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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.
Fig, Strawberry, Raspberry and Apple... am I missing one?
Every person has their own thoughts on various topics. I wonder if it would "cheapen" our view of Newton by releasing these documents, or would we just discount them due to their age?
Colossians 2:8
Pantheon published a bio of Newton last year by James Gleick (Chaos, Genius). It's concise and consistently interesting.
There's also some interesting speculation as to whether or not he was gay -- here, there's less evidence one way or the other, but his nervous breakdown may have been caused by the ending of his relationship with a much younger man, Fatio de Duiller (?).
Find free books.
I already voted for The Apocalypse in this poll... Once I read some Newton maybe he can tell me for sure if the Apocalypse comes; maybe I can even decipher a HL2 release date.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Should we consider ourselves 'Natural Philosophers' instead of Scientists.
..but I certainly don't compare to Newton.
Number of physics laws I've come up with: 0
Number of treatises on church history and alchemy: 0
I don't know about the rest of slashdot
PS> On the other hand I do have some cool 0 days to my name.
I no longer drink alcohol, which might be unnatural.
I'm pretty sure this disqualifies me from being a philosopher, let alone a natural philosopher.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Shall we just change the term to "Person who had a brain" instead? I can become a genius and write the next major OS which works well and does everything perfectly for everyone, but my opinion on jellyfish means jack.
You can excel at one point but it doesn't mean you know everything.
I like muppets.
What we think of a person should be based on the sum and whole of his/her works. I'm fascinated by both science and theology, and I hope if I ever write something influential in one category, my works in the other aren't completely ignored or discarded.
... sharing his "non-scientific" ideas? I've noticed while meta-moderating here that people put some very thoughtful posts, containing non-mainstream but on topic views about things like evolution, the big bang, etc... they get modded flamebait. I personally believe evolution, but it's also not such a religious belief with me that I have to moderate down other people who don't believe in it.
I wonder if this is going to lower peoples opinions of Newton here on slashdot?
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
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
It will use the latest XML (Extensible Markup Language) technology -- essentially "a more robust version of HTML," the familiar code that most Internet sites currently use, says Robert Iliffe of Imperial College, an editorial director of the project.
...
At least the article wasn't titled "Discovering the unknown Newton with XML"
"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." _ He probably had to do this kind of stuff to appease the church. Scientists in this era lived in fear of the mighty clergy. Just look at what happened to Galileo!
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
P.S. We are now witnessing a similar split in the computer programming. The field has widened tremendously, and nowadays people transcending the various areas of programming are becoming more and more rare...
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
and today science is still a major source of philosophical debate, both directly e.g. consequences of quantum mechanics, cosmology... and indirectly e.g. cloning.
;-)
the very meaning of Ph.D. is quite a big hint too.
but I still consider myself a scientist because I think an important thing is that no matter how good your logic is and how nice your explanations are, it doesn't mean a thing if it's inconsistent with ***observations***.
mathematics is the subject for people who have great logic but don't concern themselves with it actually having any relevence to our own universe.
modern "pure philosophers" are people who don't care about their logic being relevent to this universe or any other!
Come on, I am still waiting for a funny 5 post.
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
for that matter, what 17th century English scientist wasn't? All the universities were founded as theological as well as natural learning centers.
Looks like he inspired Mr Stephenson in more ways than one...
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
1) Motion must not harm a human or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm. ...
2) Motion must obey all orders given by a human, except where such orders conflict with the First Law.
3) Motion must protect its own existance, except where it would conflict with the first or second laws.
It's possible I'm thinking of robots here. It's been a while since I took Physics.
--AC
If Newton wasn't the smartest person who ever lived he was close. Some of his ideas where important some weren't. The ones that were were ones that were scientifically testable or mathematically provable. In fields like theology you can get completely lost in ass-wankery that has nothing to do with anything. So the great Newton persued many interests. His science and math changed the world. His theology and alchemy were about as important as any other works of that nature. I think it goes to show that certain approaches to understanding the world are better than others. So we might not have Newton's genius but we have better direction than him, hopefully.
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"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"
Whether physics was only one of Newton's intellectual priorities or not has nothing whatsoever to do with 'word count'. Nor would such a count have anything to do with how much time he spent on it.
Did no-one proof read this?
