| "The fasted way to get the right answer is to post the wrong one on the internet" Actually, Kepler came before Newton. Kepler's laws of planetary motion were derived from observations of others. They also follow straightforwardly from Newton's laws of motion. In particular, Kepler's second law is equivalent to conservation of angular momentum. Kepler's third law is equivalent to "Newton's universal gravitation + conservation of angular momentum". And Kepler's first is a consequence of Newtonian kinematics. That is to say, Newton generalized Kepler's laws. The order is: 1. Astronomical observations (Brahe et. al.)
2. Kepler's laws
3. Newton's laws + universal gravitation. Similarly with Einstein: His theoretical treatment of Brownian motion was based on observations by... Robert Brown half a century ealier. The photoelectric effect (for which Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize) was an extension of theoretical work by Plank, who started theorizing to explain observations made by Hertz. Special Relativity resolved a conflict between E&M and Mechanics, but it was really needed to explain why the Michelson-Morley experiment couldn't find a difference in the speed of light, despite increasingly-sophisticated apparatus (which was an unsolved paradox for a quarter of a century before SR was invented). And, while not on your list, quantum theory had many experimental inspirations. The Millikan oil drop experiment, for one. And spectral lines in stellar observations, for another. |