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Isaac Newton & His Many Interests

An interesting snippet. Bloody Jesuits want to hog the glory.

Did Jesuit missionaries help Newton develop calculus?

Manchester, Aug. 14, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Scholars in India discovered several key principles of calculus in the 14th century, according to a researcher at the University of Manchester in England. The Indian mathematicians' discoveries may have been passed on to Jesuit missionaries, and then to Isaac Newton-- who is generally credited, along with Gottfried Leibnitz, for introducing calculus 300 years later.

Dr. George Gheverghese Joseph of Manchester says that scholars of the "Kerala School" in India identified the "infinite series" in about 1350, and had been able to calculate the value of pi to 10 decimal places.

"But we've found evidence which goes far beyond that," Joseph says; "for example, there was plenty of opportunity to collect the information as European Jesuits were present in the area at that time." The Jesuit missionaries were well trained in mathematics, he says, and probably brought the discoveries of the Kerala School back to Europe.

Dr. Joseph--the author of The Crest of the Peacock: the Non-European Roots of Mathematics-- argues that historians have given short shrift to the influence that Asian scholars had on the development of European mathematics.
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cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=52930
Link is dead. No archived version found.
 
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EnolaGaia said:
... But then there's Archimedes with his 1000+ year head start on the subject ...
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"If you give me a 1000+ year head start and a place to stand, I can beat the world..."
 
Looks like an interesting book.

Newton the gumshoe

Posted by Margaret Guthrie
[Entry posted at 31st July 2009 02:03 PM GMT]


Everyone knows the story about Sir Isaac Newton's run-in with an apple. But when you read Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson, you realize that there was more to the man than an extraordinary understanding of physics and philosophy. The book tells the story of how, in the author's words: "Newton, only months removed from the life of a Cambridge philosopher, managed incredibly swiftly to master every dirty job required of the seventeenth century version of a big-city cop."


What makes the story spellbinding is not just that Newton managed this transformation, but that in doing so he came up against a criminal mastermind who has few equals -- even in fiction -- for his imaginative brazenness. In 1695 the British government sought out Newton's opinion on troubling financial matters, and although his advice was for the most part disregarded, he ended up being appointed Warden of the English Mint that year.

The greatest mind of the 17th (or arguably any) century found himself in a position to use his superior mental powers to study and rectify the problems of England's Mint. Once he'd improved the manufacture of the King's coin by adding eight new rolling mills and five new coin presses to the Mint, his attention turned to the country's counterfeiters. This is when Newton morphed into a master sleuth, building a network of spies and informers in London's underworld, never hesitating to wade into unsavory, dangerous territory. His mania for detail helped him in matching wits with one of the most inventive criminals of the age, one William Chaloner.

William Chaloner's roots, like Newton's, were rural, but there the resemblance between the two men ended. From an early age, Chaloner proved troubled. Given by his parents into an apprenticeship to a nail maker, he learned to handle molten metals. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, he ran off to London where his life of crime began. Chaloner dabbled in deception, hawking fake, homemade watches and posing as a physician.

Chaloner's rise through the ranks of London's criminal world continued, but he was forced to retreat into the London's seedy underworld when he was threatened with arrest for stealing. He would emerge as a master counterfeiter just as Newton took up his post at the Mint. The two were on a collision course, and the first few rounds went to Chaloner, who had friends in high places and an audacity that saw him writing pamphlets ("The Defects in the present Constitution of the Mint") and testifying before Parliamentary committees on how to stop both clipping and counterfeiting. (Clipping was a process of cutting bits of a silver coin off the edge and re-working the coin to appear untouched. Clipping was possible only with the old, handmade coins but was extremely profitable, leaving the clipper with silver ingots which could then be sold, traded, or shipped to the continent in exchange for gold.) Chaloner never stopped trying to worm his way into the Mint itself, offering to demonstrate for government officials how to stop counterfeiters and clippers. All the while, Newton continued to build his network of spies and informants, while keeping meticulous records of everything Chaloner was doing by deposing his coconspirators. Newton's implacability and relentlessness bring Police Inspector Javert of Hugo's Les Miserables to mind.

