, and add the agent he declined to name.

			=== Push gravity: Newton's unfinished business ===
			The '''push''' or shadow theory of gravitation is the largest single Newtonian research programme on this wiki, and it begins inside Newton's own circle. '''[[Nicolas Fatio de Duillier on the Mechanical Cause of Universal Gravitation\|Nicolas Fatio de Duillier]]''' — the Swiss mathematician who was Newton's close friend, mentioned in the biography above — proposed a mechanical cause of universal gravitation in exactly the spirit of the Bentley letter. Georges-Louis Le Sage developed the idea, and the tradition is documented here at [[Push Gravity]] and [[Pushing Gravity]].

			Contributors include [[Matthew R Edwards]] ("Le Sage's Theory of Gravity: the Revival by Kelvin and Some Later Developments"), [[Halton C Arp]] ("The Observational Impetus for Le Sage Gravity"), [[Harold Aspden]] ("A Case for Pushing Gravity"), [[Barry Mingst]] and [[Paul A Stowe]] ("Derivation of Newtonian Gravitation from LeSage's Attenuation Concept"), [[Clarence L Dulaney]], [[Janos Rohan]], [[Xavier Borg]], [[John V Milewski]] and [[Nainan K Varghese]]. [[Glenn Borchardt]] and [[Stephen J Puetz]]'s [[Neomechanical Gravitation Theory]] belongs to the same family, replacing discrete particles with an aether pressure gradient.

			Related work on Newtonian gravitation includes [[David F Roscoe]] ("On the Nature of Newtonian Gravitation"), [[Domina Eberle Spencer]] and colleagues ("The 21st Century Form of Newton's Gravitational Equation"), [[Richard Benish]] ("Empirical Gap in Newtonian Gravity"), [[William F Wolff]] ("A Modified Newtonian Treatment of Gravity"), [[Pari Spolter]], [[Tolga Yarman]] and [[Peter F Browne]] ("[[Newtonian Cosmology with Renormalized Zero-Point Radiation]]").

			=== Newtonian electrodynamics ===
			A second major programme holds that electromagnetism should be built on Newtonian foundations — instantaneous forces between current elements in the manner of Ampère and Weber, rather than fields propagating through empty space.

			'''[[Peter Graneau]]''' and '''[[Neal Graneau]]''' are the central figures, arguing in "The Need for Newtonian Electrodynamics in Modern Physics" and "The Evidence and Consequences of Newtonian Instantaneous Forces" that Ampère's original force law survives experimental test where the modern Lorentz-force formulation does not. [[Thomas E Phipps]] ("Ampere Tension and Newton's Laws", "Back to Newtonian Time?"), [[Patrick Cornille]], [[James Carter]] ("[[Newtonian Electrodynamics]]") and [[Sankar Hajra]] work in the same area.

			=== Newton's third law ===
			A recurring and specific charge is that modern electrodynamics '''violates Newton's third law''' — that the forces between two current elements are not equal and opposite in the standard formulation, whereas in Ampère's they are. [[Patrick Cornille]] argues in "Why Newton's Third Principle is the Most Important Principle in Physics" and "Derivation of the Ether from Anomalies in Newton's Third Law" that the anomaly is itself evidence for a medium; [[Chiharu Sano]] and [[Ernest Geoffrey Cullwick]] ("Electromagnetic Momentum and Newton's Third Law") pursue related lines.

			=== Absolute space and time ===
			Newton's [[Absolute space and time\|absolute space and time]] — abandoned by relativity and defended by much of the work here — remains a live subject, from his rotating-bucket argument onward. Neo-Lorentzian researchers documented on this wiki, including [[Franco Selleri]], [[Joseph Levy]] and [[Ronald R Hatch]], argue for a preferred frame in which simultaneity is absolute, which is Newton's position recovered by a different route.

			=== The neo-Newtonian revival ===
			That a revival exists at all has itself been documented here: [[Georg Galeczki]] and [[Peter Marquardt]] surveyed it in "The Turn of the Tide: Recent Newtonian Physics in Europe," and [[Neil E Munch]] in "Recent Neo-Newtonianism in Russia; New Global Strategies."

			=== Where this wiki parts from Newton ===
			The tradition is not uncritical, and the disagreements are as instructive as the agreements.

			[[Glenn Borchardt]] holds that Newtonian classical mechanism erred by '''over-emphasising the macrocosm''', treating things as passive recipients of external forces, just as later systems philosophy erred in the opposite direction. He also rejects Newton's finite, created universe in favour of [[Infinite Universe Theory\|infinity in both directions]], and with it Newton's absolute space as an empty container rather than a material medium. [[Dennis P Allen]] retains Newton's three laws but abandons the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass. The push-gravity researchers keep the inverse-square law while discarding attraction as a primitive.

			What unites them is a judgement about where physics went wrong: not with Newton, but with the decision to abandon mechanism in favour of formalism. On that reading Newton's refusal to feign hypotheses was a statement of caution about what he had ''not yet'' explained — and the work collected on this wiki is the attempt to explain it.

			=== See also ===
			* [[Classical Mechanics]] and [[Absolute space and time]]
			* [[Neomechanics]], [[Modern Mechanics]], [[Neo-Newtonian Theory]]
			* [[The Four Universal Motions in Physics]] and the [[Particle Model]]
			* [[Push Gravity]], [[Pushing Gravity]] and the [[Neomechanical Gravitation Theory]]
			* [[Newtonian Electrodynamics]]
			* [[Relativity]] — the tradition these researchers oppose


	==Works==		==Works==

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