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99-608: It was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Polish Reformed Church between the 16th and 17th centuries, and embraced by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period. Socinianism is most famous for its Nontrinitarian Christian beliefs about the unitary nature of God and the human nature of Jesus but contains a number of other distinctive theological doctrines, such as

198-435: A Newtonian telescope , involved solving the problem of a suitable mirror material and shaping technique. Newton ground his own mirrors out of a custom composition of highly reflective speculum metal , using Newton's rings to judge the quality of the optics for his telescopes. In late 1668, he was able to produce this first reflecting telescope. It was about eight inches long and it gave a clearer and larger image. In 1671,

297-518: A quart mug. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough (née Blythe). Newton disliked his stepfather and maintained some enmity towards his mother for marrying him, as revealed by this entry in a list of sins committed up to the age of 19: "Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and

396-536: A Journal continuing research into the Polish Brethren and related groups. Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27 ) was an English polymath active as a mathematician , physicist , astronomer , alchemist , theologian , and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher . He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and

495-471: A brief exchange of letters in 1679–80 with Hooke, who had been appointed Secretary of the Royal Society, and who opened a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions. Newton's reawakening interest in astronomical matters received further stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 1680–1681, on which he corresponded with John Flamsteed . After

594-553: A catch-all term for any kind of dissenting belief. Sources in the 18th and 19th centuries frequently attributed the term Socinian anachronistically, using it to refer to ideas that embraced a much wider range than the narrowly defined position of the Racovian catechisms and library. Socinian theology, as summarised in the Racovian Catechism , rejected the views of orthodox Christian theology on God's knowledge, on

693-470: A circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier . In 1710, Newton found 72 of the 78 "species" of cubic curves and categorised them into four types. In 1717, and probably with Newton's help, James Stirling proved that every cubic was one of these four types. Newton also claimed that the four types could be obtained by plane projection from one of them, and this

792-525: A cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed. He was, however, noted by Cambridge diarist Abraham de la Pryme to have rebuked students who were frightening locals by claiming that a house was haunted. Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint during the reign of King William III in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax , then Chancellor of

891-503: A concluding General Scholium , writing that it was enough that the phenomena implied a gravitational attraction, as they did; but they did not so far indicate its cause, and it was both unnecessary and improper to frame hypotheses of things that were not implied by the phenomena. (Here Newton used what became his famous expression " Hypotheses non fingo " . ) With the Principia , Newton became internationally recognised. He acquired

990-478: A correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions, which had the effect of stimulating Newton to work out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. But the two men remained generally on poor terms until Hooke's death. Newton argued that light is composed of particles or corpuscles, which were refracted by accelerating into

1089-423: A debt to corpuscular alchemy. He showed that coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects, and that regardless of whether reflected, scattered, or transmitted, the light remains the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This

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1188-467: A denser medium. He verged on soundlike waves to explain the repeated pattern of reflection and transmission by thin films ( Opticks Bk. II, Props. 12), but still retained his theory of 'fits' that disposed corpuscles to be reflected or transmitted (Props.13). However, later physicists favoured a purely wavelike explanation of light to account for the interference patterns and the general phenomenon of diffraction . Today's quantum mechanics , photons , and

1287-556: A large part of the reason for this enduring legacy. Newton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1672 . Newton's work has been said "to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied". His work on the subject, usually referred to as fluxions or calculus, seen in a manuscript of October 1666, is now published among Newton's mathematical papers. His work De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas , sent by Isaac Barrow to John Collins in June 1669,

1386-464: A mathematician, he generalized the binomial theorem to any real number, contributed to the study of power series , developed a method for approximating the roots of a function , classified most of the cubic plane curves , and also originated the Newton-Cotes formulas for numerical integration . Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at

1485-538: A new version of Newton's Principia , and corresponded with Leibniz. In 1693, the relationship between Duillier and Newton deteriorated and the book was never completed. Starting in 1699, other members of the Royal Society , such as Duillier, accused Leibniz of plagiarism. Mathematician John Keill accused Leibniz of plagiarism in 1708 in the Royal Society journal, thereby deteriorating the situation even more. The dispute then broke out in full force in 1711 when

