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Newton's "Principia" stolen
Silverleaf writes "O2 have a story on the theft of Isaac Newton's revolutionary "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" from a Russian museum. For the non-physicists among you, Newton first published his famed three laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation in "Principia" in 1687. I'm surprised this theft hasn't attracted more attention in the mainstream media, since "Principia" is generally considered the most important scientific works in history."
I have that in paperback. They can have mine.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Or just slashdotted already? Gee, that was quick.
ISO certified == THX certified
Not Found /news/OLGBTOPNEWS/2002-11-10T173943Z_01_L10426000_ RTRIDST_0_OUKTP-LIFE-RUSSIA-NEWTON.html was not found on this server.
The requested URL
Oh, go on, check out my job.
Other source of info on this story:
n ne ws&StoryID=1715112
http://reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=huma
Reuters isn't a big enough news service?
n ne ws&StoryID=1715112
http://reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=huma
# Erik
Google news has some more links.
I'm looking for a HEPA media filter for my TV. I'm alergic to reality shows.
It must've been Hudson Hawk who stole it..
Check on ebay, I'm sure it'll be on there soon...
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
That that thief will have a hard time finding a buyer. After all, it's hard explain where you got a one of kind book like this.
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
Here is the cached article
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Didn't someone at least make a photocopy of it?!
Where the hell am I supposed to find obscure geometrical proofs of things otherwised proved by calculus now!?
?-|||-----x<*))))><
*urp*
*cough*
*choke*
They stole... Principia ?!
(screams to the next room) BRING ME MY GUN!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Moscow times mentions the theft as well (near the bottom of the page). Not nearly as much publicity as it deserves though.
Perhaps there should be link to the library as well. Their online exhibitions section has some interesting links for a literature buff.
Perhaps Mr. Gutenberg's newfangled invention made this a nonevent.
I am a virus, put me in your
They have stolen the web page as well!
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
and think oh great, another scandal amongst the scientific community?
CNN has the story here
-- Heisenberg might have slept here.
Newtons essay is actually written on special material that in fact houses the CORE FUNDAMENTIAL ELEMENTS tha stabalize the laws of physics in our universe. If the theif has it in his mind to incenerate said document, be prepared for chaos. Apples not falling from trees, velocity and acceleration NOT functioning in automobiles (even Italian sportscars), Microsoft going open source, alphas of Doom III leaking. You get my drift. Just be careful.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You don't seem to realize the gravity of the situation.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Newton died years ago. Why not put something in the museum that's a bit more contemporary?
Maybe some Harlequin Romances or Stephen King?
Trolling is a art,
Most museums place items of such great importance under locked glass, or they just lock them up altogether and show replicas. Why the hell would they just let any ol' person touch them. Paper that old is sensitive to light, not to mention the oils on your fingers!
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Isaac Newton's revolutionary "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" from a Russian museum.
:)
Odd. I could have sworn it was located in the Huntington museum in California, along with Newton's notes, seeing as how I saw it not six months ago.
Of course, it may have been moved to Russia since then. See if we'll ever loan them a famous scientific work again!
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Comment removed based on user account deletion
but eaten it, so that the incarnation of Newton wouldn't hurt his girlfriend; but then he would have stolen the idea from Red Dragon
"No, I don't want hurt her, but Newton third Law urges me...."
Originals in Art, especially those painted or otherwise created non digitally are hard to recreate. The information stored in the way Newton wrote, the shapes of the letters, etc is not THAT important. However, the brush strokes of a Monet or Manet are priceless.
now that we are free from the oppressive laws of inertia and opposite reaction? I don't even think the universe was ever planning on opening the source code to physics, and this EULA that Newton devised has just been a setback to innovative new paradigms.
Unless a news story has to do with cloning, israel, murder, or some sort of celebrity getting charged with a crime, it won't be published. Sadly Journalism has devolved into the equivelent of a Fox special, displaying only quick thrills and eye catching (but unimportant) news and ignoring the more fundemental events in the world.
Don't worry though, we have slashdot to fill the gaping hole left by todays bad journalism!
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
I need it for my calculus homework. Geez!
"It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to be destroyed" --William S. Bourroughs
Try Reuters
C8H10N4O2 | Developer > Code
Hopefully they made copies!
Those sneaky russians!
[cx]
that sneaky bastard!
Romeo & Juliet for 1337 hax0rz! http://www.redcoat.net/pics/romjul.swf
Look out Stephen Hawking - you're next!!
How the hell do you sell that on the black market? Is there some reclusive physicist out there collecting rare works (Einstein's drink napkin from Le Lapin Agile!) that will pay top dollar for this? If so, how does he/she show it off to their friends and family (assuming that they aren't that reclusive)? How do you explain that you just happen to have this sitting around in the family room?
I fear the crime will stay unsolved unless it is acted upon by an outside force.
I'm surprised this theft hasn't attracted more attention in the mainstream media, since "Principia" is generally considered the most important scientific works in history."
Oh, come on. Get real... The Sooners lost to the Aggies in College Station. No mystery here.
Once and for all, taking a physical item from its owner is not "theft". Yes this is the common usage these days, but saying something over and over doesn't make it true.
If you want to be accurate, use the word "take". As in, someone "took" the Principia Mathematica.
