Necessary Factual Truth

[Ellen Stuttle]

It is not "the nature" of the structure, it is simply the structure that we look for by doing experiments and taking measurements. Using the map analogy with Newton and Einstein we can say that Newton took measurements and produced a map but Einstein had better instruments and better measurements and so produced a more accurate map. We can still use old maps as long as we realize their their limitations. We also need to realize that our new maps are not the end of the story, some day they will be old maps.

What if later research shows that the land the maps portray does not exist (like Shangra La and Atlantis)? The space and time that Newton assumed was Out There was in his head. Newton had a categorically flawed concept of space and time which is why his theories turned out to be wrong. Space and time (or more accurately Space-Time) is not not an absolute rigid frame which pre-exists matter. Matter tells space how to bend and space tells matter how to move (A paraphrase of a statement Wheeler made in one of his books on Relativity). For Newton, Space and Time where the sensorum of God (Newton was a God Phreak, as is revealed in several scholia in -Principia Mathematica-).

Ba'al Chatzaf

To GS: You provide no basis for "taking measurements" and "doing experiments" while being consistent with the theories you've presented. And, no, you cannot say anything about how much better Einstein's "map" might be, unless you know what the correct map is.

To Bob: Not only was Newton "a God Phreak," he thought that God had selected him, Newton, as special emissary to explain how God had decreed the universe's laws of motion (his self-appraisement made Rand's look the model of humility). Also, he was known in his own day even more for his alchemical work than for his physics. (Much of the alchemical work languised in the Newton archives unread by modern scholars until the pretty recent past). I think a case could be made for describing Newton as having been as much "the last true alchemist" as "the first true physicist." I think of Rand as similarly being at a dividing line, attempting to enunciate individualism as a workable ideal but still in the mode of "thou shalts" which the implications of her own most-daring ideas challenged.

To MSK: Something I thought after I signed off earlier might have been a good quote to tell you: my favorite definition of "genius" (though I forget where I heard it or to whom it was attributed): "Genius is the ability to make the maximum number of errors in the minimum amount of time." This is especially the case in science. Scientists expect that their theories will turn out to be wrong, which doesn't mean that they don't do their damndest attempting to get it right.

Ellen

___

[BaalChatzaf]

To Bob: Not only was Newton "a God Phreak," he thought that God had selected him, Newton, as special emissary to explain how God had decreed the universe's laws of motion (his self-appraisement made Rand's look the model of humility). Also, he was known in his own day even more for his alchemical work than for his physics. (Much of the alchemical work languised in the Newton archives unread by modern scholars until the pretty recent past). I think a case could be made for describing Newton as having been as much "the last true alchemist" as "the first true physicist." I think of Rand as similarly being at a dividing line, attempting to enunciate individualism as a workable ideal but still in the mode of "thou shalts" which the implications of her own most-daring ideas challenged.

___

Quite so.

Newton wrote at least three times as much on Alchemy and the "true" meaning of the ancient writings (including the Bible) as he did on Natural Philosophy (i.e. natural science). The extent of Newton's career as a wizard and seer became clear when none other than John Maynard Keynes bought the Newtonian archive of letters and diaries. What they revealed was not Newton the cool rational man, but Newton the mystic. Fortunately he spent some of his time in non-mystical pursuits. One of Newton's ambitions was to expose the Trinitarian Doctrine as the corrupt doings of those who ran the Church. Newton himself espoused Arianism (a denial of the Trinity) but he kept that pretty close or he would have been fired from his position at Cambridge (or even worse). Newton lived his childhood during the religious civil wars that brought Oliver Cromwell to leadership. In addition to his not totally rational pursuits, Newton was psychologically screwed up. His mother effectively abandoned him when she re-married and that made a dent in Newton's personality. He positively could not stand rejection of any kind.

Newton also had a third career as the head of the Mint, in which capacity he had counterfeiters hanged, drawn and quartered. He was quite without mercy in this capacity. He ran a black intelligence network including urchins, waifs and "irregulars" right out of Conan Doyle's fiction. Perhaps Conan Doyle fashioned some of Sherlock Holme's black operations after the doings of Isaac Newton.