1584-509: A royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge. The knighthood is likely to have been motivated by political considerations connected with the parliamentary election in May 1705 , rather than any recognition of Newton's scientific work or services as Master of the Mint. Newton was the second scientist to be knighted, after Francis Bacon . As a result of a report written by Newton on 21 September 1717 to

1683-649: A series of " Quaestiones " about mechanical philosophy as he found it. In 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became calculus . Soon after Newton obtained his BA degree at Cambridge in August 1665, the university temporarily closed as a precaution against the Great Plague . Although he had been undistinguished as a Cambridge student, Newton's private studies at his home in Woolsthorpe over

1782-455: Is a property intrinsic to light – a point which had, until then, been a matter of debate. From 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics. During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that the multicoloured image produced by a prism, which he named a spectrum , could be recomposed into white light by a lens and a second prism. Modern scholarship has revealed that Newton's analysis and resynthesis of white light owes

1881-482: Is at rest or moves uniformly forward in a right line". (Newton adopted the "at rest" alternative in view of common consent that the centre, wherever it was, was at rest.) Newton was criticised for introducing " occult agencies" into science because of his postulate of an invisible force able to act over vast distances . Later, in the second edition of the Principia (1713), Newton firmly rejected such criticisms in

1980-420: Is established that Newton came to develop calculus much earlier than Leibniz. Leibniz's notation and "differential method", nowadays recognised as much more convenient notations, were adopted by continental European mathematicians, and after 1820 or so, also by British mathematicians. His work extensively uses calculus in geometric form based on limiting values of the ratios of vanishingly small quantities: in

2079-425: Is known as Newton's theory of colour . From this work, he concluded that the lens of any refracting telescope would suffer from the dispersion of light into colours ( chromatic aberration ). As a proof of the concept, he constructed a telescope using reflective mirrors instead of lenses as the objective to bypass that problem. Building the design, the first known functional reflecting telescope, today known as

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2178-560: Is no data to explain a finding, one should simply wait for that data, rather than guessing at an explanation. The full quote, translated from that section is, "Hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses, for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from

2277-480: Is of this calculus." His use of methods involving "one or more orders of the infinitesimally small" is present in his De motu corporum in gyrum of 1684 and in his papers on motion "during the two decades preceding 1684". Newton had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared controversy and criticism. He was close to the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier . In 1691, Duillier started to write

2376-529: Is the visible manifestation of light's wavelength. Science also slowly came to realise the difference between perception of colour and mathematisable optics. The German poet and scientist, Goethe , could not shake the Newtonian foundation but "one hole Goethe did find in Newton's armour, ... Newton had committed himself to the doctrine that refraction without colour was impossible. He, therefore, thought that

2475-401: Is unclear if Newton ever lectured in geography, the 1733 Dugdale and Shaw English translation of the book stated Newton published the book to be read by students while he lectured on the subject. The Geographia Generalis is viewed by some as the dividing line between ancient and modern traditions in the history of geography , and Newton's involvement in the subsequent editions is thought to be

2574-594: The Geographia Generalis , a geography textbook first published in 1650 by the then-deceased Bernhardus Varenius . In the Geographia Generalis, Varenius attempted to create a theoretical foundation linking scientific principles to classical concepts in geography, and considered geography to be a mix between science and pure mathematics applied to quantifying features of the Earth. While it

2673-550: The Church of England was sufficient. He made the commitment that "I will either set Theology as the object of my studies and will take holy orders when the time prescribed by these statutes [7 years] arrives, or I will resign from the college." Up until this point he had not thought much about religion and had twice signed his agreement to the Thirty-nine Articles , the basis of Church of England doctrine. By 1675

2772-599: The Ecclesia Minor , which was refused because of his rather unusual personal objection to water baptism, but they saw in the Italian an able advocate and Sozzini's capable answering of Budny, followed by his marriage to the daughter of Krzysztof Morsztyn Sr. in 1586 cemented his place among the Polish Brethren. The calling of the group " Socinian " in England is more a result of the place given to Sozzini's writings in

