Jed Buchwald: Isaac Newton and the Philosophy of Science | Lex Fridman Podcast #214

the following is a conversation with jed. buckwald a professor of history and a. philosopher of science at caltech. interested especially in the development. of scientific concepts and the. instruments used to create and explore. new effects and ideas in science. to support this podcast please check out. our sponsors in the description. this is the lex friedman podcast and. here is my conversation with jed. buckwald.

the science progress. via paradigm shifts and uh revolutions. as philosopher thomas kuhn said or does. it progress gradually what do you think. well i got into this field because i was. tom coons research assistant 50 years. ago 52 years ago. he pulled me into it out of physics. instead. so i know his work pretty well and in. the years when i was at mit running an. institute. he was then in the philosophy department.

used to come over all the time. to the talks we held and so on. so what would i say about that he of. course developed his ideas a lot over. the years yes the thing that he's famous. for the. structure of scientific revolutions came. out in 62. and um. as you just said it offered. an outline for what he called a. paradigmatic structure namely the notion. that. you have to look at what scientists do.

is forming a community of investigators. and that they're trying to solve various. puzzles as he would put it that crop up. figuring out how this works how that. works and so on and of course they don't. do it out of the blue they do it within. a certain framework the framework can be. pretty vague. he called it a paradigm. and his notion was that eventually they. run into troubles or what he called. anomalies that kind of cracks things.

somebody new comes along with a. different way of doing it etc do i think. things work that way no not really. tom and i used to have lengthy. discussions about that over the years. i do think there is a common structure. that formulates both theoretical and. experimental practices. and historians nowadays of science like. to refer to scientific work as what. scientists practice it's uh almost.

craftsmen like. they can usually adapt in various ways. and i can give you all kinds of examples. of that i. once wrote a book on the origins of wave. theory of light and that is one of the. paradigmatic examples that tom used only. it didn't work that way. exactly because he thought that what. happened was. that the. wave theory ran into trouble with a.

certain phenomenon which it couldn't. crack. well it turned out that in fact. historically that phenomenon was. actually um. not relevant. later on to the wave theory and when the. wave theory came in. the alternative to it which had. prevailed which was newton's views of. light as particles. that it seemed couldn't explain what the. wave theory could explain again not true.

not true and much more complex than that. the wave theory offered the opportunity. to deploy. novel experimental and mathematical. structures which gave younger. scientists mathematicians and others the. opportunity to. effect. manufacture make. new sorts of devices. it's not that the alternative couldn't. sort of explain these things but it. never was able to generate them.

de novo as novelties in other words if. you think of it as something scientists. want to. progress in the sense of finding new. stuff to solve. then i think what often happens is is. that it's not so much that the. prevailing view can't crack something as. that it doesn't give you the opportunity. to do new stuff. when you say new stuff are we referring. to experimental science here or new. stuff in the space of uh new theories. could be both it could be both actually.

so how does that can maybe elaborate a. little bit on the story of the wave. sure. the prevailing view of light. at least in france where the wave theory. really first took off although it had. been introduced in england by thomas. young the prevailing theory dates back. to newton that light is a stream of. particles and that refraction and. reflection involve sort of repulsive and. attractive forces. that deflect and bend the paths of these.

particles. newton was not able successfully to deal. with the phenomenon of. what happens when light goes past a. knife's edge or a sharp edge what we now. call diffraction. he had. cooked up something about it that no. mathematical structure could be applied. thomas young first but really this guy. named augustan fernell in france. deployed. in fresnel's case rather advanced.

calculus forms. of mathematics which enabled. computations to be done. and observations to be melded with these. computations. in a way that you could not do or see. how to do with newton did that mean that. the newtonian explanation of what goes. on and diffraction fails. not really you can you can actually. make it work but you can't generate.

anything new out of it whereas. using the mathematics of wave optics in. respect to a particular phenomenon. called polarization. which ironically was discovered by. partisans of newton's way of doing. things. you were able to generate devices. which reflect light in crystals do. various things. that the newtonian way. could accommodate only after the fact.

they couldn't generate it from the. beginning and so if you want to be. somebody who is working a novel vein. which increasingly becomes the case with. uh. people who become what we now call. physicists in the 1820s 30s and 40s. in particular then that's the direction. you're going to go but there were. holdouts until the 1850s. i want to try to elaborate on the nature. of the disagreement you have with thomas. kuhn so do you still believe in paradigm.

shifts do you still see that there is. ideas that really have a. transformational effect on science. you just the nature of the disagreement. has to do with how those. paradigm shifts come to be. how they come to be and how they change. i certainly think they exist. how strong they may be at any given time. is maybe not quite as powerful as tom. thought in general. although towards the end of his life he.

was beginning to develop uh different uh. modifications. of his original way of thinking. but i don't think that the changes. happen quite so. neatly if you will in reaction to um. novel experimental observations making. much more complex than that. in terms of neatness. how much of science progresses by. individual lone geniuses.

and how much by the messy collaboration. of competing and. cooperating humans. i don't think you can cut. that. with a knife to say it's this percent. and that percent. it's. almost always the case that there are. one or two or maybe three. individuals. who. are sort of central.

to what goes on when things begin to. shift. are they inevitably and solely. responsible for what then. begins to happen. um in a major way i think not. it depends you can go. very far back with this. even into antiquity to see what goes on. um. the locus the major locus we always talk. about from the beginning is if you're.

talking about galileo's work on motion. for example. uh were there ways of accommodating it. that others could adapt to without. buying into the whole scheme yes. did it eventually evolve and start. convincing people because you could also. do other things with it that you. couldn't otherwise do. also yes let me give you an example the. great french mathematician philosopher. descartes.

who uh was a mechanical philosopher he. believed the world was. matter in motion he never thought much. of what galileo had done in respect to. motion. because he thought well at best it's. some sort of approximative scheme or. something like that. but one of his. initial. i wouldn't call him a disciple but. follower who then broke with him in a. number of ways was a man named christian. huygens who was along with newton one of. the two greatest. scientists of the 17th century.

huygens is older than newton and huygens. nicely deployed galilean relationships. in respect to motion to develop all. sorts of things including the first. pendulum governed. clock. and even figured out how to build one. which is keeps perfect time except it. didn't work but he had the mathematical. structure for it how well known as. huygens oh very well known should i be.

should i know him well yes you should. interesting you should definitely know. him no no no no no can we can we define. should here okay because i don't. right. um so uh so this should like uh. uh. yeah can you define should. should means this. um. if you had taken up to a second year of. physics courses you should you would. have heard his name because one of the. fundamental principles and optics is.

called huygens principle. okay okay yeah so i have and i have i. heard his name there you go no but i. don't remember but you don't remember so. i mean there's there's a very different. thing. between names attached to principles and. laws and so on that you sometimes let go. of you just remember the equations of. the principles themselves and the. personalities of science and there's. certain personalities certain human. beings that stand out. and that's why there is a sense to which.

the lone inventor the lone scientist is. the way. i personally mean i think a lot of. people think about the history of. science is these lone geniuses without. them the senses if you remove newton. from the picture if you remove galileo. from the picture. then science would. there's almost a feeling like it would. just have stopped there. or at the very least. there's a feeling like it would take. much longer to develop the things that. were developed is that a silly way to.

look at the history that's not entirely. incorrect i suppose um. i. find it difficult to believe that had. galileo not existed that eventually. someone like huygens for instance given. the context of the times. what was floating around. in the belief structure concerning the. nature of the world and so on the. developments in mathematics and whatnot.

that sooner or later. whether it would have been exactly the. same or not i cannot say but would. things have evolved yes. if we look at the long arc of history of. science. from from uh back when we were in the. caves. trying to knock two rocks together. or maybe make a basic tool. to.

a long time from now many centuries from. now when human civilization finally. destroys itself if you look at that. history. and imagine you're a historian. at the end. like with the fire of the apocalypse. coming upon us. and you look back at this time in the. 21st century how far along are we on. that arc. do you do you sense. have we invented and discovered. everything that's to be discovered or. are we at like below one percent.

well. you're going to get a lot of absurd. questions today i apologize it's a. lugubrious picture you're. painting there i don't even know what. the word. is but i love it. well um. let me try and separate the question of. whether we're all going to die in an. apocalypse in several hundred years or. not. um. from the question of where science may. be sitting take this consumption. okay.

