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|Summary=Newton’s most notable contributions were made to the fields of physics, mathematics, and scientific method, which were so groundbreaking that he is currently considered to be one of the most important physicists in modern Western history.[[CiteRef::Janiak (2016)]] Philosophers of science credit Newton’s revolutionary theory of gravity and his experimental approach to conducting natural philosophy as outlined in his major work, ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (''Mathematical principles Principles of Natural Philosophy'' or simply [[Newton (1687)|''The Principia'']]), whose principles became central to the mosaic of late 18th and 19th century science.[[CiteRef::Janiak (2016)]] Some consider The ''Principia'' to be the work that initially created physics as its own scientific field separate from the umbrella of metaphysics and philosophy. [[CiteRef::Janiak (2016)]]|Historical Context=When Isaac Newton began his studies at Cambridge University's prestigious Trinity College in 1661, more than a century had passed since Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) had proposed a '''heliocentric cosmology''' in his 1543 ''De revolutionibus orbium coelestiumRevolutionibus Orbium Coelestium'' (''On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres''). It had been fifty years since Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) had published his observations with the telescope in 1610, which uncovered dramatic evidence favoring the Copernican system. His discovery of the phases of the planet Venus indicated that it revolved around the sun and was lit by reflected sunlight. His description of four moons circling Jupiter indicated that Earth, with its own moon, resembled this planet. Finally, his discovery of surface features on the moon indicated that it was another world, as expected under the Copernican system, but not by Aristotelianism. Around the same time, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)published his laws of planetary motion, indicating that the planets revolved around the sun on elliptical paths, replacing the circular motion and complex epicycles of Copernicus and Ptolemy.[[CiteRef::Westfall (1980)|pp. 1-7]] According to Westfall, "by 1661 the debate on the heliocentric universe had been settled; those who mattered had surrendered to the irresistible elegance of Kepler's unencumbered ellipses, supported by the striking testimony of the telescope, whatever the ambiguities might be. For Newton, the heliocentric universe was never a matter in question".[[CiteRef::Westfall (1980)|p. 6]] A planetary Earth that rotated on its axis and revolved around the sun was incompatible with the accepted Aristotelian physics. The community of the time was engaged with the question of how it could be that the Earth itself was in motion through space, and with the question of how one could hope to gain reliable knowledge in the face of the failure of Aristotelian scholastic knowledge accepted for centuries.

Newton’s education at Cambridge was classical, focusing on Aristotelian rhetoric, logic, ethics, and physics. Bound to Aristotelian scholasticism by statutory rules,[[CiteRef::Christianson (1984)|p. 33]] the curriculum had changed little in decades.[[CiteRef::Westfall (1980)|pp. 81-90]][[CiteRef::Smith (2009)]] Like many of the more ambitious students, Newton distanced himself from classical metaphysics and instead studied the works of the French natural philosopher [[René Descartes]](1596-1650) on his own. By 1664, Newton is known to have read the 1656 Latin edition of Descartes' ''Opera philosophicaPhilosophica'', a one volume compilation of Descartes' major works.[[CiteRef::Smith (2009)]] Descartes had died just over a decade prior, and these works had first been published within the preceding thirty years. They were gaining in popularity and by about 1680 would become the [[Theory Acceptance|accepted]] centerpiece of the Cambridge curriculum, as they also would in Paris by 1700.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 190]]