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What evidence helped persuade European scientists to accept Newtonian physics?
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physics
As conceived by Daniel Bernoulli in Hydrodynamica (1738), gases consist of numerous particles in rapid random motion. He assumed that the pressure of a gas is produced by the direct impact of the particles on the walls of the container.
European scientists were largely persuaded to shift from Cartesian to Newtonian physics in the mid-18th century due to the successful empirical confirmation of several key predictions derived from Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation.1
Key evidence included:
- Earth’s Shape: Newton predicted that Earth’s rotation would cause it to bulge at the Equator and flatten at the poles, forming an oblate spheroid. This was decisively confirmed by French Academy of Sciences expeditions to Lapland and equatorial South America, which measured the length of a degree of the meridian to verify the planet's shape.12
- The Return of Halley’s Comet: Scientists successfully calculated the comet's return by accounting for the gravitational perturbations caused by massive planets like Jupiter. The comet’s reappearance within the predicted window was viewed as a major triumph for Newtonian theory.2
- Lunar Motion: Alexis-Claude Clairaut demonstrated that the complex motion of the Moon’s perigee could be accurately explained using the inverse-square law, provided that sufficiently careful approximations were made.2
These successes provided a physical basis for Kepler’s laws and unified celestial and terrestrial physics under a single, coherent framework.13