The English physicist Isaac Newton launched a new and powerful scientific synthesis that would dominate Western science until it eventually became obsolete with the rise of relativity and quantum theory at the dawn of the twentieth century. It also had a wider cultural effect on the Enlightenment. The basic principles of Newtonianism were set forth in Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687). This famously difficult book was written in Latin for a European audience skilled in mathematics, and most educated Europeans learned of the new Newtonian cosmos secondhand or through translations, textbooks, and popularizations. The cosmos Newton set forth in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy was law governed. Newton’s most famous scientific breakthroughs were the law of gravitation and the three laws of motion.