Deism. The world, nature is presented as a gigantic mechanical system set in motion by a divine first impulse. Considering matter as a passive substance, placing the source of development outside the object, materialist philosophers were forced to come to the idea of ​​the first impulse. Deism is a worldview according to which God or spirit, having given the world the initial impulse of movement, no longer interferes with the natural course of events. B. Spinoza, for example, states: “God constitutes the productive cause (causa elliciens) not only of the existence of things, but also their essence.”

Atomism- the idea of ​​the structure of matter, the presence at the basis of nature of the smallest material indivisible particles. In the 17th century, thanks to the works of Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) and other thinkers, ancient atomism was revived and received both philosophical and natural scientific recognition. The concept of “atom” has become key in experimental mathematical physics and chemistry, which is becoming scientific. P. Holbach argued that: “all nature exists and is preserved only through the movement of either invisible molecules and atoms, or visible particles of matter.” In this concept, matter is identified with substance and the immutable properties of matter are considered: extension, divisibility, hardness, heaviness, inertial force.

Reductionism- a methodological principle according to which the highest properties of matter can be fully explained on the basis of the laws characteristic of lower forms. The science and philosophy of modern times interprets movement as the movement of bodies in space (i.e. mechanical movement) and tries to explain the essence of the universe and everything that is in it from the position of the laws of mechanics. P. Holbach defines motion as “... a consistent change in the relationship of a body to various points in space or to other bodies.” From the point of view of modern materialists, movement occurs naturally, that is, teleologism is denied - the movement of an object towards a predetermined goal.

Determinism- the principle of the interdependence of all things, the universality of cause-and-effect relationships. Determinism also interprets mechanistically (this historical form of determinism is also called Laplacean, classical, hard), that is, only unambiguous, linear patterns are recognized. Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827) formulated the classic position that if there were such a vast mind as to know at a given moment about all the forces of nature and points of application, then there would be nothing left that would not be certain for it, and the future, just like the past, would appear before his gaze. In this concept, causality is identified with necessity and completely denies randomness. According to Holbach, “chance... a word devoid of meaning... we attribute to chance all phenomena whose connection with their causes we do not see. Thus, we use the word chance to cover up our ignorance of the natural causes that produce the phenomena we observe in ways unknown to us.”

A definite result of the activities of philosophers - materialists and naturalists of the New Age was the scientific picture of the world. The scientific picture of the world as the highest synthesis of scientific knowledge includes the most general knowledge about the world and man, as well as the basic methodological principles of the study of existence. The scientific picture of the world created in the 17th-18th centuries was based on a materialistic worldview and solved the problem of radically overcoming the religious worldview and at the same time had a historically limited mechanistic and metaphysical (anti-dialectical) character. The mechanism of views on nature was due to the special position of mechanics as a science at that time; it received complete systematic treatment and widespread practical application before others. The natural science of that time did not have sufficient material to reflect the universe as a process that is constantly evolving. F. Engels, characterizing the period under consideration, makes the following comparison: as high as natural science of the first half of the 18th century rose above Greek antiquity in the volume of its knowledge and even in the systematization of material, it was just as inferior to it in the ideological mastery of this material, in the general view of nature. For the Greek philosophers, the world was essentially something evolving. For the naturalists of the period we are considering, it was something ossified, unchangeable, and for the majority something created immediately1.

Basic principles of the mechanistic picture of the world

Deism. The world and nature are presented as a gigantic mechanical system, which is set in motion by a divine first impulse. Considering matter as a passive substance, placing the source of development outside the object, materialist philosophers were forced to come to the idea of ​​the first impulse. Deism is a worldview according to which God or spirit, having given the world the initial impulse of movement, no longer interferes with the natural course of events. B. Spinoza, for example, states: “God constitutes the productive cause (causa elliciens) not only of the existence of things, but also their essence” 2.

Atomism- the idea of ​​the structure of matter, the presence at the heart of nature of small material indivisible particles. In the 17th century, thanks to the works of P. Gassendi (1592-1655) and other thinkers, ancient atomism was revived and received both philosophical and natural recognition. The concept of “atom” has become key in experimental mathematical physics and chemistry, which is becoming scientific. P. Holbach argued that: “all nature exists and is preserved only through the movement of either invisible molecules and atoms, or visible particles of matter” 1. In this concept, matter is identified with matter; The immutable properties of matter are considered to be: length, divisibility, hardness, weight, inertial force.

Reductionism- a methodological principle according to which the highest properties of matter can be fully explained on the basis of the laws characteristic of lower forms. The science and philosophy of modern times interprets movement as the movement of bodies in space (that is, mechanical movement) and tries to explain the essence of the universe and everything that is in it from the position of the laws of mechanics. P. Holbach defines movement as “... a consistent change in the relationship of a body at different points in space or to other bodies” 2.3 from the point of view of modern materialists, movement occurs naturally, that is, teleologism is denied - the movement of an object in a predetermined goal.

Determinism- the principle of the interdependence of all things, the universality of cause-and-effect relationships. Determinism is also interpreted mechanistically (this historical form of determinism is also called Laplacean, classical, hard), that is, only unambiguous, linear patterns are recognized. P. Laplace (1749-1827) formulated the classical position that if there were such a great mind as to know at a given moment about all the forces of nature..., then there would be nothing left that was not certain for him, and the future, just like the past would appear before his eyes. In this concept, causality is identified with necessity and completely denies randomness. P. Holbach believed that chance... the word is meaningless... we attribute to chance all phenomena whose connection with their causes we do not see. Thus, we use the word chance to cover up our ignorance of the natural causes that make the phenomena we observe in ways unknown to us3.

The formation of a mechanistic picture of the world is associated with the name of Galileo Galilei, who established the laws of motion of freely falling bodies and formulated the mechanical principle of relativity. He was the first to use the experimental method to study nature, together with measurements of the quantities under study and mathematical processing of measurement results. If experiments had been carried out periodically before, it was he who began to systematically apply their mathematical analysis for the first time.

Galileo's approach to the study of nature was fundamentally different from the previously existing natural philosophical method, in which a priori, not related to experience and observations, purely speculative schemes were invented to explain natural phenomena.

Natural philosophy, represents an attempt to use general philosophical principles to explain nature. Sometimes brilliant guesses were made that were many centuries ahead of the results of specific research. For example, the atomic hypothesis of the structure of matter put forward by the ancient Greek philosopher Leucippus (V BC) and substantiated in more detail by his student Democritus (c. 460 BC - year of death unknown), as well as the idea of ​​evolution expressed by Empedocles (c. 490 - c. 430 BC) and his followers. However, after concrete sciences gradually emerged and they were separated from undifferentiated knowledge, natural philosophical explanations became a brake on the development of science.

This can be seen by comparing the views on motion of Aristotle and Galileo. Based on an a priori natural philosophical idea, Aristotle considered motion in a circle to be “perfect,” and Galileo, relying on observations and experiment, introduced the concept inertial motion.

The following formulation, convenient for use in theoretical mechanics, is equivalent: “A reference system is called inertial, in relation to which space is homogeneous and isotropic, and time is homogeneous.” Newton's laws, as well as all other axioms of dynamics in classical mechanics, are formulated in relation to inertial reference systems.

The term “inertial system” (German: Inertialsystem) was proposed in 1885 by Ludwig Lange and meant a coordinate system in which Newton’s laws are valid. According to Lange, this term was supposed to replace the concept of absolute space, which was subjected to devastating criticism during this period. With the advent of the theory of relativity, the concept was generalized to an “inertial frame of reference.”

Inertial reference system (IRS)- a reference system in which all free bodies move rectilinearly and uniformly or are at rest (Fig. 2). The use of the Earth as an ISO, despite its approximate nature, is widespread in navigation.

Rice. 2. Inertial reference system.

The inertial coordinate system, as part of the ISO, is constructed according to the following algorithm. The center of the earth is chosen as the point O - the origin of coordinates in accordance with its adopted model. Axis z coincides with the axis of rotation of the earth. Axles x And y are in the equatorial plane. It should be noted that such a system does not participate in the rotation of the Earth.

According to Galileo, a body not subject to any external forces will move not in a circle, but uniformly along a straight path or remain at rest. This idea, of course, is an abstraction and idealization, since in reality it is impossible to observe such a situation without any forces acting on the body. However, this abstraction mentally continues the experiment, which can be approximately carried out in reality, when, isolating itself from the action of a number of external forces, it can be established that the body will continue its movement as the influence of extraneous forces on it decreases.

The new experimental natural science, in contrast to the natural philosophical guesses and speculations of the past, began to develop in the close interaction of theory and experience, when each hypothesis or theoretical assumption is systematically tested by experience and measurements. It was thanks to this that Galileo was able to refute Aristotle’s previous assumption that the path of a falling body is proportional to its speed. Having undertaken experiments with the fall of heavy bodies (cannonballs), Galileo proved that this path is proportional to their acceleration (9.81 m/s2). Galileo discovered the satellites of Jupiter, spots on the Sun, mountains on the Moon, which undermined faith in the perfection of the cosmos.

A new major step in the development of natural science was marked by the discovery of the laws of planetary motion. If Galileo dealt with the study of the movement of terrestrial bodies, then the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) studied the movements of celestial bodies, intruding into an area that had previously been considered forbidden to science.