The philosopher eventually assembled such a compelling case against Chaloner -- from testimony by witnesses, informants, and even the wives and mistresses of the criminal's associates -- that he was able to bring him up on charges of counterfeiting the King's coin, a treasonable offence, in 1698.

Newton's careful records left Levenson a remarkably clear trail, for being written almost four centuries ago. Adding to the author's storytelling arsenal was an anonymous biography of Chaloner written shortly after his execution in 1698.

Levenson's pace and timing rival those of the best crime story authors. He has written a real page-turner, perfect for a long afternoon's engagement with the hammock or whiling away a long airport layover.

Newton and the Counterfeiter, by Thomas Levenson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-151-01278-7. 336 pp. $25.00.
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http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/print/55860/
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Newton's work for the Royal mint is commemorated on the modern £2 coin:

The coin has the edge inscription STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS taken from a letter by Sir Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke, in which he describes how his work was built on the knowledge of those that had gone before him. "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_pounds ... cimal_coin)
 
Newton's apple: The real story

Amanda Gefter, Books & Arts editor


apple_1.jpgWe've all heard the story. A young Isaac Newton is sitting beneath an apple tree contemplating the mysterious universe. Suddenly - boink! -an apple hits him on the head. "Aha!" he shouts, or perhaps, "Eureka!" In a flash he understands that the very same force that brought the apple crashing toward the ground also keeps the moon falling toward the Earth and the Earth falling toward the sun: gravity.


Or something like that. The apocryphal story is one of the most famous in the history of science and now its origin has come to light. Squirreled away in the archives of London's Royal Society was a manuscript containing the truth about the apple.


The manuscript, from 1752, is a biography of Newton entitled Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life written by William Stukeley, an archaeologist and one of Newton's first biographers. Newton told the apple story to Stukeley, who relayed it as such:


"After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank thea, under the shade of some apple trees...he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself..."


The Royal Society has made the manuscript available today for the first time in a fully interactive digital form on their website at royalsociety.org/turning-the-pages. The digital release is occurring on the same day as the publication of Seeing Further (HarperPress, £25), an illustrated history of the Royal Society edited by Bill Bryson, which marks the Royal Society's 350th anniversary this year.


So it turns out the apple story is true - for the most part. The apple may not have hit Newton in the head, but I'll still picture it that way. Meanwhile, three and a half centuries and an Albert Einstein later, physicists still don't really understand gravity. We're gonna need a bigger apple.
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newscientist.com/blogs/cultu ... -story.php
Link is dead. The MIA web article (quoted in full above) can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010042...elab/2010/01/newtons-apple-the-real-story.php
 
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How many angels dance on a pinhead? Find out here.

Israeli library uploads Newton's theological texts
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-isr ... gical.html
February 15th, 2012 in Other Sciences / Other

Engraving of Isaac Newton based on a 1726 painting by John Vanderbank that was from the frontispiece of a 1726 editiion of Principia, on display on Friday, Oct.8, 2004, at the New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library. Israel's national library, an unlikely owner of a vast trove of Newton's writings, has digitized his theological collection, and put it online. The curator of Israel's national library's humanities collection said Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012, Newton was also a devout Christian who dealt far more in theology than he did in physics and believed that scripture provided a "code" to the natural world. (AP Photo/NY Public Library, File) NO SALES

He's considered to be one of the greatest scientists of all time. But Sir Isaac Newton was also an influential theologian who applied a scientific approach to the study of scripture, Hebrew and Jewish mysticism.

Now Israel's national library, an unlikely owner of a vast trove of Newton's writings, has digitized his theological collection - some 7,500 pages in Newton's own handwriting - and put it online. Among the yellowed texts are Newton's famous prediction of the apocalypse in 2060.

Newton revolutionized physics, mathematics and astronomy in the 17th and 18th century, laying the foundations for most of classical mechanics - with the principal of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion bearing his name.

