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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."
Would you like to swing on a star?
Carry moonbeams home in a jar?
And be better off than you are?
Or would you rather be a mule?
A mule is an animal with long funny ears
Kicks up at anything he hears
His back is brawny but his brain is weak
He's just plain stupid with a stubborn streak
And by the way, if you hate to go to school
You may grow up to be a mule
Would you like to swing on a star?
Carry moonbeams home in a jar?
And be better off than you are?
Or would you rather be a pig?
A pig is an animal with dirt on his face
His shoes are a terrible disgrace
He has no manners when he eats his food
He's fat and lazy and extremely rude
But if you don't care a feather or a fig
You may grow up to be a pig
Would you like to swing on a star?
Carry moonbeams home in a jar?
And be better off than you are?
Or would you rather be a fish?
A fish won't do anything, but swim in a brook
He can't write his name or read a book
To fool the people is his only thought
And though he's slippery, he still gets caught
But then if that sort of life is what you wish
You may grow up to be a fish
A new kind of jumped-up slippery fish
And all the monkeys aren't in the zoo
Every day you meet quite a few
So you see it's all up to you
You can be better than you are
You could be swingin' on a star
Man, I loved that movie.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
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make an icon on your menu bar for quick access
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.
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
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."So this is the best of all possible worlds."
Candide, anyone?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).
Certainly Leibniz should have known that you can prove anything when you start dividing by zero or multiplying by infinity.
I'd bet that the omnipotent God created a stone so large that even he couldn't lift it and then got squashed trying. That's why there is no sign of him around today.