Who Created the Newtonian Paradigm? (On Velvet Revolutions in Science)

The article analyzes a view that is still widespread in the history-of-science literature. This view purports that the foundations of classical mechanics were laid in I. Newton's treatise "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (1687), which gained wide recognition in continental Europe after overcoming the resistance of the Cartesians and Wolffians, and that, although Newton's mechanics presented in the language of geometry took a new form in the 1730s through the efforts of L. Euler and other mathematicians, this transformation included, according to the traditional narrative, only minor, by no means fundamental, changes. The paper shows that this view is inconsistent with the actual development of mechanics. In its theoretical part, mechanics of the 2nd half of the 16th-17th century dealt almost exclusively with the motion of a material point (free motion in the central force field). Together with the law of universal gravitation, this mechanics undoubtedly achieved some impressive successes (the description of the motion of planets, the motion of projectiles, the free fall of bodies, etc.). However, the mechanics created by Galileo, Huygens, Hooke, Newton, and Leibniz had practically no resources for solving many other mechanical problems of practical importance (solid body rotation, motion of different types of liquids, etc.). To expand the problematic field of mechanics, to generalize it and go beyond the consideration of point masses and central forces, it was necessary not only to improve its mathematical apparatus and add a few ideas and idealizations. A new foundation for theoretical mechanics had to be laid, which was accomplished through the efforts of a small group of mathematicians (J. and D. Bernoulli, L. Euler, J. D'Alembert, J. Lagrange, and others). These circumstances indicate the need for revisiting the essence, structure, and periodization of the Scientific Revolution of the early modern period. It appears that two main stages must be distinguished in it: the natural philosophy stage and the stage of science per se. The former reached its culmination on the cusp of the 17th and 18th centuries and the beginning of the latter may be conditionally dated 1736 when Euler's "Mechanics" was published.