um. i find that hard to say. and i find it hard to say. because. in the deepest sense of the term. as it's usually deployed by philosophers. of science today i'm not fundamentally a. realist that is to say i think our. access. to. the. inner workings. of nature is inevitably mediated.

by what we can do. with. the materials. and factors around us we can probe. things in various ways does that mean. that i don't think that the. you know the standard model in quantum. electrodynamics is in of course not. uh i wouldn't even dream of saying such. a thing it can do a lot. especially when it comes to figuring out. what's happening in very large expensive.

particle accelerators. and applying results in cosmology and so. on as well. do i think that we have inevitably. probed the depths of reality through. this i do not agree with stephen. weinberg who thinks we have. about such things. do i on the other hand think that. the way in which science has been moving. for the last 100 years physics in. particular is what i have in mind.

uh will continue on the same course. in that sense i don't because we're not. going to be building bigger and bigger. and more and more expensive. machines to rip apart particles in. various ways. in which case what are physicists going. to do they'll turn their attention to. other aspects there are all sorts of. things we've never explained. about the material world we don't have. theories that. go beyond a certain point for all sorts.

of things. we can can we for example start with the. standard model and work our way up all. the way to chemical. transformations you can make an argument. about it. and you can justify things but that's in. chemistry that's not the way people work. they work with much higher level quantum. mechanical relationships and so on. so this notion of the deep theory to. explain everything. is.

a. long-standing belief. which goes back pretty far although i. think it only takes its fullest form. sometime in towards the end of the 19th. century so maybe we just speak to that. you're referring to. a hope a dream a reality of coming up. with a theory of everything that. explains everything. so there's a very specific thing that. that currently means in physics. as the unification of the laws of.

physics. but. i'm sure in antiquity or before it meant. maybe something else or is it always. about physics because i mean i think as. you've kind of implied. in physics there's a sense once you get. to the theory of everything you've. understood everything but there's a very. deep sense in which you've actually. understood not very much at all. you've understood at that particular. level how things work but you don't. understand how the abstractions on top. of abstractions form all the way to the.

chemistry to the human mind and the. human societies and all those kinds of. things. so uh maybe you can speak to the theory. of everything in its history and and. comment on what the heck does that even. mean the theory of everything. well i don't think you can go back that. far with something like that maybe to. the at best to the 17th century if you. go back all the way in antiquity there. are of course discussions about. the nature of the world. but first of all.

you have to. have to recognize. that the manipulative character of. physics and chemistry. the probing of. let me put it this way. we assume. and have assumed for a long time. i'll come back to when in a moment. that if i take. a little device which is really. complicatedly made out of all kinds of. things.

and i put a piece of some material in it. and i monkey around with it and do all. kinds of unnatural things to it things. that wouldn't happen. and i find out how it behaves and what. not and then i try and make an argument. about how that really applies even in. the natural world without any artificial. structures and so on that's not a belief. that was widely held. by pretty much anyone until sometime.

maybe in the 1500s and when it was first. held it was held by people we now call. alchemists. so alchemy was the first the early days. of the theory of everything of a dream. of a theory of everything i would put it. a little differently i think it's more. along the way a dream. that by probing nature in. artificially constructed ways we can. find out what's going on deep down there.

so that was that's distinct from science. being an observing thing where you. observe nature and you study nature. you're talking about probing like. messing with nature to understand it. indeed i am and but that of course is. the very essence of experimental science. you have to. you have to manipulate nature. to find out things about it and then you. have to convince.

others. that you haven't so manipulated it that. what you've done is to produce what. amounts to. fake artifactual behavior that doesn't. really hold. purely naturally. so where are we today in your sense. to jump around a little bit with the. theory of everything okay maybe a a. quick kind of uh. sense you have about the journey. in the world of physics that we're. taking towards the theory of everything.

well. i'm of course not a practicing physicist. i mean i was trained in physics at. princeton a long time ago until thomas. coons stole you away. more or less i was taking graduate. courses in those days in general. relativity i was an undergraduate but i. moved up and then i took a course with. him and. well you made the mistake of uh being. compelled by charismatic philosophers. and never looked back. i suppose so in a way. and um.

from what i understand talking. especially to my friends at caltech. uh. like kip thorne. and others the um. the fundamental notion is that actually. the laws that even at the deepest level. we can. sort of divine. and work with in the universe that we. inhabit. are perhaps quite unique. to this particular universe as it formed.

at the big bang. the question is. how deep does it go. if you are very mathematically inclined. the prevailing notion for. several decades now has been what's. called string theory. but. that has not. been able to. figure a way to generate. probative experimental evidence although. it's pretty good apparently at.

accommodating things. and. then the question is you know what's. before the big bang or actually the word. before doesn't mean anything given the. nature of time but. but um. why the why do we have the laws that. prevail in our universe. well there is a notion that those laws. prevail in our universe. because if they didn't we wouldn't be. here.

that's a bit of a cyclical but uh. nevertheless a compelling definition and. there's all kinds of things like. the. it seems like the unification of those. laws could be discovered by looking. inside of a black hole because you get. both the general relativity and the. quantum mechanics quantum field theory. in there. uh experimentally of course there's a. lot of interesting ideas we can't really. look close to the big bang can look that. far back. this caltech and mit will lie go look. into gravitational waves perhaps allows.

us to march backwards and so on yeah. it's really exciting space and there's. of course. the theory of everything like with a lot. of things in science captivates the. dreams of those who are perhaps. completely outside of science it's the. dream of discovering the key to how the. you know the nature of. how everything works. and that feels uh. that feels deeply human. that's perhaps the thing the. the basic. elements of what makes up a scientist in.

the end is that curiosity that longing. to understand. let me ask you mentioned a disagreement. with weinberg on. reality. could you elaborate a little bit. well i. obviously i don't disagree with steve. weinberg on physics itself i wouldn't. know enough to even begin to do that. and clearly you know he's one of the. founders of the standard model and so on. and it works.

to a level of accuracy that no physical. theory has ever worked at before. i suppose the question in my mind is. something that. in one way could go back to the. philosopher immanuel kunt in the 18th. century namely can we really ever. convince ourselves. that we have. come to grips. with something that is.

not in itself. knowable. to us. by our senses. or even except in the most remote way. through the complex instruments that we. make. as to what it is that underlies. everything can we corral it. with mathematics and experimental. structures yes. uh do i think that a particular way of. corralling nature. will inevitably play itself out.

i don't know. it always has. i'll put it to you that way. um. so the basic question is. can we. no. reality. is that the the con question is that the. weinberg. question. we humans okay with our brains right can. we. comprehend reality. sounds like a very trippy question.

because a lot of it rests on definitions. of uh no and comprehend and reality but. get to the bottom of it. like it's it's turtles on top of turtles. can we get to the bottom turtle. well i say hello uh maybe i could um. put it to you this way. in uh. a way that i we often i often begin. discussions in a class on. uh the history of.

science and so on. and say i'm looking at you. yes. um you are in fact a figment of my. imagination. you have a messed up imagination yes. well what do i mean by that. if i were a dragonfly. looking at you. whatever my nervous system would form. by way of. a perceptual structure.

would is clearly be utterly different. from what. my brain. and perceptual system altogether is. forming. when i look at you. who's right. is it me or the dragonfly. well the dragonfly is certainly very. impressive so i don't know but yes it's. uh the observer matters.

well how does what is that supposed to. tell us about objective reality well i. think it means that. it's very difficult to get beyond. the constructs. that our perceptual system is leading us. to when we make apparatus and devices. and so on we're still making things. the results of which are the outputs of. which we process perceptually in various.

ways. and an analogy i like to use with the. students sometimes is this all right. they all have their laptops open in. front of them of course okay. and um i've sent them. something to read. and i say okay click on it and open it. up so pdf opens up i said what are you. looking at. i said well i'm looking at you know the. paper that you sent me. i said no you're not. what you're looking at is a stream of.

light coming off leds or lcds coming off. a screen. and and i said what happens when you use. your mouse and move that. fake piece of paper on the screen around. what are you doing you're not moving a. piece of paper around are you you're. moving a construct around. a construct that's being processed so. that our perceptual system can interact. with it in the way we interact with. pieces of paper yes but it's not.