Blaise Pascal is often credited as one of many historical figures responsible, in one way or another, for the development of modern computing. His mathematical achievements, similar to those of Newton, were only part of his preoccupation in life. His famous "Pensees" was a powerful treatise on Christian apologetics (i.e. defense of his faith), and as a philosopher he left a rich legacy to this day.
Like most great minds, Newton particulary did not do so well interacting with other people.
Some interesting Newton personality traits and tidbits can be found here.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
Alchemy is often unfairly maligned as it essentially *became* chemistry. They were working from a set of assumptions, such as the mutability of the atom through chemical means, that we *now* know to be false, but they had no way of knowing back then.
By the standards of 300 years from now, I'm sure our science will seem downright primitive and "unscientific" in comparison.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
In the broadest sense, Science or scientia is simply knowledge. In classical terms, the four main branches of Science were Mathematics, Philosphy, Rhetoric, and the so-called Practical Sciences.
It is only in recent centuries that we have divorced the more esoteric disciplines from Science and reduced it to the Practical, that is to say, the Empirical Sciences. When we talk about Science today, we are really talking about only the Empirical disciplines.
Science in the truest sense embraces all knowledge and not just the practical, and that was reflected in the way they viewed it.
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.'
Also little known to most Newton teamed up with John Nabisco to create many tasty cookie inventions. He was just all over the place!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
If Newton lived and philosophised under todays intellectual property reigeme we may not have calculus, especially since he has been credited as one of the founding fathers of this branch of maths. Would it be considered a patentable algorithm or process under todays US enforced laws? What would the world be like without free access to calculs?
Does it go on forever?
The fact that Newton worked with dozens of subjects outside of math and science is not surprising, since he was an INTP. Quite simply put. Once an INTP personality type masters a subject, it very likely they will move on to something else out of boredom.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
I've just finished Quicksilver - I thought I'd better wade through it so I could start on The Confusion.
I reckon it is best read as a mildly-accurate potted history of modern Science and Economics, rather than a novel. A lot of these historical anecdotes are interesting in and of themselves (e.g. Newton's wider interests), but the attempt to add action and intrigue really just clashes with the long segments of (interpreted) history lessons.
Stephenson would have been better off writing a collection of short stories based around the more interesting and amusing historical anecdotes. That is all I came away with after reading Quicksilver: a bunch of amusing bits of dinner-table trivia about alchemy, early science ('Natural Philosophy'), and economics (e.g. the Bourse, the Dutch East-India Company...).
gadgetophile.com
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".
Any scientist that tells you something is "true" has a mountain of evidence to back him or her up.
Understand the theories, _then_ criticize. Most of these kinds of objection I've heard have come from people who either took the dumbed-down high school version as gospel, or who just plain don't understand the field being discussed.
Science doesn't know everything. Any good scientist knows the limits of scientific knowledge in their field. All or nearly all models of reality that science has constructed have areas where they don't apply well, as most of these are simpler approximations to very complex systems. But to use this to say that scientists are talking vapour about the areas where they _do_ apply well is extremely foolish.
The progress of science over the past couple of centuries has not generally been to overturn old theories and models, but to extend scientific knowledge to cover cases where the old models didn't apply. When a new model is proposed, it almost always turns out that it reduces to the old model in domains that the old model was designed to address. This is why Newton's laws of motion still hold, and why you don't need special relativity to find kinetic energy of slow-moving objects, and why general relativity still gives you Kepler orbits and Newton's laws of gravitation in weak gravitational fields, and why you don't need to solve quantum electrodynamics equations to find out how strong an electromagnet is.
In this light, I find it amusing that you use Newton's works as a supporting example for ignoring scientists' statements when we still use his laws of motion and gravitation for engineering today.
