Newton and the Infinite Universe

FEB 01, 1986

Newton said that if the starry heavens were of finite extent they would “fall down to the middle” and there “compose one great spherical mass,” yet he avoided calculating the time for gravitational collapse.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881049

Edward Harrison

Isaac Newton formulated his ideas on space and the universe during his early years at Cambridge in response to René Descartes’s 1644 publication Principles of Philosophy. Sometime between 1666 and 1668, in an unpublished manuscript that we refer to by its opening words, De gravitatione, Newton wrote that an “infinite and eternal” divine power coexists with space, which “extends infinitely in all directions” and “is eternal in duration.” Descartes claimed that where there is no matter there can be no space; on the contrary, argued Newton, space, by virtue of omnipresent spirit, exists where there is no matter. Descartes claimed that matter extends indefinitely; on the contrary, argued Newton, God has created in infinite space a material system of finite extent.

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More about the Authors

Edward Harrison. University of Massachusetts, Amherst.