real. so. are there things outside the reach of. science. can you maybe. as an example. talk about consciousness i'm asking for. a friend trying to figure this thing out. well boy i mean i i. i read a fair bit about that but i. certainly don't. can't really say much about it.

i'm a materialist. in the deepest sense of the term i don't. think there is anything out there. except material structures which. interact. in various ways do i think for example. that this bottle of water is conscious. no i do not. although how would i know i can't talk. to it. yeah but so what do it's a hypothesis. you have it's an opinion an educated. opinion that may be very wrong well i.

know that you're conscious because i can. interact directly with you but am i. well unless you're a figment of my. imagination of course nor or i'm a robot. that's able to generate the illusion uh. yes the illusion of consciousness. effectively enough to facilitate a good. conversation because we humans do want. to pretend that we're talking to other. conscious beings that's how we respect. them if it's not conscious we don't. respect them we're not good at talking. to robots that's true of course we. generalize from our own inner sense.

which is the kind of thing descartes. said uh from the beginning and we. generalize from that but i do think that. consciousness must be. something whatever it is that occurs as. a result of some particular. organizational structure of. material. elements does materialism mean that it's. all within. within the reach of science. my sense would be that.

especially as. neuroscience. progresses more and more and at caltech. we just built a whole neuroscience. arena and so on and as. more knowledge is gained about the ways. in which. animals. when they behave. what patterns show up at various parts. of the brain and nervous system. and perhaps extending it to humans. eventually as well.

we'll get more of a handle. on what brain activity is associated. with. uh experiences. that. we have as humans can we move from the. brain activity to the experiences. in terms of our person no you can't. perception is perception. that's the hypothesis once again. maybe maybe the.

maybe consciousness is just one of the. laws of physics that's yet to be. discovered. maybe it permeates all matter. maybe it's. maybe it's as simple as trying to plug. it in and um. plug into. the ability to generate and control that. kind of law of physics that would crack. open. where we would understand that the wa. that the bottled water is in fact. conscious just much less conscious than. us humans and then we would be able to. then generate uh beings that are more.

conscious. well that'll be unfortunate i'd have to. stop drinking the water after that. every time you take it take a sip. there's a little bit of a. suffering going on right. what to use the most. interesting beautiful moments in the. history of science what stands out right. and then we can pull at that thread. right. well i like to think of. events that have. a major impact and involve both.

beautiful. conceptual. mathematical. if we're talking physical structures. work and are associated as well with. probing. experimental. situations. so um among my favorites is one of the. most famous. which was the young isaac newton's. with the colors produced when you pass. sunlight through a prism.

and why do i like that. it's not profoundly mathematical in one. sense it doesn't need it initially it. needs the following though which begins. to show you i think a little bit about. what gets involved when you've got a. smart individual who's trying to monkey. around with stuff and finds new things. about it. first let me say that the the notion the. prevailing notion going back to. antiquity was that um. colors are produced in a sense by.

modifying or tinting. white light that they're modifications. of white light in other words the colors. are not in the sunlight in any way. okay. now. what newton did following experiments. done by descartes before him who came to. very different conclusions. he took a prism. you might ask where do you get prisms in. the you know 1660s. county fairs they were very popular they.

were pretty crude with bubbles in them. and everything but they produced colors. so you could buy them at county fairs. and things very popular oh so they were. modifying the white light. well to create colors they were. creating colors from it well known. um. and what he did was the following he was. by this time even though he's very young. a very good mathematician. and he could use the. then known laws for how light behaves. when it goes through glass.

to calculate what should happen. if you took light from the sun passed it. from a hole through a little hole. then hit the prism. goes out of the prism goes strikes a. wall a long distance away and makes a. splash of light never mind the colors. for a moment makes a splash of light. there he was very smart. first of all. he abstracts from the colors themselves. even though that's what everybody's. paying attention to initially. and because what he knows is this he.

knows that if you take this prism. and you turn it to a certain particular. angle that he knew. what it should be because he could. calculate things and. very few other people in europe at the. time could calculate things like he. could. that if you turn the prism to that. particular angle. then the sun which is of course a circle. when its light passes through this. little hole and then into the prism on. the far distant wall.

should still make a circle. but it doesn't. it makes a very long image okay. and this. led him to a very different conception. of light indicating that there are. different types of light in the sunlight. now. to go beyond that what's particularly. interesting i think is the following. when he published uh this paper which. got him into a controversy.

he really didn't describe it all what he. did he just gave you some numbers. now i just told you that you had to set. this prism at a certain angle right. you would think because we do have his. notes and so on. um you would think that he took some. kind of complicated measuring device to. set the prism he didn't. he held it in his hand. that's all and he twiddled it around. and what was he doing it turns out.

that when you twiddle the prism around. at the point where you should get a. circle from a circle. it also is the place where the image. does not move very fast so if you want. to get close to there you just twiddle. it this is manipulative experimentation. taking advantage through his. mathematical knowledge. of the inherent inaccuracies that label. let you come to exact conclusions.

regardless of the built-in problematics. of measurement he's the only one i know. of doing anything like that at the time. yeah. well even still there's very few people. that are able to have to calculate as. well as he did to be a theoretician. and an experimentalist. like in the same moment. right um it's it's true although until.

uh the um. really the. well into the 20th century. maybe the beginning of the 20th century. really. most of the most significant. experimental results. produced in the 1800s. which laid the foundations for light. electricity electrodynamics and so on. even. hydrodynamics and whatnot were also. produced by people who are both.

excellent. calculators uh. very talented mathematicians and good. with their hands experimentally. and then that led to the 21st century. with enrico from me that uh. one of the one of the last people that. was able to do that. both of those things very well and that. uh. he built a little device called an. atomic bomb. that has some positives and negatives.

right of course that actually did. involve some pretty large-scale. elaborate equipment too yeah while. holding a. prism in your hands. right no what uh what's the controversy. that you got into with that paper when. you published it. well i th. in a number of ways it's a complicated. story there was a. very talented character. known as a mechanic mechanic means. somebody who was a craftsman who could. build and make really good stuff and he.

was very talented his name was robert. hook. and he was the guy who. at the weekly meetings of the royal. society in london and newton's not in. london you know he's at cambridge a. young guy he would demonstrate new. things and he was very clever. and he had written a book in fact called. the micrographia which by the way he. used a. microscope. to make the first depictions of things. like a fly's eye the structure of you.

know it had a big influence and in there. he also talked about light and so he had. a different view of light when he read. what newton was. wrote he had a double reaction on the. one hand he said anything in there that. is correct i already knew. and anything. that i didn't already know is probably. not right anyway. i gotta love egos okay can you uh can we. just step back can you say.

who was isaac newton. what are the things he contributed to. this world in the space of ideas. wow uh. who was he. he was born. in. 1642. in. and near the small town of grantham in. england. in fact the house he was born in. and that his mother died in is still. there and can be visited.

his father died. before he was born. and his mother eventually remarried. uh a man named reverend smith whom. newton did not like. at all. uh. because reverend smith took his mother. away to live with him a few miles away. leaving newton to be brought up more or. less by his grandmother. over there and he had huge resentment. about that his.

whole life. i think that gives you a little inkling. that a little bit of trauma in childhood. maybe a complicated father-son. relationship can be useful uh to create. a good scientist. could be although this case it would be. right the you know. absent father non-father relationship. he was known as a kid little that we do. know for uh being very clever about uh. flying kites and. uh there are stories about him putting.

candles and putting. flying kites and scaring the living. devil out of people at night by doing. that and things like that making things. most of the uh. physicists and. natural philosophers i've dealt with. actually. as children were very fond of making and. playing with things. i can't think of one i know of who. wasn't. actually they're very good with their. hands and whatnot. he uh.

was. his mother wanted him to take over the. manor it was a kind of farming manner. they were the class of what are known as. yeomans. there are stories that he wasn't very. good at that. one day one of the stories is he's. sitting out in the field and the cows. come home without him and he doesn't. know what's going anyway. i. had relatives and. he manages to get to cambridge sent to. cambridge because he's known to be smart.