For his research, Kepler could not turn to experiment and therefore was forced to use many years of systematic observations of the movement of the planet Mars made by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). After trying many options, Kepler settled on the hypothesis that the trajectory of Mars, like other planets, is not a circle, but an ellipse. The results of Brahe's observations were consistent with the hypothesis and confirmed it.

The trajectory of Mars is not a circle, but an ellipse, with the Sun at one focus - a position known today as Kepler's first law. Further analysis led to second law: The radius vector connecting the planet and the Sun describes equal areas at equal times. This meant that the further a planet is from the Sun, the slower it moves. Kepler's third law: the ratio of the cube of the average distance of a planet from the Sun to the square of its period of revolution around the Sun is a constant value for all planets: a³/T² = const.

The discovery of the laws of planetary motion by Kepler testified: there is no difference between the movements of earthly and celestial bodies, they all obey natural laws; The very way of discovering the laws of motion of celestial bodies is, in principle, no different from the discovery of the laws of terrestrial bodies. True, due to the impossibility of carrying out experiments with celestial bodies, in order to study the laws of their motion, it was necessary to turn to observations, i.e. in the close interaction of theory and observation, careful testing of put forward hypotheses by measurements of the movements of celestial bodies.

The formation of classical mechanics and the mechanistic picture of the world based on it occurred in two directions: a generalization of the previously obtained results (the laws of motion of freely falling bodies discovered by Galileo) and the laws of planetary motion formulated by Kepler; creation of methods for quantitative analysis of mechanical movement in general.

Newton created his version of differential and integral calculus directly to solve the basic problems of mechanics: determining instantaneous speed as the derivative of the path with respect to the time of movement and acceleration as the derivative of the speed with respect to time or the second derivative of the path with respect to time. Thanks to this, he was able to accurately formulate the basic laws of dynamics and the law of universal gravitation. In the 18th century this was the greatest achievement of scientific thought.

Newton, like his predecessors, attached great importance to observations and experiment, seeing them as the most important criterion for separating false hypotheses from true ones. Therefore, he sharply opposed the assumption of so-called “hidden qualities”, with the help of which Aristotle’s followers tried to explain many phenomena and processes of nature. To say that each kind of thing is endowed with a special hidden quality with the help of which it acts and produces effects, Newton pointed out, means to say nothing.

In this regard, he puts forward a completely new principle for the study of nature, according to which to derive two or three general principles of motion from phenomena and then set out how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from these obvious principles would be a very important step in philosophy, although the reasons for these principles have not yet been discovered.

These principles of motion represent the fundamental laws of mechanics, which Newton precisely formulated in his main work, “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,” published in 1687.

The first law which is often called the law of inertia, states: every body continues to be maintained in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line until and unless it is forced by applied forces to change this state. This law was discovered by Galileo; he was able to show that as the influence of external forces decreases, the body will continue its movement, so that in the absence of all external forces it must remain either at rest or in uniform and linear motion.

Of course, in real movements one can never completely free oneself from the influence of friction forces, air resistance and other external forces, and therefore the law of inertia is an idealization in which one abstracts from the truly complex picture of movement and imagines an ideal picture that can be obtained by going to the limit, those. through a continuous decrease in the effect of external forces on the body and a transition to a state where this effect becomes zero.

Second Basic Law occupies a central place in mechanics: the change in momentum is proportional to the applied acting force and occurs in the direction of the straight line along which this force acts.

Newton's third law: An action always has an equal and oppositely directed reaction, otherwise the interactions of two bodies on each other are equal and directed in opposite directions.

Newton believed that the principles of mechanics are established using two opposing, but at the same time interrelated methods - analysis and synthesis. Genuine hypotheses that can be tested experimentally form the basis and starting point of all research in natural science. Thanks to this, the study of mechanical processes was reduced to their exact mathematical description. For such a description, it was necessary and sufficient to specify the coordinates of the body and its speed (or momentum mv), as well as the equation of its motion. All subsequent states of a moving body were accurately and unambiguously determined by its initial state.

Thus, by defining this state, it was possible to determine any other state of it, both in the future and in the past. It turns out that time has no effect on the change of moving bodies, so that in the equations of motion the sign of time could be reversed. Consequently, classical mechanics and the mechanistic picture of the world as a whole are characterized by the symmetry of processes in time, which is expressed in the reversibility of time.

This easily gives the impression that no real changes occur during the mechanical movement of bodies. By specifying the equation of motion of a body, its coordinates and speed at some point in time, which is often called its initial state, we can accurately and unambiguously determine its state at any other point in time in the future or past. Let us formulate the characteristic features of the mechanistic picture of the world.

1. All states of mechanical motion of bodies in relation to time turn out to be basically the same, since time is considered reversible.

2. All mechanical processes are subject to the principle of strict determinism, the essence is the recognition of the possibility of an accurate and unambiguous determination of the state of a mechanical system by its previous state.

According to this principle, randomness is excluded from nature. Everything in the world is strictly determined (or determined) by previous states, events and phenomena. When this principle is extended to the actions and behavior of people, one inevitably comes to fatalism.

In a mechanistic picture, the world around us itself turns into a grandiose machine, all subsequent states of which are precisely and unambiguously determined by its previous states. This point of view on nature was most clearly and figuratively expressed by the French scientist. 18th century Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827):

3. Space and time are in no way connected with the movements of bodies; they are absolute.

In this regard, Newton introduces the concepts of absolute, or mathematical, space and time.

Absolute space - in classical mechanics - three-dimensional Euclidean space in which the principle of relativity and Galilean transformations are fulfilled. The term was introduced by Newton (along with the concept of absolute time) in The Mathematical Principles of Philosophy. For him, space and time act as a universal container, possessing relations of order and existing independently of both each other and material bodies.

This picture is reminiscent of the ideas about the world of the ancient atomists, who believed that atoms move in empty space. Similarly, in Newtonian mechanics, space turns out to be a simple container of bodies moving in it, which do not have any influence on it.

4. The tendency to reduce the laws of higher forms of motion of matter to the laws of its simplest form - mechanical movement.

Mechanism, which tried to approach all processes without exception from the point of view of the principles and scope of mechanics, was one of the prerequisites for the emergence of a metaphysical method of thinking.

5. The connection between mechanism and the principle of long-range action, according to which actions and signals can be transmitted in empty space at any speed. In particular, it was assumed that gravitational forces, or forces of attraction, act without any intermediate medium, but their strength decreases with the square of the distance between the bodies. Newton left the question of the nature of these forces to be decided by future generations. All of the above and some other features predetermined the limitations of the mechanistic picture of the world, which were overcome in the course of the subsequent development of natural science.

Plan:

1. Natural scientific views and methodology of Leonardo da Vinci.

2.

3. Galeleo Galilei and the birth of experimental natural science.

4. Johannes Kepler and the discovery of the laws of celestial mechanics.

5. Mechanics and methodology of Isaac Newton.

6. Successes and difficulties of the mechanical picture of the World.

Mechanical picture of the World.

1. Natural scientific views and methodology of Leonardo da Vinci.

The new science, and physics in particular, begins with Galileo and Newton. But it, like the new culture, was not a direct continuation of the science and culture of the Middle Ages. At the turn of the 15th century. The old, medieval culture of the countries of Western and Central Europe was replaced by a new culture, the characteristic features of which were humanism, restoration of interest in antiquity, revival of ancient values, denial of scholasticism, faith in the capabilities of man and his mind.

This is the Renaissance. At this time, painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and new experimental natural science developed unusually quickly. And among these titans of the Renaissance, one of the first should be called Leonardo da Vinci, “to whom the most diverse branches of physics owe the most important discoveries.”

For Leonardo, art has always been science. To engage in art meant for him to make scientific calculations, observations and experiments. The connection of painting with optics and physics, with anatomy and mathematics forced Leonardo to become a scientist. Leonardo valued mathematics especially highly.

Leonardo's mathematics is the mathematics of constant magnitude; it, of course, could not master the complex problems of motion. The simplicity of the mathematical apparatus and the complexity of the problems that he took on in physics and technology, in a number of cases forced him to replace mathematical calculations with observation and measurement, and led to the invention of many instruments.

As for Leonardo da Vinci's views on space and time, they were the same as Aristotle's.

Very characteristic of the mechanics of Leonardo da Vinci is the desire to understand the essence of oscillatory motion. He came closer to the modern interpretation of the concept of resonance, speaking about an increase in the amplitude of oscillations when the natural frequency of the system coincides with a frequency from outside.

Hydraulics occupied a large place in Leonardo's works. He began studying hydraulics as a student and returned to it throughout his life. Leonardo designed and partially carried out the construction of a number of canals. He came close to the formulation of Pascal’s law, and in the theory of communicating vessels he practically anticipated the ideas of the 17th century.

Leonardo was the first to work a lot on issues of flight. The first studies, drawings and drawings dedicated to flying machines date back to approximately 1487. Metal parts were used in his flying machine; the person was positioned horizontally, driving the mechanism with his hands and feet.

He built a model of the glider and was preparing to test it. The desire to protect people during these tests led him to the invention of the parachute.

During the time of Leonardo da Vinci, the geocentric system of the world of Ptolemy reigned supreme. Leonardo repeatedly pointed out its inconsistency. It can be considered that Leonardo, independently of Copernicus, came closer to understanding the heliocentric system of the world.