2871-733: The Ecclesia Minor . His influence continued after his death through the writings of his students published in Polish and Latin from the press of the Racovian Academy at Raków, Kielce County . The term Socinian started to be used in the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of England from the 1610s onward, as the Latin publications were circulated among early Arminians , Remonstrants , Dissenters , and early English Unitarians . In

2970-580: The Enlightenment that followed. Newton's book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ( Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy ), first published in 1687, achieved the first great unification in physics and established classical mechanics . Newton also made seminal contributions to optics , and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus , though he developed calculus years before Leibniz. He contributed to and refined

3069-546: The Industrial Revolution which soon followed and were not improved upon for more than 200 years. Many of these advances continue to be the underpinnings of non-relativistic technologies in the modern world. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) for the effect that would become known as gravity , and defined the law of universal gravitation . In the same work, Newton presented a calculus-like method of geometrical analysis using 'first and last ratios', gave

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3168-505: The Logos referred to in the Gospel of John was Jesus. The Socinians held that humans were created mortal in the beginning and would have died naturally whether Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree or not. They also rejected the doctrine of original sin . Socinianism also rejected the propitiatory view of atonement . The Socinians believed that God's omniscience was limited to what

3267-539: The Netherlands , where their works were widely published and influenced much of the thinking of later philosophers such as John Locke and Pierre Bayle . Their main ideologues were Piotr z Goniadza ("Gonesius"), Grzegorz Paweł z Brzezin , Marcin Czechowic , although Johannes Crellius (from Germany), and Johann Ludwig von Wolzogen (who came to Poland from Austria) were far better known outside Poland. Among

3366-444: The Principia itself, Newton gave demonstration of this under the name of "the method of first and last ratios" and explained why he put his expositions in this form, remarking also that "hereby the same thing is performed as by the method of indivisibles." Because of this, the Principia has been called "a book dense with the theory and application of the infinitesimal calculus" in modern times and in Newton's time "nearly all of it

3465-599: The Royal Society (1703–1727). Isaac Newton was born (according to the Julian calendar in use in England at the time) on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 ( NS 4 January 1643 ) at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth , a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. His father, also named Isaac Newton, had died three months before. Born prematurely , Newton was a small child; his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that he could have fit inside

3564-805: The Sandomierz Agreement of 1570 between different Polish Protestants . The Minor Church in Poland was dissolved on July 20, 1658, when the Sejm expelled the Socinians from Poland after a series of 17th-century wars known as the Deluge in which Protestant Sweden invaded Poland since the Brethren (like almost all other non-Catholic Christians) were commonly seen as Swedish collaborators. The Brethren were exiled in three directions and found asylum in

3663-667: The University of Cambridge . He was a devout but unorthodox Christian who privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity . He refused to take holy orders in the Church of England , unlike most members of the Cambridge faculty of the day. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences , Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology , but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. Politically and personally tied to

3762-684: The University of Cambridge . His uncle the Reverend William Ayscough, who had studied at Cambridge, recommended him to the university. At Cambridge, Newton started as a subsizar , paying his way by performing valet duties until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, which covered his university costs for four more years until the completion of his MA . At the time, Cambridge's teachings were based on those of Aristotle , whom Newton read along with then more modern philosophers, including Descartes and astronomers such as Galileo Galilei and Thomas Street . He set down in his notebook

3861-566: The Whig party , Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge , in 1689–1690 and 1701–1702. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696–1699) and Master (1699–1727) of the Royal Mint , in which he increased the accuracy and security of British coinage, as well as president of

3960-688: The denial of divine foreknowledge regarding the actions of free agents and rejection of the pre-existence of Christ . The beliefs of Socinianism date from the wing of the Protestant Reformation known as the Radical Reformation and have their root in the Italian Anabaptist movement of the 1540s, such as the anti-trinitarian Council of Venice in 1550. Lelio Sozzini was the first of the Italian anti-trinitarians to go beyond Arian beliefs in print and deny