However, the curator of Israel's national library's humanities collection said Newton was also a devout Christian who dealt far more in theology than he did in physics and believed that scripture provided a "code" to the natural world.
"Today, we tend to make a distinction between science and faith, but to Newton it was all part of the same world," said Milka Levy-Rubin. "He believed that careful study of holy texts was a type of science, that if analyzed correctly could predict what was to come."
So he learned how to read Hebrew, scrolled through the Bible and delved into the study of Jewish philosophy, the mysticism of Kabbalah and the Talmud - a compendium of Jewish oral law and stories about 1,500 years old.
For instance, Newton based his calculation on the end of days on information gleaned from the Book of Daniel, which projected the apocalypse 1,260 years later. Newton figured that this count began from the crowning of Charlemagne as Roman emperor in the year 800.
The papers cover topics such as interpretations of the Bible, theology, the history of ancient cultures, the Tabernacle and the Jewish Temple.
The collection also contains maps that Newton sketched to assist him in his calculations and his attempts to reveal the secret knowledge he believed was encrypted within.
He attempted to project what the end of days would look like, and the role Jews would play when it happened. Newton's objective curiosity in Judaism and the Holy Land contrasted with the anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by many leading Christian scholars of the era, Levy-Rubin said.
"He took a great interest in the Jews, and we found no negative expressions toward Jews in his writing," said Levy-Rubin. "He said the Jews would ultimately return to their land."
How his massive collection of work ended up in the Jewish state seems mystical in its own right.
Years after Newton's death in 1727, his descendants gave his scientific manuscripts to his alma mater, the University of Cambridge.
But the university rejected his nonscientific papers, so the family auctioned them off at Sotheby's in London in 1936. As chance would have it, London's other main auction house - Christie's - was selling a collection of Impressionist art the same day that attracted far more attention.
Only two serious bidders arrived for the Newton collection that day. The first was renowned British economist John Maynard Keynes, who bought Newton's alchemy manuscripts. The second was Abraham Shalom Yahuda - a Jewish Oriental Studies scholar - who got Newton's theological writings.
Yahuda's collection was bequeathed to the National Library of Israel in 1969, years after his death. In 2007, the library exhibited the papers for the first time and now they are available for all to see online.
The collection contains pages after pages of Newton's flowing cursive handwriting on fraying parchment in 18th-century English, with words like "similitudes," "prophetique" and "Whence."
Two print versions in modern typeface are also available for easier reading: A "diplomatic" one that includes changes and corrections Newton made in the original manuscript, and a "clean" version that incorporates the corrections.
All of the papers are linked to the Newton Project, which is hosted by the University of Sussex and includes other collections of Newton's writings.
The Israeli library says the manuscripts help illuminate Newton's science and well as his persona.
"As far as Newton was concerned, his approach was that history was as much a science as physics. His world view was that his 'lab' for understanding history was the holy books," said Levy-Rubin. "His faith was no less important to him than his science."
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More information: On the Web: http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English ... ewton.aspx
 
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Before the apple fell.

A new review of a notebook filled with scrawlings by Isaac Newton shows that he very nearly uncovered the secret of how plants defy gravity by pulling water up from roots all the way into their stems and leaves. David Beerling with the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, at the University of Sheffield, in the U.K. has published a Comment piece in the journal Nature Plants describing the words written by the great philosopher and scientist in an old notebook.

Isaac Newton, was of course, one of the great minds of the modern era—his work with gravity, and the development of formulas that describe the universe, calculus and ideas on light were remarkable, doubly so considering he was a man living in the seventeenth century. Now it appears his mind at times drifted to other topics as well—such as botany. As Beerling notes, Newton kept a notebook during his college years which he used for jotting down ideas and musings. One of those was apparently an idea to help explain how it is that plants are able to pull water from the ground via roots and transport it up through stalks and stems to their leaves—defying gravity in the process. ...

http://phys.org/news/2015-02-early-newton-notebook-prescient-ascension.html#ms
 
Newly purchased Newton alchemy manuscript to be put online

(Phys.org)—A 17th century document written by Isaac Newton has been purchased from a private owner, by a nonprofit called the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and they have plans to put the whole thing online. What is intriguing about the manuscript is that the main page is a recipe hand-copied by Newton that describes a method of creating "sophick" mercury—a supposed necessary ingredient for making the Philosopher's stone.

So great is Newton's stature in the science world, that mention of his dalliance in alchemy has been cause for not just embarrassment, but for attempts to hide it as one of his great passions. The genius, the father of modern physics and co-inventor of calculus, is believed to have written over a million words on alchemy, which historians have lately begun to note, was originally, a synonym for chemistry.

