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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
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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.
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.
As opposed to Leibniz, who was a womaniser, an alcoholic and in his spare time discovered differential calculus (simultaneously to newton, in fact, his 'Acta Eruditorum' was published 1 year before newton's 'Principia').
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]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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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).