ABSTRACT
The Newtonian synthesis, the crowning achievement of the Scientific Revolution, was the product of one further revolutionary transformation, which started in August 1684. Just like Newton himself in 1669, we are almost but not yet quite ready for it. One element that drove the revolutionary movement forward from the time of the pioneers to the early 18th century is still missing from the account: the resolution of the crisis of legitimacy that over the late 1640s and the 1650s came perilously close to laying waste to the work of the pioneers (ch. 12). The achievement attained in the wake of the pioneers in all three modes of revolutionized nature-knowledge, both separately and together, makes it crystal clear that the crisis was overcome but not what had made that feat possible. To find that out is the burden of the present chapter.
