Abstract
Abstract Although in the seventeenth century several philosphers including Rene Descartes, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Robert Hooke, and Christiaan Huygens studied celestial phenomena using the laws of mechanics, with the appearance of Newton’s Principia the mathematical study of the system of the world reached a new level of sophistication and a broader horizon. If physical causes had been left at the margin of Newton’s account, mechanics and astronomy were brought together to an unprecedented degree of cohesion. Not only planetary motion and Kepler’s three laws, but also the motion of comets, tides, the shape and mutual perturbations of celestial bodies were studied on the basis of the same principles and laws of motion. This unified treatment of celestial and terrestrial phenomena set a number of problems in mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy and established a new field within the mathematical disciplines, namely celestial mechanics. It is essential at this point to permit some remarks about disciplinary boundaries. Newtonian and Leibnizian celestial mechanics had a location on the map of knowledge different from that which became standard several decades later. With regard to theology, for example, the order and constitution of the cosmos and the status of its laws with respect to the Creator were a major concern for the two contenders.
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