"His idea was that rather than very slow, incremental changes in evolution, there were sudden, abrupt changes (Westfall 113).".
Newton's sudden and new understanding can be described as ingenious. He understood in a profound way the real workings of the universe, at least its mechanical aspects. Observation provided proof; theory could be tested. It was, in a way, the birth of science as we understand it today.
Sir Isaac Newton had many discoveries through out his lifetime. Some of his more popular experiments involved; .
The "Crucial Experiment" with light which was dispersed through two separate prisms in a dark room, his experiments with gravity, and also little known work he did in theology and history.
Newton's most famous experiment demonstrated his theory of the composition of light. Briefly, in a dark room Newton allowed a narrow beam of sunlight to pass from a .
small hole in a window shutter through a prism, breaking the white light into an oblong spectrum on a board. Then, through a small hole in the board, Newton selected a given color to pass through yet another hole to a second prism, through which it was refracted onto a second board. Therefore what began as ordinary white light was thus dispersed through two prisms. .
Newton's "Crucial Experiment" demonstrated that a selected color leaving the first prism could not be separated further by the second prism. The selected beam remained the same color, and its angle of refraction was constant throughout. Newton concluded that "White light is a Heterogeneous mixture of differently refrangible Rays and that colors of the spectrum cannot themselves be individually modified, but are Original and connate properties (Westfall 74)." .
In Astronomy, Newton allowed his theories on the laws of gravitation and the laws motion to explain a wide range of preconceived phenomena that were considered to be absolute truths. "Newton's one general law of nature and one system of mechanics reduced to order most if the known problems of astronomy and terrestrial physics (Berlinski 3).
