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The Greatest And The Luckiest Of Mortals
sgant writes "So says the 18th-century French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange about Sir Isaac Newton. The New York Times has a piece on 'The Newtonian Moment: Science and the Making of Modern Culture' which is a new exhibit at the NY Public Library. It includes a number of Newton's manuscripts from the Cambridge University Library, including a first edition of his most famous work, "Principia," bearing the author's corrections and additions for the next printing, have never before been shown in the United States."
I'm enduring college level calculus right now, and to think that one man, more or less invented a major area of mathematics that we use in a vast array of situations, is simply, incredible.
Given the resources he had availible, it's simply amazing he accomplished what he did
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Which practice? Physics? Museum exhibits in public libraries? Because those cats are already pretty much out of the bag...
Oh, and the exhibit's in New York, not Germany.
(did you mean to go here?)
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
It's said that he died a virgin... so in at least one respect Newton was not, and did not get, "lucky".
...he died a virgin and studied alchemy.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
-
but weren't Newton's ideas debunked by Einstein's theory of relativity? Shouldn't we be focusing on the physicists who got it right, not the ones who were wrong.
Don't know much indeed, apparently you should add Math to that as well.While some of Newtons ideas were later proven to be incorrect by Einstein, most of his work on Calculus (which he pretty much invented) are still perfectly valid today. Most of Newton's calculus stuff that isn't used nowadays is simply because quicker/better methods have been developed since, not because he was wrong. As pretty much anyone who's taken Calculus can tell you, inventing it was quite a feat, it's not always easy to understand when you're learning it from someone who already knows it, developing it from scratch is quite amazing!
I thought Enistein said that his greatest hope was that he would be prooven wrong on his theories? There is never going to be one right answer, Newton and Eintein did great jobs
Dont you just love those latin cool new computer names... :)
The lunatic is in my head
No - he came up with a more advanced theory.
If you are going to jump your motorcycle over a tank of sharks I'd recommend again using the Theory of Relativity and sticking with Classical Physics (the time dilation may be weighing on your mind as Jaws takes a chunk out of you).
but weren't Newton's ideas debunked by Einstein's theory of relativity?
Not really. Newton's classic mechanics work fine at the macroscopic level. Same for Galileo's relativity. The model doesn't work at the atomic level, and that's where the relativistic model enters. Both are true in a sense.
Also, it doesn't really matter if one model is wrong or not if it helps understanding how things work. Take for example Bohr's Hydrogen model. It wasn't totally correct, but a necessary step to develop a fully correct atomic model, and he received (and well deserved) the Nobel prize for his work and contributions.
Erlang Smorgreff
Newton didn't get it 'wrong' it is just that his theories are less accurate at extremes - Einstein's theories of relativity produce answers that are the same as Newton's theories of motion at 'non-relativistic' speeds (hence the term non-relativistic).
These speeds (or more properly velocities perhaps) are those anything less than a significant fraction of the speed of light (or very close to a massive object for gravitational calculations). So, you only need Newton's equations for almost all practical applications.
"Plague is sweeping across England, and a young Isaac Newton retreats to the isolation of Lincolnshire. Sitting in the family garden he watches an apple fall, and unlocks the secrets of gravity - or does he? Adam explores the truth behind this famous moment in the history of science, and discovers that Newton wrote his own account over forty years after the supposed event."
Listen to it here (starts 1 min 50 secs in)
I went to the same boys school as Newton originally went to, called the 'Kings School' in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England where Newton scratched his name into the wall of the old library. As was the custom at the time, many other students scratched and carved their names. His looks considerably less impressive than others. We were all taught that he attended the school and about his subsequent accomplishments. There is a garden named after him with a single apple tree in the middle, although it's not one he ever sat under. One of the various 'houses' in the school is also named after him. The town has a statue of him in front of the guildhall (equivalent to a town hall). However, in their rush to name things after him they have named a travisty of a shopping mall after him, which is awful, it's called the 'Isaac Newton Shopping Centre' and is particularlly down market with a big plastic apple hanging high near one of the entrances. Growing up asa kid I saw Newton's name and face everywhere as he adorned the back of the one pound note, the equivalent of a $1 bill. Sadly that was replaced by a coin with nobody on the reverse of the queens 'head' side. Even worse my home town is now remembered more for 'Maggie Thatcher' than Newton. I hope that one day the place will be associated more for Newton than Thatcher, but it is unlikely as he wasn't born there (he was born in Colsterworth nearby), only attending school there for a while when he was young. Lastly, I hope that Apple Computer bring back their Newton as it was a fantastic machine which deserved to bear the name of such an amazing man.