If you want to give it a positive connotation, use the term "shared" or "loan". As in, I just "shared" my copy of the Principia with a stranger, or I just involuntarily "loaned" my copy to a man in a ski mask with a gun.
Let the RIAA and other thugs use their propaganda words. I'll stick with morally neutral terminology.
Remember, matter just wants to be free. This doesn't mean zero cost, but it means once you pick up a physical object, you can put it in your pocket and head for the hills, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Besides, I believe the Supreme Court has already ruled that people have the right to "space-shift" other people's possessions.
Hey, now I know how to finally get myself a copy of the 'Dragon Book'. I should have thought of this before!
Library of Congress, watch out!
Jack William Bell
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Get my drift?
I've got the eBook.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I heard there was this weird rich couple interested in it; something about a crystal hidden in the spine?
Sounds like something her gang would be involved in.
Fnord
Plus ca change, plus c'est les memes choses.
submit but report with Linus Torvalds
... do you mean "bug report" or "butt report" there?
Wait
...all your Principia now belong to us.
Thank god I have my own copy!
I was trying to figure out how I fell down and hit the ceiling. Now I know.
hehehehe.
that's the cleverestest thing i've read all day.
Perhaps the thieves wanted to see if Newton was for real about the whole "gravity" thing.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
They called him the walking dude.
The copyright expired, so the Evil Content Pirates(tm) just thought they could take it!
Seriously, I hope they find this thing soon. It's got to be priceless.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Wall sonny, when I was a chillun we didn't stand for none of this "Perrrincipia" nonsense. I don't hold no truck with none of this high-falutin' Neewtonian physics. In my day we didn't need none of your so called "gravytational constant" or your "three laws of motion." Heck, we didn't but barely have the wheel, and by golly, that was good enough for us! You kids nowadays are so dad gum spoiled, going and crying to yo mommy whenever someone takes your precious book. It ain't nothing but revolting, that's what.
Don't give me none of this "nature theme" business.
I hate to break it to you, but there are rumors that Newton actually created calculus too. Luckily, calculus hasn't been stolen yet, but it's under close watch now.
More at eleven ...
Well posession is 9/10ths of the law...
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
This is a rare first edition, not a hand written manuscript. Although these selfish thieves have deprived Russian students of a rare and valuable text, it is not unique. A quick google search revealed that among other universities, Georgia Tech owns not only a first edition identical to the one being stolen (although the russian copy may have been in better condition, the article doesn't say) they also have a rare second and a rare third edition(http://gtalumni.org/StayInformed/magazine/ sum99/newton.html). Some other results also credited the University of Cambridge for having the most complete collection of Newton's papers. Rare first editions are mainly for bragging rights anyway. I don't see why this should be an international incident as the story suggests. Very few people outside of Russia would have ever seen it anyway, as there are other copies available in mroe convenient places anyway.
I saw the headline "Newton's Principia stolen" and immediately thought that someone stole a technology called "Principia" from the NewtonOS.
Damn, I'm a geek.
SIGFEH
You dont get much more mainstream (read: corprate lies) than this
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
"You don't seem to realize the gravity of the situation."
Neither did Willie. E. Coyote.
Some bad guy wants it, so he hires a nice looking, female, international thief to steal it. I bet they got Wynona Ryder to play the part, she was just practicing for the role!
ROFL
Sigs are bad for your health.
Surely Leibniz should be considered an initial suspect.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
So what you're saying is: A theft of significant large magnitude did not meet with an equal response by the media... I'm sorry, didn't anyone ever explain the three laws of Media to you?
A story at rest or in motion remains at rest or in motion unless acted upon by some editorial force
The rate of public interest in a story is proportional to the number of times reiterated in the story, or in some cases use of the phrase "for the first time since ..."
If the media attempts to educate the public, in the process of telling a story, the public will respond with and equal and opposite attempt to find something else to watch, read or listen to.
It's a sad sad sad sad world
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Second? I thought it was the first!
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
"What time is it?" "I don't know, it keeps changing".
(As an aside, the above should cue the Bob Dylan jokes from the old folks).
Sigs are bad for your health.
I have seen comments about how the story wasn't covered anywhere but one Reuter's article and Moscow Times. And decided to check what's going on with main russian-language news sites.
:)
NOTHING. Not a single mention whatsoever. Checked 5 of the most popular newsfeeds. No mention.
Simple search (Yandex.ru for the unduly curious
turned up several articles on lesser sites. Among the interesting tidbits:
* Another book is also missing, a 1913 edition of some book called "Le Futur" by Bolshakov
* The book is unique (other than being the first edition) because it has marks/stamps from many other libraries. I wasn't quite sure what that meant - only one article mentioned it - but probably the history of book's ownership is quite interesting.
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
No security? Heck, I saw at least five guys with machine guns when I borrowed it. I'm just trying to scan a page a day for the Project Gutenberg, and well, it is taking a lot longer than I thought. Those calculus thingies don't OCR well at all....
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Neither did Willie. E. Coyote.
Nor his cousin Saddam
Sigs are bad for your health.
Why do people view some sets of information as too valuable for one person to own (eg, the thief or the person who hired them) yet still back the very concept of Intellecual Property?
After all, all the robber did was remove it from the public domain, effectively. Illegal, sure, but the effect is the same; the public is out a tremendous good to benefit the greedy few/one.