he's read books that he got from local. dignitaries and some relatives. uh and he goes there as what's known as. a sub-sizer what does that mean well. it's not too pleasant basically a. sub-sizer was a student who had to clean. the bedpans of the richer kids. okay right. that didn't last too long. he makes his way. and he becomes absorbed. in some of the new ways of thinking that. are being talked about.

on the parts of descartes and others as. well there's also the traditional. curriculum which he follows and we have. his notes. we have his student notebooks and so on. we can see gradually this young man's. mind. focusing and coming to grips with. deeper questions of the nature of the. world and perception even and how we. know things and also probing and. learning uh. mathematical structures to such an.

extent that he builds on. some of the investigations that had been. done in this. period before him to create the. foundations of a way of investigating. processes that happen and change. continuously instead of by leaps and. bounds and so on forming the foundation. of what we now call the calculus yeah. so. can you maybe just paint a little bit of. a picture you've already started. of.

what were the things that bothered him. the most. that stood out to him. the most about the traditional. curriculum. about the way people saw the world you. mentioned discrete versus continuous is. there something where he began thinking. in a revolutionary way it's because it's. fascinating most of us go to college uh. cambridge or otherwise. and we just kind of take what we hear. as gospel. right like not gospel but um.

as like facts you don't begin to sort of. see how can i expand on this. aggressively your heart how can i. challenge everything. that i hear. like rigorously mathematically. through the i mean i don't even know how. how rigorous the mathematics was at that. point i'm sure it was. geometry and so on no calculus huh. there are elements of what turned into. the calculus that predate newton but how.

much how much rigor was there how much. uh well rigor no. and then of course no scientific method. not really i mean somewhat like. i mean appreciation of data. ah that is a separate question from a. question of method appreciation of data. is a significant question. as to what you do with data there's lots. of things you're asking i apologize so. maybe let's backtrack and the first. question is was there something that was. bothering him that he especially.

thought he could contribute or work on. well of course we can't go back and talk. to him but we do have these student. notebooks there's two of them. one's called the philosophical questions. and the other is called the waste book. the philosophical questions has. discussions of the nature of reality and. various issues concerning it and the. wastebook has things that have to do. with motion in various ways what happens. in. collisions and things of that sort and.

it's a complicated story but what's. among the things that i think are. interesting is he took notes in the. philosophical questions on stuff that. was traditionally. given to you in the curriculums going. back several hundred years namely on. what uh scholars refer to as scholastic. or neo-scholastic. ways of thinking about the world. dating back to the reformulation of. aristotle in the middle ages by thomas.

aquinas in the church this is a totally. different way of thinking about things. which actually connects to something we. were saying a moment ago for instance um. so i'm wearing a blue shirt. and. i will sometimes ask students where is. the blue. and they'll usually so it's in your. shirt. and then some they'll get clear and they. say well no you know light is striking. it photons are re-emitted they strike. the back of your retina and etc etc and.

i said yes. you what that means is that the blue. is actually. an artifact of our perceptual system. considered as. the percept of blue. it's not out there it's in here yeah. right that's not how things were thought. about. well into the 16th century the general. notion. dating back even to aristotelian. antiquity and formalized by the 12th.

century. at the paris. oxford and elsewhere is that qualities. are there in the world. they're not in us. we have senses and our senses can be. wrong. you know you could go blind things like. that. but if they're working properly. you get the actual qualities of the. world now that break. which is. occurring. towards the end of the 16th century and.

is most visible in descartes. is the break between conceiving. that the qualities of the world are very. different. from the qualities that we perceive. that in fact the qualities of the world. consist almost entirely in shapes. of various kinds and. maybe hard particles or whatever. but. not colors not sounds.

not smells. not softness and hardness they're not in. the world they're in us. that break newton is picking up. as he reads descartes he's going to. disagree with a lot in descartes but. that break. he is. among other things picking up very. strongly and that underlies a lot. of the way he works later on when he. becomes skeptical of the evidence. provided by the senses.

yeah that's that's actually i don't know. the way you're describing is so powerful. this makes makes me realize how. liberating that is as a. as a scientist as somebody who's trying. to understand reality. that our senses is just. our senses are not to be trusted. that reality is to be investigated. through. tools that are beyond our senses yes. or that improve our sense improve our.

senses. in some ways. um that's pretty powerful for i mean. that is uh. for a human being. that's like einstein level. for be for a human being to realize you. can't tr i can't trust my own senses at. that time. that's pretty trippy. it's coming in it's coming in and i. think it. it arises probably you know. a fair number of decades before that.

perhaps in part with all chemical. experimentation and manipulations that. you have to go through elaborate. structures to produce things. and ways you think about it. but let me give you an example that you. know i think you might find interesting. because it's from. it involves that guy named hook that. newton had an argument with. and um he had lots of arguments with. hook although hook was a very clever guy. and gave him some things that stimulated.

him later anyway. hook who was argumentative. and he really was convinced that the. only way to gain real knowledge. of nature is through carefully. constructed. devices and he was an expert. mechanic if you will at building such. things now there was a. there was a rather wealthy man. in.

danzig. by the name of hevelius latinized name. he was a brewer in town. and he had become fascinated with the. telescope. this is. 30 years or so 20 or 30 years after the. telescope had moved out and become more. common and he built a large observatory. on the top of his uh brewery actually. and working with his wife. they they. used these very uh elaborate.

reconstructed brass and metal. instruments to make observations of. positions of the stars and he published. a whole new catalog of where the stars. are. and he claimed it was incredibly. accurate. he claimed it was so accurate that. nothing had ever come close to it hook. reads this and he says wait a minute. you. didn't use a telescope here of any kind. because what's the point. unless you do something to the telescope. all you see are dots with stars you just.

use your eye your eyes can't be that. good it's impossible. so what did hook do to prove this he. said what you should have done is you. should have put a little device in the. telescope that lets you measure. distances between these dots you didn't. do that and because you didn't there's. no way you could have been that good. at two successive meetings of the royal. society. he hauls. the members out into the courtyard. and he takes a card.

and he makes successive black and white. stripes on the card and he pastes the. card up on a wall and he takes them one. by one he says now. move back looking at it. presumably with one eye until you can't. tell the the black ones from the white. stripes he says. that i can then measure the distance i. can see the angles i can give a number. then for what is the best possible. what we would uh call perceptual acuity.

of human vision. and it turned out he thought to be. something like 10 or more times worse. than this guy hevelius had claimed so. obviously says hook of alias. right well. years ago. i calculated um hevelius's numbers and. so on using modern uh. tables from nasa and so on and they are. even more accurate than hevelius claimed. and worse than that.

the royal society sent a young. astronomer named hallie. over to dunsig to work with him and. halley writes back and he says i. couldn't believe it. but i could he taught me how to do it. and i could get just as good as he how. is it possible. well here this shows you something very. interesting about experiments perception. and everything else hook was right but. he was also wrong. he was wrong for the right reasons. and he was right for the wrong reasons.

and what do i mean by that. what he actually found. was the number for what we now call 2020. vision he was right. you can't tell except a few people much. better than that. yeah. but he was observing the wrong thing yes. what hevelius was observing was a bright. dot. a star. moving past a pointer.

our eyes are rather similar to frog's. eyes. you know i'm sure you've heard the story. if i hold a dead fly on a string in. front of a frog and don't move it the. frog pays no attention as soon as i. move the fly the frog immediately tongue. laptop because the visual system of the. frog responds to motion yes so does ours. and our. acuity for distinguishing motion from. statics. five or more times better yeah that's.

fascinating. damn uh and of course. i mean i maybe you can comment on. their understanding. of the human perceptual system at the. time was probably really terrible. like yeah like i've recently been. working with just almost as a fun side. thing with vision scientists and. peripheral vision. it's a it's a beautiful complex mess. that whole thing we still don't. understand all the weird ways that human. perception works and they were probably.

terrible at it. they probably didn't have any conception. of peripheral vision or or the fovea or. or i mean basically anything. they had some i mean because actually. was newton himself who probed a lot of. this for instance. uh newton the young newton. trying to work his way around what's. going on with colors. wanted to try and distinguish. colors that occur through natural. processes out there.

and colors that are a result of our eyes. not operating right so you know what he. did it's a famous thing he took a stick. and he stuck that stick under his lower. eyelid and pushed up on his eyeball. and what that did. what produced colored circles. at diametrically opposite positions of. the stick in the eyeball and he moved it. around to see how they moved. trying to distinguish legit. right i always have to tell my students.