While some of Newtons ideas were later proven to be incorrect by Einstein
Without the imperfect (but functional) model developed by Newton (which we still use today with some refinements! very few situations require a more complex model of forces and effects) it seems unlikley that Einstein would have been able to develop relativity, indeed many other advances would not have been made until someone else replicated Newton's work.
Newton himself said "If I have seen further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants" (which is etched onto the Brish pound coin) - and he is definatly one of the giants upon which later physists stood. Science is a process, not a product, and viewing it in terms of right and wrong is foolish - it's a series of advances leading to a more and more accurate understanding of the universe. No step towards that goal is any less worthy than another.
Beep beep.
I'm currently reading a book writte by Bill Bryson called ' A short Hisory of Nearly Everything'.
In this book het tells how strang guy Newton was. Newton once poked with a needle behind his eyers becease he wanne know what happends. Just by sheer luck nothing happend. He also discovered some verry inportant things but he kept is secret for almost 30 years.
He was briliant but he was also solitary,sombre and nearly paranoea.
"The model doesn't work at the atomic level, and that's where the relativistic model enters."
Bullshit. At atomic level the relativistic model is quite fucked up my dear child.
but weren't Newton's ideas debunked by Einstein's theory of relativity?
No, no, no. Einstein revised, extended and made Newton's mathmatical model of observable phenomenon (not his ideas) more accurate. Newton's "laws" simply turn out to be a limited case, not inapplicable or "wrong."
In fact, Newton himself was perfectly aware of this and published unexplained phenonenom which his model could not handle.
Relativity is not even considered modern physics, it is classical. Einstein did not kill Newton, he stood on Newton's shoulders.
KFG
The model doesn't work at the atomic level, and that's where the relativistic model enters. Both are true in a sense.
You are confusing Relativity and Quantum Theory, Classical physics and Modern.
Relativity is a classical theory of gravitational, i.e. macro, masses.
KFG
The author of the site is (or at least was) highly reputed. It was also him who first pointed out that the so-called gravitational anomaly, found by Pioneer spacecrafts, probably has a simple (Newtonian) explanation: dust in the Kuiper Belt--and this explanation has been entirely ignored by most physicists.
Some physicists seem to prefer complicated explanations over simple ones.
Actually, Newton did get it "right" based on measurement technology and information at the time. His laws of motion described things "perfectly" based on his data. It was this simplicity and accuracy that makes his discovery famous.
Though it is true that his discoveries do not hold true at extreme (relativistic) speeds, Newton could not know anything about this.
For that matter it is conceivable that Einstein may not have gotten it "right" either. Perhaps in the future new information and new technology will provide us with more information about the universe that will prove Einstein wrong too . . . if that happens should we belittle Einstein and say that his discoveries would then be "less" important?
Newton's equations work in the normal world. It's not until you start playing with extremes that any difference is present. Newtonian physics is still tought in schools. What does that tell you?
Both classical mechanics and general relativity are incomplete; they are approximations of the physical reality we observe, both excellent for some applications but useless for others.
Newton's classical mechanics is amazingly accurate when familiar scales and speeds are involved, but breaks down when large speeds are involved. Relativity fixes this; however, both theories break down at the subatomic scale, where we need quantum mechanics instead. (Unfortunately, though, quantum mechanics ONLY holds for the subatomic scale.)
You're right about Einstein "getting it right", however, since in addition to working out relativity he was one of those physicists who developed the quantum theory. On the other hand he never really accepted quantum mechanics...
Or, as is the case for me and most others, "if I have failed to see further, it is because giants are standing on my shoulders".
Shouldn't that be: The cats are already out of the FLAP
ba da bing
Not so much debunked as viewed on from a different angle. For all velocities much smaller than the speed of light (v << c), Newton's mechanics are quite accurate. A. Einstein (and before him H. A. Lorentz) took great care to put the formulas for Special and Universal Relativity in a way that Newton's formulas remain correct for (v/c)->0.
There are some assumptions which are not correct for v->c. There is no universal inertial system, everything is related to the position of the observer (that's why Einsteins theories are called 'Relativity Theories'). Mass and Time are no basic physical concepts as thought by Newton, but they behave this way if the velocities related to the observer are small compared to light speed.
Certain aspects of calculus were developed two centuries prior to Newton in India by Madhava of Sangamagrama. This seems to be widely accepted now. A few links to Madhava and other Keralese mathematicians are also present here.
