nLab natural philosophy

Natural philosophy

Context

Philosophy

Physics

physics, mathematical physics, philosophy of physics

Surveys, textbooks and lecture notes


theory (physics), model (physics)

experiment, measurement, computable physics

Natural philosophy

Idea

Before mathematics was found to be ‘the language with which God has written the universe’ (Galilei, Il Saggiatore, 1623) (eventually via Newton's laws of motion), the study of the phenomenology of physics was pursued by more informal means, and went by the name natural philosophy, that is the philosophy of nature?. (Compare ‘natural history’ for biology, although that term is still used for observational biology.)

Last revised on January 3, 2018 at 05:48:43. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.