Newton’s black-box physics.

From laws of force and motion in mechanics, Isaac Newton developed laws of orbital motion around ‘centres of force’ and saw gravity as governing the motions of the celestial bodies as well as apples falling from trees. But despite using the ‘force’ terminology perhaps more readily associated with mechanics, Newton concluded that gravity might be due to unseen signals acting across empty space in line with William Gilbert’s physics theory, or might be caused by the impact force of unseen ether matter in line with Rene Descartes physics.

But Newton saw his laws of science as correctly predicting natural events without the need to know why things happened, in the manner of ‘black box’ behaviour laws that related only inputs or stimuli to outputs or responses. Newton considered hypotheses regarding unseens like ‘gravity signals crossing space’ or ‘ether matter filling space’ as matters of philosophy or logic and not science, but as not easily disproven by science. Newton’s physics was about what the universe did, but explicitly excluded explanations of why.

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