As an engineer, I frequently use Newton's laws of motion. I can't say that I have ever had the need to consider bodies travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light in my work.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
I can't comment on all of his site, but this page should provide a good example of his crank-ness.
His argument is, in a nutshell, "quantum mechanics is wrong, because it doesn't make sense to me". However, he doesn't seem to provide any alternative explanations...
but weren't Newton's ideas debunked by Einstein's theory of relativity? Shouldn't we be focusing on the physicists who got it right, not the ones who were wrong.
In that sense , even Einstein didnt get it completely correct.His special and then the general theories didnt answer all the quantum phenomena.He spent most of his working life trying to find a grand unified theory , infact it was his holy grail.
Remember , Einstein's Nobel prize (in physics) was for his work on the photoelectric effect , because his work on relativity was a bit "unique" and "bold" for that time.
Wanted : A Signature.
...suddenly feel illuminated. :)
Funny. It was when considering the properties of light, this super hero showed he was not infallible...
Some human traits make these men just so much more interesting
And Latin. We now know Latin to be a dead language. What real scientist uses Latin?
And the English system of weights and measures. He didn't even use the Metric system, or bother to convert the values!
How the great learned history critics and scientists of the future will scoff at our inaccurate decimal system, our clunky wire-based infosystems, and our use of BASIC.
We use the tools we have. The best of us modify them to fit our own needs. Every once in a while, someone comes up with a mod that everyone agrees is really cool. On that measure, Isaac Newton is the greatest hacker of all time. OK, maybe Edison was greater, or the woman who invented the stick.
I picking on your fine post (a bit unfairly, to be sure) because if someone comes up with a mod, how does that make everything that went before it "incorrect"?
sigs, as if you care.
He has to change his appearance and identification from time to time so as to not stand out so much. I have it on good advice that he is currently living as the comic genius Carrot Top.
How about the billions of millions of kilograms of burnt fuel used to move the Earth out of orbit in the first place?
I think this site may be an attempt to troll first year physics undergraduates ...
>As an engineer, I frequently use Newton's laws of motion. I can't say that I have ever had the need to consider bodies travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light in my work.
The one obvious example is the work of
the gps folks --- they have to do
their calculations taking into
account relativistic effects, otherwise
you get the wrong gps location for objects.
(The satellites are so many thousands of miles apart, travelling fast enough that doppler
effects (among other things) have to be taken into account.)
It doesn't. What makes it incorrect is the fact that it was incorrect. Incorrect might not be the right word, it was not mathematically rigorous. There were instances when he treated an infintesimal as a zero and discarded it, there were instances where he treated it as a non-zero and divided it. Math is rigorous. You need a set of rules that hold in all situations.
Did you bother to read the rest of the post where I pointed out that they were both geniuses and knowones perfect? I'm not nitpicking them and saying that they fucked up. I'm just stating a fact, that they are not solely 100% responcible for the development of calculus as many people believe.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
>did you bother to read the rest of the post...
Yes, and I'm sorry for slighting you for using the word "incorrect". I should have been more Charitable - and on Sunday, no less.
sigs, as if you care.
He was also probably the most useless Member of Parliament ever, speaking in the House on only one occasion, and then to ask that a window be closed because there was a cold draught.
Amazing how Newton's status has changed. In the early 70s the Cambridge Union Society actually sold off a copy of the Principia cheap (as the guy who beat me to it gloated at me at considerable length). They wouldn't do that nowadays when virtually every Latin edition is worth a great deal of money.
Just as it's extremely difficult to spend any time in Florence without becoming aware of the Dante connection, it's quite difficult to spend time in Cambridge, England without encountering Newton. Whatever his faults - and he was clearly not an easy person to get on with - he made major contributions to optics, pure physics, chemistry, mathematics and the running of the Royal Mint. Other people around at the time did remarkable work - Hooke, Boyle, Liebniz - but Newton surpassed them al for sheer output, breadth and depth. Logically, nowadays, with a much larger and better educated population we should be throwing up lots of Newtons. Why aren't we? Is it because all the relatively easy science and maths has now been done and it takes large organisations and computing power to make any advance at all? Or is it because clever people get pulled off into business or celebrity before they really have a chance to do any work that will really endure?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I'm a math major, I should have known better anyway lol....