Leonardo inquisitively observed nature, and for this reason alone he could not help but be interested in issues of geology, paleontology and agronomy. Thus was born his theory of fossils. Leonardo is not afraid to abandon biblical ideas about disasters and floods on Earth. He claims that the discovery of fossilized shells and plants in mysterious places has nothing to do with biblical statements, but is caused by the slow movement of land and sea.

It is difficult to list all the engineering problems that Leonardo’s inquisitive mind worked on. He invented many types of looms for spinning, weaving and other purposes. Among his surviving records are a description of a compass with a moving center, a dredge, a device for a diver, and various types of drilling tools. Leonardo made especially many inventions in the field of military and military engineering.

In 1502 - 1503 Leonardo da Vinci writes a letter to the Turkish Sultan, where he offers him several of his inventions and projects, including a design for a bridge across the Golden Horn Bay, which would connect Galata with Istanbul and under which sailing ships could sail.

During the same period, Leonardo da Vinci drew up a design for a bridge across the Bosphorus. This would be a huge bridge about 24 meters wide, 41 meters high and 350 meters long, with 233 meters going over the sea, the remaining 117 meters over the land. These were exceptionally bold projects and ideas that were realized much later.

Many artists of that time, despite the strict prohibition of the church, studied human anatomy. Leonardo was initially interested in questions of anatomy as an artist. He studied the muscles of the body in various positions of the arms and legs, but soon significantly expanded the scope of anatomical research: he became interested in the heart, circulatory system, and lungs; he was the first to give a correct description of the spinal column and came closer to the modern understanding of the role of the lungs in the body. The significance of Leonardo's anatomical works for the development of medicine is indisputable. It should be noted that Leonardo da Vinci considered the activity of the body, its various organs, and various movements from the point of view of mechanics.

One can only be surprised and admire the versatility of interests and the inquisitive mind of this thinker.

Summing up the scientific activities of this giant, I would like to draw attention to his methodological views.

“The interpreter of nature is experience. He never deceives; only our judgments, which expect from him what he is unable to give, are mistaken. We must carry out experiments, changing circumstances, until we extract general rules from them.”

Highly appreciating the role of experience, the role of practice, Leonardo da Vinci was not a narrow practicalist; he was well aware of the need for theory: “He who is carried away by practice without science is like a helmsman entering a ship without a rudder or compass: he is never sure where he is sailing. Practice should always be built on a good theory. Science is the commander, and practice is the soldiers.” This is the methodology of knowledge of Leonard da Vinci, which has retained its value to this day.

2. Heliocentric system of the World of Nicolaus Copernicus.

The geocentric system of Ptolemy, despite doubts expressed about its correctness and correct guesses about the movement of the Earth, lasted in science for 14 centuries. And only with the beginning of geographical discoveries, with the transition from the feudal Middle Ages to modern times, the need arose to replace Ptolemy’s theory with a new one.

In 1506 Copernicus, having received an education (mathematics, canon law, medicine, astronomy), returned from Italy to his homeland in Poland and within 10 years formalized his ideas, born during the years of study and travel, in the form of a scientific theory - the heliocentric system of the World. In this system, Copernicus reduced the Earth to the role of an ordinary planet, he placed the Sun in the center of the system, and all the planets, together with the Earth, moved around the Sun in circular orbits. For 16 years, Copernicus conducted astronomical observations of the Sun, stars and planets. In 1532, on the eve of his sixtieth birthday, he completed his life’s work, “On the Rotations of the Celestial Spheres.” In February 1543, the immortal work of N. Copernicus “on the rotations of the celestial spheres” was published. But Copernicus himself saw his book only a few hours before his death (May 24, 1543). The essay “On the Rotations of the Celestial Spheres” consists of 6 books. The first book provides all the logical and physical arguments in favor of the Earth's movement. The second book contains elements of spherical astronomy and ends with a catalog containing the coordinates of 1025 stars. The third book contains the theory of the movement of the Sun, the fourth book - the theory of the movement of the Moon. The most important is the fifth book, which gives the full development of the heliocentric theory of planetary movements with all the mathematical proofs. The sixth book describes the apparent motion of the planets.

The enormous significance of the heliocentric system of the World created by Copernicus was discovered after Kepler discovered the true laws of elliptical motion of planets, and I. Newton, on their basis, discovered the law of universal gravitation; when Le Verrier and Adams, based on data from this system, predicted the existence and theoretically determined the location of an unknown planet (Neptune), and Halle, pointing a telescope at the point in the sky they indicated, discovered the unknown planet. At present, the teachings of Copernicus have not lost their significance because it revealed the true picture of the World and made a revolutionary revolution “in the development of a system of scientific worldview.”

3. Galileo Galilei and the birth of experimental natural science.

Galileo Galilei, the great Italian scientist, one of the creators of classical mechanics, was born on February 15, 1564, in the family of a poor Pisan nobleman. Galileo received his first education in a monastery. At the age of seventeen, he entered the University of Pisa, first to study medicine, and then moved to law, where he thoroughly studied mathematics and philosophy. In 1589 Galileo was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa. During these years, Galileo was engaged in refuting the teachings of Aristotle about the proportionality of the speed of falling to the weight of the body. To refute this doctrine, he takes two bodies, identical in shape and size (cast iron and wooden balls). By finding the relationship between the speed of fall and the time of fall, between the distance traveled and the time of fall, Galileo refuted the centuries-old misconception and proved the constancy of the acceleration of free fall. But at the university, mechanics and astronomy had to be presented in the spirit of Aristotle and Ptolemy. In 1592 he became a professor at the University of Padua, where he worked for 18 years (until 1610). Towards the end of the Paduan period, Galileo begins to openly oppose the Ptolemy-Aristotle system.

By making a telescope with a magnification of 32 times and pointing it at the sky, Galileo discovered the irregularities of the Moon; The Milky Way turned out to consist of many stars, the number of which grew as the tube grew larger; Jupiter has four satellites. All this did not correspond to Aristotle’s teaching about the opposition of earthly and heavenly, but confirmed the Copernican system.

In 1612, Galileo published “Discourses on bodies that are in water and those that move in it,” this work was directed against Aristotle’s mechanics. Following this, Galileo's letter on sunspots appears. This was also a refutation of Aristotle, but it could not go unnoticed by the church; the church accuses Galileo of proving the movement of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun; they are trying to achieve a ban on the teachings of Copernicus. In 1615, Galileo travels to Rome to defend himself and prevent the prohibition of the teachings of Copernicus. But on March 5, 1616, the teachings of Copernicus “as false and completely contrary to the Holy Scriptures” were prohibited, Galileo received an unspoken order from the Holy Inquisition to remain silent. In 1623, he again went to Rome to achieve the lifting of restrictions on his scientific activities, but he failed to achieve an official lifting of the restrictions. Despite the limitations, Galileo is preparing for publication his main work, “Dialogue on the Two Major Systems of the World: Ptolemaic and Copernican.” In February 1632, the book was published, it included all the works of Galileo, everything that was created by him from 1590 to 1625. The goal of the scientist is to present not only astronomical, but also mechanical arguments in favor of the truth of the teachings of Copernicus.

The rotation of the Earth, according to Ptolemy, should have scattered the bodies on it; when falling bodies would have to move not vertically, but obliquely, since they would lag behind the moving Earth; birds and clouds would have to be carried away to the west. Refuting these arguments, Galileo came to the discovery of the law of inertia. The discovery of this law eliminated the centuries-old misconception put forward by Aristotle about the need for constant force to maintain uniform motion. The modern formulation of this law is as follows: Every body maintains a state of rest or uniform and rectilinear motion until the influence of other bodies takes it out of this state. Galileo defined the mechanical principle of relativity: no mechanical experiments carried out inside a closed inertial system can establish whether the system is at rest or moving uniformly and rectilinearly.

Conversations between the interlocutors about various astronomical discoveries (irregularities of the Moon, spots on the Sun, phases of Venus, satellites of Jupiter) confirm the idea of ​​​​the validity of the Copernican theory.

The success of the Dialogue was amazing; like-minded people enthusiastically greet Galileo with the opening of a new era in the study of nature. Opponents, in turn, started a rumor that the Pope himself was brought out under the guise of the defender of Aristotle and Ptolemy. The persecution of Galileo began, in September Galileo was given an order from the papal Inquisition to appear in Rome, but due to Galileo’s illness they were given a short delay. In February 1633, Galileo arrived in Rome; during interrogation, he denied that he shared the Copernican teaching after the Inquisition declared him heretical. Galileo firmly stood on the fact that during the discussion about the heliocentric system of the World, it was not prohibited to write or speak, and the book itself was published with the permission of the censor. After interrogation, Galileo was arrested and shackled by the Inquisition. On June 22, 1633, in the Church of St. Mary, with a large crowd of people, the last act of the trial of Galileo took place. According to the verdict, his book was banned, and he himself was subject to imprisonment, the duration of which was left to the discretion of the Holy Office. The humiliating act of trial and abdication greatly undermined the health of the sick Galileo, but despite everything, Galileo mentally saw his future work “Conversations and Mathematical Proofs”, in which the ideas of the “Dialogue” received their further development. The Conversations were completed in 1637. The book summarizes everything that Galileo did in the field of mechanics. In 1642, Galileo died. One of the remarkable thinkers, a great astronomer, mechanic, physicist, mathematician, has passed away.

