There is no RationalWiki without you. We are a small non-profit with no staff—we are hundreds of volunteers who document pseudoscience and crankery around the world every day. We will never allow ads because we must remain independent. We cannot rely on big donors with corresponding big agendas. We are not the largest website around, but we believe we play an important role in defending truth and objectivity. |
Fighting pseudoscience isn't free. We are 100% user-supported! Help and donate $5, $10, $20 or whatever you can today with ![]() ![]() |
Natural philosophy
Thinking hardly or hardly thinking? Philosophy |
![]() |
Major trains of thought |
The good, the bad, and the brain fart |
Come to think of it |
Natural philosophy is a term nobody uses any more. Its use roughly coincides with The Enlightenment, the period between the mid-17th and early-18th centuries, when the foundations of what is now known as science were laid by people such as Isaac Newton, René Descartes, Robert Hooke and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.
In natural philosophy, there is an emphasis on deduction as a means of obtaining knowledge, in contrast to the modern emphasis on induction.
Probably the most famous use of the term is in the title of Newton's seminal work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).