don't do this but. or do it if you want to be great. and remembered by uh human history. that's that there's a lot of equivalent. to sticking a stick into your eye in. modern day that. may pay off in the end. okay. uh. as a small aside is the newton and the. apple story true no. was it a different fruit.

as a colleague of mine named simon. shaffer in england. once said on a nova program that we were. both on. the role of fruit in the history of. science has been vastly exaggerated. okay. so was there any immune to to zoom out. moments of epiphany. is is there something to moments of. epiphany or again this is the paradigm. shift versus the gradualism there is a. shift um it's a much more complex one.

than that and we. i'm. as it happens a colleague of mine and i. are writing a paper right now on one of. the aspects of these things. based on the work that many of our. colleagues have done over the last. 30 and 40 years. um. let me try and see if i could put it to. you this way. newton. until the. early 1670s.

and probably really until a fair time. after that. first of all was not very interested in. questions of motion. he was working actually. in all chemical relationships or what is. called by historians chymistry a kind of. early modern chemical structure. colleagues of ours at indiana have even. reproduced the amalgams that. anyway. his way of thinking about motion. involved a certain.

set of relationships. which. was not conducive. to. any application that would yield. computationally direct results. uh for things like planetary motions. which he wasn't terribly interested in. anyway. he enters the correspondence with his. original nemesis robert hook and hook. says well have you ever thought about.

and then hook tells him a certain way. you might think about it and when newton. hears that. he recognizes that there is a way to. inject time that would enable him to. solve certain problems. it's not that he. that there was anything he thought. before. that was contrary to that way of. thinking it's just that that particular. technical insight. was not something that. for a lot of reasons that are complex.

had never occurred to him. at all and that sent him a different way. of thinking. but to answer your question about the. apple business which is always about you. know gravity and the moon and all of. that being no um the the re the reason. there is that the idea. that um. what goes on. here in the neighborhood of the earth. and what goes on at the moon. let us say remind the sun and the planet.

can be due to a direct relationship. between the earth let's say. and the moon. is contrary. to fundamental. beliefs held by many of the mechanical. philosophers as they're called at the. time in which everything has to involve. at least a sequence of direct contacts. has to be something between here and. there yes that's involved. and uh hook. probably not thinking terribly deeply.

about it based on what he said along. with others like the architect and. mathematician christopher wren. hearken back to the notion that well. maybe there is a kind of magnetic. relationship. between the moon and maybe the planets. and the earth and gravity and so on. vague but establishing a direct. connection somehow however it's. happening forget about it. newton wouldn't have cared about that if. that's all they said but it was when. hook mentioned this different way of.

thinking about the motion. a way he could certainly have thought of. because it does not contradict anything. newton is a brilliant mathematician and. he could see. that you could suddenly start to do. things with that. that you otherwise wouldn't and this led. eventually to another controversy with. hook in which hook said well after. newton published his great principia i. gave him how to do this and then newton. of course got ticked off about that and. said well listen to this i did.

everything and because he had a picayune. little idea he thinks he can take credit. for it. okay. uh. so his ability to play with his ideas. mathematically is what solidified the. initial intuition that you could have. was that the first time he was born the. idea that you have action at a distance. that you can have. forces without contact which is another. revolutionary idea. i would say that in the sense of dealing.

with. the mechanics of force-like. effects. considered to act at some distance. it is novel. uh with both hook and newton. at the time the notion that two things. might interact at a distance with one. another without direct contact that goes. back to antiquity. uh only there it would thought of more. as a sympathetic reaction. you know to a magnet and and a piece of.

iron they have a kind of mutual sympathy. for one another. and like uh like what love what are we. talking about well actually they do. sometimes talk like that. but that is love that i meant. i see now i talk like that all the time. i think love is somehow. in consciousness or forces of physics. that yet to be discovered okay. now there's the. the other side of things which is. calculus that you begin.

to talk about so newton brought a lot of. things to this world one of them is. calculus. what is calculus. and uh what was role what was newton's. role in bringing it. to life what was it like what was the. story of bringing calculus to this world. well. since the publication starting. many decades ago by. tom whiteside who's now deceased of. newton's mathematical papers. we know a lot about.

how he was pushing things and how he was. developing things it's a complex. question to. to say what calculus is calculus is the. set of mathematical techniques that. enable you to investigate. what we now call functions mathematical. functions which are continuous that is. that are not formed out of. discrete. sets like the counting numbers for. instance.

um. uh newton uh there were already. procedures. for. solving problems involving such things. is finding areas. to under curves and tangents to two. curves by using geometrical structures. but only for certain limited. types. of curves if you will. um newton as a young man the.

we know this is what happened. is looking at. a formula which involves an. expansion in separate terms polynomial. terms as we say for certain functions. i know i don't want to get complicated. here about this but and he realizes it. could be generalized. and he tries the generalization and that. leads him to a an expansion formula. called the binomial theorem.

that. enables him to move ahead with the. notion that if i take something. that has a certain value. and i add a little bit to it and i use. this binomial theorem and expand things. out i can begin to do new things. and the new things that he begins to do. leads him to a recognition that the. calculations of areas and the. calculations of tangents to curves. are reciprocal. to one another.

and the. procedures that he develops is a. particular form of the calculus. in which uh he considers small. increments and then continuous flows. uh and changes of curves uh and so on. and we have relics of it in physics. today the notation in which you put a. dot over a uh variable indicating the. rate of change of the variable that's.

newton's original type of notation the. dot yeah. the the the dot notation. possibly independently of newton. because he didn't publish this thing. although uh he became quite well known. as quite a brilliant young man in part. because um. people heard about his work and so on. uh when another young. man by the name of gottfried leibniz.

visited london. and he heard about these things. it is said that he independently. develops. his form of the calculus which is. actually the form we use today both in. notation and perhaps in certain. fundamental ways of thinking. it has remained. a controversial point as to. where exactly. and how much independently leibniz did. it leibniz aficionados think.

and continue to maintain he did it. completely independently newton when he. became president of the royal society. put together a group to go on the attack. saying no he must have taken everything. we don't know. but i will tell you this. about uh 25 or so years ago. a scholar uh who's a professor at. indiana now. uh named domenico melli. got his hands on a leibnitz manuscript. called the ten tammon which was.

leibniz's attempt. to produce an alternative to newton's. mechanics. and it comes to some conclusions that. you have in the newton's mechanics well. he published that but mellie got the. manuscript and what mellie found out was. that leibniz reverse engineered the. principia and cooked it backwards. so that he could get the results he. wanted. that was for the mechanics so that means. his mind allows for that kind of thing. some people.

you're breaking some news today you're. starting some people. some people think so i think most. historians of mathematics do not agree. with that. a. friend of mine rather well-known. physicist unfortunately died a couple. years ago named mike nauenberg at uc. santa cruz. had some evidence along those lines. didn't pass mustard. with many of my friends who are. historians of math in fact i edit with a. historian of math a technical journal.

and. we were unable to publish it in there. because we couldn't get it through. any of our colleagues. but i am i remain suspicious. what is it about those tense. relationships and that kind of drama. einstein doesn't appear to have much of. that drama. nobody claims i haven't heard claims. that they. perhaps because it's. such crazy ideas of any of his major uh. inventions major ideas.

being those that are. basically i came up with it first or. independently there's not. as far as i'm aware not many people talk. about general relativity especially. in those terms but with newton that was. the case. i mean. is that just a natural outgrowth of how. science works is there's going to be. personalities that i'm not saying this. about lands but maybe i am that there's. people who uh steal ideas for the.

you know. because of ego because of all those. kinds of things i don't think it's all. that common frankly. um the the newton hook leibniz contra. tomps and so on. well you know you're at the beginnings. of a lot of things there and so on these. are difficult and complex times as well. these are times in which. science as an activity. pursued by other than let us say.

interested aristocrats is becoming. something somewhat different it's not a. professional community of investigators. in the same way. it's also a period in which. procedures and rules. of practice are being developed to avoid. um attacking one another directly and. pulling out a sword to cut off the other. guy's head if he disagrees with you. and so on. so it's a very different period.