Galileo is considered one of the founders of experimental natural science and new science. It was he who formulated the requirements for a scientific experiment, consisting in the elimination of side circumstances, in the ability to see the main thing. Through an experiment, Galileo refuted Aristotle's teaching about the proportionality of the speed of falling to the weight of a body, showed that air has weight and determined its density. He was the first to point a telescope at the sky for scientific purposes, thereby expanding the scope of knowledge. Galileo's thought experiments were based on the idealization of the movement of balls, carts and other material objects along horizontal and inclined planes. The thought experiment later became widespread in physics and became the most important method of cognition; Maxwell used it when creating the theory of the electromagnetic field. Thought experiments allowed many scientists (Maxwell, Boltzmann, Carnot, etc.) to establish patterns in chaotic thermal motion and thermodynamics. Thus, both Galileo’s principle of relativity, which received its further development in the theory of relativity, and the thought experiment, introduced into science by him and which became a necessary method of modern physics, testify to the extremely high methodological level at which the great Italian scientist stood in his research.

4.Johann Kepler and the discovery of the laws of celestial mechanics.

Johann Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, his father, Heinrich Kepler, a bankrupt nobleman, served as a simple soldier, his mother, the daughter of a village innkeeper, could not read and write. At birth, the boy miraculously survived. When he was four years old, his parents abandoned him; at the age of 13, he died for the third time, but life did not leave him. After graduating from a monastery school in 1579, Kepler transferred to a three-year theological school, after which he remained at the Tübingen Seminary, and then at the University of Tübingen. At the university he became acquainted with the teachings of Copernicus, becoming his ardent supporter. Working as a teacher of mathematics and philosophy at a school in Graz, he, along with teaching, began to engage in scientific work in astronomy, as well as compile calendars and horoscopes. Kepler was forced to study astrology in order not to starve, to feed his family and to conduct research in astronomy.

Kepler wrote many works during his life. His first book, published in 1597, came out under the interesting title “The Cosmographic Mystery.” Kepler set out to find the numerical relationships between the orbits of the planets. Trying different combinations of numbers, he came up with a geometric scheme that could be used to find the distances of the planets from the Sun. Kepler sent his work to the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and G. Galileo. Due to persecution by the Catholic Church, life in his homeland has become unbearable, and Kepler goes to Prague. There he was appointed imperial mathematician and had to work under the leadership of Tycho Brahe, the imperial astronomer. In 1601, Tycho Brahe died and the journal of thirty years of observations of the “king of astronomy” ended up in Kepler’s hands.

In 1609, Kepler’s book “New Astronomy or Celestial Physics with Commentaries on the Movement of the Planet Mars According to the Observations of Tycho Brahe” was published. For eight years he worked on calculations, each calculation had to be repeated seventy times, but, despite everything, he formulated the first two laws on the motion of planets:

1. All planets move in ellipses, with the Sun at one of the focuses.

2. The radius vector drawn from the Sun to the planet describes equal areas in equal periods of time.

Need and misfortune continue to haunt him; in 1611, his wife and son died, and he was left with two children in his arms. Material need forced him to leave Prague, and he went to Linz, where he took a position as a teacher of mathematics. In 1615, he received news of his mother being accused of witchcraft. He spends all his strength and resourcefulness to save his mother from the fire, and in 1621 he achieves her release. Even after such blows of fate, the strength of spirit does not leave him, and he releases a new work, “Harmony of the World,” containing the third law of celestial mechanics: the squares of the planets’ orbital periods are related to the cubes of the semi-major axes of their orbits.

Kepler's other most famous works are: "Rudolph's Tables" - astronomical planetary tables, which Kepler worked on for 20 years. They were named in honor of Emperor Rudolph II. These tables served sailors and astronomers, calendar compilers and astrologers, and only in the 19th century were they replaced by more accurate ones. With his work in mathematics, Kepler made a major contribution to the theory of conics.

Sections, in developing the theory of logarithms, contributed to the development of integral calculus and the invention of the first computer. In 1618 the Thirty Years' War begins. The treasury is still empty. Kepler lives by odd jobs, making numerous trips to Regensburg with the hassle of paying his salary. During one of these trips, Kepler fell ill and died. In 1774, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences bought most of Kepler's archive.

A monument was erected to this remarkable man and great scientist in his homeland, Weil and Regensburg, and museums were opened. Kepler is destined to immortality as a reward for his persistence and ingenuity, with which he renewed his attempts to unravel the secrets of Nature, for the laws of planetary motion he discovered.

1996 marked the 425th anniversary of the birth of one of the world's greatest astronomers, Johannes Kepler.

5. Mechanics and methodology of Isaac Newton.

In 1987, it was 300 years since the publication of the outstanding work of Cambridge University professor Isaac Newton, “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.”

In his fundamental work, containing 700 pages in Russian translation, the brilliant English physicist, astronomer and mathematician outlined the system of laws of mechanics, the law of universal gravitation, and gave a general approach to the study of various phenomena based on the “method of principles”, i.e. The work had not only great scientific, but also great methodological significance. For Newton, the legacy of his predecessors was very important: “If I saw further than others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” Among these giants, Galileo and Kepler should be mentioned first. At the age of 27 he became a professor at Cambridge University.

In his work on optics, Newton posed a very important and difficult question: “Are not the rays of light very small particles emitted by luminous bodies?” And the hypothesis of outflow, and then the corpuscular theory, unconditionally recognized by his followers and supported by the authority of Newton, dominant in optics of the 18th century. Many people did not agree with this theory because... on its basis it was impossible to explain the interference and diffraction of light. In the theory of light, Newton wanted to combine corpuscular and wave concepts. Newton had two interesting thoughts on this matter:

1. About the possible transformation of bodies into light and back. In 1933-1934. the facts of the transformation of an electron and a positron into gamma quanta (photons) and the birth of an electron and a positron during the interaction of a photon with charged particles were discovered for the first time. This is a fundamental discovery of modern particle physics.

2. About the influence of bodies on the propagation of light.

The pinnacle of Newton's scientific creation is “Principia...”. It took Newton about two and a half years of hard work to prepare the first edition of “Beginnings...”. The book consisted of three parts: the first two set out the laws of motion of bodies, the third part was devoted to the system of the World. Newton wrote his own preface to the first edition, where he talks about the tendency of contemporary natural science to “subordinate natural phenomena to the laws of mathematics.” Next, Newton formulates the purpose of the work and the tasks of physics: “We propose this work as the mathematical foundations of physics. The whole difficulty of physics is to recognize the forces of nature from the phenomena of motion, and then, using these forces, to explain all other phenomena,” he managed to cope with this difficult task. As the first law of mechanics, Newton took the law of inertia discovered by Galileo, formulating it more strictly. The core of mechanics is the second law, which connects the change in the momentum of a body with the force acting on it, i.e. the change in the momentum of a body per unit time is equal to the force acting on it and occurs in the direction of its action. The third law of mechanics reflected that the action of bodies is always in the nature of interaction and that the forces of action and reaction are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. The fourth law was the law of universal gravitation. Having expressed the position about the universal nature of gravitational forces and their identical nature on all planets, showing that “the weight of a body on any planet is proportional to the mass of this planet,” having established an experiment on the proportionality of the mass of a body and its weight (gravity), Newton concludes that the force of gravity between bodies is proportional to the masses of these bodies.

Even before Newton, many scientists believed that the force of gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, but only Newton was able to logically substantiate and convincingly prove this universal law using the laws of dynamics and experiment. The establishment of proportionality between mass and weight meant that mass is not only a measure of inertia, but also a measure of gravity.

In the third part of the book, the scientist outlined the general system of the World and celestial mechanics, the theory of compression of the Earth at the poles, the theory of ebbs and flows, the movement of comets, disturbances in the movement of planets, etc., based on the law of universal gravitation. The theory of gravity caused philosophical discussions and needed further proof. The first question was about the shape of the Earth. According to Newton's theory, the Earth was compressed at the poles; according to Descartes' theory, it was elongated. The disputes were resolved by measuring the arc of the earth's meridian in the equatorial zone (Peru) and in the north (Lapland) by two expeditions of the Paris Academy of Sciences. Newton's theory turned out to be correct.

Newton's works reveal his methodology and worldview of research. Newton was convinced of the existence of matter, space and time, and of the existence of objective laws of the world accessible to human knowledge. With his desire to reduce everything to mechanics, Newton supported mechanistic materialism (mechanism). Despite his enormous achievements in the field of natural science, he deeply believed in God and took religion very seriously. He believed that “the wisdom of the Lord is revealed equally in the structure of nature and in the sacred books. Studying both is a noble cause.” Newton was the author of the Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Daniel, the Apocalypse, and the Chronology. From this we can conclude that for Newton there was no conflict between science and religion; both coexisted in his worldview.

Newton himself characterizes his method of cognition as follows: “To deduce two or three general principles of motion from phenomena and then set out how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from these obvious principles would be a very important step in philosophy, at least the causes of these principles and have not yet been discovered." By principles, Newton means the most general laws underlying physics. This method was later called the method of principles; Newton outlined the requirements for research in the form of 4 rules:

1. One should not accept other causes in nature beyond those that are true and sufficient to explain phenomena.

2. The same causes must be attributed to the same phenomena.

3. The properties of the bodies subjected to research, independent and unchangeable during experiments, must be taken as the general properties of material bodies.