4059-541: The doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ , and on soteriology . The Racovian publications, like the Sozzinis, rejected the pre-existence of Christ and held that Jesus did not exist until he was conceived as a human being. This view had been put forward before by the 4th-century bishop Photinus , but it conflicts with the mainline Protestant , Eastern Orthodox , and Catholic views, which hold that

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4158-558: The ecclesia minor , but he was influential in reconciling several controversies among the Brethren: on conscientious objection , on prayer to Christ, and on the virgin birth . Fausto persuaded many in the Polish Brethren who were formerly Arian , such as Marcin Czechowic , to adopt his uncle Lelio's views. Fausto Sozzini furthered his influence through his Racovian Catechism , published posthumously, which set out his uncle Lelio's views on Christology and replaced earlier catechisms of

4257-538: The pre-existence of Christ in his Brevis explicatio in primum Johannis caput – a commentary on the meaning of the Logos in John 1:1–15 (1562). Lelio Sozzini considered that the "beginning" of John 1:1 was the same as 1 John 1:1 and referred to the new creation , not the Genesis creation. His nephew Fausto Sozzini published his own longer Brevis explicatio later, developing his uncle's arguments. Many years after

4356-436: The scientific method , and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science. In the Principia , Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity . He used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion , account for tides ,

4455-699: The silver standard to its first gold standard . It is a matter of debate as to whether he intended to do this or not. It has been argued that Newton conceived of his work at the Mint as a continuation of his alchemical work. Newton was invested in the South Sea Company and lost some £20,000 (£4.4 million in 2020 ) when it collapsed in around 1720. Toward the end of his life, Newton took up residence at Cranbury Park , near Winchester , with his niece and her husband, until his death. His half-niece, Catherine Barton , served as his hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn Street in London; he

4554-526: The trajectories of comets , the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System 's heliocentricity . He demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles. Newton's inference that the Earth is an oblate spheroid was later confirmed by the geodetic measurements of Maupertuis , La Condamine , and others, convincing most European scientists of

4653-747: The 1690s, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal and symbolic interpretation of the Bible. A manuscript Newton sent to John Locke in which he disputed the fidelity of 1 John 5:7 —the Johannine Comma —and its fidelity to the original manuscripts of the New Testament, remained unpublished until 1785. Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England for Cambridge University in 1689 and 1701, but according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about

4752-614: The 1840s always looked for historical precedents, the group was unaware of closer precedents in Socinianism . That changed with a series of articles in the community magazine during the early 1970 that was subsequently published. The Polish arm of the Christadelphians use the name Bracia w Chrystusie in a conscious echo of Socinian precedents. The Atlanta Bible College of the Church of God General Conference also publishes

4851-472: The 18th century. Most of Polish Brethren moved to the Netherlands , where they greatly influenced European opinion, becoming precursors to Enlightenment . John Locke was preceded by a few decades by Samuel Przypkowski on tolerance and by Andrzej Wiszowaty on 'rational religion'. Isaac Newton had met Samuel Crell , son of Johannes Crellius , of the Spinowski family. Newton was well informed about

4950-649: The Exchequer . He took charge of England's great recoining, trod on the toes of Lord Lucas, Governor of the Tower, and secured the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for Edmond Halley. Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon the death of Thomas Neale in 1699, a position Newton held for the last 30 years of his life. These appointments were intended as sinecures , but Newton took them seriously. He retired from his Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercised his authority to reform

5049-485: The Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury, the bimetallic relationship between gold coins and silver coins was changed by royal proclamation on 22 December 1717, forbidding the exchange of gold guineas for more than 21 silver shillings. This inadvertently resulted in a silver shortage as silver coins were used to pay for imports, while exports were paid for in gold, effectively moving Britain from

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5148-493: The Polish Brethren, was started on January 22, 1556, when Piotr of Goniądz (Peter Gonesius), a Polish student, spoke out against the doctrine of the Trinity during the general synod of the Reformed ( Calvinist ) churches of Poland held in the village of Secemin . A theological debate called by the Polish king Sigismund II Augustus himself in 1565 did not succeed in bringing both Protestant factions together again. Finally,