controversies happen people get angry i. can think of a number of others. including in the development of optics. in the 19th century and so on. and it can get hot under the collar. sometimes. one character who's worked an area. extensively whether they've come up with. something terribly novel or not and. somebody else kind of moves in. and. does completely different novel things. the first guy gets upset about it.

because he's sort of muscled into what i. thought was my area yeah and you find. that sort of stuff but uh do you have. examples of cases where it worked out. well like uh that competition is good. for the progress of science yeah it. almost always is good in that sense so. it's just painful for the individuals. and b yeah it doesn't have to be you. know nasty. although sometimes it is so on the space. like for the example of the optics could. you comment on that one well yeah sure.

let me there are several but. i could give you um. all right so i'll give you this example. that probably is. the most pertinent um. the first. polytechnic school like mit or caltech. was actually founded in france during. the french revolution it exists today. it's the egg called pulley technique. right. and two people who were there. uh were two young men in the 90s 1790s.

uh named on the one hand francois arago. and the other jean-baptiste bio they. both lived a long time well into the. 1850s arago became a major administrator. of science. and b.o. his career started to peter out after. about the late teens. now. they are. sent on an expedition. which was one of the expeditions.

involving measuring things to start the. metric system. there's a lot more to that story anyway. they come back arago gets separated. he's captured. uh. by uh pirates actually. wounds up in. uh tangier escapes is captured again. everybody thinks he's dead he gets back. to paris and so on he's greeted as a. hero and what not in the meantime b.o. has pretty much published some of the.

stuff that he's done and arago doesn't. get much credit for it and aragog starts. to get very angry and bo is known for. this kind of thing so hour ago anyway. b.o. starts investigating a new phenomenon in. optics involving something called. polarization. and he writes all kinds of stuff on it. arago. looks into this. and decides to write some things as well. and actually.

b.o gets mostly interested in it when he. finds out that arago is doing stuff yeah. now bo is actually the better scientist. in a lot of ways but arago is furious. about this. so furious that he actually demands and. forces the leader of french science. laplace the marquis de la place. and. cohorts to write a note in the published. journal saying oh excuse us.

um. actually arago et cetera et cetera. blah blah so. arago continues to just hold this. antipathy and. fear of beo so what happens. 1815. uh. napoleon is finished at waterloo. right a young frenchman by the name of. august stanford now. was in the army. is going back to his home on the north. coast of france in normandy passes.

through paris. arago is friends with. fresnel's uncle. uh. who's the head of the ecole de bozar at. the time. anyway. fresnel is already interested in certain. things in light and he talks to arago. arago tells him a few things fresnel. goes home and fernell is a brilliant. experimenter. he observes things. and he's a very good mathematician. calculates things he writes something up.

he sends it to arago arago looks at it. and arago says to himself. i can use this to get back at b.o. he brings fresnel to paris sets him up. in. a room at the observatory where arago is. for fresnel to continue his work. paper after paper comes out. undercutting everything b.o had done. what is it about jealousy and. just envy that could be an engine of.

creativity and and productivity. versus like an einstein where it seems. like not. i don't know which one is better i guess. it depends on the personality both are. useful engines and science. well in this particular story it's um. maybe even more interesting because. fresnel himself the young guy. he knew what arigo was doing with him. and he didn't like it yeah he didn't. want to get with he wrote his brother.

said i you know i don't want to get an. argument with b i just want to do my. stuff. arago is using him. but it's because arago kept pushing him. to go into certain areas that stuff kept. coming out yeah. ego is beautiful okay but back to uh. newton. there's a bunch of things i want to ask. but sort of. let's say. since we're on the leibniz and the topic. of drama let me ask another drama. question. why was newton a complicated man.

we're breaking news today this is like. uh. right. complicated it's like. his brain structure was different i. don't know why he had a complicated. young life as we've said. he. had always been. very. self-contained and solitary he had. acquaintances in france. and when he moved to london eventually. he had quite a career.

a career for instance that led him when. he was famous by then the 1690s he moves. to london he becomes first. warden of the mint the mint is what. produces coins and coinage was a. complicated thing because there was. counterfeiting going on. and he becomes master of the mint to the. extent. and a guy at mit. wrote a book about this a little bit we. wrote something on it too i forget his. name was levin. newton sent.

investigators out to catch these guys. and sent at least one of them a famous. one named challenger to the gallows. so he was. he and and one of the reasons he. probably was so particularly angry at. challenger was challenger had apparently. said some nasty things about newton in. front of parliament at some point. fair enough yeah that was apparently not. a good idea well he had a bit of a ten. percent had a bit of a clearly okay.

clearly um. but he um. he even as a young man at uh cambridge. though he doesn't come from wealth he. attracts um people who recognize his. smarts uh he there's a young fellow. named humphrey newton uh shared his. rooms you know these students always. shared rooms with one another uh became. his kind of amanuensis to uh write down. what newton was doing. and so on.

and uh there were others over time. uh who he befriended in various ways and. so on he was solitary. uh he had as far as we know no. relationships with either women or men. in uh anything other than a. formal way. uh the only those get in the way. relationships right well i mean he was. he he was. i don't know if he was close to his. mother i mean she passed away everything. left him he went to be with her after.

she died he was close to his niece. catherine barton who basically came to. run his household. when he moved to london and so on and. she married. a man named conduit who became one of. the. people who controlled newton's legacy. later on and so on so he and and and you. can even see the house that the. townhouse that newton lived in in those. days still there.

so there's the the story of uh newton. coming up with quite a few ideas uh. during a pandemic. we're on the outskirts of a pandemic. ourselves right and a lot of people use. that example as motivation for everybody. while they're in lockdown to get stuff. done. uh so. what's that about can you tell the story. of that. well i can let me first say that uh of. course we've been teaching over zoom. lately and there's no zoom back then.

yeah there was no zoom back then. although it wouldn't have made much. difference because the story was newton. was so complicated in his lectures that. at one point the humphrey newton. actually said that he might as well have. just been lecturing to the walls because. nobody was there yeah to listen to it so. what difference but uh also not a great. teacher huh i if you look at his optical. notes. if that's what he's reading from oh boy. okay. no. so what uh what can you say about that.

whole journey through the pandemic. that uh that resulted in so much. innovation right of amount of time well. i mean there's two times that he goes. home. would he have been able to do it and do. do it if you'd stayed at cambridge i. think you would have. i don't think it really uh although i do. like to tell my advanced students when i. lecture on the history of physics to the. physics and chemistry students. especially we've been doing it over zoom. last year when we get to newton and so.

on because these kids are you know 21 22. i like to say well you know when newton. was your age. and he had to go home. during an epidemic do you know what he. produced. so can you actually summarize this for. people who don't know how old was newton. and what did he produce. well newton goes up to cambridge as it. said when he's 18 years old in 1660. and the so-called miraculous year. the anus mirabilis where you get the.

development in the calculus and in. optical discoveries especially is 1666. right so he's what 24 years old at the. time but judging from his. the notebooks that i mentioned he's. already before that come to an awful lot. of uh developments uh over the previous. couple of years. does it have much to do with the fact. that he twice went home.

it is true. that the optical experiments that we. talked of a while ago with the light on. the wall moving up and down were done at. home in fact you can visit the very room. he did it in to this day. yeah it's very cool and if you look. through the window in that room there is. an apple tree. out there in the garden so you might be. wrong about this. i thought you were lying to me what. maybe there's an apple involved after. all well it's it's not the same apple. tree but it's cuttings how do you know.

they don't last that long but okay it's. 400 years ago oh. wow i continue with the dumbest. questions okay so. you're saying that perhaps going home. was not. it may have given him an opportunity to. work things through and after all he did. make use of that room and he could do. things like put you know a shade over. the window move things around cut holes. in it and. do stuff probably in his rooms at. cambridge he maybe not although.

when he stayed at cambridge. subsequently became a fellow and then. the first uh actually the second. lucasian professor there he was actually. really the first one because. isaac barrow who was the mathematician. professor of optics who recognized. newton's genius. gave up what would have been his. position. because he recognized um. not newton may not have learned too much. from him although they did interact.

and and so newton was the first lucasian. professor really the one that stephen. hawking held. until he died. and we know. that the rooms that he had there at. cambridge uh subsequently because rooms. are still there. he built an all chemical furnace outside. did all sorts of stuff in those rooms. uh and. don't forget you didn't have to do too. much. as a lucasian professor every so often. you had to go give these lectures.

