Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727)
As noted below, the means used to understand the behavior of natural phenomena and their effects evolved from philosophy, progressively replaced by natural philosophy then natural science, to eventually arrive at the modern conception of physics
Natural philosophy has its origins in Greece during the Archaic period, (650 BCE – 480 BCE), when Pre-Socratic philosophers likeThales refused supernatural, religious or mythological explanations for natural phenomena and proclaimed that every event had a natural cause.
They proposed ideas verified by reason and observation and many of their hypotheses proved successful in experiment, for example atomism.
Natural science was developed in China, India and in Islamic caliphates, between the 4th and 10th century BCE.
Quantitative descriptions became popular among physicists and astronomers, for example Archimedes in the domains of mechanics, statics and hydrostatics. Experimental physics had its debuts with experimentation concerning statics by medieval Muslim physicists like al-Biruni and Al
Classical physics became a separate science when early modern Europeans used these experimental and quantitative methods to discover what are now considered to be the laws of physics. Kepler, Galileo and more
specifically Newton discovered and unified the different laws of motion.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
During the industrial revolution, as energy needs increased, so did research, which led to the discovery of new laws in thermodynamics, chemistry and electromagnetics.
Modern physics started with the works of Einstein both in relativity and quantum physics.
In many ways, physics stems from ancient Greek philosophy. From Thales' first attempt to characterize matter, to Democritus' deduction that matter ought to reduce to an invariant state, the Ptolemaic astronomy of a crystalline firmament, and Aristotle's book Physics (an early book on physics, which attempted to analyze and define motion from a philosophical point of view), various Greek philosophers advanced their own theories of nature. Physics was known as natural philosophy until the late 18th century.
By the 19th century physics was realized as a discipline distinct from philosophy and the other sciences. Physics, as with the rest of science, relies on philosophy of science to give an adequate description of the scientific method.
The scientific method employs a priori reasoning as well as a posteriori reasoning and the use of Bayesian inference to measure the validity of a given theory.
The development of physics has answered many questions of early philosophers, but has also raised new questions. Study of the philosophical issues surrounding physics, the philosophy of physics, involves issues such as the nature of space and time,determinism, and metaphysical outlooks such as empiricism, naturalism and realism.
Many physicists have written about the philosophical implications of their work, for instance Laplace, who championed causal determinism, and Erwin Schrödinger, who wrote on quantum mechanics. The mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has been called a Platonist by Stephen Hawking, a view Penrose discusses in his book, The Road to Reality. Hawking refers to himself as an "unashamed reductionist" and takes issue with Penrose's views.
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