Newton was a bit like Robert Stadler in -Atlas Shrugged- and a bit like Saurumon from -Lord of the Rings-. There was also a Faustian element to Newton's character.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[James Heaps-Nelson]

To Bob: Not only was Newton "a God Phreak," he thought that God had selected him, Newton, as special emissary to explain how God had decreed the universe's laws of motion (his self-appraisement made Rand's look the model of humility). Also, he was known in his own day even more for his alchemical work than for his physics. (Much of the alchemical work languised in the Newton archives unread by modern scholars until the pretty recent past). I think a case could be made for describing Newton as having been as much "the last true alchemist" as "the first true physicist." I think of Rand as similarly being at a dividing line, attempting to enunciate individualism as a workable ideal but still in the mode of "thou shalts" which the implications of her own most-daring ideas challenged.

___

Quite so.

Newton wrote at least three times as much on Alchemy and the "true" meaning of the ancient writings (including the Bible) as he did on Natural Philosophy (i.e. natural science). The extent of Newton's career as a wizard and seer became clear when none other than John Maynard Keynes bought the Newtonian archive of letters and diaries. What they revealed was not Newton the cool rational man, but Newton the mystic. Fortunately he spent some of his time in non-mystical pursuits. One of Newton's ambitions was to expose the Trinitarian Doctrine as the corrupt doings of those who ran the Church. Newton himself espoused Arianism (a denial of the Trinity) but he kept that pretty close or he would have been fired from his position at Cambridge (or even worse). Newton lived his childhood during the religious civil wars that brought Oliver Cromwell to leadership. In addition to his not totally rational pursuits, Newton was psychologically screwed up. His mother effectively abandoned him when she re-married and that made a dent in Newton's personality. He positively could not stand rejection of any kind.

Newton also had a third career as the head of the Mint, in which capacity he had counterfeiters hanged, drawn and quartered. He was quite without mercy in this capacity. He ran a black intelligence network including urchins, waifs and "irregulars" right out of Conan Doyle's fiction. Perhaps Conan Doyle fashioned some of Sherlock Holme's black operations after the doings of Isaac Newton.

Newton was a bit like Robert Stadler in -Atlas Shrugged- and a bit like Saurumon from -Lord of the Rings-. There was also a Faustian element to Newton's character.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Fascinating stuff. I know next to nothing about Newton the man.

Jim

[tjohnson]

To GS: You provide no basis for "taking measurements" and "doing experiments" while being consistent with the theories you've presented. And, no, you cannot say anything about how much better Einstein's "map" might be, unless you know what the correct map is.

One can say how much better a map is than another by how well you can navigate with it. So if you expect to see an island and one is not there or vice versa then you know the map needs work. There is no such thing as "the correct map", that accounts for ALL details for ALL time. I don't understand your first sentence. We observe phenomena and we make measurements, what "basis' do we need for that?

[Dragonfly]

To Bob: Not only was Newton "a God Phreak," he thought that God had selected him, Newton, as special emissary to explain how God had decreed the universe's laws of motion (his self-appraisement made Rand's look the model of humility). Also, he was known in his own day even more for his alchemical work than for his physics. (Much of the alchemical work languised in the Newton archives unread by modern scholars until the pretty recent past). I think a case could be made for describing Newton as having been as much "the last true alchemist" as "the first true physicist."

It is therefore funny to hear the Peikoff-Harriman clowns in the dimwit lectures praise Newton to the skies as the perfect example of integration, while they at the same time condemn the Big Bang theory with arguments like this:

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the Big Bang was originally proposed by a physicist who was also a priest.

It seems that the ideas of Peikoff & Co themselves are not so well integrated...

[James Heaps-Nelson]

To Bob: Not only was Newton "a God Phreak," he thought that God had selected him, Newton, as special emissary to explain how God had decreed the universe's laws of motion (his self-appraisement made Rand's look the model of humility). Also, he was known in his own day even more for his alchemical work than for his physics. (Much of the alchemical work languised in the Newton archives unread by modern scholars until the pretty recent past). I think a case could be made for describing Newton as having been as much "the last true alchemist" as "the first true physicist."

It is therefore funny to hear the Peikoff-Harriman clowns in the dimwit lectures praise Newton to the skies as the perfect example of integration, while they at the same time condemn the Big Bang theory with arguments like this:

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the Big Bang was originally proposed by a physicist who was also a priest.

It seems that the ideas of Peikoff & Co themselves are not so well integrated...

Dragonfly,

That is hilarious .

Jim

[BaalChatzaf]

Fascinating stuff. I know next to nothing about Newton the man.