4. Laws inductively found from experience must be considered true until they are contradicted by other observations.

Since principles are established through the study of natural phenomena, at first they represent hypotheses, from which, through logical deduction, consequences are obtained that are verified in practice. Therefore, the method of Newton's principles is a hypothetico-deductive method, which in modern physics is one of the main ones for constructing physical theories. Newton's method was highly praised in the methodological statements of many scientists, including A. Einstein and S. I. Vavilov, but many scientists also believed that principles and hypotheses were derived directly from experience. Consequently, a theory is derived directly from experience through formal logic, which has only the goal of connecting one experimental data with another.

Newton's views on space and time caused a lot of questions and controversy in the history of physics. Newton proceeds from the fact that in practice people experience space and time by measuring spatial relationships between bodies and temporal relationships between processes. Newton calls the concepts of space and time developed in this way relative. He admits that in nature there exist absolute space and time independent of these relations, as empty containers of bodies and events. Space and time, according to Newton, do not depend on matter and material processes, which is not consistent with the concepts of physics of the 20th century. Since Newton’s matter is inert and incapable of self-motion, and empty absolute space is indifferent to matter, he recognizes the “first push,” that is, God, as the primary source of movement.

Newton - this brilliant genius - showed, according to Einstein, the ways of thinking, experimental research and practical constructions, created ingenious methods and mastered them perfectly, was exceptionally inventive in finding mathematical and physical proofs, was placed by fate itself at a turning point in the mental development of mankind . Modern physics has not discarded Newtonian mechanics; it has only established the limits of its applicability.

6.Successes and difficulties of MKM

The MCM was formed under the influence of metaphysical materialistic ideas about matter and the forms of its existence. The fundamental ideas of this picture of the World are classical atomism and mechanism. The core of the MCM is Newtonian mechanics; there are quite a lot of concepts in any physical theory, but there are basic ones in which the specificity of this theory, its basis, and its ideological aspect are manifested. Such concepts include: matter, motion, space, time, interaction. Matter is a substance consisting of tiny, further indivisible, absolutely solid moving particles (atoms), i.e. discrete concepts of matter were adopted in the MCM. And therefore, the most important concepts in mechanics were the concepts of a material point and an absolutely rigid body; a material point is a body whose dimensions can be neglected in the conditions of a given problem. An absolutely rigid body is a system of material points, the distance between which remains unchanged.

Space. Aristotle denied the existence of empty space, connecting space, time and motion. Atomists recognized atoms and empty space in which atoms move. Newton considers two types of space: relative, which people become familiar with by measuring the spatial relationships between bodies, and absolute - this is an empty container of bodies, it is not associated with time and its properties do not depend on the presence or absence of material objects in it. It is three-dimensional, continuous, infinite, homogeneous, isotropic. Spatial relationships are described in MCM by Euclidean geometry.

Time. Newton considers two types of time: relative and absolute. Relative time is learned in the process of measurements. “Absolute, true, mathematical time by itself and by its very essence, without any relation to anything external, flows uniformly and is otherwise called duration.” Thus, time is an empty container of events that does not depend on anything, it flows in one direction (from the past to the future), it is continuous, infinite and the same everywhere (homogeneous).

Movement. The MCM recognized only mechanical movement, i.e. change in body position in space over time. It was believed that any complex movement can be represented as a sum of spatial displacements (the principle of superposition). The motion of any body was explained on the basis of Newton's three laws.

It should be noted that in mechanics the question of the nature of forces was not of fundamental importance. For its laws and methodology, it was enough that force is a quantitative characteristic of the mechanical interaction of bodies. She simply sought to reduce all natural phenomena to the action of forces of attraction and repulsion, encountering insurmountable difficulties along the way.

The most important principles of the MCM are Galileo's principle of relativity, the principle of action at a distance and the principle of causality. Galileo's principle of relativity states that all inertial frames of reference (IRS) from the point of view of mechanics are completely equal (equivalent). The transition from one inertial system to another is carried out on the basis of Galilean transformations.

In MCM it was accepted that interaction is transmitted instantly and the intermediate medium does not take part in the transmission of interaction. This position is the principle of long-range action.

As you know, there are no causeless phenomena; you can always identify cause and effect, cause and effect are interconnected and influence each other. The effect may be the cause of another phenomenon. “Every existing phenomenon is connected with the previous one on the basis of the obvious principle that it cannot arise without an efficient cause.” In nature there may be more complex connections:

1. The same effect can have different reasons, for example, the transformation of saturated steam into liquid due to an increase in pressure or due to a decrease in temperature.

2. In thermal motion, for example, the speed, kinetic energy, and momentum of an individual particle change without changing the macroparameters (temperature, pressure, volume) that characterize the system as a whole. As a result of the development of thermodynamics and statistical physics, a number of important laws were discovered, including the conservation and transformation of energy for thermal processes (the first law of thermodynamics) and the law of increasing entropy in isolated systems (the second law of thermodynamics).

Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that studies the patterns of energy transition from one type to another. The first law of thermodynamics states: Heat imparted to a system is spent to change its internal energy and to perform work on the system against external forces. From the point of view of the first law of thermodynamics, any processes can occur in a system, as long as the law of conservation and transformation of energy is not violated.

All real processes are irreversible, since the presence of friction forces necessarily leads to the transition of ordered motion to disordered motion. To characterize the state of the system and the direction of the processes, a special state function was introduced in physics - entropy. It turned out that the entropy of a closed system cannot decrease. The closedness of the system means that processes in it occur spontaneously, without external influence. In the case of reversible processes (and in reality there are none), the entropy of a closed system remains unchanged, in the case of irreversible processes it increases. Thus, in reality, the entropy of a closed system can only increase, this is the law of increasing entropy (one of the formulations of the second law of thermodynamics). This law is of great importance for the analysis of processes in closed macroscopic systems. The statistical nature of this law means that it is more fundamental than dynamic laws.

In modern physics, probabilistic and statistical ideas have become widespread (statistical physics, quantum mechanics, theory of evolution, genetics, information theory, planning theory, etc.). Undoubtedly, their practical value: product quality control, checking the operation of a particular object, assessing the reliability of a unit, organizing mass service. But neither thermodynamics nor statistical physics were able to radically change the ideas of the MCM, or destroy it: the MCM changed and expanded its boundaries. The development of physics until the middle of the 19th century proceeded mainly within the framework of Newtonian views, but more and more new discoveries, especially in the field of electrical and magnetic phenomena, did not fit into the framework of mechanical concepts, i.e. The MCM became a brake on new theories, and the need arose to move to new views on matter and motion. It was not the MCM itself that failed, but its original philosophical idea – mechanism. In the depths of the MCM, elements of a new – electromagnetic – picture of the World began to take shape.

Everything that has been said about the mechanical picture of the World can be summarized by the following conclusions:

1. The impressive successes of mechanics led to mechanism and the idea of ​​the mechanical essence of the World became the basis of the worldview. Indivisible atoms formed the basis of Nature. Living beings are “divine machines” operating according to the laws of mechanics. God created the World and set it in motion.

2.Molecular physics developed within the framework of the MCM. The idea of ​​heat was formed in two directions: as the mechanical movement of particles and as the movement of weightless, imperceptible “fluids” (caloric, phlogiston).

On the basis of electric magnetic “fluids”, mechanics sought to explain electrical and magnetic phenomena; on the basis of fluid, “vital force” tried to understand the work of living organisms.

3. Analysis of the operation of heat engines led to the emergence of thermodynamics, the most important achievement of which was the discovery of the law of conservation and transformation of energy. But in MKM all types of energy were reduced to the energy of mechanical movement. The macroworld and microworld obeyed the same mechanical laws. Only quantitative changes were recognized. This meant a lack of development, i.e. The world was considered metaphysical.

Bibliography:

1. Diaghilev F.M. "Concepts of modern natural science"

2. Solopov E.F. "Concepts of modern natural science"

1. Natural scientific views and methodology of Leonardo da Vinci.

3. Galeleo Galilei and the birth of experimental natural science.

4. Johannes Kepler and the discovery of the laws of celestial mechanics.

6. Successes and difficulties of the mechanical picture of the World.

Mechanical picture of the World.

1. Natural scientific views and methodology of Leonardo da Vinci.

The new science, and physics in particular, begins with Galileo and Newton.
But it, like the new culture, was not a direct continuation of the science and culture of the Middle Ages. At the turn of the 15th century. The old, medieval culture of the countries of Western and Central Europe was replaced by a new culture, the characteristic features of which were humanism, restoration of interest in antiquity, revival of ancient values, denial of scholasticism, faith in the capabilities of man and his mind.

This is the Renaissance. At this time, painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and new experimental natural science developed unusually quickly. And among these titans of the Renaissance, one of the first should be called Leonardo da Vinci, “to whom the most diverse branches of physics owe the most important discoveries.”

For Leonardo, art has always been science. To engage in art meant for him to make scientific calculations, observations and experiments. The connection of painting with optics and physics, with anatomy and mathematics forced
Leonardo becomes a scientist. Leonardo valued mathematics especially highly.

Leonardo's mathematics is the mathematics of constant magnitude; it, of course, could not master the complex problems of motion. The simplicity of the mathematical apparatus and the complexity of the problems that he took on in physics and technology, in a number of cases forced him to replace mathematical calculations with observation and measurement, and led to the invention of many instruments.

