ABSTRACT
The requirement is now, not merely to sense dimly the law of activity in nature, but to know this law precisely and to express it in clear concepts. Sense observation must be combined with exact measurement, and the new theory of nature must grow out of these two factors. This theory too, as established in the works of Kepler and Galileo, is still imbued with a strong religious impulse which acts as a driving force. Thanks to Newton, it believed it stood finally on firm ground which could never again be shaken by any future revolution of natural science. By this basic conception is to be explained the almost unlimited power which scientific knowledge gains over all the thought of the Enlightenment. D’Alembert called the eighteenth century the philosophical century but with equal justification and pride this era often labeled itself the century of natural science.
