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<title>Clockwork universe</title>

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<span id="openzim-page-title" class="mw-page-title-main"><span class="mw-page-title-main">Clockwork universe</span></span>

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</style><div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">Compare also the <a href="Watchmaker_analogy" title="Watchmaker analogy">watchmaker analogy</a>.</div>

<p>The <b>clockwork universe</b> is a concept which compares the <a href="Universe" title="Universe">universe</a> to a <a href="Clockwork" title="Clockwork">mechanical clock</a>. It continues ticking along, as a perfect machine, with its gears governed by the <a href="Laws_of_physics" class="mw-redirect" title="Laws of physics">laws of physics</a>, making every aspect of the machine predictable. It evolved during the <a href="Age_of_Enlightenment" title="Age of Enlightenment">Enlightenment</a> in parallel with the emergence of <a href="Newton's_law_(disambiguation)" class="mw-redirect mw-disambig" title="Newton's law (disambiguation)">Newton's laws</a> governing motion and gravity.

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="History">History</h2></div>

<p>This idea was very popular among <a href="Deism" title="Deism">deists</a><sup class=" nourlexpansion citation" id="ref_{{{1}}}"><a class="external autonumber external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockwork_universe#endnote_">[1]</a></sup> during the <a href="Age_of_Enlightenment" title="Age of Enlightenment">Enlightenment</a>, when <a href="Isaac_Newton" title="Isaac Newton">Isaac Newton</a> derived his <a href="Newton's_laws_of_motion" title="Newton's laws of motion">laws of motion</a>, and showed that alongside the law of universal <a href="Gravitation" class="mw-redirect" title="Gravitation">gravitation</a>, they could predict the behaviour of both <a href="Motion_(physics)" class="mw-redirect" title="Motion (physics)">terrestrial objects</a> and the <a href="Solar_System" title="Solar System">Solar System</a>.

</p><p>A similar concept goes back to <a href="Johannes_de_Sacrobosco" title="Johannes de Sacrobosco">John of Sacrobosco's</a> early 13th-century introduction to astronomy: <i><a href="De_sphaera_mundi" title="De sphaera mundi">On the Sphere of the World</a></i>. In this widely popular medieval text, Sacrobosco spoke of the universe as the <i>machina mundi</i>, the machine of the world, suggesting that the reported eclipse of the Sun at the crucifixion of Jesus was a disturbance of the order of that machine.<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-1"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>1<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>

</p><p>Responding to <a href="Gottfried_Leibniz" class="mw-redirect" title="Gottfried Leibniz">Gottfried Leibniz</a>,<sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-2"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>2<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> a prominent supporter of the theory, in the <a href="Leibniz%E2%80%93Clarke_correspondence" title="Leibniz–Clarke correspondence">Leibniz–Clarke correspondence</a>, <a href="Samuel_Clarke" title="Samuel Clarke">Samuel Clarke</a> wrote:<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-3"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>3<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>

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</style><blockquote class="templatequote"><p>The Notion of the World's being a great Machine, going on without the Interposition of God, as a Clock continues to go without the Assistance of a Clockmaker; is the Notion of Materialism and Fate, and tends, (under pretence of making God a Supra-mundane Intelligence,) to exclude Providence and God's Government in reality out of the World.</p></blockquote>

<p>In 2009, artist Tim Wetherell created a wall piece for <a href="Questacon" title="Questacon">Questacon</a> (The National Science and Technology centre in Canberra, Australia) representing the concept of the clockwork universe. This steel artwork contains moving gears, a working clock, and a movie of the <a href="Lunar_terminator" class="mw-redirect" title="Lunar terminator">lunar terminator</a>.

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<ul><li><a href="Mechanical_philosophy" class="mw-redirect" title="Mechanical philosophy">Mechanical philosophy</a></li>

<li><a href="Determinism" title="Determinism">Determinism</a></li>

<li><a href="Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)" title="Eternalism (philosophy of time)">Eternalism (philosophy of time)</a></li>

<li><a href="History_of_science" title="History of science">History of science</a></li>

<li><a href="Orrery" title="Orrery">Orrery</a></li>

<li><a href="Philosophy_of_space_and_time" title="Philosophy of space and time">Philosophy of space and time</a></li>

<li><a href="Superdeterminism" title="Superdeterminism">Superdeterminism</a></li></ul>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="References">References</h2></div>

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<li id="cite_note-1"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-1">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">John of Sacrbosco, <i>On the Sphere</i>, quoted in Edward Grant, <i>A Source Book in Medieval Science,</i> (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1974), p. 465.</span>

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</style><cite id="CITEREFDanielson2000" class="citation book cs1">Danielson, Dennis Richard (2000). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://books.google.com/books?id=RYr-swEACAAJ&q=editions:ISBN0738202479"><i>The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking</i></a>. <a href="Basic_Books" title="Basic Books">Basic Books</a>. p. 246. <a href="ISBN_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="ISBN (identifier)">ISBN</a> <bdi>0738202479</bdi>.</cite></span>

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<li id="cite_note-3"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-3">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Davis, Edward B. 1991. "Newton's rejection of the "Newtonian world view" : the role of divine will in Newton's natural philosophy." Science and Christian Belief 3, no. 2: 103-117. Clarke quotation taken from article.</span>

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Further_reading">Further reading</h2></div>

<ul><li><a href="E._J._Dijksterhuis" class="mw-redirect" title="E. J. Dijksterhuis">E. J. Dijksterhuis</a> (1961) <i>The Mechanization of the World Picture</i>, <a href="Oxford_University_Press" title="Oxford University Press">Oxford University Press</a></li>

<li><a href="Edward_Dolnick" title="Edward Dolnick">Dolnick, Edward</a> (2011) <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://books.google.com/books?id=IJ-GgyfvKL8C"><i>The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World</i></a>, HarperCollins.</li>

<li>David Brewster (1850) "A Short Scheme of the True Religion", manuscript quoted in <i>Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton</i>, cited in Dolnick, page 65.</li>

<li><a href="Anneliese_Maier" title="Anneliese Maier">Anneliese Maier</a> (1938) <i>Die Mechanisierung des Weltbildes im 17. Jahrhundert</i></li>

<li>Webb, R.K. ed. Knud Haakonssen (1996) "The Emergence of Rational Dissent." <i>Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain</i>, <a href="Cambridge_University_Press" title="Cambridge University Press">Cambridge University Press</a> page 19.</li>

<li>Westfall, Richard S. <i>Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England</i>. p. 201.</li>

<li>Riskins, Jessica (2016) <i><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://books.google.com/books?id=HKUNrgEACAAJ">The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick</a></i>, <a href="University_of_Chicago_Press" title="University of Chicago Press">University of Chicago Press</a>.</li></ul>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="External_links">External links</h2></div>

<ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://physicalworld.org/restless_universe/html/ru_2_11.html">"The Clockwork Universe".</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200214215544/http://physicalworld.org/restless_universe/html/ru_2_11.html">Archived</a> 2020-02-14 at the <a href="Wayback_Machine" title="Wayback Machine">Wayback Machine</a> <i>The Physical World</i>. Ed. John Bolton, Alan Durrant, Robert Lambourne, Joy Manners, Andrew Norton.</li></ul></div><div><div class="zim-footer">

This article is issued from <a class="external text" title="Last edited on 2025-07-25" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?title=Clockwork_universe&oldid=1302376874">Wikipedia</a>. The text is available under <a class="external text" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en">Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0</a> unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

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