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Out of these four rules a new, engaged method for conducting science emerged that stood in stark contrast the previous passive and theoretical Cartesian and Aristotelian-scholastic methods. Propositions are born from natural sources and placed back into the natural world to be tested empirically.[[CiteRef::Smith (2002)]] As the four rules were absorbed into the ensuing mosaic, the calculus became deeply incorporated in the experimental method, as it was used to mathematically calculate from natural laws an empirical prediction, and then evaluate how exactly the prediction matched the observed reality.
Using these principles, Newton was able to derive the law of universal gravity in the context of his method. In the Cartesian mosaic, the centripetal force had already been defined as the agent that pulled the moon towards the Earth, keeping its orbit circular rather than linear. Newton applied rules 1) and 2) to determine that the centripetal force, and the force that compelled objects to move downwards towards the Earth, were merely two different expressions of the same thing. Newton then went on to apply the third rule, and argue that this force, which he called gravity, must be a universal property of all material objects. From here, he went on to argue for the unification of superlunary and sublunary phenomena.[[CiteRef::Harper (20092002)|pp. 183-184]]
Although not all of the ontological changes to the mosaic described in The ''Principia'' were immediately accepted, the new experimental philosophy that he described influenced contemporary scientists within the same century of it’s publication. [Newtons philosophy] Both prominent 17th century natural philosophers Christiaan Huygens and John Locke are known to have taken the experimental philosophy, if not necessarily the full content of Newton’s theories, to heart.[[CiteRef::Janiak (2016)]] By 1700 the acceptance of “experimental philosophy” methodological structure had overtaken that of Cartesianism in England.[[CiteRef::Janiak (2016)]]