As for Leonardo da Vinci's views on space and time, they were the same as Aristotle's.

Very characteristic of the mechanics of Leonardo da Vinci is the desire to understand the essence of oscillatory motion. He came closer to the modern interpretation of the concept of resonance, speaking about an increase in the amplitude of oscillations when the natural frequency of the system coincides with a frequency from outside.

Hydraulics occupied a large place in Leonardo's works. He began studying hydraulics as a student and returned to it throughout his life. Leonardo designed and partially carried out the construction of a number of canals. He came close to the formulation of Pascal’s law, and in the theory of communicating vessels he practically anticipated the ideas of the 17th century.

Leonardo was the first to work a lot on issues of flight. The first studies, drawings and drawings dedicated to flying machines date back to approximately 1487. Metal parts were used in his flying machine; the person was positioned horizontally, driving the mechanism with his hands and feet.

He built a model of the glider and was preparing to test it. The desire to protect people during these tests led him to the invention of the parachute.

During the time of Leonardo da Vinci, the geocentric system of the world of Ptolemy reigned supreme. Leonardo repeatedly pointed out its inconsistency. It can be considered that Leonardo, regardless of
Copernicus came closer to understanding the heliocentric system of the world.

Leonardo inquisitively observed nature, and for this reason alone he could not help but be interested in issues of geology, paleontology and agronomy.
Thus was born his theory of fossils. Leonardo is not afraid to abandon biblical ideas about disasters and floods on Earth. He claims that the discovery of fossilized shells and plants in mysterious places has nothing to do with biblical statements, but is caused by the slow movement of land and sea.

It is difficult to list all the engineering problems that Leonardo’s inquisitive mind worked on. He invented many types of looms for spinning, weaving and other purposes. Among his surviving records are a description of a compass with a moving center, a dredge, a device for a diver, and various types of drilling tools. Leonardo made especially many inventions in the field of military and military engineering.

In 1502 - 1503 Leonardo da Vinci writes a letter to the Turkish Sultan, where he offers him several of his inventions and projects, including a project for a bridge across the Golden Horn Bay, which would connect Galata with
Istanbul and under which sailing ships could sail.

During the same period, Leonardo da Vinci drew up a project for a bridge across
Bosphorus. This ball would be a huge bridge about 24 meters wide, water height
41 meters and 350 meters long, with 233 meters going over the sea, the rest
117 meters - above land. These were exceptionally bold projects and ideas that were realized much later.

Many artists of that time, despite the strict prohibition of the church, studied human anatomy. Leonardo was initially interested in questions of anatomy as an artist. He studied the muscles of the body in various positions of the arms and legs, but soon significantly expanded the scope of anatomical research: he became interested in the heart, circulatory system, and lungs; he was the first to give a correct description of the spinal column and came closer to the modern understanding of the role of the lungs in the body. The significance of Leonardo's anatomical works for the development of medicine is indisputable. It should be noted that Leonardo da Vinci considered the activity of the body, its various organs, and various movements from the point of view of mechanics.

One can only be surprised and admire the versatility of interests and the inquisitive mind of this thinker.

Summing up the scientific activities of this giant, I would like to draw attention to his methodological views.

“The interpreter of nature is experience. He never deceives; only our judgments, which expect from him what he is unable to give, are mistaken. We must carry out experiments, changing circumstances, until we extract general rules from them.”

Highly appreciating the role of experience, the role of practice, Leonardo da Vinci was not a narrow practicalist; he was well aware of the need for theory:
“He who is carried away by practice without science is like a helmsman entering a ship without a rudder or a compass: he is never sure where he is sailing. Practice should always be built on a good theory. Science is the commander, and practice is the soldiers.” This is the methodology of knowledge of Leonard da Vinci, which has retained its value to this day.

2. Heliocentric system of the World of Nicolaus Copernicus.

The geocentric system of Ptolemy, despite doubts expressed about its correctness and correct guesses about the movement of the Earth, lasted in science for 14 centuries. And only with the beginning of geographical discoveries, with the transition from the feudal Middle Ages to modern times, the need arose to replace Ptolemy’s theory with a new one.

In 1506 Copernicus, having received an education (mathematics, canon law, medicine, astronomy), returned from Italy to his homeland in Poland and within 10 years formalized his ideas, born during the years of study and travel, in the form of a scientific theory - the heliocentric system of the World. In this system
Copernicus reduced the Earth to the role of an ordinary planet, he placed the Sun in the center of the system, and all the planets, together with the Earth, moved around the Sun in circular orbits. For 16 years, Copernicus conducted astronomical observations of the Sun, stars and planets. In 1532, on the eve of his sixtieth birthday, he completed his life’s work, “On the Rotations of the Celestial Spheres.” In February 1543, the immortal work of N. Copernicus “on the rotations of the celestial spheres” was published. But Copernicus himself saw his book only a few hours before his death (May 24, 1543). The essay “On the Rotations of the Celestial Spheres” consists of 6 books. The first book provides all the logical and physical arguments in favor of the Earth's movement. The second book contains elements of spherical astronomy and ends with a catalog containing the coordinates of 1025 stars. The third book contains the theory of the movement of the Sun, the fourth book - the theory of the movement of the Moon. The most important is the fifth book, which gives the full development of the heliocentric theory of planetary movements with all the mathematical proofs. The sixth book describes the apparent motion of the planets.

The enormous significance of the heliocentric system created by Copernicus
Mira was discovered after Kepler discovered the true laws of elliptical motion of planets, and I. Newton, based on them, discovered the law of universal gravitation; when Le Verrier and Adams, based on data from this system, predicted the existence and theoretically determined the location of an unknown planet (Neptune), and Halle, pointing a telescope at the point in the sky they indicated, discovered the unknown planet. At present, the teachings of Copernicus have not lost their significance because it revealed the true picture of the World and made a revolutionary revolution “in the development of a system of scientific worldview.”

3. Galileo Galilei and the birth of experimental natural science.

Galileo Galilei, the great Italian scientist, one of the creators of classical mechanics, was born on February 15, 1564, in the family of a poor Pisan nobleman. Galileo received his first education in a monastery.
At the age of seventeen, he entered the University of Pisa, first to study medicine, and then moved to law, where he thoroughly studied mathematics and philosophy. In 1589 Galileo was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa. During these years
Galileo is engaged in refuting the teachings of Aristotle about the proportionality of the speed of falling to the weight of the body. To refute this doctrine, he takes two bodies, identical in shape and size (cast iron and wooden balls).
By finding the relationship between the speed of fall and the time of fall, between the distance traveled and the time of fall, Galileo refuted the centuries-old misconception and proved the constancy of the acceleration of free fall. But at the university mechanics and astronomy had to be presented in the spirit
Aristotle and Ptolemy. In 1592 he became a university professor in
Padua, where he worked for 18 years (until 1610). Towards the end of the Paduan period
Galileo begins to openly oppose the Ptolemaic system -
Aristotle.

By making a telescope with a magnification of 32 times and pointing it at the sky, Galileo discovered the irregularities of the Moon; The Milky Way turned out to consist of many stars, the number of which grew as the tube grew larger; Jupiter has four satellites. All this did not correspond to Aristotle’s teaching about the opposition of earthly and heavenly, but confirmed the Copernican system.

In 1612, Galileo published “Discourses on bodies that are in water and those that move in it,” this work was directed against Aristotle’s mechanics. Following this, Galileo's letter on sunspots appears. This was also a refutation of Aristotle, but it could not go unnoticed by the church; the church accuses Galileo of proving the movement of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun; they are trying to achieve a ban on the teachings of Copernicus. In 1615, Galileo travels to Rome to defend himself and prevent the prohibition of the teachings of Copernicus. But March 5
1616 the teaching of Copernicus “as false and completely contrary to the Sacred
Scripture” was forbidden, Galileo received an unspoken order from the Holy Inquisition to remain silent. In 1623, he again went to Rome to achieve the lifting of restrictions on his scientific activities, but he failed to achieve an official lifting of the restrictions. Despite the limitations, Galileo is preparing for publication his main work, “Dialogue on the Two Major Systems of the World: Ptolemaic and Copernican.” In February 1632, the book was published, it included all the works of Galileo, everything that was created by him from 1590 to 1625. The goal of the scientist is to present not only astronomical, but also mechanical arguments in favor of the truth of the doctrine
Copernicus.

The rotation of the Earth, according to Ptolemy, should have scattered the bodies on it; bodies when falling would have to move not vertically, but obliquely, since they would lag behind the moving
Earth; birds and clouds would have to be carried away to the west. Refuting these arguments, Galileo came to the discovery of the law of inertia. The discovery of this law eliminated the centuries-old misconception put forward
Aristotle, on the need for constant force to maintain uniform motion. The modern formulation of this law is as follows:
Every body maintains a state of rest or uniform and rectilinear motion until the influence of other bodies takes it out of this state. Galileo defined the mechanical principle of relativity: no mechanical experiments carried out inside a closed inertial system can establish whether the system is at rest or moving uniformly and rectilinearly.

Conversations between interlocutors about various astronomical discoveries
(irregularities of the Moon, spots on the Sun, phases of Venus, satellites of Jupiter) affirms the idea of ​​the validity of the Copernican theory.