Where is the difference?
My
Limekiller
or jlo and ben are getting married or some other nonsense crap is more important for the media owned news to help the media parent sell movies/records.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
XKILL easiest solution for sure
make an icon on your menu bar for quick access
look, you got lucky with that gravity line. Don't go thinking that you're funny now. Leave the comedy to the experts.
Keeping a work like this in archives and accessible to anyone who wants to see it is absurd. The British Museum doesn't let you check out the Magna Carta to read it! The National Archives won't loan you the U.S. Constitution. Why would a museum try a work this valuable with such cavalier security? More evidence that security in Russia is completely permeable.
Unless I'm mistaken the theft diserved a paragraph on page five of the New York Times this morning. Not much, but it was there.
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
without newton's writings, I can describe the universe however I like and not be subject to any scathing editorials about 'consistency' jeez
...I'm definitely going to take advantage of F !=ma. I'm going to give my car a good shove tomorrow morning and ride it all the way to work.
I just hope that we don't spin out of orbit while F != G(m1m2)/d2. I guess, though, that if we start to spin out of orbit, somebody on the far side of the planet can just give it a shove and we'll be back in place.
Unfortunately, I've already noticed my CPU getting hotter. And I stood on this really tall guy's shoulders but I couldn't see very far...
"95% of all Slashdot
Thanks! This reminds me of a very old Benny Hill routine: "No, officer, I did not kill my wife. She just felll on the knife. 12 times. Backwards." That is, just how much circumlocution will we tolerate.
For the record (one exempt from RIAA) it is nice looking book, and Australia has one.
This is from:
o ns /chapter3.html
http://astsun.astro.virginia.edu/~jh8h/Foundati
Newton delayed publishing his results in part because he was forced to invent calculus in order to work out the results for the gravitational attraction of two extended bodies.
He toyed with the idea that the interaction between the earth & the apple can be treated as the interaction between two point particles. To prove this he had to invent a formalism to add up the contribution to the interaction of different pieces of the earth at varying distances from the apple -- (integral) calculus
Sorry, Mr. Leno.
"Eat up martha"
Fans will think it is funny, others will think it is overrated.
"The emperor and his new clothes" syndrome should be good for at least a +4
--Joey
Tragic though this may be... it hasn't stopped the planets' turning ;)
don't force me to mutilate your genitals with a melon scooper. 'cause I'll do it!
First its stolen. Then its slashdotted! Now I never get to read it....
NO NO Don't mod me. Please! I'm too young to die as a stupid troll. {click} Damn, I'm bleeding karma all over my keyboard.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Thanks! xkill will do for now. This _only_ happens when starting the application via a launcher from GNOME panel. If I run kterm from another kterm, it closes fine. Obviously something is fucked with GNOME. ;-)
I think I'll take your suggestion about submitting a bug report to the KDE team though. They always have something fucked that needs fixing.
Too late. My ex-wife has them in her house that I paid for in her trophy case that I paid for.
I'm tired of Fasciscs whining about democracy. People will deny fascism while denigrating democratic government and prosletyzing for corporate rule.
To claim that my vote is worthless in running the state, and that a corporation would give me more power, is Fascism.
A democratic government is intended to give a voice to everyone. I have some small amount of influence when I vote, and when I write to a representative, or participate more directly in more local government, where I have yet more influence over how things are run. Maybe voting isn't worth anything to you, but it is to me.
I'm not saying that the government should run everything, just responding to your assertion that the stock market gives me more power than democracy.
Corporate rule is far from democratic. The vast majority of Enron investors didn't decide to enrich the few folks who burned down the store. The folks with the voting shares weren't paying enough attention, but most of the people who lost money had no influence at all, putting the lie to your last paragraph.
Perhaps you merely meant that the government shouldn't own anything? Of course without owning anything, it couldn't govern, and would become irrelevant. That's OK for the fascists, because corporate rule will be best for us all.
Forced to choose between my stocks, and my vote, I'd pick my vote (even back in the 90's.) Fortunately, I get both.
So much for my offtopic answer to a troll.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Bring on the super flu... Oh wait, we already have that. It's called the US g'vment.
What's very interesting about this book is that the printers of the day decided to take Newton's nice illustrations and print them on a new embossing press. However, the pages had to ben run through the plain type press first, then the embosser. Four hundred years ago, this was the bleeding edge of technology and his illustrations wouldn't line up with the text.
So instead they printed the first 80 pages or so of pure text with footnotes, and at the end of the book added a section of large fold-out pages for the embossed diagrams. In addition to having to learn calculus while reading the book, looking up each diagram in an appendix must've made for some maddening reading material!
Mr. Tufte's point was that people who create data displays shouldn't let anyone screw with it. If they did it to Newton, they'll do it to anyone.
By the way, the colophon includes the printer's name in color (the only place color is used in the book), but doesn't even have Newton's name on it!
Anyway, that's a little info about the book.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
I'm surprised this theft hasn't attracted more attention in the mainstream media
At least in America this is probably due to the fact that when someone says "Newton" the first thing we think of is "Fig".
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The U.S. will prove Saddam stole it looking for bomb secrets.. Attack imminent!
