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The Unknown Newton
An anonymous reader writes "The unknown Newton -- The genius who gave us three laws of motion wrote even more about the Apocalypse and the Whore of Babylon. Eventually, all of his work -- about 10 million words -- will be on the Web.
Quote from the article:
'Yet if we go by sheer word count, physics was only one of Newton's intellectual priorities. He devoted more time to what we would now regard as non-scientific topics such as theology and alchemy, writing treatise after treatise on early church history and biblical prophecy.' An interesting note on Pythagoras and religion too. Should we consider ourselves 'Natural Philosphers' instead of Scientists?" Neal Stephenson fans may find this article a nice adjunct to Quicksilver.
How does it "cheapen" a man to have more than one interest? It does not lessen his scientific achievements that he did not singly devote his life to them.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
This had interesting implications to the way scientific papers were written. Rather than the modern form (just about 300 old) going like "Theorem-proof-example etc.", it was all heavily interwened with theology, intents of the creator, fabric of the world, etc., whatever the domain of the research in the natural sciences was!
VKh
Astrology and alchemy as part of Christian theology.
In Newton's day, the Neoplatonists of the Renaisance (typified by Pico della Mirandola, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, John Dee, Jacob Boehme, etc.) were losing favor and in many ways Newton was a throwback to the likes of Francis Bacon, who was not only an empiricist but also a very well known achemist, or John Dee who was at once an astrologer, alchemist, and mathematician (also reputed to have used his occult powers to save England from the Spanish Armada).
Indeed, I would have expected Newton's stand on Astrology and Alchemy to have made him many enemies in the Church at that time.
This is way off topic for Slashdot (though right on-topic for this story), but as these topics interest me greatly, I would like to see what Newton wrote on astrology, alchemy, etc.
Also as a note-- people develop strange reputations after their deaths that might surprise them. For example Michel de Notradame (Nostradamus) was best known in his day as a physician and alchemist.
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Some people are so desperate for heroes, scientific or otherwise, that they want to gloss over the rough spots. Given Newton's times, alchemy and astrology were not that far out of the mainstream and indeed had their part in the development of the sciences as the world moved out of the Medieval Period.
Research into a field that didn't prove fruitful, indeed into what we consider a sham today, doesn't in any way dim Newton's other achievements. It's a mistake to judge by our knowledge today, that was built on Newton's original work.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Well it was more that alchemy was still considered a real science back then.
I guarantee there are certain scientific fields that will seem absolutely retarded in another 200, 500 or 1000 years but are taken very seriously today.
That's why you should never put scientists up on a pedestal like they are so unquestionable or let them tell you that their crappy theories are truth just becuase "you can't understand it".
If you said "transmuting lead into gold? That sounds kind of retarded!" The alchemist would say "oh you silly little man you don't have the same mathematical talents I do, now just go away!"
I now laugh at all high and mighty alchemists who belittled doubters.
Hopefully in a 400 years when some of the silly bull that some "scientists" spew out is proven nonesense someone will laugh at them on my behalf.
Oh please. Netwon lived in a time before the scientific method as we know it and before what eventually became the scientific community distanced itself and became aware of pseudo-scientific pursuits like astrology, prophecy, etc.
Its not the 17/18th century anymore and your argument is a pretty weak strawman. Essentially you are saying "Newton's physics were valid (ignoring Einstein) thus his other views are just as valid and deserve the same audience and respect."
Uh no.
All the world's society's gave superstion more than the benefit of the doubt for millenia. It didn't pan out. Move on, don't complain that the book of Revelation or Alchemy or Phrenology deserves a 2nd chance. They have gotten more than their fair share of attention. Its not my fault or anyone else's these theories didn't pan out.
I suggest at least looking at the wikipedia's entries of protoscience and psuedoscience if you are being sincere and not just making a jab at scientific cosmology and the slashdotters who understand it is the most likely explanation of why things are.
I also take slight offense at how you're saying its "hip" to be against these dead philosophies, when in reality its much more hip to be against those eggheads in their ivory towers who challenge traditional beliefs. Its very hip for the religious to cry "Persecution!" when a science teacher mentions evolution or when a social studies teacher mentions different religions other than xtianity. I see it in the paper almost weekly. Yet you can join any religion you want, make your kids believe what you like, and religious organizations enjoy tax-free status, gambling rights, and a power-structure that protects them from criminal investigations (at least for a while).
Ironically, the western world has more religious freedom than ever, thanks to the secularists and western enlightenment.
Also, a decent primer on how what eventually became science is Shapin's The Scientific Revolution.
I don't think alchemy was even as silly as you're making it sound. To study alchemy was to try to understand why matter is what it is and does what it does, what makes one substance different from another, and how one substance can change into another. We've refined our methods and our understanding, and we call it "chemistry" now, but it's pretty much the same undertaking.
People seems to want to think that eveyone from more than 50 years ago was a silly, primitive moron, and that we, now, are finally the "smart" ones who have achieved a "real knowledge" that was utterly inaccessable "back then". However, that's what they thought 50 years ago, too- and fifty years before that, and 50 years before that...
I'm not sure why you would hold such ideas. I'm not sure even where to begin, because you seem so utterly off-base that I can't formulate how a person would come to say such a thing. Maybe if you explained what you mean by "there arguably wasn't even Physics or Science!" Clearly there was... so I don't know what to say.
As for this: He discovered the laws of motion... Well, he formulated laws of motion that allowed for him to build a physical model of the world we see. I'm not sure "discovered" is the right word. See, many physicists have started with postulates of some kind that allow them to build an accurate model of the universe, but "discovery" implies a sort of independant existence that's very hard to talk about. Often, these amount to "good" or "useful" ways of thinking about things, but "true", independant of human study, is tricky to define, let alone establish. Newton, himself, is very careful about any assertion that the laws of motion, or the model he creates, are "real".
I'm confused and a little annoyed when people talk about the "Scientific Method". I won't accuse you particularly, but most people who use that term have a frightfully bad understanding of the history of science. They think the "Scientific Method", which can be boiled down to observation-hypothesis-experiment-analysis-conclus ion, was something invented a few hundred years ago, and before that, well... people just made stuff up.
In truth, most of what we call "science" traces back to Aristotle, and even then, it may only be because that's as far back as our records go. We don't have records of Aristotle going through the "Scientific Method", but it can hardly be argued that he didn't go through the same process. What part of it do you think he skipped? Examples that he sites clearly indicate both observation and experimentation. In fact, the "Scientific Method" is, at best, a formal characterization of how the human thought process naturally works.