this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes. And mathematics. And a key figure in the scientific revolution. Probably also one of the most intelligent people ever.

[–] Clinicallydepressedpoochie 4 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I firmly believe Newton would have gotten to relativity before Einstien if he were born at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Possible. But then we'd need somebody else to develop calculus and write a Principia Mathematica and lay the groundworks for the age of enlightenment.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

But then we'd need somebody else to develop calculus

Poor, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Heheh, valid objection. Guess Newton wasn't the only smart person in history 😆 And drama has always been part of human history... But we still hear those names over 300 years later. Along with a lot of other names of people whose results are taught in university today. But yeah, that hypothetical situation (Newton's achievements in mathematics being replaced by Leibnitz) would make a good Dr. Who episode.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

A lot of what Newton used in Principia was already more or less in the air, it was just a matter of someone picking up the pieces and seeing the big pictures. It couldn't have been more than a few decades at most until someone found out if it hadn't been Newton.

[–] Clinicallydepressedpoochie 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Same could be said about Einstein

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago
[–] marcos 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Much of the Special Relativity value was on Lorenz mechanics anyway.

And General Relativity, the Photoelectric Effect explanation, and his explanation for the Brownian movement all needed a great deal of anti-establishment thinking... honestly, I have no idea how much Newton had of that.

[–] NeoNachtwaechter 4 points 2 weeks ago

General Relativity needed lots and lots of the math that has been developed after Newton, even shortly before Einstein (and also he himself has developed some of it).

[–] NeoNachtwaechter 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I firmly believe Newton would have gotten to relativity before Einstien if he were born at the same time.

But it wasn't the end results and complex formulas of Einstein's theory that showed the flaws and gaps in Newton's mechanics.

It was the basic questions and thought experiments in Einstein's first script. About basic geometry, length and width. The flow of time, the speed of a signal. Concurrency.

It should have been possible to think these thoughts at Newton's time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

No it shouldn't? Without Mercury's orbit having been noticed, there was no need yet to question Newton's theory, they simply worked as far as anyone could see; so why complicate it? And without the Lorentz transformation, the math Einstein used wasn't there. And without Fizeau's experiment, the fact that the speed of light is the same in every frame wasn't known, and that's a huge part of the theory. And if he had intuited it somehow, the Maxwell's equations were even there either. Special relativity is at it's core a way reconcile Maxwell's equations with the core tenants of Newton's theory. There was no way special relativity could've been found even half a century earlier, let alone over two centuries...

[–] NeoNachtwaechter 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Mercury's orbit

I wasn't talking about Astronomy at all.

Lorentz transformation

That was needed only for the end results. Not in the introductory thoughts that I was talking about.

Fizeau's experiment, the fact that the speed of light is the same

Good point here. That was in fact one of the starting points for Einstein.

There was no way special relativity could've been found even half a century earlier

Again you are looking at the end results only, when the theory was complete.

Have you even read my comment?

Have you even read Einstein?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The thoughts experiment are no different from the maths and wouldn't have occurred in any context, or at least wouldn't have come close to yielding the same conclusions. The most famous one was Einstein imagining himself riding a beam of light iirc. As you say, he imagined time and space stretching. Why would someone have imagined that in the 1600s? What reason was there to think riding light was any different from riding a very fast stream on a boat? Who knew then that you couldn't just add the speed of lights to other speeds like you do in every galilean frame in Newtonian physics? You conceded that Fizeau's experiments were a starting point. These experiments would've never happened without the questions raised by the discrepancy between Newton and Maxwell's laws! And if they had, someone with no prior knowledge of Maxwell's laws wouldn't have had any interest or use for these results.

[–] NeoNachtwaechter 1 points 2 weeks ago

Thank you for answering at least one of my questions, the last one, in so many words.
EOD.

[–] RegalPotoo 9 points 2 weeks ago

.... no?

if I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

[–] spittingimage 9 points 2 weeks ago

The dude contributed greatly to physics, optics and mathematics.

He also tried to cure the plague with magic frog vomit.

[–] NeoNachtwaechter 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

physics jesus

Yes, he is still regarded as such. Nearly nobody is aware of how thoroughly his core statements in physics have been refuted since 1905.

His math holds water.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

I think several other people have a better claim to that title, like Galileo Galilei and Roger Bacon. Bacon is one of the first to spell out the scientific method and Galilei... Well, you know what he did. I'd say Galileo is more Jesus-like because he was persecuted by the dominant church. And Galileo moved things a lot. Remember, Newton was born around the time Galileo died, he was born in a period of scientific upheaval. Galileo also introduced concepts that played a big role in Newtonian physics, like Galilean frames, the relativity of speeds, the idea that speed is conserved in the absence of a force...

You could argue there was also a slow acceleration of progress before Galileo 's time, and also that Copernicus is another good candidate for example, but if you really wanna emulate the Christ-like narrative, Galileo seems better. He's even named after a region where Jesus might've lived.

[–] RizzRustbolt 1 points 2 weeks ago

Did Jesus suck a lot of dick?