How did our view of the Universe develop? By the mid-eighteenth century, a world view had
developed of a system constrained by physical laws. These laws, if not entirely understood,
showed regularity and could be handled mathematically to provide both explanation and
prediction of celestial phenomena. Most of us have at least some hazy idea of the
fundamental shift that came through the work of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton.
The idea of a 'Mechanical Universe'running rather like a clock tends to be associated with …