Why do people view some sets of information as too valuable for one person to own (eg, the thief or the person who hired them) yet still back the very concept of Intellecual Property?
In case you somehow missed it, nothing at all has happened to the information. The robbers stole a physical object. This particular physical object happens to contain valuable information, yes, but that information is still available from many other sources. This also has nothing to do with either the information itself or the physical object containing it being "too valuable for one person to own"; the issue is that the physical object was taken from its owner without permission. This is, quite simply, a case of theft in the most basic sense of the word.
One page from the Silver Bible, the only one on display, was stolen a few years ago fom the Upsala University.
The Silver Bible is oldest document written in a Germanic language. It is 1600 years old. The stolen page was recovered one year later, intact.
Since Newton stole it from Leibniz in the first place. Turnabout is fair play.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Still, sure, you can learn all about the application of the math without knowing the theoretical underpinnings all the way back to geometric first principles, but it's much more intellectually rewarding to trace them. And it's necessary in order to say that an equation is "proved" mathematically. Theories do get non-Euclidean sometimes, but you can't really appreciate that unless you know the Euclidean things themselves work.
Here's what I came up with as a handy "exit" command:
.*//'`"
alias exit="kill `ps -p $$ -l|tail -1|sed -e 's/^\([^ ]* \)\{6\}//' -e 's/
Seems to work (although I'd imagine there is a more elegant way of getting the parent pid), and I don't need to change my habits of typing the "exit" command to close my terminal, since only my work machine is fucked. My home machine's kterm works as usual.
I was able to simplify the above (should have looked more carefully at the ps man page):
.*//'`"
alias exit="kill `ps -jhp $$|sed -e 's/
you'd all be going up up up... until another counter-acting force brought you to rest
posted anonymously to protect the reputation of those who know me. Clearly, my own reputation is beyond salvation.
EOM
Damn, and I thought the wheel and fire were considered the most important ones.
I think it's particularly telling but not at all suprising that this hasn't gotten the attention that a theft of other items such as art would get. The media and liberal arts people who would make a fuss don't understand or care about science, so they would give a lot more attention to the scribblings of a second rate artist than to a scientific work. Scientists value the information, not the paper, and know that can't be taken, and the media gives them little attention anyway unless a giant rock is heading towards Earth. It's a shame to have the artifact vanish, but I'm not at all surprised that more attention is given when a thief breaks in and steals from Madonna.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Actually the thief probably stole it for a client who is trying to obtain all three remaining copies of this book of logic.
Each copy has slightly different sets of drawings, and it is believed that when the correct drawings from each are put together that whoever reads from the book will have extreme powers of the mind, and be able to perform strong feats of logic, such as getting rid of religion.
They stole the Principia Mathematica, not the Principia Discordia. It's OK; put your gun away.
This is the same museum that keeps Babbage's Analytical Engine in the daycare. Kids are allowed to play with it, but only if they use the museum's wooden mallets and only if they share with the other kids. To be sure it isn't damaged, no one is allowed to take it into the cafeteria. They settled on that policy after the Shroud affair.
When the Shroud Of Turin was on exhibit at that museum, several museum-goers accidentally knocked their wine glasses over on it, several spilled spaghetti sauce, and there were a number of coffee mishaps. Fortunately, the museum janitorial staff are trained to deal with rare artifacts; they used the "gentle" cycle on the Maytag in the basement to avoid doing too much damage.
Of course, the Ark wasn't so lucky. It got pretty cold and kind of wet in the painting storage warehouse last winter, what with the temporary patchwork canvas and wood roof and all, so the Ark was burned in the warehouse woodstove for heat. It did do a nice job of keeping the humidity down for a couple weeks, and Ivan Stanyanko said it cured his rheumatism, so it wasn't really a waste at all.
It's a pretty cool museum. They're always looking for new exhibits.
Does it have anything at all to do with the Royal Family?
-- taking over the world, we are.
Perhaps Newton was wrong about gravity afterall and some unaccounted force levitated the thing out of a vent or window.
Table-ized A.I.
Rich Russian kid: "I couldn't finish my math report, teacher, because a thief stole my library book."
Table-ized A.I.
What about Newton's "Principia? I mean it's not as if nobody knows about it. Everbody who studies physics, and many not studying it, know whats in this book already so why the fuss about an old book?
If, i.e. Claudia Shiffer panties were stolen, well that would be a tremendous loss and I bet that media would have weeks of reporting over that (at least here in Germany), talks shows would be inviting people who would have something to say about it and radio stations would stop sending for a minute as a tribute to that loss. But Newtons Prinicpia? Gosh! Some people don't seem to have their priorities right in reporting such trivial stuff.
Considering the mdeia hype when the Big Brother series was running I'm not really suprised at all.
Those of you hopping up and down about this should calm down. This is not a big story.
This copy of the Principia was one of the first edition copies. First editions are crap. They have all the errors and misspellings, and they come out with nicer editions afterward that make you feel stupid for not waiting a little longer. Just look at all those first edition "Lord of the Rings" DVDs that are now for sale on Ebay. Newton probably filled his "Principia Director's Cut" with at least 30 pages of extra stuff for those Renaissance astronomers who were willing to wait and pay a little extra for the famous "apple scene".