5247-527: The Principia were in fact divided in sections headed by hypotheses. But he clearly seems to have gone away from that, as further evidenced from his famous line in his "Opticks", where he wrote, in English, "Hypotheses have no place in experimental science." These ideas are in line with the scientific philosophy of Francis Bacon , who advocated for an inductive, or data-drivien, approach to science. In

5346-433: The Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope. Their interest encouraged him to publish his notes, Of Colours , which he later expanded into the work Opticks . When Robert Hooke criticised some of Newton's ideas, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. Newton and Hooke had brief exchanges in 1679–80, when Hooke, appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence, opened up

5445-585: The Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Newton who was the true discoverer and labelled Leibniz a fraud; it was later found that Newton wrote the study's concluding remarks on Leibniz. Thus began the bitter controversy which marred the lives of both Newton and Leibniz until the latter's death in 1716. Newton is generally credited with the generalised binomial theorem , valid for any exponent. He discovered Newton's identities , Newton's method , classified cubic plane curves ( polynomials of degree three in two variables ), made substantial contributions to

5544-778: The Solar System—developed in a somewhat modern way because already in the mid-1680s he recognised the "deviation of the Sun" from the centre of gravity of the Solar System. For Newton, it was not precisely the centre of the Sun or any other body that could be considered at rest, but rather "the common centre of gravity of the Earth, the Sun and all the Planets is to be esteem'd the Centre of the World", and this centre of gravity "either

5643-712: The Transylvanians), as they preferred not to be called Socinians. The term had been used by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania as early as 1600. Socinian theology continued in Transylvania, where Polish exiles such as Andrzej Wiszowaty Jr. , taught in the Unitarian College (1726–1740), as evidenced in the Summa Universae Theologiae Christianae secundum Unitarios of Mihály Lombard de Szentábrahám , recognized as

5742-840: The Trinity). During the Second Polish Republic , the priest Karol Grycz-Śmiałowski recreated what he considered was a revival of the Church of Polish Brethren in Kraków in 1937. During the People's Republic of Poland , it was registered in 1967 as the Unity of Polish Brethren ( Jednota Braci Polskich ). Modern groups that look to the Polish Brethren include the Christadelphians and Church of God General Conference . Although Christadelphians had since their origins in

5841-407: The best known adherents of this fellowship are Mikołaj Sienicki , Jan Niemojewski , and writers and poets Zbigniew Morsztyn , Olbrycht Karmanowski and Wacław Potocki . This expulsion is sometimes taken as the beginning of decline of famous Polish religious freedom , although the decline started earlier and ended later: the last non-Catholic deputy was removed from parliament in the beginning of

5940-606: The complexity of applying his theory of gravity to the motion of the moon was so great it affected Newton's health: "[H]e was deprived of his appetite and sleep" during his work on the problem in 1692–93, and told the astronomer John Machin that "his head never ached but when he was studying the subject". According to Brewster, Edmund Halley also told John Conduitt that when pressed to complete his analysis Newton "always replied that it made his head ache, and kept him awake so often, that he would think of it no more ". [Emphasis in original] Newton made clear his heliocentric view of

6039-563: The currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters. As Warden, and afterwards as Master, of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20 percent of the coins taken in during the Great Recoinage of 1696 were counterfeit . Counterfeiting was high treason , punishable by the felon being hanged, drawn and quartered . Despite this, convicting even the most flagrant criminals could be extremely difficult, but Newton proved equal to

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6138-434: The death of his uncle in Switzerland, Fausto Sozzini consulted with the Unitarian Church in Transylvania , attempting to mediate in the dispute between Giorgio Biandrata and Ferenc Dávid . He moved to Poland, where he married the daughter of a leading member of the Polish Brethren , the anti-trinitarian minority, or ecclesia minor . In 1565, it had split from the Calvinist Reformed Church in Poland. Sozzini never joined

6237-418: The developments in Poland and collected many books from the Racovian Academy . The Englishman John Biddle had translated two works by Przypkowski, as well as the Racovian Catechism and a work by Joachim Stegmann , a "Polish Brother" from Germany. Biddle's followers had very close relations with the Polish Socinian family of Crellius (aka Spinowski). Subsequently, the Unitarian strain of Christianity

