1. Scientific picture of the world in the XVIII century.

By the 18th century, the works of many scholars of the West had developed an understanding of the world and certain laws of nature. Summarized these ideas and polished them Newton. This period was so characterized by Engels: "... The first period of the new natural sciences in the field of the inorganic world ends with Newton ..." What was the picture of the world at that time or what was the scientific paradigm of the XVIII century?

The term "paradigm" (paradigma - example, sample) was introduced by the American philosopher Thomas Coon in the 70s of our century. The combination of recognized scientific achievements usually gives the scientific community a model of problem definition and methods of solving them for some time. Such a system of world views and ways of studying it is called a paradigm. The works of the great physicists of the 18th century created a picture of the world and its corresponding philosophy, which received the name of the Newton-Cartesian model of the world. The greatest achievements, having the character of completeness, were made in mechanics. First of all, these are the laws of mechanics, about which every schoolchild should be aware. Recall these laws in Newton's formulation.

Law I : Every body continues to be held in its state of rest or of uniform and rectilinear motion, until it is forced by the applied forces to change this state.

Law II : The change in the amount of motion is proportional to the applied driving force and occurs in the direction of the straight line along which this force acts

it is assumed here that the mass m = const; through F, V, a, indicated force, speed, acceleration and time.

Law III : There is always an equal and opposite reaction to action, otherwise, the interaction of two bodies against each other is equal and directed in opposite directions.

From these laws, a number of important consequences were obtained: the principle of superposition of forces (the rule of the parallelogram of forces), the law of conservation of momentum for a closed system.

A significant contribution was made by Newton to the discovery of the law of aggression: the strength of the force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. These laws are set out in Newton's Beginnings (1687), where the main tendency of contemporary natural science is "to subordinate natural phenomena to the laws of mathematics". In addition, Newton proposed the mechanism of resistance experienced by the body as it moves in a fluid, that is, he studied the complex issues of the hydrodynamics of a viscous fluid.

Newton’s views on space and time, relative and absolute motion, are clearly stated in the Principles. Newton believed that we can talk about the absolute movement of bodies, if we introduce the concept of absolute space and time.

"Absolute true mathematical time ... flows evenly and is otherwise called duration."

"Relative, apparent or ordinary time is ... a measure of duration used in everyday life instead of real time, such as: hour, day, month, year."

"Absolute space, by its very essence, regardless of what it is, is always the same and motionless."

We do not consider Newton's works in the field of electricity, magnetism, the theory of light and color, etc. We note only that for the mathematical implementation of various equations, he developed an analysis of infinitely small quantities, which is the basis of higher mathematics in our time.

In conclusion, with the release of the "Beginnings", Newton's fame has become universally recognized, his authority is unquestioned.

So, according to the Newton-Cartesian model of the world:

• matter exists in three-dimensional (Euclidean) space in time;
• a linear causal relationship is observed in the world;
• matter, space and time are independent of each other;
• The material world has clearly defined boundaries.

In physics in the 18th century, mechanical motion was thoroughly studied and other forms of motion were little known. Scientists of that time and the beginning of the XIX century. Were convinced that if we set the laws of motion (Newton's laws), the initial position of the body in the coordinates x _o , y _o , z _o and the initial velocities Vx _o , Vy _o , Vz _o , then the system behavior is completely defined and known in advance, i.e. It is possible to calculate the position and velocity of bodies at any time in the past and present. The world is like a grand clockwork, which was once set in motion. At the beginning of the 19th century, the French physicist and mathematician Laplace argued that if a certain demon knows the initial coordinates and speeds, then everything can be predictable to them, since the Universe develops according to quite fatalistic laws. Ignorance is subjective, it does not reflect the law of Nature, that is, chance in this picture of the world does not objectively exist, behind it are quite deterministic parameters of the system. The demon Laplace knows them ^* , but we do not know them.

So, in classical mechanics, processes are reversible and there is no place for randomness, everything is predetermined and everything can be calculated in principle. However, not everyone could agree with such a vision of the world, the intuition of individual contemporaries protested against such a picture of the world, and people of art felt it keenly. In 1802, the English poet W. Blake wrote:

Note that among some of our contemporaries, including scholars of various specialties, the picture of the world is based on the postulates of the 18th century cited here, but as we will see later, everything is much more complicated and richer.