Jim

If I were 20 years younger and had enough spare cash I would dedicate myself to writing a history based fiction entitled -Warden of the Mint- which would tell about Newton's career as Warden of the Mint and the operations he mounted against counterfeiters. During the Commonwealth period under Cromwell, England's finances had become frayed. Mounting debt and currency debased by counterfeiting had left England in sad shape by the time Charles II took the throne. One of Newton's tasks was to get rid of counterfeiters (which he did with holy revenge ; they were treated as traitors and some were drawn and quartered). Another task was to cast coins with proper metal and not debased alloys, so that English coins could be taken seriously. Newton was as thorough at restoring the currency as he was at natural philosophy and alchemy.

He set up all sorts of "black operations" to ferret out the counterfeiters including going out in disguise (sounds like Holmes, yes?). What a yarn that would make! But it would take all sorts of thorough research to make such a story soundly based on fact. Unfortunately I am not sufficiently an expert scholar nor do I have the resources to undertake such a task. But I wish someone with the chops for the task would do it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

It has been done. See Dark Matter: the private life of Sir Isaac Newton by Philip Kerr.

Also, if you read the Wikipedia entry, you will find a paragraph about Sir Isaac and the Counterfeiters that I added based on out-takes from an essay that I wrote for the American Numismatic Association. It was, in fact, based almost entire on one monograph (Craig, John (1963). "Isaac Newton and the Counterfeiters", Notes and Records of the Royal Society (18). London: The Royal Society).

It is no surprise that I got into numismatics via Objectivism and I found it curious that Newton's tenure as Warden and Master of the Mint is not treated better. In fact, his biographer Berlinkski (Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of our World) says baldly that after his appointment as president of the Royal Society, his life is "uninteresting." As compelling as that early life was, his hard labor as master of the mind was of Randian proportions. We're talking Roger Marsh and Dwight Sanders here, folks, if not HR himself. Sir Isaac smelted with the best of them. He was a master of the assay. No functionary he, Newton applied his scientfic genius to a wide range of problems.

Interestingly, as his statistical studies (before Bayes) revealed that 20% of the pennies in circulation were fake, he recommended that the new currency be 20% lighter than the old. (Make of that what you will.) He did not oversee the beginning of The Great Recoinage, but he concluded it. The problem of wear on coins was not addressed with theoretical rigor until Neil Carothers' Fractional Money. Even Federal Reserve economist and medieval numismatist Francoise Velde dropped the ball. (The Big Problem of Small Change by Sargent and Velde.)

Anyway, Newton's time at the mint has been document by Kerr (fiction) and by me (non-fiction: ANA Heath Literary Award, 2002 ). He had himself sworn as a justice of peace so that he could conduct these investigations. I offered the story to a couple of law enforcement magazines, but got no takers.

Edited November 17, 2007 by Michael E. Marotta

[Mike Hardy]

Newton wrote at least three times as much on Alchemy and the "true" meaning of the ancient writings (including the Bible) as he did on Natural Philosophy (i.e. natural science).

Was his alchemical work disjoint from his "natural philosophical" work?

One may feel inclined to dismiss alchemical work as worthless because

it is reported to rest upon a theory not even approximating the truth:

that water, air, fire, and earth are the four elements of which all matter

is composed. But experimental alchemists did a lot of work on making

substances out of other substances that had industrial and medical

applications and became part of the data on which chemistry was

eventually based. So the question would be whether Newton's work

on alchemy was included in that latter category. Any interest on

research in the sort of questions that chemistry answers might have

been regarded in Newton's day as an interest in alchemy. -- Mike Hardy

[Ellen Stuttle]

Newton wrote at least three times as much on Alchemy and the "true" meaning of the ancient writings (including the Bible) as he did on Natural Philosophy (i.e. natural science).

Was his alchemical work disjoint from his "natural philosophical" work?

One may feel inclined to dismiss alchemical work as worthless because

it is reported to rest upon a theory not even approximating the truth:

that water, air, fire, and earth are the four elements of which all matter

is composed. But experimental alchemists did a lot of work on making

substances out of other substances that had industrial and medical

applications and became part of the data on which chemistry was

eventually based. So the question would be whether Newton's work

on alchemy was included in that latter category. Any interest on

research in the sort of questions that chemistry answers might have

been regarded in Newton's day as an interest in alchemy. -- Mike Hardy

Oh God, Michael Hardy, you would go and ask a question like that!

His alchemical work was of both kinds, i.e., both experiments of a type which could be regarded as forerunners to chemistry proper, and mystical-spiritual investigations of the type which Jung analyzes as being a complex metaphor for psychological processes.

