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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 (?).
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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.
I think you might want to consult the writings of Nostrodumbass, the profit from Texas.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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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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.
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!
Read the article. His religious writings would have landed him in prison if he hadn't kept them secret.
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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
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.
It is well documented that Newton had a very contentious mannerism when it came to ideas. See the perpetual attacks on both Leibniz and Hooke. I think that if newton did post to slashdot (which would be rare since he was at times a bit of a recluse as well), he would be modded troll and flamebait.
"What the masochist doesn't know can't hurt him."
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.