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Isaac Newton

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Stephensonia

"Newton's 1693 illness is no mystery to me" Daniel tells Enoch Root

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Community entry for Isaac Newton

There is tons of stuff on Newton online. Consider this a digest of the more offbeat ideas. Newtn3_f.jpg
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
a portrait

Arty Science

1666 Sir Isaac Newton studies the phenomena of colors, laying the groundwork for the modern physical theory of color. To begin, he creates a camera obscura with a triangular glass prism at its"entrance,"which he ground himself, focusing and refracting the sun’s rays through the dark room onto the opposite wall. There it is"a very pleasing divertissement [diversion] to view the vivid colors"of the spectrum. These experiments culminate in his letter of February 6, 1672 to the Royal Society of London, which outlines his discovery of the properties of light rays. Newton also notes that the relative color or perceived color of objects is determined by the quality of the light striking the object. For example, an apple tends to reflect red in a full spectrum of light. As Newton points out, it is useless to think of an apple as red, for"any body may be made to appear any color"by controlling the reflected light. Newton is also the first person in history to unlock the riddle of the rainbow when he applies his understanding of refraction to the water droplets in the air. The rainbow is a smooth continuum of wavelengths. It was commonly believed that the rainbow comprised only five colours. It was Isaac Newton, lecturing on the “harmonies of colours” in 1669, who determined that there are seven colours in the rainbow, on the assumption that colours are “perhaps analagous to the concordances of sound”. So Newton added the colours orange and indigo, to bring the number of colours up to the number of tones in the ancient Greek musical scale.

Isaac's Rage Issues

Isaac Newton was a known stutterer. It is a suppressed rage issue. Stuttering also disappears during singing and also when the individual speaks out of an already memorized script. Imagine Michael Palin's protrayal of Ken in "A Fish Called Wanda" and apply it to Newton.

New Scientist magazine's Simon Baron-Cohen CLAIMS Newton showed signs of autism (or more specifically - its variant - Asperger's Syndrome). Baron-Cohen, who is based at Cambridge University, and mathematician Ioan James of Oxford University assessed the personality traits of Newton to see if he exhibited three key symptoms of Asperger syndrome: obsessive interests, difficulty in social relationships, and problems communicating. Newton seems like a classic case. He hardly spoke, was so engrossed in his work that he often forgot to eat, and was lukewarm or bad-tempered with the few friends he had. If no one turned up to his lectures, he gave them anyway, talking to an empty room. He had a nervous breakdown at 50, brought on by depression and paranoia (see more below).

  • Newton 'set back science by his vindictiveness' by Mark Henderson in The Times, 26th. December, 2000, page 5."Sir Isaac Newton was a vindictive man who used his prestige and position to destroy the careers of rival scientists, according to a new book about Britain's greatest physicist and mathematician."

"Newton's Tyranny by David Clark, a research director at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and his son Stephen Clark, a history teacher at Haberdasher Aske's school in London, tells the story of two significant but little-known scientists of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Both had their reputations broken after falling out with Newton, who held the powerful position of President of the Royal Society. John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer-Royal, who had spent decades mapping the skies at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, was forced to publish prematurely by a Newton impatient to use the data to test a theory he had advanced about the motion of the moon. Newton and his follower Edmond Halley, the discoverer of the comet that bears his name, then savaged the astronomer's work, criticising the errors that had resulted from their haste to see it published." "The second scientist, a former dyer named Stephen Gray who was an early pioneer of electricity, was caught in the crossfire. Newton, the Clarks suggest, turned against Gray for no other reason other than his loyal friendship with Flamsteed, and prevented him publishing his work in the Royal Society's journal Philosophical Transactions."

"White has provided the reader with a rumbustious, galloping tale. His Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer is one of those books that is extremely hard to put down. Every page reveals a diverting aspect of Newton's life. White has clearly studied his subject long and hard. But instead of going for the dry, dusty approach to scientific biography we are treated to a middle-of-the-road, 'tabloid journalistic' write-up. The reader is constantly titillated by imagined scurrilous headlines. Why did Newton love the colour crimson? Did he really die a virgin and never see the sea? Just how friendly was he with John Wickins (his room-mate at Trinity College, Cambridge for 20 years) and Nicolas Fatio de Duillier (a Swiss mathematician 22 years younger than Newton)? Was he a suppressed homosexual? What about his relationship with his beautiful, gregarious, intelligent, excitable and flirtatious half-niece Catherine Barton? How could such a devout puritan like Newton condone the fact that his aforementioned niece (and housekeeper in London) and his best friend (Charles Montague, Baron Halifax) were lovers?" Details of any relationships are unclear as Newton defaced many letters that may have provided evidence of his sexuality."

