Query 31 of Isaac Newton’s Opticks was his last word in science. It begins:
After a lengthy sketch of how this concept might lead to explanations of various phenomena in what we would now call chemistry and condensed matter physics, Query 31 concludes with a statement of methodological faith:
“Reductionism” is modern jargon for the program that Newton advocated in Query 31. But this is an ugly and misleading term, and it has become almost a term of abuse in fashionable intellectual circles. So in this series of three columns, I’ll avoid the R-word and stick with the “Analysis and Synthesis.” The phrase has the virtue of emphasizing that both procedures, breaking down and building back up, form essential elements in scientific understanding—and that such understanding is therefore not reduction, but rather enrichment.
Whatever you call it, as a tool for understanding the physical world, the method of analysis...