Here's a link to a website about a PBS program called "Newton's Dark Secrets." The program has a lengthy segment about Newton's alchemical explorations. He devoted some years to intense alchemical work but then discontinued, apparently not having found whatever result/answer he was looking for and giving up the quest. (He then went to London, adopting an official role with the Treasury; in his later years he pursued biblical studies, believing he was finding a code in the Bible.)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/newton/

Here's a link to and excerpt from a news item about the discovery of an alchemical manuscript of his which had been thought to be lost:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/res...1519335,00.html

The notes were originally uncovered following Newton's death in 1727, but they were never properly documented and were thought to be lost following their sale for £15 at an auction at Sotheby's in July 1936. But during the cataloguing of the society's miscellaneous manuscripts collection the notes were discovered and, with the help of Imperial College's Newton Project, were identified as being the papers that had disappeared nearly 70 years before.

Newton kept hidden his occasional interest in alchemy during his lifetime, in part because the making of gold or silver was a felony and had been since a law was passed by Henry IV in 1404. But throughout his career he, and other scientists of the time, many of whom were fellows of the society, carried out extensive research into alchemy.

The text is written in English, but it is not easy to work out what Newton is actually saying. Alchemists were notorious for recording their methods and theories in symbolic language or code so others could not understand it.

One excerpt reads: "It is therefore no wonder that - in their advice lay before us the rule of nature in obtaining the great secret both for medicine and transmutation. And if I may have the liberty of expression give me leave to assert as my opinion that it is effectual in all the three kingdoms and from every species may be produced when the modus is rightly understood: only mineralls [sic] produce minerals and sic de calmis."

(The statement that he carried out alchemical research "throughout his career" disagrees with the PBS show, if I'm remembering the latter correctly.)

Here's a link to and excerpt from a brief synopsis:

http://www.cftech.com/BrainBank/OTHERREFER.../Newtonian.html

For two centuries after his death in 1727, Isaac Newton was hailed as the supreme scientist, a Monarch of the Age of Reason and the initiator of the scientific and the industrial revolutions, of modernity itself. On one popular list of the hundred most influential people in history, Newton placed No. 2, behind Mohammed but ahead of Jesus Christ. But In 1936 an interesting lot came on the block at Sotheby's in London containing a cache of writings by Newton -- journals and personal notebooks deemed to be "of no scientific value." The winning bidder was the economist John Maynard Keynes. After perusing his purchase, Keynes delivered a somewhat shocking lecture to the Royal Society Club in 1942, on the tercentenary of Newton's birth. "Newton was not the first of the age of reason," Keynes announced. "He was the last of the magicians."

This was meant quite literally, as was a statement expressed by the poet Wordsworth that Newton had a mind "forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone." For the "secret writings" made it clear that during the crucial part of Newton's scientific career -- the two decades between his discovery of the law of gravity and the publication of his masterwork, the "Principia Mathematica" -- his consuming passion was alchemy. Bunkered in his solitary live-in lab at the edge of the fens near Cambridge, Newton indulged in occult literature and strove to cook up the legendary "philosopher's stone" that would convert base metals into gold.

You'll come up with more if you Google "Newton alchemy" (without the quote marks).

E-

___

Edited November 18, 2007 by Ellen Stuttle

[BaalChatzaf]

It has been done. See Dark Matter: the private life of Sir Isaac Newton by Philip Kerr.

Thank you for the lead. I have ordered the book through amazon.com.

There is another novel -The Sot-Weed Factor- by John Barth, which gives the texture of flavor of London around the same time period. A very interesting, if un-hygienic place to be. London after the Restoration sounds like a place to have fun, if one could stand the odor. Some of the smartest people who ever lived lived there and then.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Ellen Stuttle]

Speaking of the gravitational force, someone forwarded me this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311952,00.html

Any comments, DF, if you have time to look at the links? (I haven't looked yet.)

Ellen

___

[BaalChatzaf]

Speaking of the gravitational force, someone forwarded me this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311952,00.html

Any comments, DF, if you have time to look at the links? (I haven't looked yet.)

Ellen

___

I hope Lisi is on the right track. You will notice that Lisi is not surfing his way back to Newton or Aristotle. That is good news. He is guided by his mathematical Muse and does not seem be hung up with metaphysical nonsense and krapdoodle. Good luck to him! The problems of physics will be solved by physicists and NOT philosophers.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Mike Hardy]

Ellen, this stuff about manuscripts shockingly reappearing reminds me of the

recent publicity (since about 1998) concerning the Archimedes Palimpsest.