  • John Wickens "... Newton's first partner may have been his 20-year roommate John Wickens during his student and professor years at Cambridge. There is no direct evidence of this. Very little written material survives from John. Some Newton biographers interviewed him in old age, but he would only give anecdotes from the early days. John said he and Newton moved in together to escape from the disorderly Cambridge student life. John became a faculty fellow like Newton and later laboratory assistant and secretary to Newton. ..." -- He did all the mechanics and actual work.

Quote:

"Isaac Newton, the mathematician and scientist (said by some to be the greatest scientist ever), was a virgin all his life. He was also very unpopular. Let us move on."

Timeline

try this http://www.chemsoc.org/timeline/pages/1687.html, seems user friendly

An Arian?

“… And a penchant for the occult was not Newton's only quirk. He is reported to have laughed just once in his life-when someone asked him what use he saw in Euclid. He took to decorating his rooms in crimson. He stuck a knife behind his eyeball to induce optical effects, nearly blinding himself. He was a Catholic-hating Puritan who secretly subscribed to the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ. Newton was also given to endless feuding. He seems to have had only two romantic attachments, both with younger males, and suffered a paranoiac breakdown after the second came to rupture. …” [1] Newton had embraced Arianism and thus was a secret heritic. Arianism, was an early theological view taught by Arius, a priest of Alexandria, Egypt. Arius, (256?-336 CE), was a priest of Alexandria, Egypt, who founded an early theological view called Arianism. In about 318, Bishop Alexander of Alexandria condemned Arius's teachings as heresy and excommunicated him. But Arius continued to teach and attracted many followers. To settle the dispute, the Roman emperor Constantine the Great called a general church council in Nicaea (in what is now Turkey) in 325. The council also condemned Arius's views. It issued the Nicene Creed, which states that the Son is fully divine and is equal to the Father. About 318 CE, Arius and his followers rejected the doctrine that the three Persons of the Christian Trinity -- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit -- were equal. Arius denied that Jesus Christ, the Son and second Person of the Trinity, was completely divine. Arius taught that the Son was created by God the Father and was inferior to Him. According to Arius, Jesus was not eternal but was a superior being created by God to redeem the human race. Arius believed that both the Father and the Son were superior to the Holy Spirit. In doing so, Arius' teachings proved that he and his teachings were not Christian at all in nature, but the opinions of his own beliefs.

In 325, the Council of Nicaea condemned Arius' teachings as heresy and affirmed that Jesus was completely divine. However, the view that Jesus Christ was not truly God continued to be taught in the eastern Roman Empire during the 300's. [2] The Council of Constantinople condemned Arianism as heresy in 381, and it quickly disappeared within the Roman Empire. But followers of Arianism remained active outside the empire. Arian missionaries converted the German tribes of northern Europe to Christianity during the 300's and 400's. After these tribes invaded the Roman Empire, they reintroduced Arianism. Arian teachings received support until the 600's, when the last German tribes were converted to orthodox Christianity.

F.Y.I.: The name Isaac -- son of Abraham in the TORAH -- means 'laughter.'

See also

ISBN 0762413484 -- On the Shoulders of Giants edited by Stephen Hawking: World-renowned physicist and bestselling author Stephen Hawking presents a revolutionary look at the momentous discoveries that changed our perception of the world with this first-ever compilation of seven classic works on physics and astronomy. His choice of landmark writings by some of the world's great thinkers traces the brilliant evolution of modern science and shows how each figure built upon the genius of his predecessors. On the Shoulders of Giants includes, in their entirety, On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres by Nicolaus Copernicus; Principia by Sir Isaac Newton; The Principle of Relativity by Albert Einstein; Dialogues Concerning Two Sciences by Galileo Galilei with Alfonso De Salvio; plus Mystery of the Cosmos, Harmony of the World, and Rudolphine Tables by Johannes Kepler. It includes an essay by each scientist preceded by biographies written by Hawking.