Editing Mechanics (section)

=== Early modern age ===
[[File:Taccola first piston.jpg|thumb|First European depiction of a [[piston]] pump, by [[Taccola]], {{Circa|1450}}.<ref>{{cite book| last = Hill | first = Donald Routledge | title = A History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times | location = London | publisher =  Routledge | year = 1996 | page = 143 | isbn =  0-415-15291-7 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=MqSXc5sGZJUC&q=Taccola+first+piston&pg=PA143}}</ref>]]
Two central figures in the early modern age are [[Galileo Galilei]] and [[Isaac Newton]]. Galileo's final statement of his mechanics, particularly of falling bodies, is his ''[[Two New Sciences]]'' (1638). Newton's 1687 ''[[Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica]]'' provided a detailed mathematical account of mechanics, using the newly developed mathematics of [[calculus]] and providing the basis of [[Newtonian mechanics]].<ref name="mechanics"/>

There is some dispute over priority of various ideas: Newton's ''Principia'' is certainly the seminal work and has been tremendously influential, and many of the mathematics results therein could not have been stated earlier without the development of the calculus. However, many of the ideas, particularly as pertain to inertia and falling bodies, had been developed by prior scholars such as [[Christiaan Huygens]] and the less-known medieval predecessors. Precise credit is at times difficult or contentious because scientific language and standards of proof changed, so whether medieval statements are ''equivalent'' to modern statements or ''sufficient'' proof, or instead ''similar'' to modern statements and ''hypotheses'' is often debatable.