The success of the Dialogue was amazing; like-minded people enthusiastically greet Galileo with the opening of a new era in the study of nature.
Opponents, in turn, started a rumor that under the guise of a defender
Aristotle and Ptolemy derived the Pope himself. The persecution of Galileo began, in September Galileo was given an order from the Papal Inquisition to appear at
Rome, but due to Galileo’s illness they give a short delay. In February 1633
Galileo arrives in Rome, during interrogation he denied that he shared
Copernican doctrine after the Inquisition declared it heretical.
Galileo firmly stood on the fact that during the discussion about the heliocentric system of the World, it was not prohibited to write or speak, and the book itself was published with the permission of the censor. After interrogation, Galileo was arrested and shackled by the Inquisition. June 22, 1633 in church
St. Mary, in front of a large crowd of people, the last act of the trial of Galileo took place. According to the verdict, his book was banned, and he himself was subject to imprisonment, the duration of which was left to the discretion of the Holy Office. The humiliating act of trial and abdication greatly undermined the health of the sick Galileo, but despite everything, Galileo mentally saw his future work “Conversations and Mathematical Proofs”, in which the ideas of the “Dialogue” received their further development. The Conversations were completed in 1637. The book summarizes everything that Galileo did in the field of mechanics. In 1642, Galileo died. One of the remarkable thinkers, a great astronomer, mechanic, physicist, mathematician, has passed away.

Galileo is considered one of the founders of experimental natural science and new science. It was he who formulated the requirements for a scientific experiment, consisting in the elimination of side circumstances, in the ability to see the main thing. Through an experiment, Galileo refuted Aristotle's teaching about the proportionality of the speed of falling to the weight of a body, showed that air has weight and determined its density. He was the first to point a telescope at the sky for scientific purposes, thereby expanding the scope of knowledge. Galileo's thought experiments were based on the idealization of the movement of balls, carts and other material objects along horizontal and inclined planes. The thought experiment later became widespread in physics and became the most important method of cognition; Maxwell used it when creating the theory of the electromagnetic field.
Thought experiments allowed many scientists (Maxwell, Boltzmann,
Carnot et al.) establish patterns in chaotic thermal motion and thermodynamics. Thus, both Galileo’s principle of relativity, which received its further development in the theory of relativity, and the thought experiment, introduced into science by him and which became a necessary method of modern physics, testify to the extremely high methodological level at which the great Italian scientist stood in his research.

4.Johann Kepler and the discovery of the laws of celestial mechanics.

Johann Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, his father, Heinrich Kepler, a bankrupt nobleman, served as a simple soldier, his mother, the daughter of a village innkeeper, could not read and write. At birth, the boy miraculously survived. When he was four years old, his parents abandoned him; at the age of 13, he died for the third time, but life did not leave him.
After graduating from a monastery school in 1579, Kepler transferred to a three-year theological school, after which he remained at the Tübingen Seminary, and then at the University of Tübingen. At the university he became acquainted with the teachings of Copernicus, becoming his ardent supporter. Working as a teacher of mathematics and philosophy at a school in Graz, he, along with teaching, began to engage in scientific work in astronomy, as well as compile calendars and horoscopes. Kepler was forced to study astrology in order not to starve, to feed his family and to conduct research in astronomy.

Kepler wrote many works during his life. His first book, published in 1597, came out under the interesting title “The Cosmographic Mystery.” Kepler set out to find the numerical relationships between the orbits of the planets. Trying different combinations of numbers, he came up with a geometric scheme that could be used to find the distances of the planets from the Sun.
Kepler sent his work to the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and G. Galileo.
Due to persecution by the Catholic Church, life in his homeland has become unbearable, and Kepler goes to Prague. There he was appointed imperial mathematician and had to work under the leadership of Tycho Brahe, the imperial astronomer. In 1601, Tycho Brahe died and the journal of thirty years of observations of the “king of astronomy” ended up in Kepler’s hands.

In 1609, Kepler’s book “New Astronomy or
Celestial physics with comments on the movement of the planet Mars according to observations
Quiet Brahe." For eight years he worked on calculations, each calculation had to be repeated seventy times, but, despite everything, he formulated the first two laws on the motion of planets:
1. All planets move in ellipses, with the Sun at one of the focuses.
2. The radius vector drawn from the Sun to the planet describes equal areas in equal periods of time.

Need and misfortune continue to haunt him; in 1611, his wife and son died, and he was left with two children in his arms. Material need forced him to leave Prague, and he went to Linz, where he took a position as a teacher of mathematics. In 1615, he received news of his mother being accused of witchcraft. He spends all his strength and resourcefulness to save his mother from the fire, and in 1621 he achieves her release. Even after such blows of fate, the strength of spirit does not leave him, and he releases a new work, “Harmony of the World,” containing the third law of celestial mechanics: the squares of the planets’ orbital periods are related to the cubes of the semi-major axes of their orbits.

Kepler's other most famous works are: "Rudolph's Tables"
- astronomical planetary tables, on which Kepler worked for 20 years. They were named in honor of Emperor Rudolph II. These tables served sailors and astronomers, calendar compilers and astrologers, and only in
In the 19th century they were replaced by more accurate ones. With my works in mathematics
Kepler made major contributions to the theory of conical
Sections, in developing the theory of logarithms, contributed to the development of integral calculus and the invention of the first computer.
In 1618 the Thirty Years' War begins. The treasury is still empty. Kepler lives by odd jobs, making numerous trips to
Regensburg with the hassle of paying salaries. During one of these trips, Kepler fell ill and died. In 1774, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences bought most of Kepler's archive.

To this wonderful man and great scientist in his homeland, in
Weil and Regensburg, a monument was erected and museums were opened. Kepler is destined to immortality as a reward for his persistence and ingenuity, with which he renewed his attempts to unravel the secrets of Nature, for the laws of planetary motion he discovered.

1996 marked the 425th anniversary of the birth of one of the world's greatest astronomers, Johannes Kepler.

5. Mechanics and methodology of Isaac Newton.

1987 marked 300 years since the publication of the outstanding work of Cambridge University professor Isaac Newton
"Mathematical principles of natural philosophy."

In his fundamental work, containing 700 pages in Russian translation, the brilliant English physicist, astronomer and mathematician outlined the system of laws of mechanics, the law of universal gravitation, and gave a general approach to the study of various phenomena based on the “method of principles”, i.e. The work had not only great scientific, but also great methodological significance. The legacy of his predecessors was very important to Newton:
“If I saw further than others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”
Among these giants, Galileo and Kepler should be mentioned first.
At the age of 27 he became a professor at Cambridge University.

In his work on optics, Newton posed a very important and difficult question: “Are not the rays of light very small particles emitted by luminous bodies?” And the hypothesis of outflow, and then the corpuscular theory, unconditionally recognized by his followers and supported by the authority of Newton, dominant in optics of the 18th century. Many people did not agree with this theory because... on its basis it was impossible to explain the interference and diffraction of light. In the theory of light, Newton wanted to combine corpuscular and wave concepts. On this occasion
Newton had two interesting ideas:
1. About the possible transformation of bodies into light and back. In 1933-1934. the facts of the transformation of electrons and positrons into gamma quanta were first discovered
(photons) and the creation of an electron and a positron during the interaction of a photon with charged particles. This is a fundamental discovery of modern particle physics.
2. About the influence of bodies on the propagation of light.

The pinnacle of Newton's scientific creation is “Principia...”. It took Newton about two and a half years of hard work to prepare the first edition of “Beginnings...”. The book consisted of three parts: the first two set out the laws of motion of bodies, the third part was devoted to the system
Mira. Newton wrote his own preface to the first edition, where he talks about the tendency of contemporary natural science to “subordinate natural phenomena to the laws of mathematics.” Next, Newton formulates the purpose of the work and the tasks of physics: “We propose this work as the mathematical foundations of physics. The whole difficulty of physics is to recognize the forces of nature from the phenomena of motion, and then, using these forces, to explain all other phenomena,” he managed to cope with this difficult task. As the first law of mechanics, Newton took the law of inertia discovered by Galileo, formulating it more strictly. The core of mechanics is the second law, which connects the change in the momentum of a body with the force acting on it, i.e. the change in the momentum of a body per unit time is equal to the force acting on it and occurs in the direction of its action. The third law of mechanics reflected that the action of bodies is always in the nature of interaction and that the forces of action and reaction are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. The fourth law was the law of universal gravitation. Having expressed the position about the universal nature of gravitational forces and their identical nature on all planets, showing that “the weight of a body on any planet is proportional to the mass of this planet,” having established an experiment on the proportionality of the mass of a body and its weight (gravity),
Newton concludes that the gravitational force between bodies is proportional to the masses of these bodies.

Even before Newton, many scientists believed that the force of gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, but only Newton was able to logically substantiate and convincingly prove this universal law using the laws of dynamics and experiment. The establishment of proportionality between mass and weight meant that mass is not only a measure of inertia, but also a measure of gravity.

In the third part of the book, the scientist outlined the general system of the World and celestial mechanics, the theory of compression of the Earth at the poles, the theory of ebbs and flows, the movement of comets, disturbances in the movement of planets, etc., based on the law of universal gravitation. The theory of gravity caused philosophical discussions and needed further proof. The first question was about the shape of the Earth. According to Newton's theory, the Earth was compressed at the poles, according to the theory
Descartes is elongated. The disputes were resolved by measuring the arc of the earth's meridian in the equatorial zone (Peru) and in the north (Lapland) by two expeditions of the Paris Academy of Sciences. The theory turned out to be correct
Newton.

