Volume 13, Issue 2, 2016
James Franklin
Pages 169-179
Elliptical Orbits and the Aristotelian Scientific Revolution Comment on Groarke
The Scientific Revolution was far from the anti-Aristotelian movement traditionally pictured. Its applied mathematics pursued by new means the Aristotelian ideal of science as knowledge by insight into necessary causes. Newton’s derivation of Kepler’s elliptical planetary orbits from the inverse square law of gravity is a central example.