Actually, it was a different Church and a different kind of philosophy. Aquinas revolutionized the world -- at least the understanding of religion in the West -- with his systematic system of Theology. This kind of systematic exploration made it's way into Astronomy and thus into Physics with Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. (Kepler, incidentally, was a better astronomer than Galileo; Galileo was certain that the obrits of planets MUST be circular because the circle is the perfect shape. Kepler realized (and told Galileo, who still didn't believe him) that the spheres must be elliptical.) Galileo, it turns out, got in trouble with the Church for a couple of reasons. He took a worldview that said that mathematics is reality. The Church contended that mathematics is only a model of reality. This was a time when scientists were still deciding whether observations made by instruments were of the same validity as obesevations made by the senses directly. (Today, imagine if we placed what we see on the news as being of the same credibility as what we see ourselves.) He was taken to trial and then retracted the definitive reality of the Copernican system, saying that it, at best, saved the accidents. This meant that it was a good model, but no one knew the reality. In fact, the stellar parallax, which was the final proof Galileo needed, was not detected until the mid 19th century. Then he only had a (mistaken) proof about the sun causing the tides. Newton, on the other hand, was not a Catholic -- he protested the King giving a chair at University to a Benedictine, which eventually led to a Revolution that removed King James II from his throne because he was a Catholic. In fact, Newton was not an orthodox Christian, believing a variant of the Arian heresy. He wrote quite a bit about the Roman Pontif being the Whore of Babylon and tried to calculate the date of the Second Coming. What we must remember is that philosophy was not so big back then that one man could no master large parts of it. Now, with so many different fields, scientists must diversify and can not be experts in all of philosophy or science. But he was certainly not obligated by any ecclesiastical body to do this or that in order to do his work.
Some experts now believe that Newton along with Einstein both 'suffered' from Aspergers Syndrome (a form of autism). I'm a little sceptical, although these people may have shown signs of Aspergers many psychiatrists will tell you that diagnosis is difficult enough with a living person; never mind someone whose been dead for tens or hundreds of years.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Yeah, for many here on slashdot the closest they will get to philosophy will be watching a Star Trek episode. But many others have broader interests.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
William Blake held Isaac Newton up as an example of stale, dry, Atheistic reason. The famous drawing I have linked to here is that of his conception of Newton, sitting in a dry desert, playing with a compass.
What would have been if Blake would have read some of Newton's writings on theology, I wonder?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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.
But yeah, Les Dossier Secrets was supposed to be planted evidence, which is still contested. In which case, the whole theory collapses :-) Maybe Newton just like to write stuff... but hey, whats wrong in a little bit of conspiracy theory :-)
What's under yellowstone?
There's a bit of socio-scientific revisionism in the concept of the 'unknown' side of those like Newton. It's bizarre to see this 'unknown' meme pop up again and again, particularly because this side of Newton was most famously pointed out in the bestselling Holy Blood, Holy Grail" twenty years ago.
There's as much resistance to similar evidence about Boyd and Da Vinci, most of it due to ignorance about the 16th century mindset.
Hopefully the Newton Project will do something towards embedding a bit more realism into our historical perspective.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
J. Gregory Keyes' cycle "The Age of Unreason" pictures a world where science is systematized alchemy and it works. Newton is the master of the art and takes a colonial boy named Ben Franklin as an apprentice.
Some "scientific" inventions are the fervefactum, the ethergraph, shoes that float on water and the kraftpistole.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
If i remember corectly Newton's first book Principia was published by a pornogrphy publisher, who could print it at a lower cost with money from Edmund Halley. All of this because the Royal Society had spent all the money in that year, for a nice fish ecyclopedia.
So \.-ers if you consume pornography you help the human kind to evolve.
Porn is good!
i had the same question myself and i found the answer on wikipedia
And here I thought this was a new thing from Apple!
Sig is on vacation
Should we consider ourselves 'Natural Philosphers' instead of Scientists?
Nup we're definitely scientists. Scientists stand slightly more chance of being employed for more than a burger flipper.
"Would you like fries with that? Let us examine exactly what a fry is, taking into account its physical and incorporeal qualities".
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Eat Up Martha
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
>I'm looking forward to the next article about
...
.The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, fo
> somebody trying to "prove" biblical "facts".
I'm looking forward to your next post where you try to to "disprove" Darwin's genocidal, white-supremacist racism (what? how could you say that about Darwin eventhorizon5??). If you somehow think Newton's theological stuff is crazy, you should start reading some of Darwin's writings. Funny how Darwin's beliefs are the exact opposite of mine, and how his beliefs reflect almost perfectly with Carl Marx, Adolf Hitler, etc.
