ABSTRACT
The seventeenth century inherited the ferment of momentous revolution, added to it the catalyst of its own genius, and passed the result on to succeeding generations. This momentous development was effected, almost singlehandedly, by that most imposing genius of the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton. Newton’s revolutionary physical theory was presented to the world in the late 1680s under the title Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Newton was born in the year that Galileo died exactly one hundred years after the publication of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus. In any case, by the middle of the seventeenth century the general character of the new, mechanical conception of nature had become fairly clear. In the ninth decade of the seventeenth century, however, the mechanical conception of nature, which had theretofore been but an infant, sprang suddenly into its full maturity. It became refined and sophisticated; and in consequence, the mechanistic trend within psychology also became refined and sophisticated.
