Author: David Berlinski Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 0684843927 Category : Physicists Languages : en Pages : 250
Book Description
In this portrait of scientist Isaac Newton, the author explores Newton's childhood, his intellectual competitions, his political escapades, and how his discoveries "unlocked the system of the world".
Author: Carl Djerassi Publisher: Imperial College Press ISBN: 9781860943904 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 194
Book Description
?What purpose is served by showing that England's greatest natural philosopher is flawed ? like other mortals?? asks one of the characters in Newton's Darkness. ?We need unsullied heroes ? But what if the hero is sullied? At stake is an issue that is as germane today as it was 300 years ago: a scientist's ethics must not be divorced from scientific accomplishments. There is probably no other scientist of whom so many biographies and other historical analyses have been published than Isaac Newton ? all of them in the standard format of documentary prose because of their didactic purpose to transmit historical information. Newton's Darkness, however, illuminates the darker aspects of Newton's persona through two historically grounded plays dealing with two of the bitterest struggles in the history of science.The name of Isaac Newton appears in virtually every survey of the public's choice for the most important persons of the second millennium. Yet the term ?darkness? can be applied to much of Newton's personality. Adjectives that have been used to describe facets of his personality include ?remote?, ?lonely?, ?secretive?, ?introverted?, ?melancholic?, ?humorless?, ?puritanical?, ?cruel?, ?vindictive? and, perhaps worst of all, ?unforgiving?. The trait most relevant to the present book is Newton's obsessively competitive nature, which was often out of proportion to the warranted facts, as demonstrated in three of Newton's best-known bitter conflicts: with the physicist Robert Hooke, the astronomer royal John Flamsteed, and a German contemporary of almost equal intellectual prowess, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ? the last fight eventually turning into an England vs Continental Europe competition. It is two of these three relentless drawn-out battles that are illuminated in Newton's Darkness in the form of historically grounded drama.After a summary of the historical evidence, the book starts with the Newton-Hooke struggle (Chapter 2), which was conducted mano a mano, and is then followed by little-known aspects of the Newton-Leibniz confrontation (Chapter 3), which was fought largely through surrogates ? notably the infamous, anonymous committee of 11 Fellows of the Royal Society.
Author: Ivars Peterson Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 0716723964 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 341
Book Description
With his critically acclaimed best-sellers The Mathematical Tourism and Islands of Truth, Ivars Peterson took readers to the frontiers of modern mathematics. His new book provides an up-to-date look at one of science's greatest detective stories: the search for order in the workings of the solar system. In the late 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton provided what astronomers had long sought: a seemingly reliable way of calculating planetary orbits and positions. Newton's laws of motion and his coherent, mathematical view of the universe dominated scientific discourse for centuries. At the same time, observers recorded subtle, unexpected movements of the planets and other bodies, suggesting that the solar system is not as placid and predictable as its venerable clock work image suggests. Today, scientists can go beyond the hand calculations, mathematical tables, and massive observational logs that limited the explorations of Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and others. Using supercomputers to simulate the dynamics of the solar system, modern astronomers are learning more about the motions they observe and uncovering some astonishing examples of chaotic behavior in the heavens. Nonetheless, the long-term stability of the solar system remains a perplexing, unsolved issue, with each step toward its resolution exposing additional uncertainties and deeper mysteries. To show how our view of the solar system has changed from clocklike precision to chaos and complexity, Newton's Clock describes the development of celestial mechanics through the ages - from the star charts of ancient navigators to the seminal discoveries of the 17th century from the crucial work of Poincare to thestartling, sometimes controversial findings and theories made possible by modern mathematics and computer simulations. The result makes for entertaining and provocative reading, equal parts science, history and intellectual adventure.
Author: J. E. McGuire Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521530668 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 536
Book Description
Isaac Newton wrote the manuscript Questiones quaedam philosophicae at the very beginning of his scientific career. This small notebook thus affords rare insight into the beginnings of Newton's thought and the foundations of his subsequent intellectual development. The Questiones contains a series of entries in Newton's hand that range over many topics in science, philosophy, psychology, theology, and the foundations of mathematics. These notes, written in English, provide a very detailed picture of Newton's early interests, and record his critical appraisal of contemporary issues in natural philosophy. Written predominantly in 1664-5, they give a significant perspective on Newton's thought just prior to his annus mirabilis, 1666. This volume provides a complete transcription of the Questiones, together with an 'expansion' into modern English, and a full editorial commentary on the content and significance of the notebook in the development of Newton's thought. It will be essential reading for all those interested in Newton and the intellectual foundations of science.