Here's some examples:
(encouraging the extinction of Blacks to advance the white "master race")
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla." - Descent of Man, Chapter Six: On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man, On the Birthplace and Antiquity of Man
Describes that the human race is divided into sub-species, which have inferior and even mentally-incapable races:
"In a series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point when the term "man" ought to be used. But this is a matter of very little importance. So again, it is almost a matter of indifference whether the so-called races of man are thus designated, or are ranked as species or sub-species; but the latter term appears the more appropriate."
"The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatization and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual faculties." - Descent, Chapter Seven: On the Races of Man, pp.343
-States that it would be very good if wealthy nations replaces the less privileged races in his above quoted power struggle
"But the inheritance of property by itself is very far from an evil; for without the accumulation of capital the arts could not progress; and it is chiefly through their power that the civilized races have extended, and are now everywhere extending their range, so as to take the place of the lower races."
states that "lower class" races should not normally be cared for (but yes if they absolutely must); that they should not multiply and should become extinct
"I have hitherto only considered the advancement of man from a semi-human condition to that of the modern savage. But some remarks on the action of natural selection on civilized nations may be worth adding . . . With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. . .
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
In the anime series The Vision of Escaflowne it is very strongly implied that the leader of the enemy forces, Emperor Dornkirk, is really Sir Isaac Newton, transported to the planet Gaea from his deathbed. In the series, Dornkirk/Newton is driven by a compulsion to understand and ultimately control fate, thinking it to be a natural force like gravity.
The series even claims that Newton was driven by this obsession with fate later in his life, but I've never seen anything to back this up, so I could never tell if this extraordinarily fanciful plot device was in any way based in fact, or if it was entirely created by the show's writers.
Keep on reading. I think you will find that in The Confusion the action and intrigue take a first plane, and the story actually starts to move in a direction. I didn't like Quicksilver too much, for the same reasons you mention, but I'm glad I read it because The Confusion was very fun to read. I can't wait for The System of the World.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Quicksilver didn't cover Newton's broader--today we'd call them non-scientific--interests as deeply as The System of the World most likely will. Half-cocked Jack versus Newton The Exchequer ought to be good!
sig semper tyrannis!
Where are the mod points? This post is informative, interesting and has valid references. Oh wait, this is slashdot, home of "impartial" moderators, my bad.
I read some time ago a book by a physician who diagnoses many illnesses of famous persons now long dead. In this book, he reflects on Newton's scientific inquiry, which encouraged him to use all senses to determine results of his practice of alchemy. The doctor suggests that Newton may have started poisoning himself with both lead and mercury, as well as other poisons, whenever he began dabbling in alchemy and, over the years, may have seriously impaired himself though that routine poisoning by tasting, touching and sniffing as well as observing the results of his experiments with his eyes.
I wondered upon reading that what Newton might have come up with had he not done that.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Does any of this gossip diminish his achievements?
In all fairness, scientific method takes it on faith that existence is rational. You can't prove existence is rational, so at some point sooner or later you half just half to assume it on faith. I personally think it's a great thing to have faith in, but lets make no bones about it - faith is faith. And if you happen to believe that existence is limitless, and rational, then that is a fiath in the nature of the existence of an infinite God. Maybe it's not the God that everyone envisions, but lets make no bones about that either. Limitless existence implies God and God implies limitless existence.
Of course, many people make the mistake of assuming that just because existence is rational that it also must be pre-determined. That Logic works pretty well, but does not work with a limitless universe for the same reasons that infinity minus infinity does not necissairly equal zero.
Add Faith in a loving God (not benevolent thank you) on top of that with a bunch of convuloted, misrepresented doctrine and mixed in with some irrational supernatural supplements and historical traditional baggage, and wala - you have what most people call Christianity and the Holy Trinity. God the Father being the rational nature per se, God the Holy Spirit being the non-dterministic free will nature per se, and God the Son being the loving nature per se.
Happens almost every time lol. Almost every thing I've posted has only gotten a score of 1. One time I posted good information, and got modded flamebait, so I complained in another post and reposted the material, and got modded up luckily.
I've recently been adding to another list about the flaws in the theory of evolution (which includes facts and incidents that disproved areas of it).
If you want more information on this stuff on Darwin, go to a friend of mine's site:
http://www.thedarwinpapers.com
(my paper which I'll publish on the internet soon, is a comprehensive summary of Darwin's racist material, while the Darwin Papers goes much more in-depth).
