Hi faul,
Newton's laws are an approximation which - far as I remember from physics class - works fairly exactly when you operate on human scales of time and motion.
But at the extremes of relativity and the quantum, the rules change. So I guess that the way the rules operate depends on conditions and that the rules themselves vary along a spectrum and in particular at the extremes.
Does that make Newton entirely untrue, or merely relatively true depending upon circumstances? I think it is the latter.
For me, the rules spectrum model suggests a notion that we operate in a universe or field of opposing forces, rather than one in which a single principle prevails.
Einstein's hypothesis fits the data for the movement of light and the energy contained in particles.
His equations about the effects of gravity on light were tested in a solar eclipse in 1919.
The notion that atoms contain and can release a vast amount of energy came up in World War 2. Energy is mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light. Boom! The bonds that otherwise hold atoms together must be awful strong, as well.
His work spins a web between Newton's gravity and mechanics and Faraday's electro-magnetic field, so that we know these forces operate on one another.
Even so, Mr Hawking tells us that there is still no theory of everything to unite all the forces we know about in a single field theory.
Why? Because the theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics have resisted physicists' attempts to reconcile them so far.
So folks have come up with theories to attempt to explain our universe in a unified form. Biblical maxim - for every theoretical physicist there's a theory and a time for every purpose under heaven. Many of the theories are untested and/or resist attempts to test them. Do we grab onto one of them and assume they contain the grain of wisdom at the risk of merely choosing the theory we would prefer to hear? Or do we wait for science to settle on a particular result that survives the tests designed to disprove it?
When folks say we live in a Newtonian universe, they mean different things. Darwin meant that Newton's rules prevail universally. I think now folks would say something more like Newton provided the foundation for a universal view of physics.
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