I guess I'd heard that Newton's anti-trinitarian writings didn't become

publicly known until Keynes announced them in the '30s, but I hadn't heard

most of the stuff you wrote. -- Mike

[Mike Hardy]

Speaking of the gravitational force, someone forwarded me this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311952,00.html

I'd heard of this thing only a few days ago. I remember all the publicity last

March about E8. Very unusual for research in mathematics to dominate the

front page of a section of the New York Times. I came across the name of

Marcus du Sautoy, who is quoted as commenting on this, for quite different

reasons recently. Small world and all that..... -- Mike Hardy

[Mike Hardy]

Speaking of the gravitational force, someone forwarded me this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311952,00.html

Any comments, DF, if you have time to look at the links? (I haven't looked yet.)

Ellen

___

BTW, am I the only one who thinks physicists make themselves ridiculous by

using the term "theory of everything"? I think they obviously ought to choose

a more difnified term. -- Mike Hardy

[BaalChatzaf]

BTW, am I the only one who thinks physicists make themselves ridiculous by

using the term "theory of everything"? I think they obviously ought to choose

a more dignified term. -- Mike Hardy

The physicists are being playful. Dignity and $1.67 will get you a small cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Theory of Everything means a single theory which accounts for the four know interactions (or forces), the electromagnetic, the strong force, the weak force and gravitation. As of now the electromagnetic force and the weak force have been unified.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak

This describes the Standard Model of the Electroweak Force

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Ellen Stuttle]

I think they obviously ought to choose a more difnified term. -- Mike Hardy

Physicists leave difnity to mathematicians -- ES

___

[BaalChatzaf]

I think they obviously ought to choose a more difnified term. -- Mike Hardy

Physicists leave dignity to mathematicians -- ES

___

Can you picture Richard Feynman dignified? When he got his Nobel Prize I bet he had to be put in his formal clothes with a shoehorn. I read somewhere that Feynman did not want to go to Stockholm to get the Prize. Formal affairs tended to bore him.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Ellen Stuttle]

I think they obviously ought to choose a more difnified term. -- Mike Hardy

Physicists leave dignity [bob's correction of "difnity"] to mathematicians -- ES

___

Groan. Why'd ya go and correct the misspelling, huh? Did you not see that I was poking fun at the misspelling by Dr. Hardy, mathematician and grammarian extraordinaire?

"a more diFnified term"

"diFnity"

Mike Hardy and I amuse each other with these sorts of things.

Ellen

___

[Brant Gaede]

I think they obviously ought to choose a more difnified term. -- Mike Hardy

Physicists leave dignity to mathematicians -- ES

___

Can you picture Richard Feynman dignified? When he got his Nobel Prize I bet he had to be put in his formal clothes with a shoehorn. I read somewhere that Feynman did not want to go to Stockholm to get the Prize. Formal affairs tended to bore him.

Ba'al Chatzaf

If you quote you quote as written, errors and all.

--Brant

[Alfonso Jones]

I think they obviously ought to choose a more difnified term. -- Mike Hardy

Physicists leave difnity to mathematicians -- ES

___

They (physicists) may leave it to mathematicians, but the mathematicians seldom pick it up. Speaking as a career academic with a PhD in a field of mathematics, I can say that most of my colleagues avoid suits, formal occasions and such at almost any cost. If I wear a suit, it means that someone is getting married, someone died, or a very important occasion (let's see . . . when I was named Fellow of the American Statistical Association is one example. Other than that, VERY SELDOM dressing formally.)

Now, attire is only one symptom of "difnity," but the package deal is there. Academics don't often enjoy formal banquets, etc..

Alfonso

[Jonathan]

Would Quentin Daniels, the fuy whom Dafny Taffart hired to reconstruct John Falt's motor, be considered more of a physicist, mathematician or enfineer? He seemed to have a lot of difnity.

J

[Brant Gaede]

Would Quentin Daniels, the fuy whom Dafny Taffart hired to reconstruct John Falt's motor, be considered more of a physicist, mathematician or enfineer? He seemed to have a lot of difnity.

J

fhycist.

--Grent

[BaalChatzaf]

If you quote you quote as written, errors and all.

--Brant

Sorry about that. I have been watching too many -Monk- reruns lately. I think OCD may be contagious.

Ba'al Chatzaf