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Newton... not only found a precise mathematical use for concepts like force, mass, inertia; he gave new meanings to the old terms space, time, and motion, which had hitherto been unimportant but were now becoming the fundamental categories of men's thinking.

— Edwin Arthur Burtt The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1924)

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More quotes by Edwin Arthur Burtt

The only way to avoid becoming a metaphysician is to say nothing.

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)

The motions of the heavenly bodies could be charted according to Ptolemy just as correctly as according to Copernicus.

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1924)

A student of the history of physical science will assign to Newton a further importance which the average man can hardly appreciate. ...the separation … of positive scientific inquiries from questions of ultimate causation.

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)

Just when did teleological explanations, accounts in terms of use and the Good, become definitely abandoned in favour of the notion that true explanations, of man and his mind as well as of other things, must be in terms of their simplest parts?

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science; a Historical and Critical Essay (1925)

Founder of exact modern science though he was, Kepler combined with his exact methods and indeed found his motivation for them in certain long discredited superstitions, including what it is not unfair to describe as sunworship.

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)

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