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
You omit his greatest contribution to science, which was establishing that the laws of nature are universal. He saw that the force of gravity which makes things fall to the ground is exactly the same force, obeying the same law, as the force of gravity between celestial bodies. It seems obvious today, but it was not at all obvious in the seventeenth century. Most people took it for granted that the celestial bodies were ruled by quite different laws from those we experienced in our daily lives.
Incorrect might not be the right word, it was not mathematically rigorous. There were instances when he treated an infintesimal as a zero and discarded it, there were instances where he treated it as a non-zero and divided it. Math is rigorous. You need a set of rules that hold in all situations. [Emphasis added]
A set of rules that hold in all situations means that there are no paradoxes.
There is nothing non-rigorous about infintesimals which behave in some cases identically with zero when added to something and in other cases behave like non-zeros when dividing two of them. What is non-rigorous and non-defensible is the attempted distinction between zero and non-zero. Not everything mathematical is a number. In fact most mathematical things are not numbers. It all has to do with functions from spaces to spaces that preserve interesting properties.
...that I'm going to be the first to suggest that these perls (get it?) of wisdom were given to him by Aliens to help us along. GEEZ.
[I]t's quite difficult to spend time in Cambridge, England without encountering Newton.
Well, hard to not encounter anyone who has a King Kong sized statue in his old college's chapel.
I wonder whether the discovery of the Turing Machine, the machine that can be all machines, at the very same place might not be an equally impressive achievement.
--
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This really should've been done within the first few posts..
The Man Who Grasped the Heavens' Gravitas
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: October 8, 2004
If Einstein is today's personification of scientific genius, he inherited that exalted role from none other than Isaac Newton, of whom it was said that this was "the greatest and the luckiest of mortals."
In the tribute, credited to the 18th-century French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Newton (1642-1727) was deemed the greatest because he discovered the law of universal gravitation and the luckiest because there was only one universe. His brilliance extended not only to the motions of worlds and falling apples, but to an early system of the calculus and a radical new theory of light and color.
Newton's stature as one of the greatest figures in the history of science, and the influence of his ideas on the wider culture for more than two centuries, is the subject of a thoughtful and engaging exhibition at the New York Public Library. The show, "The Newtonian Moment: Science and the Making of Modern Culture," opens today and will run through Feb. 5.
"Newton was immensely curious and obviously immensely talented," said Dr. Mordechai Feingold, a history professor at the California Institute of Technology who is curator of the exhibition, as he conducted a tour of the hundreds of rare books, prints, instruments and other displays of Newtonian science.
A number of Newton's manuscripts from the Cambridge University Library, including a first edition of his most famous work, "Principia," bearing the author's corrections and additions for the next printing, have never before been shown in the United States. Dr. Feingold has also written a companion book to the exhibition, to be published this fall by Oxford University Press.
The Newtonian Moment began in the plague years of 1665-66 when the young scholar first formulated many of his revolutionary ideas of mathematics, optics and mechanics. He had already absorbed the essential science of Descartes, Galileo and Robert Hooke. As Dr. Feingold observed, much of Newton's genius consisted of "his remarkable ability to simultaneously consume and transform any knowledge he acquired."
Newton himself attributed at least some of his success to the fact that he had stood "on the shoulders of giants."
Newton came to prominence in 1671 when a small telescope he designed and built won him election to the Royal Society. Then Edmond Halley, he of comet fame, went to Cambridge to ask Newton's advice on the shape of orbits traveled by planets. Ellipses, Newton replied forthwith. He had already figured it out.
Impressed, Halley persuaded a reluctant Newton to write what became his magnum opus, "Principia," published in 1687. His other great work, "Opticks," followed in 1704, describing how a beam of light, when passed through a prism, dispersed into the many colors of the visual spectrum.
The exhibition dwells at length on the international response to Newton's science. Germans contended that Leibniz was the true inventor of calculus, and his principles are indeed the basis for today's calculus. The French stoutly defended their Descartes, whose universe was full of matter whirling in vortices. The ascendant Dutch universities served as arbiters in Newton's ultimate triumph.
The French, to their credit, eventually organized expeditions to Lapland and Peru that confirmed a prediction of Newtonian gravity: the Earth is an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator.
The complex character of Newton is also explored in the exhibition. He was a pious man who dabbled in chronologies of biblical history, though he apparently held unorthodox views on Christian doctrine like the Trinity. He also devoted much effort to alchemy, the practice of trying to turn base metals to gold, which makes Newton a central character in a new novel, "The System of the World," by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow). Dr. Feingold suggests t
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I will point out that the pdf version of these books is still available via p2p.
