Isaac Newton: His Life and Visionary Ideas
Matthew Stanley teaches the history and philosophy of science at NYU. He holds degrees in astronomy, religion, physics, and the history of science and is interested in the connections between science and the wider culture. He has held fellowships at the British Academy, and the Max Planck Institute, and was recently awarded the NYU Distinguished Teaching Award. Professor Stanley is the author of Einstein’s War: How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I.
Overview
Isaac Newton’s experiments, equations, and calculations changed the world – but he thought those were his least important contributions. He saw his epochal investigations in science as just one part of his obsessive quest to find the deepest truths of the universe, which took him through physics, alchemy, and theology. Newton lived at a time of almost unimaginable turmoil and uncertainty, surrounded by wars, plagues, and revolution. In this course, we will examine his life and ideas to see how he not only established science as we know it today but created a framework for knowledge that reshaped everything–from philosophy to politics.