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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."
Other source of info on this story:
n ne ws&StoryID=1715112
http://reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=huma
Google news has some more links.
I'm looking for a HEPA media filter for my TV. I'm alergic to reality shows.
Here is the cached article
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
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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.
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I'd recommend the first one (the blue one). The attention to detail wrt. the translation is amazing.
He didn't listen to Leibnitz beause he was an egostical maniac, as well as a genuis. Newton independantly invented much of calculus at the same time as Liebnitz, but he did his darnedest to get all the credit. Calculus was a shiny new thing, so it made sense to explain it in his book.
Anarchists never rule
Try Reuters
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More info on the Newton / Leibniz battle:
Newton vs Leibniz
Anarchists never rule
There's an obvious reason why he did this: none of his readers could be expected to know calculus. It had, after all, just been invented, or was still in the process of being invented. If he wanted people to understand the concepts, he either had to teach them the math or figure out a way of presenting it convincingly without the reader needing to know calculus. Neither one is an easy prospect. I haven't read Principia myself, but I remember a physics prof mentioning that in some cases he deliberately avoided using calculus because he thought that his demonstrations would be more likely to convince people if they didn't use all that new fangled math, and it wound up being vastly more complicated as a result.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Which translation did you read? There is one that is accompanied by a very good physics commentary that discusses the theorems and proof as well as contrasting the methods with modern physics. Unfortuantely I lost mine and can't for the life of me remember who the translator was. None of the versions I've seen at Barnes and Nobel or Borders are the one I had. Anyway, Leibniz rules for many reasons, not the least of which is his version of the calculus. The Monadology is a pretty interesting read as well. Even if I don't buy it.
They did. I realize this was a joke, but, coincidentally, I had been looking for it online just last week, and the linked site contains a full scanned-in copy of what might very well be the first edition.
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You can read it here.
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.
And for those of you unfamiliar with Voltaire: Dr. Pangloss is a character from his work Candide, a comical story about a hapless idiot named Candide. It's quite hilarious, and a recommended read.
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 reason this story hasn't attracted more media attention is that the book wasn't an original. It was a rare first edition, of which there are still 200 left, with 70 in the U.S. alone. See here.
If a rare "first print" of the Mona Lisa were stolen, yet there were still more than 250 left in the world (not to mention the original), the media would barely even mention it.
The link to O2 produced a missing page. Here is BBC's blurb on the same subject.
This is a simple and common mistake people make talking about omnipotence. No one claims that God can do what is logically impossible. "Omnipotence" does not mean "able to do what cannot be done", it means "able to do all things".
Semantically void statements (such as "Why can't God do what cannot be done?") do not constitute valid arguments against omnipotence. Just because you can express a logically ridiculous statement in English doesn't mean that anyone needs to pay attention to it. "A rock so heavy that God can't lift it" (to use the canonical example) has no more semantic meaning than "colorless green ideas". God's inability to create either is no argument against Him.
Similarly, omniscient does not mean "knows what cannot be known". It means "knows all (possible) things". Something truly unknowable would not violate God's omniscience, since it would not be something which could be known.
So, while there are perfectly reasonable arguments against God's omnipotence or omniscience, this type of approach is just too simplistic. And too linked to imperfect human language (which allows the formulation of meaningless statements).