:)
Go to suprnova.org and search for 'calculus'. The volumes sell for $125.95 (free shipping!) at Amazon and they only have four left.
I am not trolling, just pointing out where some poor college students can get the information. When they graduate and start earning all of that mad math money, then can buy a set for their children.
So skip Apostol.
My special disdain goes out to Dr. Roach and other purists of the University of Texas' School of Mathematics, where a band of rigorists held sway for decades. Their influence and too-early focus on unnecessary rigor [e.g., teaching advanced group theory to freshmen instead of introductory calculus] and upon the (delta, epsilon) interpretation of calculus rippled through numerous universities as their disciples spread out into professorial positions. These bigots ruined the minds of scientists and mathematicians and drove thousands from those fields. May those rigorists stoke the ovens of Hell forever.
Ron Jeremy is pretty darned lucky I'd say!!!
He saw his wife's pussy the first conjugal night and never looked at her ever again. He never ever had sex cos the sight of pubic hair made him very very sick.
greatest and luckiest ??? i think not.
Sig Heil: Scumerica - Land of the Free* (* 18+, valid papers, health insurance, some restrictions apply)
Ask anyone who worked on the Apollo program whether they used Einstein's equations of motion or Newton's equations of motion.
Seastead this.
This reminds me of the auction where the notes of newton or the first edition was sold for an enormous amount! Those people just don't get it do they. Newton's contribution to humanity is worth what? billions? trillions? better lives? better health? And the nice thing is that this knowledge is indestructible, which we cannot say about the first edition. If someone would deface the first edition it would be sad but insignificant. Open source anyone?
"...normal evolution would have gone Word to Frame to troff, but instead, the computer industry has gone the other way!"
Leibniz's published output and range of interests were both far larger than Newton's, in fact. Newton was a great (if unpleasant) man, but his reputation doesn't need boosting at the expense of others'.
What I read about the exhibit seems to further illustrate that whenever anybody talks about physics or the history of physics without resorting to mathematics or even "thought experiments", the conversation inevitably devolves into what is commonly known as "bullshit". It's kind of like an exposition on the progress of science since the dark ages -- delivered in reverse.
As opposed to all of those great and lucky immortals running around.
Play Command HQ online
OK, maybe Edison was greater...
Where is the horde of raving Tesla fans?
I suppose that they cannot bear to come this close to an actual scientist.
at least that's how one my professors explained it to me, a long time ago on a college campus far, far away.
Compare to Gauss who contributed to nearly everything mathematics was studying in his time ...
Not to mention doing his father's payroll calculations at the age of 3.
It includes a number of Newton's manuscripts from the Cambridge University Library, including a first edition of his most famous work, "Principia," bearing the author's corrections and additions for the next printing, have never before been shown in the United States.
No matter how many times I try, I can not get this sentence to make sense!
This is definiteily not true, quantum mechanics holds just find for large scale processes, its just that its effects are unoticable. This is called the correspondence principle which is normally studied in third semester physics alongside quantum mechanics and special relatively.
Special relatively does indeed have a consistent relativistic formulation, called the Dirac equation. Its general relativity that is somewhat at odds with quantum mechanics. I never got that far in my univeristy physics studies, however, so I can't really comment further.
The greatest and the luckiest of mortals? No one will ever be better? That would be sad. Whenever I hear people praise Newton for making so many basic discoveries and contributing so much to the progress of humankind, one thought enters my mind:
"I can do better than that."
Planetary death rate: 150,000 lives per day. End the slaughter
So "incorrect" was incorrect then?? I'm confused ...
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
Perhaps. But mathematical definitions are not necessarily rigorous. Try to formulate a rigorous definition of a set.
Another interesting case of the non-rigorous use of mathematics was by Dirac. He used the delta-function comfortably for a while, while the mathematicians cried foul (IIRC, the great von Neumann was one of them). Eventually they realized that, while not rigorous, he was right. Of course, he knew he had to be.
I don't discount the worth of rigor--far from it. An attempt at a rigorous argument often exposes implicit assumptions and possible caveats. But those who believe that mathematics is (or is even capable of being) an absolute, water-tight framework are living in a fantasy world (as the great Bertrand Russell unfortunately discovered).
.... but that did not change physics and mathematics, so in hitoric terms this is only a curiosity.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You're a douchebag, is what you are -- a douchebag who can't spell ("knowone"?) and who spends too much time fucking around on Slashdot.
I heard the same story, on a college campus not so far away.