6336-425: The entire period of their development. Modern Socinians (in Christological terms) include the small number of " Biblical Unitarian " churches such as the Christadelphians , the Church of God General Conference and the Church of the Blessed Hope , though these churches are not direct descendants of the Polish Brethren. At the time of Fausto Sozzini, Symon Budny held a variant of unitarianism including denial of

6435-465: The equality and brotherhood of all people. They opposed social privileges based on religious affiliation, and their adherents refused military service (they were known for carrying wooden swords, instead of the real almost obligatory szablas ), and they declined to serve in political office. Although never numerous, they had a significant impact on political thought in Poland. After being expelled from Poland, they emigrated to England , East Prussia and

6534-439: The exchanges with Hooke, Newton worked out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. Newton communicated his results to Edmond Halley and to the Royal Society in De motu corporum in gyrum , a tract written on about nine sheets which was copied into the Royal Society's Register Book in December 1684. This tract contained

6633-474: The faction that had supported Piotr of Goniądz's arguments broke all ties with the Calvinists and organised its own synod in the town of Brzeziny on June 10, 1565. In the 1570s a split was developing between the pacifist and Arian group, led by Marcin Czechowic and Grzegorz Paweł z Brzezin , and the non-pacifist and Ebionite group, led by the Belarusian Symon Budny . In 1579, the Italian exile Fausto Sozzini arrived in Poland and applied for admission to

6732-484: The first analytical determination (based on Boyle's law ) of the speed of sound in air, inferred the oblateness of Earth's spheroidal figure, accounted for the precession of the equinoxes as a result of the Moon's gravitational attraction on the Earth's oblateness, initiated the gravitational study of the irregularities in the motion of the Moon , provided a theory for the determination of the orbits of comets, and much more. Newton's biographer David Brewster reported that

6831-444: The following regions: Originally, the Minor Church followed a non-trinitarian doctrine, inspired by the writings of Michael Servetus . Later on, Socinianism , named for the Italian theologian Fausto Sozzini , became its main theological approach. They were against capital punishment and did not believe in the traditional Christian doctrines of Hell or the Trinity . They advocated the separation of church and state and taught

6930-457: The house over them." Newton's mother had three children (Mary, Benjamin, and Hannah) from her second marriage. From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The King's School in Grantham , which taught Latin and Ancient Greek and probably imparted a significant foundation of mathematics. He was removed from school by his mother and returned to Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth by October 1659. His mother, widowed for

7029-533: The idea of wave–particle duality bear only a minor resemblance to Newton's understanding of light. In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles. The contact with the Cambridge Platonist philosopher Henry More revived his interest in alchemy. He replaced the ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles. John Maynard Keynes , who acquired many of Newton's writings on alchemy, stated that "Newton

7128-458: The issue could not be avoided, and by then his unconventional views stood in the way. His academic work impressed the Lucasian professor Isaac Barrow , who was anxious to develop his own religious and administrative potential (he became master of Trinity College two years later); in 1669, Newton succeeded him, only one year after receiving his MA. Newton argued that this should exempt him from

7227-769: The late 1660s, Fausto Sozzini's grandson Andreas Wiszowaty and great-grandson Benedykt Wiszowaty published the nine-volume Biblioteca Fratrum Polonorum quos Unitarios vocant (1668) in Amsterdam, along with the works of F. Sozzini, the Austrian Johann Ludwig von Wolzogen , and the Poles Johannes Crellius , Jonasz Szlichtyng , and Samuel Przypkowski . These books circulated among English and French thinkers, including Isaac Newton , John Locke , Voltaire , and Pierre Bayle . In Great Britain and North America , Socinianism later became

7326-501: The letter of the law and allowing senior Socinians such as Hieronim Moskorzowski to vote in the Sejm . The direct doctrinal descendants of the original Socinians are the Unitarian Christians of Transylvania and England. Although the Polish Brethren never adopted the name "Unitarian" while in Poland, when they were disbanded in 1658, those who fled to Holland eventually embraced the term "Unitarian" (which they got from