Second, you have to remember that the book really isn't that good. While Newton was trying to describe concepts such as planetary motion and orbital dynamics that usually involve calculus, the only branch of mathematics well known at the time was Euclidean geometry. So the Principia is dumbed down to the level of his contemporary boneheads- and it suffers greatly for it. For example, here is a section cut and pasted from the Principia (the author has been dead since 1727 so this is probably still safe):
PROPOSITION XI. PROBLEM VI.
If a body revolves in an ellipsis; it is required to find the law of the centripetal force tending to the focus of the ellipsis.
Let S be the focus of the ellipsis. Draw SP cutting the diameter DK of the ellipsis in E, and the ordinate Qv in x; and complete the parallelogram QxPR. It is evident that EP is equal to the greater semi-axis AC: for drawing HI from the other focus H of the ellipsis parallel to EC, because CS, CH are equal, ES, EI will be also equal; so that EP is the half sum of PS, PI, that is (because of the parallels HI, PR, and the equal angles IPR, HPZ), of PS, PH, which taken together, are equal to the whole axis 2AC. Draw QT perpendicular to SP, and putting L for the principal latus rectum of the ellipsis (or for 2BC^2/AC), we shall have L QR to L Pv as QR to Pv, that is, as PE or AC to PC; and L Pv to GvP as L to Gv; and GvP to Qv^2 as PC^2 to CD^2; and by (Corol. 2, Lem. VII) the points Q and P coinciding, Qv^2 is to Qx^2 in the ratio of equality; and Qx^2 or Qv^2 is to QT^2 as EP^2 to PF^2, that is, as CA^2 to PF^2, or (by Lem. XII) as CD^2 to CB^2. And compounding all those ratios together, we shall have LQR to QT^2 as ACLPC^2CD^2, or 2CB^2PC^2CD^2 to PCGvCD^2CB^2, or as, 2PC to Gv. But the points Q and P coinciding, 2PC and Gr are equal. And therefore the quantities LQR and QT^2, proportional to these, will be also equal. Let those equals be drawn into SP2/QR, and LSP^2 will become equal to SP^2 QT^2 / QR. And therefore (by Corol. 1 and 5, Prop. VI) the centripetal force is reciprocally as LSP2, that is, reciprocally in the duplicate ratio of the distance SP. Q.E.D.
Holy crap! And you should see the pictures! Can you imagine it in Latin, too! Whoever stole this book is going to be sorry. You'd have to be a crazy person to want to steal this book, or to bid on it if it shows up on Ebay. I think we can assume that the remaining copies of this first edition Principia aren't going to walk anytime soon.
Explaining concepts for a wide audience using insufficiently advanced math is a very difficult trick to pull off. Feynman did a reasonably good job of it in QED. But seriously, would you rather read a book by Feynman or Newton? Feynman also wrote books that told you how to pick up bar chicks. Newton wrote his books in Latin and died a virgin. Before Feynman died he made history by breaking a piece of rubber on national TV. Newton's career, on the other hand, ended at the mint where he spent the rest of his life hanging counterfeiters. Both of these guys were really smart. But which one do you think did a better job at writing books for people with a limited attention span?
Third, the theories are wrong. They look good at first, and seem to explain most phenomena very well. But if you kick the tires and look at more accurate measurements, you start noticing things don't quite match up right. The perihelion of Mercury precesses, when Newton claims it shouldn't. And while F = GMm/r^2 gives good numbers for everyday work such as hurling probes at high speed into Mars, it's wrong. The equation is just wrong; it gives wrong answers! They're usually close but they're always wrong. The very first equation they teach you in high school physics is another one that Newton came up with, F=ma, and F=ma is wrong too! F starts to get bigger faster than a at high speeds! They have F=dp/dt, and that equation works with relativity, so why don't they indoctrinate kids' heads with that one? Probably because it uses Leibniz notation, and Newton hated Leibniz. And high school physics even today is under the thrall of Newton.
In other news today, Newton's law of Gravity was stolen. In its place, people found a theory by A. Einstein. Police are currently baffled by it. "We just can get our heads around it. Newton's was so much simpler to look at". In other news, Cows have been seen drifting off into space.
This is actually a bit misleading. Leibniz did not die without honor... he was a nobleman's nobleman who worked for kings and princes and the like.
He didn't get credit for the Calculus as readily, but it's not like he was Baruch Spinoza or William Blake (or David Hume for that matter). The man was a philosopher to royalty. The calculus was only one of his great philosophical achievements and that was noted in his time.
Incidentally, Leibniz's argument which Voltaire ridicules is kinda neat. God is all knowing, all powerful, and all loving. Because he is all knowing, he knows all the possible worlds he could have made. Because he's all poweful, he could make any worlds he knows. And because he's all-loving, he would only make the best of all the possible worlds for us of those that he knows (all of them) and can make (all of them).
So this is the best of all possible worlds.
The submitter forgot about Euclid's elements. That one is even more important. Not only scientificaly but also paedagologicaly. However, we don't have the prototype. *sigh*.
(IAAP:i am a physicist)
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
She collected art works too which has turned into the Hermitage Museum. Whilst the Hermitage isn't funded well enough and the security is poor, the Russian National Library has negligiable funding so security is almost non existent. The staff are poorly paid and there are not enough of them.
Most books that have been stolen from there are never seen again, which implies they have been disposed of in private collections.
