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."

Comments

Re:'Greatest and Luckiest of Mortals' indeed

[slacktide]

And of course, Archimedes pretty much a cat's whisker away from discovering the integral around 200 BC, as described in the nearly lost work "The Method"

Re:'Greatest and Luckiest of Mortals' indeed

[n3k5]

not invented, discovered
also, Leibniz also independantly devised the system of calculus at the same time

In 'META MATH! -- The Quest for Omega', Gregory Chaitin writes:

Newton was a great physicist, but he was definitely inferior to Leibniz both as a mathematician and as a philosopher. And Newton was a rotten human being---so much so that Djerassi and Pinner call their recent book Newton's Darkness.

Leibniz invented the calculus, published it, wrote letter after letter to continental mathematicians to explain it to them, initially received all the credit for this from his contemporaries, and then was astonished to learn that Newton, who had never published a word on the subject, claimed that Leibniz had stolen it all from him. Leibniz could hardly take Newton seriously!

But it was Newton who won, not Leibniz.

Newton bragged that he had destroyed Leibniz and rejoiced in Leibniz's death after Leibniz was abandoned by his royal patron, whom Leibniz had helped to become the king of England. It's extremely ironic that Newton's incomprehensible Principia---written in the style of Euclid's Elements---was only appreciated by continental mathematicians after they succeeded in translating it into that effective tool, the infinitesimal calculus that Leibniz had taught them!

Morally, what a contrast! Leibniz was such an elevated soul that he found good in all philosophies: Catholic, Protestant, Cabala, medieval scholastics, the ancients, the Chinese... It pains me to say that Newton enjoyed witnessing the executions of counterfeiters he pursued as Master of the Mint.

[The science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson has recently published the first volume, Quicksilver, of a trilogy about Newton versus Leibniz, and comes out strongly on Leibniz's side. See also Isabelle Stengers, La Guerre des sciences aura-t-elle lieu?, a play about Newton vs. Leibniz, and the above mentioned book, consisting of two plays and a long essay, called Newton's Darkness.]