vortex theory (uncountable)
- (physics, historical) An obsolete scientific theory, chiefly developed by René Descartes, which attempted to explain celestial mechanics and the phenomena now described as gravitation by positing a system of fluid vortices governed by centrifugal forces and extending outwards from the sun.
1953, Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes: A Study of Scientific Naturalism in the Enlightenment, pages 83–84:Roger Cotes, in a preface to the first English edition of the Principia in 1729, argued that vortex-theory, with its notion of the plenum and its ambition to explain natural effects on exclusively physical grounds, made no allowance for, and could not be fitted into, a teleological scheme of any kind.
2000, Stephen Gaukroger, “The foundational role of hydrostatics and statics in Descartes’ natural philosophy”, in Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster, John Sutton, editors, Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, →ISBN, page 71:Still, it cannot be denied that the fortunes of vortex theory eclipsed radically with the publication of Newton’s Principia.
2021, Stathis Psillos, “From the Evidence of History to the History of Evidence: Descartes, Newton, and Beyond”, in Timothy D. Lyons, Peter Vickers, editors, Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge from the History of Science, →ISBN, page 79:Christiaan Huygens came to doubt the vortex theory “which formerly appeared very likely” to him.
- The vortex theory of the atom: a theory by Lord Kelvin, to explain why there are relatively few types of atom, but a huge number of each type.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see vortex, theory.
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