See my journal, I write things there
It's one of many first editions. It's not the original which is more likely to be located in the British Library (keeper of all published works in the Empire) than anywhere else....
I remember watching C-SPAN years ago when some bill or other about federal funding for scientific research was being debated. Some typical Congresscritter was on, the worst kind of clueless politician, way in over his head. He supported the bill, which put him on the right side in my view, but one could easily see that he was trying to profile himself as being "friendly to science", although he in fact understood very little of it.
...", with a bit of rhetorical flourish on the man's name.
To illustrate his views, he introduced a quotation of Newton's by saying something like, "As the Great Scientist Isaac Newton once said,
I was depressed. One would hope that anyone could speak of Isaac Newton without any further introduction, but clearly, this Congresscreature felt compelled to tell us that he was the "the Great Scientist". Otherwise, he ran the risk that his audience wouldn't know who in the world he was talking about.
Why isn't there more interest in this story, you ask? Well, because quite a few people haven't the slightest clue who Newton is or what the Principia is all about. Not unless you mention "the Great Scientist".
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
...it was Steve Jobs. He always hated Newton.
So Newton's own copy is still in Trinity Library, and I'm sure there are plenty of other copies around. What's all the fuss about?
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
It's been superceded by Einstein's special and general theories of relativity.
There's no need to keep these books around. They should be remaindered and pulped to make CD inserts for the latest Britney album. (I've had a sneak preview, and it's awesome!!)
Why would it cause a stir? It's not the intellectual property of a major movie studio.
...is whether it's now in the hands of the CIA or SD-6.
...now some terrorist knows all about motion and gravity. Thanks a lot, Russia.
I think it's particularly telling but not at all suprising that this hasn't gotten the attention that a theft of other items such as art would get.
No big deal was made of because it's not single or unique. It's one of many. A rare first edition copy, granted, but there are a lot of those. There wasn't even any security to speak of. This is why there hasn't been much media attention.
The media and liberal arts people who would make a fuss don't understand or care about science
Yeah, yeah, what the fuck ever. Remember when an original Enigma was stolen? Obviously you don't. That attracted media attention. Why? Maybe because, once again, it wasn't up for grabs all over the place, unlike this one.
Scientists value the information, not the paper, and know that can't be taken, and the media gives them little attention anyway unless a giant rock is heading towards Earth.
Scientists are the pets of the media these days, not artists. You can't read half a page of a normal newspaper without coming across the opinion of an "expert."
RTFA next time, will ya? Nobody wants your FUD.
Ted Striker: Surely you can't be serious. Dr. Rumack: Yes I am serious...and don't call me Shirley.
While I will agree that Newton's "Principia" is an extremely important work and can be held responsible for one of the biggest changes in the ways human look at reality. However I feel that by saying any single work is the most important is absurd. Einsteins General Theory of Relativity is at least as important if not more. Yet it would not have been made possible without Newton's previous theory. So saying one peice of science is the most important simply does not have any sense in the statement due to the fact that all scientific works build upon another.
Later,
Phil
I am pretty sure there are a few "originals" - my college had one in ther Rare Books Library that you could see under glass, but obviously not take out and molest.
Not to say that makes the theft of this one any better, but I just wanted another chance to post about rare books. Those things fascinate me.
Especially them rare books with nekkid chicks in 'em.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Probably going to end up in some private library of some shady industrial magnate or russian maffia boss.
I just dropped my Apple Newton and apparently it does fall to the ground. It missed the student sitting under the tree, but I am sure this was nothing to worry about.
Isn't the Principia Mathematica basically obsolete? Who cares what happens to an old rag except for nostalgia mongers?
Woot! Einstein in da House, yall!
Wile E. Coyote.
Get the important things right.
I wonder if they will let the thief off if he returns it within two weeks.
No big deal, that text is worthless now that all of physics has been supplanted by "A New Kind of Science." I don't think Newton even warranted a comment in the End Notes.
"...Russell, who along with Whitehead authored Principia Mathematica in an effort to base logic in arithmetic..."
As can be seen in Universal Algebra, their approach is algebraic, not arithmetical. It involves the manipulation of equations, not the calculation of numerical values, in the service of determinating truth and falsehood.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
>"Principia" is generally considered the most important scientific works in history.
For my knowledge of the scientific hitory, I think that the most importat scientific work in modern history was the "Le discour de la méthode" of Descartes in 1534. All other work in modern history take the base of his Discours.
Of course, the most important scientific works in history, was the "Republica" of Platoon, and spefictly, the part in the cave..
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Scientific texts are always evolving and subject to verification, repudiation, clarification, and refinement. As such, they are living ideas that don't reside on a dusty page only.
Literature, on the other hand, is much more like magic. One can't prove that Hamlet was crazy. One can't demonstrate scientifically and early in the text that Dimsdale is the father of Hester Prynne's child. As such, the actual object that originates literature is more "interesting" to the average person since it represents the genesis of an idea or a story, while a scientific text is seen as more the capturing of laws and facts that exist without regard to Man.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Of course there is no media coverage, it's only an important scientific work. Now if Jerry Falwell's bible was stolen, you would see media coverage comparable to the recent sniper coverage. Welcome to the New Dark Ages.
