Current Events > I legit can't even comprehend how smart Isaac Newton must have been

(+) Yeah! (+)

There's so much we understand about the universe mathematically that we take for granted. We accept that physical laws can be calculated.

But to start from a position of not even assuming gravity is a force (let alone a universal one) and then produce all the crazy equations and shit Newton came up with is like one person discovering bacteria, then figuring out Molecular Biology, biochemistry and the TCA cycle.


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Similarly, one of the praises often heaped on Einstein is that he had surprisingly few references in his published work because so much of it was truly original.
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Godnorgosh posted...

I've never been mathematically inclined, but I've always thought it was fascinating that Newton and Leibniz each developed (discovered?) calculus independently of one another.

Not to diminish their accomplishments, but to some extent these discoveries are a product of the culture they are made in. Like, its not a coincidence that they happened at the same about time. The same way that its not an accident that Darwin and Wallace discovered the process of natural selection at the same time. There was an aspect of the paradigms of knowledge around this time that means that if they didnt do it, someone else within a reasonable frame of time would have come up with the idea that lead to the breakthrough.
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Dont even get me started on his cookies... figs?
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I think the math stuff was his side occupation, not sure. Kings wanted their astrologers. BTW you can't predict where genius will happen or in what form.
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s0nicfan posted...

Similarly, one of the praises often heaped on Einstein is that he had surprisingly few references in his published work because so much of it was truly original.

This is what I tell my college professors when I turn in a report
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Einstein was comparatively born in a time where there were plenty of genius scientists and mathematicians.
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Vita_Aeterna posted...

Einstein was comparatively born in a time where there were plenty of genius scientists and mathematicians.

Sure, but to be fair what Einstein did was actually remarkably similar to Newton. He took something that, in retrospect, makes perfect sense (a universe mediated by a speed constant c should work differently than classical Newtonian mechanics) but nobody ever really thought that way up until that point.

Newton looked at the Moon and asked an astonishingly simple question - why doesn't it fall towards the Earth, but normal objects like apples do?

Then he thought about projectiles and how, based on the force and velocity by which they're fired, they form parabolic trajectories. He postulated that if a projectile was fired with enough force and at a very specific angle, it would "fall" towards the Earth at the same rate that the Earth itself curves away from the projectile. In such a system, the projectile would never actually hit the Earth but continually orbit it. Then he realize that's how the Moon works - it's forward momentum exactly matches it's "downward" (towards Earth) momentum, keeping it in place around the Earth.

Then he figured out that this is based on the mass of the object. Then he figured out basically all of modern macroscopic physics.

I mean shit that's ridiculously brilliant

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have you ever read the principia?

you gotta understand that newton's formulation was HEAVILY based upon geometry. In fact, if you arent used to it, when you read the principia you'll be lost.

Took others to reformulate his ideas which allowed us to use the "way of thinking" that he came up with.

Though I gotta say, Galilean invariance seems like a pretty huge turning point as well but galileo doesn't get cred for it outside of physics circles

Romes187 posted...

have you ever read the principia?

you gotta understand that newton's formulation was HEAVILY based upon geometry. In fact, if you arent used to it, when you read the principia you'll be lost.

Took others to reformulate his ideas which allowed us to use the "way of thinking" that he came up with.

Though I gotta say, Galilean invariance seems like a pretty huge turning point as well but galileo doesn't get cred for it outside of physics circles

Galileo has a Top 5 all-time beard though

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