His202

Isaac Newton and the Newtonian Revolution

Newton believed he was working within the tradition of the mechanical natural philosophy, established and articulated by Descartes. Newton was one generation after Descartes (After Descartes articulated a very STRICT philosophy - all atoms are just bumping into each other, everything is mathematically explained, everything is mathematical everything is mechanical there's very little room to move).

By the time Newton came to university mechanism was widely used but it was also mixed with a philosophy that encouraged experiments and such, which is in fact contrary to what Descartes prescribed.

(Post Cartesian)

Most natural philosophers subscribed a mechanical natural philosophy that included 'vacuums' (Descartes did not believe that vacuums could exist).

Bacon's inductive beliefs and method was mixed with Descarte's natural mechanical philosophy.

Newton and natural magic (the occult):

Newton insisted that the natural world cannot be explained solely in terms of the arrangement and inertial movements of totally passive atoms. Instead, Newton said that atoms have active principles. Each atom has its own power to attract and repel at a distance.

Kepler:

There's a magnetic theory in Kepler's work but there's no mathematical description or demonstration of that theory.

So Newton wants to give this some explanation, some description. So the first thing he does is he looks at Newton's third law. Thus Newton comes up with INVERSE SQUARE LAW: The attractive force is dependent on the distance of the planet from the sun.