The link to O2 produced a missing page. Here is BBC's blurb on the same subject.
No, that's usually, "takes it out of the hands of the public and their accountable elected representatives, and places it in the hands of a few whose sole motivation is the increase in its share price usually at the expense of its operating efficiency," most often with a concomitant increase in public risk burden (privatize the benefits, socialize the costs of business, after all). Or did you miss Enron, all those California blackouts, and that study of 24 thousand for-profit and not-for-profit hospitals?
In this case, though, the thief of Newton's books looks like they're privatizing both the benefits and the risks, especially to their ass, which will be grass if and when the authorities find them.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
The document is said to contain encrypted secrets
that could lead to control of foreign goverments.
Unfortunately, Agent Sydney Bristow learned of the mission to steal the document too late for the CIA to arrange a counter-mission.
The MPAA claims they purchased the rights to the Principia when they released "Bodies, Rest and Motion"
CowboyNeal now has an original 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica' on his mantelpiece.
I really appreciated your summary of Leibniz's theological analysis of an omnipotent and omniscient being.
A question comes though, what about impossible worlds? Does Leibniz's God, being omniscient, know about worlds that he/she/it cannot make, worlds which are impossible? If so, God is not omnipotent.
Or, maybe there is no such thing as an impossible world. If so, let's imagine one of the worlds in which he/she/it does not exist. That world--the world where God does not exist--is not one God can create. Again, God is not omnipotent.
Hence, God cannot be omniscient and omnipotent simultaneously. Either power is blind, or sight is powerless. Take your pick:
blog
stating:
"Provided by the management for your protection."
achurch writes:
"In case you somehow missed it, nothing at all has happened to the information. The robbers stole a physical object. This particular physical object happens to contain valuable information, yes, but that information is still available from many other sources. This also has nothing to do with either the information itself or the physical object containing it being "too valuable for one person to own"; the issue is that the physical object was taken from its owner without permission. This is, quite simply, a case of theft in the most basic sense of the word."
No, I didn't miss a thing.
The point is that the robbers have said, basically, "this is now mine" to the exclusion of everyone else. Similarly, Intellectual Property Laws do the same thing -- they legally give one person the exclusive right to a chunk of information to the exclusion of everyone else.
I'm not trying to say that both items were physical, I'm saying that in both instnaces, one person gained while everyone else suffered.
You argue that a physical item was taken from the owner and as such it is a theft that sets it apart from something owned by virtue of IP law. But in doing this you actually make my point for me. I'm suggesting that while the thief took a physical item from it's rightful owner, a person who claims a bit of knowledge under IP law is stealing it from the public. For you to continue to disagree you'd have to argue that the information was never the public's to begin with.
Unfortunately, IP law does not give room for subsequent invention.
Suppose you make thing A in 1990 and, say, patent it. If I come to this same idea in 1995, I cannot do anything with it even if I never heard of your work. It's gone, it's out of the realm of 'possible,' whereas it once was. In other words, it went from the public pool -- where anyone could have thought it up if they were bright enough -- to the private domain of the first person to do so. This is accomplished through IP law.
It is with this logical sequence that I consider IP law in it's current manifestation to be "theft" that is no less heinous than the stealing of Principia. The only difference is social perception and legal application, which is arbitrary and demonstrably inconsistent.
Finally, I realize it is easier to paint someone as a "troll" than mount a logical defense, but it makes you look foolish. Use it sparingly.
My
Limekiller
alias exit="kill `ps -hp $$ -o ppid`"
;)
Hi, In regards to
x + y = 24
x - y = 18
I find the easiest way to solve this is to use a matrix.
[mathies can correct me, because I forget all the details]
You will need a 2X3 matrix because there are 3 "columns".
The final column of the matrix will contain your answer when we are finished.
1 1 |24
1 -1 |18
Now you "reduce" or "normalize" [can't remeber the word for it]
so that the first part looks like
1 0
0 1
and using row operations from linear algebra you change the 24 and 18 into X and Y respectively.
I'm quite certain this isn't in Newton's book, so I'm going to post as anon, but I'm saskboy a friend of a friend whom you posted to his journal today.
Too bad you can't easily make an exact copy of a physical object, hey? (As opposed to a data file which can be copied an infinate number of times without depriving it's original owner of their copy.)
IP Nerds fucking piss me off.
Regarding
x + y = 24
x - y = 18
There is a simple reasoned way of solving this thing. If both variables have the same values in both equations and spew those results, you should be able to sum the equations and the results as follows:
(x+y)+(x-y) = 24+18
then simplify like: x+x+y-y = 42
2x=42
x=21
then, by substituting in the first of the initial equations, you'd get
18+y=24
y=3
And that's it. This is the result of applying simple math rules to get more information about your variables. Nothing magical about it, but mathematicians somehow manage to make it sound really difficult. Good luck with the ETS if you take it!
...backup everything.
Now I'm the one who is shame-faced: that's a really good point about the irrelevance of semantically meaningless arguments.
However, I'm not sure I buy your dimunition of omnipotence. Omnipotence means "capable of doing everything," which is especialy true if we're talking about the omnipotence of God, also known as divine omnipotence. The problem is that such a proposition creates logical inconsistencies. It's not a problem of syntax; it's a problem of the condition of divine omnipotence.