whether anybody was there or not and. deposit the notes. uh you know for the future which is how. we have all those things. oh they were stored in and now we have. them and now we know just how terrible. the teacher newton was yeah but we know. how brilliant these notes are in fact. the second volume of newton's. of the notes really on the great book. that he published the optics which he. published in 1704 that has just been. uh finished with full annotations and.

analysis by the greatest analyst of. newton's optics alan shapiro who uh. retired a few years ago at the. university of minnesota and been working. on newton's optics. ever since i knew him and before and. i've known him since 1976. is there. something you could say broadly about. what either that work on optics or. principia itself as a. something that i've never actually.

looked at. as a piece of work. is it. powerful in itself or is it just an. important. moment in history in terms of the amount. of inventions that are within. the. amount of ideas that are within or is it. a really powerful work in itself well it. is a powerful work in itself you can see. this uh this guy. coming to grips with and pushing through. and working his way around complicated.

and difficult issues melding. experimental situations which nobody had. worked with before even discovering new. things trying to figure out ways of. putting this together with mathematical. structures succeeding and failing at the. same time. and we can see him doing that. i mean what is uh what is uh contained. within principia i don't even know in. terms of the scope. of the work all right is it the entirety.

of the body of work of uh. of newton no no no no the principia. mathematic as is the calculus. well he all right so. the principia is divided into three. books excellent. book one contains his version of the. laws of motion. and the application of those laws to. figure out when a body moves in certain. curves and is forced to move in those. curves by forces directed to certain.

fixed points. what is the nature of the mathematical. formula for those forces that's all that. book one is about and it contains not. the kind of version of the calculus that. uses algebra of the sort that i was. trying to explain before. but is done in terms of. ratios between. geometric line segments when one of the. line segments goes very very small.

it's called the kind of limiting. procedure which is calculus but it's a. geometrically structured although it's. clearly got algebraic elements in it as. well. and that makes the principia's. mathematical structure rather hard for. people who aren't studying it today to. go back to. book two contains his. work on what we now call hydrostatics.

and a little bit about hydrodynamic. hydrodynamics a fuller development of. the concept of pressure. which is a complicated concept and book. three. applies what he did in book one to the. solar system. and it is successful. partially. because. the only way that you can exactly solve. the only types of problems you can.

exactly solve in terms of the. interactions of. two particles governed by gravitational. force between them is for only two. bodies. if there's more than two. let's say it's a b and c a x on b b x on. c c axon a. you can cannot solve it exactly you have. to develop techniques the fullest sets. of techniques are really only developed. about 30 or 40 years after newton's. death by french.

mathematicians like laplace. newton. tried to apply his structure to the. sun earth moon because the moon's motion. is very complicated. the moon for instance. exactly repeats its observable position. among the stars only every 19 years. that is if you. look up where the moon is among the. stars at certain times and it changes.

it's it's complicated that's by the way. that was discovered. that was discovered by the babylonians. that fact in 19 years thousands of years. ago yeah and then you have to look that. little piece of data and how do you make. sense of it well i mean that that is. data and you have to and it's. complicated so newton actually kind of. reverse engineered a technique that had. been developed by a man named horox. using certain laws of kepler's to try. and get around this thing in newton then.

sort of. my understanding i've never studied this. has reversed. sort of reversed it and fit it together. with his force calculations by way of an. approximation. and. was able to construct a model to make. some predictions. fit. things backwards pretty well. okay. where does data fit into this we kind of. earlier in the discussion.

uh mention data as part of the. scientific method. how important was. data to newton okay so like you. mentioned uh prism and playing with it. and looking at stuff and then coming up. with calculations and so on where does. data fit into any of his ideas. all right well let me say two things. first one we rarely use the phrase. scientific method anymore because there. is no one. easily. describable such method in a certain i.

mean humans have been playing around. with the world and learning how to. repetitively do things and make things. happen ever since you know humans became. humans. um. do you have a preferred definition of. the scientific method what are the. various uh no i don't. i prefer to talk about. um. the. considered. manipulation of artificial structures to. produce results.

that can be worked together with schemes. to construct other devices and make. uh. predictions if you will about the way. such things will work. so ultimately it's about producing other. devices it's like leads you down uh i. think so principally. uh i mean you may have data if you will. like astronomical data. obtained otherwise and so on but yes. and but but but number two here is this.

question of data what is data. in that sense see when we talk about. data today. um we have. a kind of complex notion which. reverts to even issues of statistics. and measurement procedures and so on so. let me put it to you this way so. let's say i had a ruler in front of me. go on and it's marked off in little. black marks separated by let's say. distances.

called a millimeter. okay now i make a mark on this piece of. paper here so i made a nice black mark. right. nice black mark. and i ask you i want you to measure that. and tell me how long it is. you're going to take the ruler. you're going to put it next to it. and you're going to look. and it's not going to sit even if you. put one end as close as you can on one. black mark the other end probably isn't. going to be exactly on a black mark well.

you'll say it's closer to this or that. you write down a number and i say okay. take the ruler away a minute i take this. away come back in five minutes put the. piece of paper down do it again. you're going to probably come up with a. different number. and you're going to do that a lot of. times. and then if i tell you i want you to. give me your best estimate of what the. actual length of that thing is what are. you going to do. you're going to. average all of these numbers. why.

statistics. well yes. statistics. there's lots of ways of going around it. but the average is the best estimate on. the basis of what's called the central. limit theorem. a statistical thing we were talking. about things. that were not really developed until the. 1750s 60s and 70s newton died in 1727. the intuition perhaps was there not. really i'll tell you what people did.

including newton although newton is. partially the one exception. we talked a while ago about this guy. christian huygens. he measured lots of things and he was a. good. mechanic himself. he and his brother ground lenses huygens. i told you developed the first pendulum. mechanism pendulum driven clock with a. mechanism and so on also. a spring watch where he got into a. controversy with hook over that by the. way. um well these mechanics and the.

controversy yeah. well we also have. huygens's notes. um they're preserved at the at leiden. university in holland he's dutch. for his work in optics which was. extensive we don't have time to go into. that except the following. a number of years ago i went through. those things because in this optical. theory that he had. there are four numbers that you've got. to be able to get good numbers on to be.

able to predict other things. so what would we do today what in fact. was done at the end of the 18th century. when somebody went back to this you do. what you just i told you to do with the. ruler you make a lot of measurements and. average results. we have huygens notes he did make a lot. of measurements. one after the other after the other. but when he. came to use the numbers for calculations. and indeed when he published things.

at the end of his life. he gives you one number and it's not the. average of any of them it's just one of. them. which one was it the one that he thought. he got. so good at. working by practice that he put down the. one he was most confident in. that was the general procedure. at the time you wouldn't publish a paper. in which you wrote down six numbers and.

said well i measured this six times let. me put them together none of them is. really. they would have said the right number. but i'll put them together and give you. a good number no you would have been. thought of that you know you don't know. what you're doing yeah. by the way there's just an inkling of. value to that approach. just an inkling. we sometimes use statistics as like a. thing that like oh that solves all the. problems. we'll just do a lot of it and we'll take.

the average or whatever it is as many. excellent books and mathematics have. highlighted the flaws. in our uh approach to certain sciences. that rely heavily on statistics okay let. me ask you again for a friend. about uh this alchemy thing. you know it'd be nice to create gold but. also seems to uh come into play quite a. bit throughout the history of science. perhaps in positive ways in terms of its. impact can you say something to the.

history of alchemy. a little bit. sure. um it used to be thought. two things one that alchemy. which dates certainly back to the. islamic period in islam. you're talking you know. 11th 12th 13th centuries. among islamic natural philosophers and. experimenters. but it used to be thought that. alchemy which picked up strikingly in.

the 15th 16th century 1500s and. thereabouts. was a sort of mystical procedure. involving all sorts of strange notions. and so on and. that's not entirely untrue. but it is substantially untrue in that. alchemists were engaged in what uh. was known as chrysopoeia that is. looking for ways to transform.

invaluable materials into valuable ones. but in the process of doing so or. attempting to do so. they. learned how to. uh create complex amalgams of various. kinds they used very elaborate apparatus. glass olympics in which they would use. heat to produce chemical decompositions. they would. write down and observe these.

