SOURCE: "Hegel's Criticism of Newton," in CLIO, Vol. 13, No. 4, Summer 1984, pp. 331-48.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1981, the critic surveys Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's criticism of the scientific procedures that formed the basis of Newtonianism. Petry argues that Hegel opposed the conclusions drawn by nineteenth-century Newtonians, including physicists and philosophers, more than he opposed Newton himself

Gi; introduction =~ Sintroduction

Even now, when we look back upon Newton's Principia and Opticks over a period of nearly three hundred years, it is difficult to imagine what modern physics would have been like had these books never been written. The experimental procedures on which they are based, their manner of exposition, the discoveries they made known, are so indispensable a part of the modern physicist's stock in trade, that he would be at a loss to define his discipline at all clearly were they to be...