To say divine omnipotence means "able to do all that can be done" is neither divine nor omnipotent. Omnipotence is the means by which God works the "impossible," also known as miracles.
So, while I grant your pointing out the irrelevance of my statement (if it is in fact semanticaly void), I don't accept that God's omnipotence is something as pedestrian as "that which can possibly be done."
I mean, really, what kind of God are we talking about here?
blog
The first time I don't subtract my +1 bonus and I write a gaffe like the parent post . . .
Please do mod the parent down if you can spare the points.
:P
--mistersquid
This fake sig admits responsibilty but has the shelter of cowardice.
that God is the essence of all that is power, with destuction being a natural effect of power over the powerless.
just as there are degrees to infinity. Most statements that are called semanticly meaningless can make more sense as a state machine that changes its state each time the statement is ran. for example:
For "This statement is false"
For no initial state the statement results in false, because the statement, initially is not false.
For an initial state of false, the statement results in true.
For an initial state of true, the statement results in false.
Every time I hear that, it seems to ignore empirical proof.
If one is omniscient this implies omnipotence. If you know everything you know how to achieve anything, which is the definition of omnipotence.
Modern logicians who work in something called "free logic" (anything is fair game to quantify over) as well as people called "dialethists" (who believe in a few true contradictions such as "This sentence is a lie.") entertain the idea of impossible worlds.
However I think power still has to be defined over logical possibility even in these systems. So Leibniz's God wouldn't be in too much trouble even in these systems.
Still, it's a good question, contrary to what you yourself and these other commentators might believe. Had a recent talk about a resurrection of a philosophy called Meinongianism which is currently waaaaaaaaaaay out of style. It postulates more existence predicates, so we exist and God might exist, but things like unicorns and manticores actually subsist in this system. Impossible worlds, presumably, could subsist (or absist, which I won't even go into) as well.
Anyway, these things make your argument seem plausible, but you'd have to adopt a somewhat exotic metaphysics.
... who can't afford to buy a new copy!
As a side bar Bill Gates bought the Codex for $30M in 1994. Maybe Bill just forgot who's
library he was in.
Five minutes of online research indicates that there may be as many as 250 first-edition Principias--which, as someone else pointed out, is probably why it didn't make a very big splash in the media. Yes, it's criminal; no, it's not disastrous.
Let's hope the terrorists don't get a hold of that book. Anyone with a working knowledge of the topics discussed therein could manufacture any number of weapons with the aim of hurting or killing innocent civilians. Why, if there's anything in there about Newton's thought experiment, they might even get it into their evil heads to develop space-based weapons!
Does anyone else out there believe that the game of Life has direct implications about the (theoretical) nature of God?
In Life, the user is omniscient (you know all the rules and the state of every cell) and omnipotent (you can alter the rules and the cells at your discretion), and could be omni-agapic (as much as you feel like "loving" arrangments of cells in a binary grid). Nevertheless you cannot know the final state of an arbitrary structure, since the Life algorithm is Turing complete. You have to allow the game to play out its course and see what happens.
The analogy to God is left as an exercise for the reader.now that the very laws of physics are in the hands of evidoers, it's only a matter of time before stuff starts flying off the desk, soup unstirs itself. etc.
Liberty uber alles.
Ah Newton,
I can remember sitting in a library, looking at rocket ships, and planets and stars when I was smaller.
Now that I am simply small, what vision and dedication exists anymore in that classically romantic pursuit of truth and God that left a man deny all that was flesh?
Oh Newton, inscribe that which God has put forth in the heavens and transcribe it for all to read, who could not see and were blind for all recorded human history before thy was born. You are the Master of all, Mathematics, Physics, Optics, Fluid Dynamics, Astronomy.
Who has lived like thy has since? Thou was the first and last of your kind. When we are gone, the human race will not be forgotten, for Newton was here and stood upon our best and brightest and revealed peace and truth, in the pursuit of God, and placed our understanding in the heavens.
Rest peacefully.
Hackus
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Type "" and then "~.", repeat the last step if it doesn't work. Read man rsh if you want to know what you are doing. One reason why I prefer telnet over [rs]sh.
He saw some dirty arabs and fired. Too bad it was just some friendly kurds, BBC reporters and his fellow cowboys.
http://lenta.ru/culture/2002/11/13/books/
use babel
Troll, n.: "A comment, deliberately overstating facts or including misleading information, intended to provoke heated responses." (paraphrased from vague recollection of a /. post a few years back)
You asked why this incident should be considered any different than current IP laws. I answered, explaining that this incident has nothing to do with information of any kind, much less IP laws (which should have been obvious from reading the article). I happen to agree with you that there are problems with the way knowledge is handled in our society, but regardless, this case has nothing to do with them (nor is this story the proper place to argue about them); that's why I called your post a "troll".
Police have taken into custody a woman suspect in connection with this theft.
According to this article in Russian the thieves were caught on Tuesday. The fish is your friend.
Carmen Sandiego! But where in the world is she hmmm?
I don't have a sig, can I borrow yours?
Moriarty: Don't touch that Christmas Pudding or it will explode!
(sound effect) KABOOM!!!
Eccles: Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh.
(OK, you had to be there).
Sigs are bad for your health.
"Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no
wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred."
-- The Mahabharata.
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