compositions and many of the so-called. really strange-looking alchemical. formulas and statements where they'll. say something like i i can't produce it. but it'll be. the soul of mars will. combine with the. this etc etc these. it has been shown are almost all actual. formulas for how to engage in the. production of complex amalgams. and what to do. and by the time of newton.

newton was reading the works of a. uh fellow by the name of starkey who was. actually came from harvard. uh. shortly before. in which um. things had progressed if you will to the. point where the procedure turns into. what historians call chrysopoeia. which basically runs into the notion of. thinking that may these things are made. out of particles.

this is the mechanical philosophy can we. engage in processes chemical processes. to rearrange these things. which is not so stupid after all. i mean we do it except we happen to do. it in reactors not in chemical processes. unless of course it had happened that. cold fusion had worked which it didn't. um i uh. well right but um so that's the way. they're thinking about these things. there's a kind of mix and newton engages. extensively.

in those sorts of manipulations in fact. more in that than almost anything else. except for his optical investigations if. you look through the latter parts of the. 1670s the last five six seven years or. so of that there's more on that than. there is on anything else he's not. working on mechanics he's pretty much. gone pretty far in optics he'll turn. back to optics later on. so optics and alchemy.

so what you're saying is isaac newton. liked shiny things. well actually if you go online and look. at what bill newman the professor at. indiana. at bloomington indiana has produced. you'll find the very shiny thing called. the star regulus which newton describes. as having produced according to a. particular way which newman figured out. and was able to do it and it's very. shiny. there you go proves the theorem. i. can ask you about god religion and its.

role in newton's life. was there. helpful. constructive. or destructive influences of religion. in his work and and in his life. well there you begin to touch on a. complex question um. the role that god played would be an. interesting question to answer should. one go and be able to speak with this. invisible character who doesn't exist.

but putting that aside for the moment. yeah we don't like to talk about others. while they're not here so right. um newton is. a deeply religious man not unusually so. of course for the assignment. and um. clearly his upbringing. and perhaps his early experiences. have. exacerbated that in a number of ways. that he takes a lot of things personally.

and and he finds perhaps solace. in thinking about a sort of governing. abstract. rule-making. exacting. deity. i think there is little question. that his. conviction. that you can figure things out. has a fair bit to do. with his profound belief that this rule.

maker. doesn't do things arbitrarily. newton does not think that miracles have. happened. since maybe the time of christ if then. and not in the same way he was for. instance an anti-trinitarian. he did not hold that christ had a divine. being. but was rather endowed with certain. powers by the rule maker and whatnot and. um.

he uh did not think that some of the. uh. tales of the old testament with various. miracles and so on occurred in anything. like that way some may have some may not. have. um like everybody else of course he did. think that creation had happened about. six thousand years ago. wait really oh yeah sure. well biblical chronology can give you a. little bit about that's a little. controversial but sure. interesting. wow the deity created.

the universe. six thousand years ago and that didn't. interfere with his. uh playing around with the sun and the. moon and the oh no because he's figuring. out he's he's watching the brilliant. construction that this. perfect entity did six thousand years. ago. yeah has produced plus or minus a few. years well if you go with bishop buster. it's 4004 bce.

i want to be precise about it. we always on this this is a serious. program we always want to be. precise uh okay let me ask another. ridiculous question if uh. if newton were to travel forward in time. and visit with einstein. and have a discussion about. space time and general relativity that. conception of time that conception of. gravity what do you think that. discussion will go.

like. uh put that way i think newton would sit. there and shock and say i have no idea. what you're talking about. if on the other hand. there's a time machine you go back and. bring a somewhat younger newton. not a man. my age say i mean he lived a long time. you know into his mid 80s. but take him when he's in his 40s let's. say. bring him forward and don't immediately. introduce him to einstein let's take him.

for a ride on a railroad. let him experience the railroad oh. that's right. take him. around and. um. show him. uh. a sparking machine. he knows about sparks sending off sparks. show him wires have him touch the wires. and get a little shock. show him a clicking telegraph. machine of the kind then let him hear. the clicks in a telephone receiver and.

so on do that. for a couple of months. let him get accustomed to things. then take him into not einstein yet. let's say we're taking him into the. 1890s. einstein is young man then we take him. into some of the laboratories. we show him some of the equipment the. devices not the most elaborate ones we. show him certain things we educate him. bit by bit well the optics maybe focus. on that certainly.

you begin to show him things he's a. brilliant human being. i think bit by bit. he would begin to see what's going on. but if you just dumped him in front of. einstein he'd sit there his eyes would. glaze over. i mean this uh i guess it's it's almost. a question. of how big of a leap. how many leaps have been taken in. science that go from newton to einstein.

we sometimes in a compressed version of. history think that. not much. oh that's totally wrong. a lot. huge amounts. in multifarious ways. involving fundamental conceptions. mathematical structures the evolution of. novel experimentation and devices the. organization. everything everything i mean to a point. where i wonder even if newton was. uh. like you said 40 but even like 30. so.

he's very like if he would be able to. catch up with the conception of. everything i i wonder as a scientist. how much. you load in from age five. about this world in order to be able to. conceive of the world. of ideas that uh that push that science. forward. i mean you mentioned the railroad and. all those kinds of things that that we. might that might be fundamental to our. ability to invent even when it doesn't. directly obviously seem relevant.

well. yes. um i mean the railroad the steam engine. the watt engine etc i mean that was. really the one engine you know was. developed pretty although what knew. joseph black a chemist scientist so on. did stuff on heat was developed pretty. much independently of. the developing thoughts about heat.

at the time but what it's not. independent of. is the evolution of practice in the. manufacture and construction of devices. which can do things in extraordinarily. novel ways and the premium being. gradually placed on calculating how you. can make them more efficient. that is of a piece. with. a way of thinking about the world in. which you're controlling things.

and working it's something that you know. humans have been doing for a long time. but. in this more concerted. and. uh structured way. i think you really don't find it in the. fullest sense until. uh. well into the 1500s and really not fully. until the 17th century later on. so newton had this uh year of miracles.

i wonder if i could ask you briefly. about einstein in his year miracles i've. been reading. i'm re-reading revisiting. the brilliance of. the papers that einstein published in. the year 1905. one of which one of the nobel prize the. photoelectric effect but also brian. motion special. theory of relativity. and of course the uh. the old e equals mc squared. is there um.

does that make sense to you that uh. these two figures had such productive. years. that there's this moment of genius maybe. maybe if we zoom out. i mean i. my work is very much in artificial. intelligence so. wondering about the nature of. intelligence. like how did we. how did evolution on earth produce. genius. that could come up with so much in so. little time to me that gives me hope. that one person.

can change the world. in such a small amount of time well of. course there are. precedents for. in both newtons and einstein's cases for. elements of what we're finding there. it's you know and so on. well i have no idea you know i'm sure. you must have read it was kind of a. famous story that um. after einstein died he donated his brain. and they sliced it up to see if they. could find something unusual there and.

nothing unusual visibly. in there. so i have i. clearly. there are people who for various reasons. maybe both intrinsic and. extrinsic in the sense of experience and. so on are capable of coming up with. these extraordinary. uh results. many years ago when i was a student. a friend of mine came in and said did. you read about did you read this i. forget what anyway there was a story in.

the paper. it was about i think it was a young. woman. who um. was. she couldn't speak. and she she was somewhere on the autism. spectrum she could not. um read. other people's affect. in any ways. but she could sit down at a piano. and. having heard it once and then run.

variations on the most complex. uh. pianistic. works of chopin and others. right now how. some aspect of our mind is able to tune. in in some aspect of reality and become. a master of it and every once in a while. that means. coming up with breakthrough ideas in. physics. yeah. how the heck does that happen.

who knows. jed i'd like to say thank you so much. for spending your valuable time with me. today it was a really fascinating. conversation i've learned so much about. isaac newton who's one of the most. fascinating figures in human history so. thank you so much for talking pleasure. enjoyed it very much. thanks for listening to this. conversation with jed buckwald. to support this podcast please check out. our sponsors in the description. and now let me leave you some words from. thomas kuhn. a philosopher of science.

the answers you get depend on the. questions you ask. thank you for listening and hope to see. you next time. you.