Meaning of vortex theory | Babel Free

Definitions

1. 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.
   historical, uncountable
2. 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.
   uncountable
3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see vortex, theory.
   uncountable

Examples

“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.”

“Still, it cannot be denied that the fortunes of vortex theory eclipsed radically with the publication of Newton’s Principia.”

“Christiaan Huygens came to doubt the vortex theory “which formerly appeared very likely” to him.”

CEFR level