Author: Colin Pask Publisher: Prometheus Books ISBN: 1616147466 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 530
Book Description
Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg has written that "all that has happened since 1687 is a gloss on the Principia." Now you too can appreciate the significance of this stellar work, regarded by many as the greatest scientific contribution of all time. Despite its dazzling reputation, Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or simply the Principia, remains a mystery for many people. Few of even the most intellectually curious readers, including professional scientists and mathematicians, have actually looked in the Principia or appreciate its contents. Mathematician Pask seeks to remedy this deficit in this accessible guided tour through Newton's masterpiece. Using the final edition of the Principia, Pask clearly demonstrates how it sets out Newton's (and now our) approach to science; how the framework of classical mechanics is established; how terrestrial phenomena like the tides and projectile motion are explained; and how we can understand the dynamics of the solar system and the paths of comets. He also includes scene-setting chapters about Newton himself and scientific developments in his time, as well as chapters about the reception and influence of the Principia up to the present day.
Author: Kathryn Lasky Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) ISBN: 1466896949 Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 52
Book Description
Famed for his supposed encounter with a falling apple that inspired his theory of gravity, Isaac Newton (1642–1727) grew from a quiet and curious boy into one of the most influential scientists of all time. Newton's Rainbow tells the story of young Isaac—always reading, questioning, observing, and inventing—and how he eventually made his way to Cambridge University, where he studied the work of earlier scientists and began building on their accomplishments. This colorful picture book biography celebrates Newton's discoveries that illuminated the mysteries of gravity, motion, and even rainbows, discoveries that gave mankind a new understanding of the natural world, discoveries that changed science forever.
Author: Publisher: History Press Limited ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 170
Book Description
Newton's Notebook is a biography of the great man, but a biography with a difference. As you would expect, it provides a full and detailed account of Newton's life and discoveries, but it is written, designed and illustrated to look like - as the title suggests - a personal notebook or journal.By mining the rich sources of his own journals and incorporating a wide range of quotations and primary sources, Newton's Notebook brings its subject to life more vividly than any ordinary history book or biography, revealing the man who 'discovered' gravity. Additional chapters examine Newton's early life and education, his achievements in mathematics and optics, the publication of the Principia and the long-term impact of his revolutionary theories.
Author: Dr D Sudhir Publisher: Haneul Publication ISBN: 8194777720 Category : Antiques & Collectibles Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
"This book is very unique in the sense of its metaphoric syllables and analogies. It has 21 evolving chapters for 21st century. Each chapter elucidates life’s fundamental theories for easy comprehension. This book has deep dived into the spiritual aura of people‘s mind. Author has assayed to inculcate mathematical analogies and algorithms to the metaphoric concepts. He believes, Readers love to pick up any chapter and read at their leisure to rejoice. Precisely, this book deduces behaviourial science, laced with spiritual overtones."
Author: Will Adams Publisher: Opalmaze Ltd ISBN: Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 529
Book Description
Luke Hayward is adrift. Blacklisted out of academia, he is in no position to refuse when a client asks for his expert help in recovering some lost Isaac Newton papers. But a chance discovery in a dusty attic plunges Luke into a race to uncover the truth behind some seemingly random scribblings - a race which pits Luke against a fundamentalist madman with dangerously powerful friends. Luke discovers connections between Oxford, London and the Old City of Jerusalem in a breathless chase to uncover a secret hidden in the eccentric ramblings of a mathematical genius; a secret that, in the wrong hands, could be used to spark the holy war to end all holy wars…
Author: Phillip Bricker Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 9780262023016 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
These original essays explore the philosophical implications of Newton's work. They address a wide range of topics including Newton's influence on his contemporaries and successors such as Locke and Kant, and his views on the methodology of science, on absolute space and time, and on the Deity.Howard Stein compares Newton's refusal to lock natural philosophy into a preexisting system with the more rigid philosophical predilections of his near-contemporaries Christian Huygens and John Locke. Richard Arthur's commentary provides a useful gloss on Stein's essay. Lawrence Sklar puzzles over Newton's attempts to provide a unified treatment of the various "real quantities": absolute space, time, and motion. According to Phillip Bricker's responding essay, however, the distinctions Sklar draws do not go to the heart of the debate between realists and representationalists.J. E. McGuire and John Carriero debate Newtons views of the relationship between the Deity and the nature of time and space. Peter Achinstein looks at the tension between Newton's methodological views and his advocacy of a corpuscular theory of light; he suggests that Newton could justify the latter by a "weak" inductive inference, but R.I.G. Hughes believes that this inference involves an induction Newton would be unwilling to make. Immanuel Kant's critique of Newton's view of gravity is discussed and amplified by Michael Friedman In response, Robert DiSalle raises a number of problems for Friedman's analysis. Errol Harris and Philip Grier extend the discussion to the present day and look at the ethical implications of Newton's work.Phillip Bricker is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. R.I.G. Hughes is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina. Philosophical Perspectives on Newtonian Science is included in the Johns Hopkins Series on the History and Philosophy of Science.
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Author: David Berlinski
Author: Carl Djerassi
Author: Ivars Peterson
Author: J. E. McGuire
Author: Colin Pask
Author: Kathryn Lasky
Author: 
Author: Dr D Sudhir 
Author: Will Adams
Author: Phillip Bricker