7425-521: The next two years saw the development of his theories on calculus, optics , and the law of gravitation . In April 1667, Newton returned to the University of Cambridge, and in October he was elected as a fellow of Trinity. Fellows were required to take holy orders and be ordained as Anglican priests, although this was not enforced in the Restoration years, and an assertion of conformity to

7524-449: The nucleus that Newton developed and expanded to form the Principia . The Principia was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Halley. In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion . Together, these laws describe the relationship between any object, the forces acting upon it and the resulting motion, laying the foundation for classical mechanics . They contributed to many advances during

7623-457: The object-glasses of telescopes must forever remain imperfect, achromatism and refraction being incompatible. This inference was proved by Dollond to be wrong." Newton had been developing his theory of gravitation as far back as 1665. In 1679, Newton returned to his work on celestial mechanics by considering gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets with reference to Kepler's laws of planetary motion. This followed stimulation by

7722-400: The ordination requirement, and King Charles II , whose permission was needed, accepted this argument; thus, a conflict between Newton's religious views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted. The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge position included the responsibility of instructing geography . In 1672, and again in 1681, Newton published a revised, corrected, and amended edition of

7821-505: The phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of motion and of gravitation, were discovered. And to us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea." This idea that Newton became anti-hypothesis has been disputed, since earlier editions of

7920-650: The publishing of his grandson Andrzej Wiszowaty Sr. in Amsterdam a century later than any role of active leadership in Sozzini's life, especially given that without submitting to baptism, he could never formally join the church that later bore his name abroad. Their biggest cultural centres were Pińczów and Raków , site of the main Arian printing press and the university Racovian Academy ( Gymnasium Bonarum Artium ) founded in 1602 and closed in 1638, which trained over 1000 students. The Brethren never participated in

8019-408: The second time, attempted to make him a farmer, an occupation he hated. Henry Stokes, master at The King's School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school. Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked student, distinguishing himself mainly by building sundials and models of windmills. In June 1661, Newton was admitted to Trinity College at

8118-607: The statement of faith of the Unitarian Church of Transylvania by Emperor Joseph II in 1782. Early English Unitarians such as Henry Hedworth and John Biddle retroactively applied the term "Unitarian" to the Polish Brethren. By 1676 there were at least three Socinian meeting houses in London, even if the Act of Toleration of 1689 saw Socinians and Catholics excluded from official recognition. Socinian ideas continued to have significant influence on Unitarians in England throughout

8217-421: The superiority of Newtonian mechanics over earlier systems. Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum . His work on light was collected in his highly influential book Opticks , published in 1704. He formulated an empirical law of cooling , which

8316-504: The task. Disguised as a habitué of bars and taverns, he gathered much of that evidence himself. For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and separating the branches of government, English law still had ancient and formidable customs of authority. Newton had himself made a justice of the peace in all the home counties . A draft letter regarding the matter is included in Newton's personal first edition of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica , which he must have been amending at

8415-432: The theory of finite differences , with him regarded as the "single most significant contributor to finite difference interpolation ", with many formulas created by Newton. Newton was also the first to use fractional indices and to employ coordinate geometry to derive solutions to Diophantine equations . He approximated partial sums of the harmonic series by logarithms (a precursor to Euler's summation formula ) and

8514-704: The time. Then he conducted more than 100 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers, and suspects between June 1698 and Christmas 1699. Newton successfully prosecuted 28 coiners. Newton was made president of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French Académie des Sciences . In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed , the Astronomer Royal , by prematurely publishing Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis Britannica , which Newton had used in his studies. In April 1705, Queen Anne knighted Newton during

8613-791: The virgin birth of Jesus and arguing that Jesus was the son of Joseph, for which he was excluded from the Racovian community. Polish Brethren The Polish Brethren (Polish: Bracia Polscy ) were members of the Minor Reformed Church of Poland, a Nontrinitarian Protestant church that existed in Poland from 1565 to 1658. By those on the outside, they were called " Arians " or " Socinians " ( Polish : arianie , socynianie ) , but themselves preferred simply to be called "Brethren" or "Christians", and, after their expulsion from Poland, " Unitarians ". The Ecclesia Minor or Minor Reformed Church of Poland , better known today as