Eventhorizon5
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
A phiolospher is literally one who 'loves wisdom', a 'natural philosopher' is therefore one who craves an understanding of nature and all the stuff whats in it.
So, there's nothing new about calling scientists 'natural philosophers'. It's as much a step forward as calling a car a 'horseless carriage' - we're already there.
We care about Newton's "Thermodynamics" because so many of us have tested his science, and agree with it. It's a consensus based on shared experience. That's why science is so popular as a belief system: it requires very little faith to accept facts. Some would say that it requires faith only in "falsifiability", and "consistency". Falsifiablility is a long word for the rigorous principle that any statement worth making is one that could be false, if tested - and the ones that are worth more are the ones that have never tested false, despite much testing. Consistency is the principle that statements that any statement worth making is always true, everywhere - sometimes known as "universality". Newton's science not only used these principles to become popular, but also strengthened them with their effective application.
Everything else people say, including Newton, that is neither falsifiable nor consistent, belongs not to "physics", the science of physical phenomena, but to "metaphysics". It can be fun, or illuminating, or even persuasive, but it's not physics, it's not as reliable, and it's worth saying only if those values aren't important.
Newton is a legend for his contributions to science. His other contributions might also be worthwhile to discuss. Science has changed a great deal since Newton's time, as has metaphysics. Perhaps some of his other investigations were disregarded, as science itself was not yet sophisticated enough to incorporate them. The basic techniques of science can be applied, and perhaps we can derive yet more benefit from the man's work. But it's important to remember that we're not engaged in "scientistism". We like Newton because of the value of his work. If the rest of it, like his hairstyle, is irrelevant today, that doesn't detract from his other contributions. However, as the work of one man who gave so much, it's probably worth testing at least some of his work that hasn't yet made it to the scientific canon.
--
make install -not war
When you are a pioneer in science and discovery you need to go on roads that sound crazy and that maybe will get you nowhere. What was crazier to think at that time:
That it was possible to change lead into gold?
Or that in 300 years from then a bunch of strange libertarians will be discussing about the nature and validity of is work by using emitting light boxes connected by cables going thousands of kilometers around the globe and some time passing information through thin air?
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
And yet scholars are still struggling to comprehend how such a rational thinker -- the man who gave us three laws of motion, the law of universal gravitation and so much more -- could have simultaneously immersed himself so deeply in arcane matters. I'll bet theories like gravity were considered arcane at the time as well.
In addition to the problems with the Priory of Sion, he also gets most of the stuff about Opus Dei wrong (they also exist, you can look them up online), and the stuff about the Council of Nicea voting on Jesus divinity (there was a similar vote, but Da Vinci's book claimed it was "close" - it was actually 300 to 2 ). He also claims there were 5 million women burnt as witches, which is an impossibly high figure - even adding every single death (not just burnings) of both genders (and witchcraft was not, as now, a thing necessarily female), 5 million is still absurdly high. The interpretation of Da Vinci's work is also suspect - see the first link I posted for pictures of the Last Supper and commentry. I also was curious, and looked up the Madonna of the Rocks, but I couldn't see anything like what was described in the book.
The Da Vinci Code was an interesting read, but nobody who knows anything about the subject matter actually takes its claims seriously; even Holy Blood, Holy Grail which was intended(unlike TDVC) to be a non-fiction is taken with large amounts of scepticism.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Once I have posted the above, I went to the wikipedia and see what I have found there:
:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.Sc.
So it looks that both of us are correct
VKh
I posted my writings on the subject, and also much more.
View them here
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
The whore of Babylon is a product of a very bad mushroom trip St John once had. She represents whatever the preacher in question hates. For instance, Jack Chick thinks she's the Vatican, and IIRC The Reverend Ian Paisley agrees...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
No-one has that much free time that they would voluntarily waste a fairly large chunk of it finishing a book they hated that much.
Even if you were a professional book reviewer you could skip through a lot of it.
