I think you are confusing special (in the absence of gravity) and general relativity. Special relativity is implicit, for example, in accelerators (check out synchnotrons) but GPS systems would drift by several miles every day without corrections for general relativity. Basically, the extremely accurate clocks run faster in the lesser gravitational field of the satellites because they are further from the earth.
There is a big difference between alchemy and astrology. The latter made no contribution to the development of astronomy. But alchemists did collect much data and it didn’t so much disappear (as astrology unfortunately hasn’t) as gradually evolve into the chemistry that we know today. I don’t criticize Newton for alchemy as much is I do for his religiosity, but nobody’s perfect.
In physics and mathematics he was a giant and I cannot recall a time that I hadn’t heard of him, usually in awe. One of his very minor accomplishments, as master of the mint, was to come up with the idea of milling the coins to prevent the practice of scraping metal off the edges of coins.
Of course he did. Einstein built on Newton’s work and was able to show that Newton was correct, just that it broke down as you approached the speed of light. But it was perfectly fine in other contexts.
Einstein “believed in” Newton for most things. It’s just that he also wanted to know what was going on with light, and at the speed of light, Newton’s equations are insufficient.
If Einstein had been asked to design a bridge, he’d have used Newtonian physics. When the bridge approaches the speed of light, Newtonian physics requires corrections (relativity). When the bridge is as small as an atom, other corrections are needed (quantum mechanics). You can design a bridge with Einsteinian physics, but the math is more complicated and the relativistic portions collapse to zero. So why bother?
I’m surprised no one has mentioned that Newton was the President of the Royal Society from 1703 to 1727 … perhaps the single most prestigious position in the sciences for the English-speaking world …
As far as Newton’s dabbling in alchemy, it should be noted that this was before the advent of chemistry … it makes sense for someone to explore alchemy in those days and it should also be noted that Newton wound up dismissing the endeavor and moved on …
Strictly speaking, Einstein built on James Maxwell’s work … Newton defined force as “action from a distance” … it was Maxwell who showed that force is in fact a “field of force lines” … who in turn built his ideas on Michael Faraday’s demonstrations of electromagnetism … who in turn built off of Alessandro Volta’s work creating current electricity from his voltaic pile (aka battery) …
There is something of a disconnect from Newton as Newton’s Law weren’t exactly very good describing the effects of electricity …
William Blackstone had one of the most brilliant legal minds in history. His work greatly influenced the Founding Fathers. Some of his concepts still influence modern British and American law.
He called Jesus’ resurrection the best-proved fact in history. (There were something like 500 witnesses to it.)
Well, yes, but lots of other people were president of the Royal Society at some point. Many were important scientists. But there’s only one Newton.
Anyone else in this thread mostly because you’ve read the Baroque Cycle by Stephenson three times, so you **feel **like you’re an expert on Newton but you know you’re not, really?
Absolutely. Marvellous books. I learned calculus at school - and passed my pure maths exam with the highest grade - but only by reading Stephenson’s account did I finally *understand *it, what it is for and why.
Someone today might have more knowledge that helps them overcome our innate human thinking processes that are less than fully rational. We’ve all got inherent and irrational cognitive biases, though. Newton did. Every single one of us still does. We’re not anymore rational today.
It seems unlikely OP has read even the Wikipedia article on the history of science, yet feels qualified to wonder if Newton was famous before the Internet. :smack: Well, since we’re in the #FakeNews era; I guess it’s reasonable that all the stories in history books etc be treated as possibly #FakeHistory.
Newton was the 2nd greatest scientist ever and was hugely admired during his own lifetime. His elaborate tomb in Westminster Abbey was sculpted shortly after his death, not in the Internet Age.
So you’re guessing the identification of the bust with Newton is a 20th-century myth? Are you Googling for an 18th-century book that makes that identification?
BTW, do we know that Franklin actually owned such a bust? Wasn’t it just added by David Martin to the portrait of Franklin he painted in 1767? (I think Franklin did commission Michael Rysbrack — sculptor of Newton’s tomb and possibly the Newton’s bust depicted in the Martin portrait — to sculpt a bust … of Franklin himself.)
First of all why would newton assume alchemy was false. Sure you have centuries more information on the subject but what you call chemistry he would have called alchemy. Also you seem to be of the common atheist delusion that states that belief in God is evidence of unintelligence. It is a supremely arrogant belief that basically states that only people who think like you are really thinking.
Then he’s another good example of an obviously intelligent man sounding very stupid when outside his realm of competence.
No, there weren’t. St. Paul said there were, but he didn’t claim to have been there himself, so it is one man passing along a story he heard somewhere, if he didn’t just make it up. His audience was a bunch of Greeks who had no means to verify his claim, especially since Paul didn’t name any of these alleged witnesses. Conveniently, the Corinthians also had little or no knowledge of either Jewish prophecy or the details of Jesus’ career, which explains why they were prepared to accept a Messiah who did nothing that the Messiah was supposed to do, and to blithely discard the Law of Moses, which Jesus said would outlast heaven and earth.
There is a word for people who did have knowledge of Jewish scripture, and the ability to check claims about events in Israel: “Jews.” All but a handful of Jews in Israel were profoundly unimpressed with all the alleged miracles, including the tombs opening up and the Jewish saints rising from the dead and walking around Jerusalem, and so they remained Jews. Why, it’s almost as if none of those miracles ever happened. Christianity would have disappeared without a ripple had not Paul found fertile ground among the credulous people of Greece and Asia Minor, who had been raised to believe in the supernatural, but were incapable of checking his claims.
I rose up to heaven yesterday myself, in front of a thousand witnesses. Are you going to reject eye-witness testimony from a thousand people? Go ahead, check it out.
I’m sorry I didn’t get any of their names, and besides, they are all out of town, and I’m not sure when they’ll be back.
I mean, look at Elon Musk, that smug bastard! He’s involved in creating PayPal and Tesla and such, but believes we can create a hyper loop between LA and SF and that we most likely live in a computer simulation!
And Einstein made up the cosmological constant!! What a twit!
Dude. Recalibrate your head. You sound like you are complaining about the sharp knees of a genius.
Are you Googling for an 18th-century book that makes that identification?