So, expecting famous thinkers to have computer like rationality is unreasonable. It probably wasn’t their rationality that was the catalyst for their fame anyway, just some irrational pattern recognition. You probably never heard of all the ideas that they tossed out, just the important ones that are likely important because other people verified them.
Whao, dude, I think you’re onto something. I’ve seen a picture of Newton too, and he was like totally old and gross, but that dude in the statue is like totally young and buff so it can’t be him.
In my experience, smart people are interested in many things. While Newton was incredibly accomplished in many ways, expecting him to ONLY have good ideas, or rational interests s unreasonable. Varied interests lead to varied paths.
A few items … quite a few individuals of extreme intellect were also really odd ducks. A good read if you want some examples.
Also the journal as a means of communicating and collaborating emerged during Newton’s career and he like many other scientists of his time was reluctant to share what he knew and how he knew it. He wrote Part one of Principia in 1672 to 1674 and sat on it for over a decade until Edmond Halley saw it and convinced him to publish it, happening in 1687. Without journals and communication amongst scientists, testing out each others ideas, black magic flourishes … literally.
Finally a scientist is first a member of the society in which they exist (and as per above there was just emerging a true scientific society) with beliefs not surprisingly often consistent with that society.
Sir Isaac Newton came around to my house one day,
His face was all sunburned and red.
He said he didn’t want to sleep in the shade of a tree,
Because an apple might fall on his head.
I said, “Sir Isaac, you dumbbell, take my advice.
Go right back there and sleep beneath that tree.
And if you let that rotten apple fall down on your head
Why, you’ll discover gravity!”
The OP may as well be: If Newton was so smart, why is he dead?
But trying to respond to it seriously: Newton was one of the pioneers of the scientific method. He could hardly be expected to adhere to it perfectly.
And in fact, I’d go further than that: it helped that he was an oddball.
The scientific method probably seemed like a strange, counter-intuitive way of finding truth – heck, it doesn’t even claim to say what is true, only what is useful and what has been supported by empirical evidence.
If we want truth, can’t we just ask the smartest guy in town what his opinion is (AKA the fallacy the OP implicitly assumes)?
It took a weirdo to look at things like mass and motion objectively.
No one is quite sure why he got the job, so maybe that is indeed the case. ;). It was supposed to be a sinecure and traditionally was, but while he was one owed a favor by the powers that be, this job which came with a lot of chance fo enrichment, well let’s just say that he was way down on the pecking order of favor owed to get this.
On the other hand, the English government was getting very alarmed with the debasement of its currency and forgery and they probably wanted a capable man there anyway, job was no longer a sinecure. Which again is a mystery as to why the selected him.His previous work did not make him particularly qualified for this role, he was a theoretical physicist and Mathematician and this job required him to run intelligence rings, go into seedy bars in disguise (not making this up), prosecute forgers… it basically would be like if Neil Degrasse Tyson was appointed head of the Secret Service, FBI and made a US Attorney. And succeeds to such a level that it overshadows all his previous work during his lifetime.
BTW, OP, we voted on the topic of most influential person in history about 7 years ago, with Newton winning the whole thing. I bring this up, not to bring enlightenment, but merely to plug one of my more successful threads.
