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For Descartes, the ultimate justification of knowledge claims lie with human reason and the absence of doubt. He relied on classical methods of theorizing and conjectured hypotheses in order to construct scientific propositions.[[CiteRef::Janiak (2016)]] Such a '''rationalist''' approach to knowledge was also championed by Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), and by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.[[CiteRef::Lennon and Dea (2014)]] But, by the early 17th century, experimental researchers like Galileo Galilei and Robert Boyle (1627-1691) had begun to elaborate and practice a very different approach to knowledge based on experimentation and extensive use of mathematics. Following the '''inductive methodology''' advocated by [[Francis Bacon]](1561-1626), they maintained that theoretical principles emerged from experimental data by a process of '''inductive generalization'''. However, there were also dissenters like Newton's contemporary Christiaan Huygens, who believed that most experimental work involved formulating hypotheses about unobservable entities, which were tested by their observable consequences. This was an early form of '''hypothetico-deductivism'''. Newton rejected Cartesian rationalism, and argued that the Cartesians did not sufficiently employ mathematics and experimentation in their work. He rejected the method of hypotheses outright. [[CiteRef::McMullin (2001)]][[CiteRef::Janiak (2016)]] He supported '''inductivism''', and held epistemological views similar to those of his contemporary and friend [[John Locke]](1632-1704), who maintained that all knowledge came from experience.[[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]]

|Criticism=Newton's theories provoked immediate and wide interest in Britain, and became accepted there by the first decade of the eighteenth century. [[CiteRef::Smith (2009)]][[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015) p. 210]] In continental Europe, acceptance came more slowly. To proponents of the mechanical philosophy, it was methodologically important necessary that all motion in the universe be given a cause involving direct physical contact, even if this amounted to a larger gap between theory and experimental evidenceof bodies. Many of Newton's continental contemporaries, in particular Leibniz and Huygens, strongly objected to the idea that forces could act at a distance. Leibniz regarded the theory of gravitation as a regression in natural philosophy and accused Newton of treating gravity as an 'occult quality' beyond philosophical understanding. John Locke and David Hume were more favorable to Newton's gravitational force and his experimental philosophy. The topic was the subject of After an intense debate in the early eighteenth century. [[CiteRef::Janiak (2016)]]Newtonian gravitation theory became accepted through much of continental Europe by the mid-eighteenth century [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015) pp. 211-212]][[CiteRef::Aiton (1958) p. 172]][[CiteRef::Frangsmyr (1974) p. 35]]

   More than two centuries after Newtonpublished the ''Principia''s contemporary, Leibniza new theory of motion and gravitation was formulated by Albert Einstein (1879-1955), who was inspired by new developments in particular was concerned that the non-Euclidean geometry and by problems with James Clerk Maxwell's (1831-1879) theory of gravity electromagnetic radiation. The new theory replaced Newton's theory as a regression in natural philosophy, as Newton could not give a mechanistic account of the source accepted theory of gravitymotion and gravitation by about 1920.  Although many natural philosophers in Einstein's '''General Theory of Relativity''' explained the 17th century were convinced success of its predecessor by Newton’s views on showing that its equations reduce to those of Newton in the the proper method limit of weak gravitational fields and velocities that are an insignificant fraction of that of conducting science, many were not willing to abandon the Cartesian mechanical philosophylight. [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015) p.125]][[CiteRef::Isaacson (2007)]]