The manuscript purchased by CHF began, it is believed, as a simple hand-copy of a recipe created by George Starkey, a well known American alchemist and sometime writer. Newton than added notes to the text and later, apparently turned the document over and used the blank side to write a procedure for subliming lead ore, an endeavor that he apparently worked on for many years, once again, as part of his desire to make the Philosopher's stone. Newton was apparently eager to create the mythical substance that would change simple base metals such as lead, into gold, making himself rich, though it might also be noted, that the original Philosopher's stone was also supposed to cure any disease and allow people to become immortal. ...

http://phys.org/news/2016-04-newly-newton-alchemy-manuscript-online.html
 
Newton's cure for the bubonic plague - toad vomit lozenges ...
Newton's recipe for 'toad vomit lozenges' up for auction

Sir Isaac Newton — famous for developing the three laws of motion and advancing calculus — apparently had a far-out idea for how to treat the plague, also called the black death: toad-vomit lozenges.

In addition to recommending a number of gemstone amulets against the plague, he gave detailed instructions on how to make the putrid toad-vomit treatment, according to two unpublished pages handwritten by Newton that are now on the auction block.

Newton describes in detail how to suspend a toad by its legs in a chimney for three days, until it vomits up "earth with various insects in it." This vomit must be caught on "a dish of yellow wax," he added. ...

Newton and his contemporaries didn't know that the plague doesn't respond to toad vomit or gems. It wasn't until 1894 that the French-Swiss scientist Alexandre Yersin learned that the disease is caused by a bacterium, which was later named Yersinia pestis in his honor.

These days, plague is treated with antibiotics, not vomit from toads that were hung upside down. (On a somewhat related note, if you want to see a toad throw up, here's a video.)

Newton likely wrote these notes on the plague shortly after returning to the University of Cambridge in England in 1667, according to Bonhams, the auction house selling off the documents. The plague had just swept through Europe, forcing the University of Cambridge to temporarily close its doors in 1665. During that time, Newton quarantined at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in Lincolnshire, England, where he investigated the laws of gravity and motion. The year 1666 became known as his "annus mirabilis," Latin for "wonderful year."

However, while the polymath's laws of motion became blockbusters, his writings on the plague's causes, symptoms and treatments did not enjoy world renown. In truth, these notes weren't entirely his own. Rather, Newton had been reading "Tumulus Pestis" ("The Tomb of the Plague"), by Jan Baptist Van Helmont, a chemist, physiologist and physician from the Spanish Netherlands, a collection of Holy Roman Empire states also run by the Spanish Crown. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/issac-newton-plague-toad-vomit-auction.html
 
Newton's lesser-known notes and writings concern sacred geometry, theology and the apocalypse.
Burnt 'Great Pyramid' Notes Reveal Isaac Newton's Research Into The Apocalypse

Sir Isaac Newton, the acclaimed physicist, mathematician, and astronomer, may be one of the most renowned scientists of all time, but his wide-ranging research took him to strange places far outside what we now consider to be science.

Amidst his outstanding legacy of academic output, numerous fragments and unpublished notes – many discovered after his death in 1727 – stand as a testament to his long and said-to-be obsessive interest in matters of the occult, alchemy, and biblical apocalypse theory.

These mystical leanings – much of which would have been considered heretical thinking in Newton's day – are evidenced in some fragmentary manuscript notes currently being auctioned by Sotheby's. ...

In the pages ... Newton muses on ancient Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza, which Newton believed was designed around an Egyptian unit of measurement called the royal cubit.

Newton thought that by quantifying the royal cubit, he might be able to refine his own theories on gravitation, and in so doing provide an unprecedentedly accurate measure of the circumference of the Earth – while also unlocking other obscure and 'sacred' geometrical insights, that might ultimately predict when the world would end, as foretold in the Bible. ...

"These notes are part of Newton's astonishingly complex web of interlinking studies – natural philosophy, alchemy, theology – only parts of which he ever believed were appropriate for publication," the auction listing explains.

"It is not surprising that he did not publish on alchemy, since secrecy was a widely-held tenet of alchemical research, and Newton's theological beliefs, if made public, would have cost him (at least) his career." ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/burnt-...eal-isaac-newton-s-occult-apocalypse-theories
 
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