I enjoyed the book, but if I had thought the first few hundred pages "dreadful" I certainly wouldn't have bothered finishing it.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yes, as I had already acknowledged that the Priory of Sion could very well be a hoax. But it still doesn't change the fact that firstly, there are potential inconsistencies in the last supper. Secondly, according to Gospel of Philip - And the companion of [the Savior is] Mary Magdalene. The [Savior] loved her more than all his disciples, and frequently kissed her on the mouth. The rest of [the disciples] [got close to her to ask]. They told him: "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Savior responded and said: "Why do I not love you as I love her?" (Gospel of Philip 63-64). Well, kissing on the mouth would probably be considered rather human, don't you think? You won't do that to someone who is just a follower I suppose. Also according to the dead sea scrolls, Jesus was still considered human. So this whole Son of God thing may very well be made up by church. In fact thats something that both Jews and Muslims agree upon, that Jesus was only human (though muslims do consider him a prophet). As far as buring of 5 million women and all is considered, that may very well be bull shit.... I don't have any way of verifying that.
What's under yellowstone?
Were there lots of Gospels and Pseudo-Gospels written in the Early Church? You bet. Did they all have an agenda? Again, you bet. Are they all reliable? Not by a long shot. There were all sorts of people making up gospels, ideas, and other whack things in the Early Church.
I'll admit that I haven't read the Da Vinci Code. I found out about it months after it was released, when I kept running across people that were espousing crazy ideas about the Early Church and those Medieval societies. Eventually, I learned where it was from, but still haven't read it. One thing I have noticed, though, is that every person I've seen who's been espousing the conspiratorial nonsense has also not read much, if any, primary source material on Christian history.
That's where this book comes in handy. It was written in the mid-second century in opposition to the movements that spawned most of those extra gospels. The TOC is here.
Other questions are such that, why are the societies that secretly kept the truth all Medieval? The Knights Templar goes back to the twelfth century. The PoS is a twentieth century group trying to claim its way back to the first century (and they aren't the first frauds to try that). This is a strong problem, because Christianity had already suffered two great divisions. In 481, many bishops and their churches seperated from the rest. These churches, the Non-Chalcedonian Churches, stretch from the Middle East to India, and they continue to exist to this day. In the ninth century, St. Photius and the Pope Nicholas II had an outing, which though repaired was made permanent in events in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and they hardly would have trusted Germanic societies like the KT in that era.
Prior to the First Schism, Christianity not only was not centralized, but could not be. The Pope had no universal jurisdiction. Simply put, it is impossible for a large conspiracy to take place to hide the truth so that secret societies had to take place. A non-centralized Christianity's response to these "gospels" was unified from India to Rome; it rejected them, largely because they were outside the normative teachings and practices (such as making Jesus a schoolyard bully) of the Church.
Proponents of conspiracy theories, such as I have found people getting from the Da Vinci Code must be able to explain how such a thing took place given the nature of early Christendom. And it must do so with sources of the era, sources on both sides of the issue. I can say this, because while I have not read the Da Vinci Code, I have read many Gnostic works, works from the Early Church, several Jewish Works from the centuries BC, pagan works from the era, etc. I haven't read them all, but I've read a good number. Likewise, I know several people, both those who are Christian and those who are not, who have. The single denominator I've seen in all of us is that we all laugh at the conspiracy theory nonsense.
I'm not meaning to be offensive, but the Da Vinci Code has about as much credibility as the National Enquirer. No, I haven't read the book, but I have come across many of its ideas repeated. It may be a good story, fiction-wise, but what I've heard repeated is nonsense factually. Will I read it? Maybe, but there are many more important things for me to read, such as books on computers and more early works, Christian, Gnostic, and pagan.
He took a worldview that said that mathematics is reality. The Church contended that mathematics is only a model of reality.
There are two main world views that my reading has uncovered....those who think that consciousness is a product of the material world. And those who think that the material world is a product of consciousness.
The astrology, alchemy, geometry, references are much older than Newton....they predated him by two thousand years at least. They are meant to be interpreted literally to non-initiates. For those with "eyes to see," these "pseudo-sciences" are allegorical treatments of the nature of the "inner-life." The study of the inner-life was not afforded to the masses....but only to those who were able to make proper use of the information and training....like Perl.
I want to be alone with the sandwich
I'm not saying Jesus wasn't human; Christian theology (or at least protestant theology, I don't know much about Catholic theology) says that Jesus was fully man and fully God. He wasn't God in some sort of pantomine human-suit. He had a full experience of the human condition.