8712-452: Was a necessary truth in the future (what would definitely happen) and did not apply to what was a contingent truth (what might happen). They believed that, if God knew every possible future, human free will was impossible and as such rejected the "hard" view of omniscience. Modern process theology and open theism advance a similar viewpoint. Later writers such as Archibald Alexander Hodge (1823–86) asserted that Socinian theology

8811-566: Was continued by, most notably, Joseph Priestley , who had emigrated to the United States and was a friend of both James Madison and Thomas Jefferson , the latter of whom sometimes attended services at Priestley's congregation in Philadelphia. Notably, Priestley was very well informed on the earlier developments in Poland, especially by his mentions of Socinus and Szymon Budny (translator of Bible, author of many pamphlets against

8910-412: Was formalized in the Racovian publications. Before F. Sozzini's arrival in Poland, there had been a wide range of positions from the total otherworldliness, common property, and withdrawal from the state of Marcin Czechowic of Lublin through to the advocacy of military service by Symon Budny . The next generation of Polish Brethren stabilized between these two positions, carrying wooden swords to follow

9009-710: Was her "very loving Uncle", according to his letter to her when she was recovering from smallpox . Newton died in his sleep in London on 20 March 1727 ( OS 20 March 1726; NS 31 March 1727). He was given a ceremonial funeral, attended by nobles, scientists, and philosophers, and was buried in Westminster Abbey among kings and queens. He was the first scientist to be buried in the abbey. Voltaire may have been present at his funeral. A bachelor, he had divested much of his estate to relatives during his last years, and died intestate . His papers went to John Conduitt and Catherine Barton . Shortly after his death,

9108-400: Was identified by Barrow in a letter sent to Collins that August as the work "of an extraordinary genius and proficiency in these things". Newton later became involved in a dispute with Leibniz over priority in the development of calculus. Most modern historians believe that Newton and Leibniz developed calculus independently, although with very different mathematical notations . However, it

9207-470: Was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, ... and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?" Newton also constructed a primitive form of a frictional electrostatic generator , using a glass globe. In his book Opticks , Newton

9306-428: Was not the first of the age of reason: He was the last of the magicians." Newton's contributions to science cannot be isolated from his interest in alchemy. This was at a time when there was no clear distinction between alchemy and science. In 1704, Newton published Opticks , in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter

9405-457: Was proved in 1731, four years after his death. Starting with the second edition of his Principia , Newton included a final section on science philosophy or method. It was here that he wrote his famous line, in Latin, "hypotheses non fingo", which can be translated as "I don't make hypotheses," (the direct translation of "fingo" is "frame", but in context he was advocating against the use of hypotheses in science). He went on to posit that if there

9504-408: Was rooted in skepticism . However, the original Polish Socinians were believers in miracles and the virgin birth, although there were a few radicals, such as Symon Budny and Jacobus Palaeologus , who denied these. Although not directly a doctrinal belief, the principle of conscientious objection and the obedient relation of the believer to the state became a distinct position of Socinianism as it

9603-430: Was the first heat transfer formulation and serves as the formal basis of convective heat transfer , made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound , and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid . Furthermore, he made early investigations into electricity , with an idea from his book Opticks arguably the beginning of the field theory of the electric force . In addition to his creation of calculus, as

9702-513: Was the first to show a diagram using a prism as a beam expander, and also the use of multiple-prism arrays. Some 278 years after Newton's discussion, multiple-prism beam expanders became central to the development of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers . Also, the use of these prismatic beam expanders led to the multiple-prism dispersion theory . Subsequent to Newton, much has been amended. Young and Fresnel discarded Newton's particle theory in favour of Huygens' wave theory to show that colour

9801-445: Was the first to use power series with confidence and to revert power series. His work on infinite series was inspired by Simon Stevin 's decimals. In 1666, Newton observed that the spectrum of colours exiting a prism in the position of minimum deviation is oblong, even when the light ray entering the prism is circular, which is to say, the prism refracts different colours by different angles. This led him to conclude that colour

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