Isaac Newton — "The true way of considering a thing is by its causes."
The true way of considering a thing is by its causes.
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More from Isaac Newton
"If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought."
"My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success."
"Errors are not in the art but in the artificers."
"Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes."
"He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who thinks seriously will believe in God, and will not doubt that God is the author of the world."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Genuine understanding requires tracing phenomena back to their root causes rather than accepting surface appearances at face value. To truly know something, you must ask why and how it came to be — not just observe what it is. Causal reasoning is the foundation of real knowledge, rejecting superficial description in favor of deep inquiry into the mechanisms and forces that produce what we experience and observe.
Relevance to Isaac Newton
Newton's career embodied this principle — he never settled for describing phenomena without uncovering their causes. His Principia Mathematica revealed gravity as the cause of both falling apples and planetary orbits, unifying celestial and terrestrial mechanics. His optical experiments traced white light to its component colors. His famous declaration 'hypotheses non fingo' meant he grounded every causal claim in observed evidence, making him science's greatest practitioner of causal reasoning.
The era
Newton worked during the Scientific Revolution, when Europe was overthrowing centuries of Aristotelian natural philosophy that explained phenomena through purpose and divine design rather than physical causes. Galileo and Descartes had begun the shift toward mechanical explanation. The newly founded Royal Society championed observation-based inquiry. Scholastic universities still taught from ancient authorities rather than causal investigation. Newton's insistence on causes — mathematical, physical, demonstrable — helped permanently displace faith in received wisdom with rigorous mechanistic science.
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