I don't doubt that Jesus was physically capable of marrying, sexual intercourse, and fathering a child, just as he was perfectly capable of suffering pain and dying. But the Bible gives no indication that that was the case (the Gospel of Phillip not being a part of the Bible). It may be that Jesus loved Mary Magdalene, and that he kissed her on the mouth without necessarily being married to her, or sleeping with her. Personally, I doubt it; it seems like an attempt to tack a love interest on to make the story more exciting.
You can be fairly certain that the claim to Jesus' divinity was not manufactured by the Church, regardless of whether you actually believe it. Documents written by non-Christians have been found describing the early Church, and the fact that they worship Jesus as God; documents that date back before the Church had any political power.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Think back to Omni magazine.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Kepler wasn't a better astronomer in the sense that he understood that planets orbits had to be elliptical. Kepler started out believing the orbits to be circular, but had available huge amount of astronomical measurements from Tycho Brahe and could calculate accurately the path taken by several of the planets. That Galileo was sceptical to Kepler's results is natural since Kepler only found a very small deviation from a circular path and Galileo could not know for sure that Brahe had made good observations and that Kepler had done all his math correctly. In a way, Kepler's big work was an early victory for experimental science and Kepler's laws were one of the results that made it possible for Newton to formulate an universal law of gravity.
We know today that Galileo believed in the Copernican system, but quite wisely saw no need to die defending it. The main proof for Galileo was that with his own build telescope he could see the moons of Jupiter, which meant that the view that the earth was the center of the universe which everything rotated around was clearly false. Since it was easier to fit the planets motion as going around the sun than the earth, this was then clearly the best scientific and metaphysical hypothesis, something Galileo proclaimed until the church silenced him.
bring it on! --- JFK
The situation is slightly more complex than that. The Jesuits had actually come to the same conclusions, but talked about accidents instead of the reality. Furthermore, Copernicus was praised, not persecuted, for the theory that bears his name. The strongest proof, back then, that the earth stood still was that we do not feel it move. In fact, this is the same thing the Michelson-Morley experiment found, at least with regard to light. One of Galileo's friends, a cardinal in Rome, warned him that unless he had more proof that the physical reality reflected his model, he had better lay off saying it was more than mathematics. Galileo devised something about the tides being that proof, an argument that we now know to be in error. The real proof that the earth moves is the stellar parallax: if the sphere if the stars is fixed and the earth stands still, so will the stars, which we see; but if the stars are fixed and the earth moves, the stars will move in small circles. This was not detected until much later, long after Galileo's death. The cause of his trial is probably due to the fact that in "Dialogue" he puts the argument of Pope Urban VIII -- that there are infinite ways to cause any effect, and that effects do not necessarily imply causes; and that there is something between the numbers and the world -- in the (ineffective) mouth of Simplicio, the idiot Aristotelian. There is some evidence that Galileo did, in fact, mean the retraction that he wrote up with Dominican lawyers after his trial; and the myth that he did not recant, but rather whispered "but it moves" as a postscript to his official statement, can be shown to be an invention.
Anyway he (Hitler) probably believed that dogs are mammals, that 2 + 2 = 4, and that Austrians are Germans minus the sense of humour. And frankly, he was right. Especially about the Austrians.
As to Carl Marx, never heard of him. Is he realted to Karl?
I'll give you kudos for inventing a new logical fallacy, though: the indirect/third party ad-hominem.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
1) I did have the time - I did not have a job
2) Stephenson could benefit from a better editor.
The bloated writing style and self-indulgence of the autor is the turnoff. So it the pretense of profundity and real-history based story when the book turns out to be just a lousily-plotted Indiana-Jones-like adventure
I was interested in the story of WII cryptographers. I kept reading even though I grew more annoyed because I already spent so much time on it and I wanted to know the end of the story. It was not worth it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In Soviet Russia, you toll for bell!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'd suggest you read "Darwin at Nuremburg" at the Darwin Papers (www.thedarwinpapers.com). The stuff you're writing isn't making much sense either, since it seems as if you didn't read the related material that I wrote. I'll assume you're close-minded.
#Secret Windows Source Code, in MS C% - if (uptime >= "24 hours") then bsod() else print "Windows License Violation!"
Once again, free gratis and on the house, just because a bad person believes in X doesn't make X false, or bad, or indeed anything. You're trotting out an inverted version of the argument from authority.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."