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Show THE UNIVERSITY JOURNAL• SOUTHERN UTAH UNlVEllSJTY • 1RIDAY, DECEMIER6, 1996 FO,CUS: THE CENTURIUM COMMEMORATING THE DECEMBER 6, 1996 UNVEILING AT SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY OF THE STATUE OF ISAAC NEWTON . - . - - . . - - o take the measure of a man whose contributions to science are almost without equal is a formidable task at best. To attempt to do so in a few pages about him is most intimidating, especially when that man is Isaac Newton. One of the most respected biographers of Newton, Richard Westfall, fo und that the result of his 20-yca r study of Newton served onl y to convince him that with Newton there is no measure- he is simply incomparable. He became for Westfall " one of a tiny handful of supreme geniuses who have shaped the human intcllcct."Einstcin, who credited N ewton for launching him on the road to his discovery of relativity, said of Newton, "N ature to him was an open book, whose letters he would read without effort." A review of Newton's life and work reveals a person of complex though t and feeling. As professor Andrade has pointed out, Newton was of the world, and yet not of it. He was a supreme practitioner of the exact sciences, yet he was at heart a mystic. He was high-minded in his principles, yet he could be petty and quarrelsome in his dealings with fri ends as well as perceived enemies. He was a modest man, but could be overbearing. He was suspicious, sensitive, and shrinking, yet effective in conducting public affairs. He was capable of arousing admiration, respect, even reverence, yet seemed incapable of warm human affection. He mixed readily with people, especially after his move to London, yet he remained withdrawn, reluctantly yielding the secrets he had guarded all his life. Because Newton's career was full of so many beginnings and cessations, with periods of complete abandonment from scientific studies, it is not particularl y helpful to approach him chronologically. A more meaningful way of presenting him will be to look first at science as Newton inherited it, then at the reputation he enjoys, at some significant incidents in his career, at his writings of both a scientific and a nonscientific type, and, finall y, at his two principle works for an appreciation of their importance. Westfall's extraordinaril y high opinion of Newton is shared by those who know him best- the members of the scientific community. In his lifetime, N ewton published only two major works, the Principia and the Opticks. The Principia is considered by most men of science to be the greatest scientific book ever written, one of the most prodigious feats of the human intellect. Newton's importance can be appreciated by considering that the world after the publication of the Prin cipia was never again seen in the same way his predecessors viewed it. Moreover, because of the universal ....... (1642-1727) Jta/;{U/ & foy ~ 0 / ' I / ifea:u& glfPW Woef significance of his discovery of universal gravitation it is argued that the quality of human thought was changed as was human experience itself. Of the Opticks it has been asserted that as a record of experiment and deduction from experiment, it reigns supreme. But, it is in the Principia, a shortened title of The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy that Newton set forth his ideas about the motion of celestial bodies and universal gravitation. One of the most remarkable incidents in the history of science is the rapid progress of astronomy in the 150year period from Copernicus to Newton (1530-1684 ). Between Copernicus' revolutionary idea that the earth was a small planet in the solar system, and Newton' s conception of gravity as the force that holds the universe together, there appeared significant contributions by Kepler, Brahe, and Galileo. There was a marvelous degree of cooperation among those five principle investigators of the new cosmology, and it is not wholly insignificant that all five of them were of different nationalities. Newton's great contribution was his selective combination of the work of his predecessorsknown today as the Newtonian Synthesis. It remains the most significant achievement of his life. Not everyone, of course, believed in the geocentric theory of the universe developed by Ptolemy, with its cycles and epicycles accounting for the motions of celestial bodies observed from earth. Still, no serious movement to displace that system was made for fifteen hundred years; and it is a remarkable departure from the Ptolemaic system to that of Copernicus, who argued that not only was the earth simply a planet in the solar system, but that it moved. It was in the treatment of motion that N ewton made one of his greatest contributions. By his time, the scientific community was substantially in agreement about Rene Descartes' qualitative dualism-that is, that there are two things in the universe qualitatively distinct from one another-matter which moves and mind which thinks. Scientists disregarded the latter and concentrated on the former-matter (atoms) in motion. Newton's breathtaking accomplishment lay in his conviction that the whole physical universe is subject to the same law of gravitation and the same laws of motion. In his search for a mechanical explanation for the motion of the planets, he hit on gravitation as the glue that held the universe together. He took the name from the Latin word "gravitas,"which means " weight,"or "heaviness. " Until the 17th century, knowledge was considered to be largely the product of pure thought; and the thinker most respected in the western world was Aristotle. His encyclopedic writings, which had been preserved by the Arabs, were translated into Latin between 1200 and 1225, and were read with great enthusiasm by scholars through out Europe. But new knowl edge was a lmost always approached in a way that discounted observation and experimentation. So, instead of asking, "How does \jght expres s itself?"the philosophers w ould ask, "What is the nature of light? "-a completely different kind of question . It might well be that the powers of deduction by m en like Galileo, N ewton, and Einstein make induction secondary. All three men had an almost uncanny power of perceiving scientific truths before they proved them. It has been said that Newton' s preeminence was due to his ability to employ the " muscles of his intuition, whi ch were " the strongest and most enduring with which a man has ever been gifted." He had the rare ability of holding a mental problem in his mind until he had "seen straight through it." 11 ven the most superficial review of Newton's life and works makes it abundantly clear that Newton possessed one of the greatest minds that science has produced; and perhaps no one has captured the majesty of that mind more eloquently than Wordsworth, who speaks of " Newton with his prism and his silent face,"and " his mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought alone." One of the most compressed and satisfying summaries of Newton's importance reads as follows: "His brilliant and revolutionary contribution to science explained the working of a large part of inanimate nature in mathematical terms and suggested that the remainder might be understood in a similar fashion. By taking known facts, forming a theory that explained them in mathematical terms, deducing consequences from the theory, and comparing the results with the observed and experimental facts, he united for the first time the explanation of physical phenomena with the means of prediction-in the process converting physics from mere science of exploration into a general mathematical system." (continued on page 10) |