Abstract

After a long process of development, which historians say began around 1500, the so-called Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century reached its culmination with the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, in 1687. Evidently, a Revolution in the scientific field is a complex social, political, and cultural phenomenon, and, although the names of Newton and Leibniz deserve special mention, we cannot fail to mention Descartes, Galileo, Kepler, Hooke and a host of thinkers and men of science from various countries who also participated in it. With the Scientific Revolution, mechanical sciences came of age, so to speak. The consolidation of a theory of movement that began with Aristotle found, in the hands of Newton, a simple, comprehensive, and universal systematization. The laws of motion from now on were valid for the entire universe. Due to its importance for the construction of a theory of movement, we will practically dedicate this Chapter to Newton and Leibniz.