Newton's works reveal his methodology and worldview of research. Newton was convinced of the existence of matter, space and time, and of the existence of objective laws of the world accessible to human knowledge. With his desire to reduce everything to mechanics, Newton supported mechanistic materialism (mechanism). Despite his enormous achievements in the field of natural science, he deeply believed in God and took religion very seriously. He believed that “the wisdom of the Lord is revealed equally in the structure of nature and in the sacred books. Studying both is a noble cause.” Newton was the author of the Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Daniel, the Apocalypse, and the Chronology. From this we can conclude that for Newton there was no conflict between science and religion; both coexisted in his worldview.

Newton himself characterizes his method of knowledge as follows:
“To derive two or three general principles of motion from phenomena, and then to expound how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from these manifest principles, would be a very important step in philosophy, even if the causes of these principles were not yet discovered.” By principles, Newton means the most general laws underlying physics. This method was later called the method of principles; Newton outlined the requirements for research in the form of 4 rules:
1. One should not accept other causes in nature beyond those that are true and sufficient to explain phenomena.
2. The same causes must be attributed to the same phenomena.
3. The properties of the bodies subjected to research, independent and unchangeable during experiments, must be taken as the general properties of material bodies.
4. Laws inductively found from experience must be considered true until they are contradicted by other observations.

Since principles are established through the study of natural phenomena, at first they represent hypotheses, from which, through logical deduction, consequences are obtained that are verified in practice.
Therefore, the method of Newton's principles is a hypothetico-deductive method, which in modern physics is one of the main ones for constructing physical theories. Newton's method was highly appreciated in the methodological statements of many scientists, including A. Einstein and
S.I. Vavilov, but many scientists also believed that principles and hypotheses are derived directly from experience. Consequently, a theory is derived directly from experience through formal logic, which has only the goal of connecting one experimental data with another.

A lot of questions and disputes in the history of physics were caused by the views
Newton on space and time. Newton proceeds from the fact that in practice people experience space and time by measuring spatial relationships between bodies and temporal relationships between processes.
Newton calls the concepts of space and time developed in this way relative. He admits that in nature there exist absolute space and time independent of these relations, as empty containers of bodies and events. Space and time, according to Newton, do not depend on matter and material processes, which is not consistent with the concepts of physics of the 20th century. Since Newton’s matter is inert and incapable of self-motion, and empty absolute space is indifferent to matter, he recognizes the “first push,” that is, God, as the primary source of movement.

Newton - this brilliant genius - showed, according to Einstein, the ways of thinking, experimental research and practical constructions, created ingenious methods and mastered them perfectly, was exceptionally inventive in finding mathematical and physical proofs, was placed by fate itself at a turning point in the mental development of mankind . Modern physics has not discarded Newtonian mechanics; it has only established the limits of its applicability.

6.Successes and difficulties of MKM

The MCM was formed under the influence of metaphysical materialistic ideas about matter and the forms of its existence. The fundamental ideas of this picture of the World are classical atomism and mechanism.
The core of the MCM is Newtonian mechanics; there are quite a lot of concepts in any physical theory, but there are basic ones in which the specificity of this theory, its basis, and its ideological aspect are manifested. Such concepts include: matter, motion, space, time, interaction. Matter is a substance consisting of tiny, further indivisible, absolutely solid moving particles (atoms), i.e. discrete concepts of matter were adopted in the MCM. And therefore, the most important concepts in mechanics were the concepts of a material point and an absolutely rigid body; a material point is a body whose dimensions can be neglected in the conditions of a given problem. An absolutely rigid body is a system of material points, the distance between which remains unchanged.

Space. Aristotle denied the existence of empty space, connecting space, time and motion. Atomists recognized atoms and empty space in which atoms move.
Newton considers two types of space: relative, which people become familiar with by measuring the spatial relationships between bodies, and absolute - this is an empty container of bodies, it is not associated with time and its properties do not depend on the presence or absence of material objects in it. It is three-dimensional, continuous, infinite, homogeneous, isotropic. Spatial relationships are described in MCM by Euclidean geometry.

Time. Newton considers two types of time: relative and absolute. Relative time is learned in the process of measurements.
“Absolute, true, mathematical time by itself and by its very essence, without any relation to anything external, flows uniformly and is otherwise called duration.” Thus, time is an empty container of events that does not depend on anything, it flows in one direction (from the past to the future), it is continuous, infinite and the same everywhere (homogeneous).

Movement. The MCM recognized only mechanical movement, i.e. change in body position in space over time. It was believed that any complex movement can be represented as a sum of spatial displacements (the principle of superposition). The motion of any body was explained on the basis of Newton's three laws.

It should be noted that in mechanics the question of the nature of forces was not of fundamental importance. For its laws and methodology, it was enough that force is a quantitative characteristic of the mechanical interaction of bodies. She simply sought to reduce all natural phenomena to the action of forces of attraction and repulsion, encountering insurmountable difficulties along the way.

The most important principles of the MCM are Galileo's principle of relativity, the principle of action at a distance and the principle of causality. The principle of relativity
Galileo claims that all inertial frames of reference (IRS) from the point of view of mechanics are completely equal (equivalent). The transition from one inertial system to another is carried out on the basis of transformations
Galilee.

In MCM it was accepted that interaction is transmitted instantly and the intermediate medium does not take part in the transmission of interaction.
This position is the principle of long-range action.

As you know, there are no causeless phenomena; you can always identify cause and effect, cause and effect are interconnected and influence each other. The effect may be the cause of another phenomenon. “Every existing phenomenon is connected with the previous one on the basis of the obvious principle that it cannot arise without an efficient cause.” In nature there may be more complex connections:
1. The same effect can have different reasons, for example, the transformation of saturated steam into liquid due to an increase in pressure or due to a decrease in temperature.
2. In thermal motion, for example, speed, kinetic energy, momentum of an individual particle change without changing macroparameters
(temperature, pressure, volume) characterizing the system as a whole. As a result of the development of thermodynamics and statistical physics, a number of important laws were discovered, including the conservation and transformation of energy for thermal processes (the first law of thermodynamics) and the law of increasing entropy in isolated systems (the second law of thermodynamics).

Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that studies the patterns of energy transition from one type to another. The first law of thermodynamics states: Heat imparted to a system is spent to change its internal energy and to perform work on the system against external forces.
From the point of view of the first law of thermodynamics, any processes can occur in a system, as long as the law of conservation and transformation of energy is not violated.

All real processes are irreversible, since the presence of friction forces necessarily leads to the transition of ordered motion to disordered motion. To characterize the state of the system and the direction of the processes, a special state function was introduced in physics - entropy. It turned out that the entropy of a closed system cannot decrease.
The closedness of the system means that processes in it occur spontaneously, without external influence. In the case of reversible processes (and in reality there are none), the entropy of a closed system remains unchanged, in the case of irreversible processes it increases. Thus, in reality, the entropy of a closed system can only increase, this is the law of increasing entropy (one of the formulations of the second law of thermodynamics). This law is of great importance for the analysis of processes in closed macroscopic systems. The statistical nature of this law means that it is more fundamental than dynamic laws.

In modern physics, probabilistic and statistical ideas have become widespread (statistical physics, quantum mechanics, theory of evolution, genetics, information theory, planning theory, etc.). Undoubtedly, their practical value: product quality control, checking the operation of a particular object, assessing the reliability of a unit, organizing mass service. But neither thermodynamics nor statistical physics were able to radically change ideas
MKM, destroy it: MKM has changed and expanded its boundaries.
The development of physics until the middle of the 19th century proceeded mainly within the framework of Newtonian views, but more and more new discoveries, especially in the field of electrical and magnetic phenomena, did not fit into the framework of mechanical concepts, i.e. The MCM became a brake on new theories, and the need arose to move to new views on matter and motion. It was not the MCM itself that failed, but its original philosophical idea – mechanism. In the depths of the MCM, elements of a new – electromagnetic – picture of the World began to take shape.

Everything that has been said about the mechanical picture of the World can be summarized by the following conclusions:
1. The impressive successes of mechanics led to mechanism and the idea of ​​the mechanical essence of the World became the basis of the worldview. Indivisible atoms formed the basis of Nature. Living beings are “divine machines” operating according to the laws of mechanics. God created the World and set it in motion.
2.Molecular physics developed within the framework of the MCM. The idea of ​​heat was formed in two directions: as the mechanical movement of particles and as the movement of weightless, imperceptible “fluids” (caloric, phlogiston).
On the basis of electric magnetic “fluids” mechanics sought to explain electrical and magnetic phenomena, on the basis of fluid
"life force" tried to understand the workings of living organisms.
3. Analysis of the operation of heat engines led to the emergence of thermodynamics, the most important achievement of which was the discovery of the law of conservation and transformation of energy. But in MKM all types of energy were reduced to the energy of mechanical movement. The macroworld and microworld obeyed the same mechanical laws. Only quantitative changes were recognized. This meant a lack of development, i.e. The world was considered metaphysical.

Bibliography:

1. Diaghilev F.M. "Concepts of modern natural science"
2. Solopov E.F. "Concepts of modern natural science"

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