[HN Gopher] Who Said Nobody Read Isaac Newton?
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Who Said Nobody Read Isaac Newton?
Author : dnetesn
Score : 26 points
Date : 2021-01-21 11:27 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| tzs wrote:
| I don't have any numbers to back this up, but having read
| biographical interviews with a lot of top mathematicians and
| scientists I got the impression that a lot of them as students
| read the masterpieces of the prior giants of their fields instead
| of just relying on the assigned textbooks.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Yes, these days Goldstein and Lanczos might be more apposite
| mrwnmonm wrote:
| Not kidding, but ever thought Newton looks like a vampire?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
| selimthegrim wrote:
| He famously had a thing for crimson the last decade of his
| life.
| giardini wrote:
| Even _I_ had a copy of the _Principia_ (translated to English)
| but when I opened the book and realized that Newton did
| everything with _geometry_ and algebra, foregoing the calculus he
| and Leibnitz developed, I lost interest in the exercise.
|
| So I believe the numbers of those who have the book and those who
| have read it are quite different.
| [deleted]
| leephillips wrote:
| Interesting and pleasant to read.
|
| I find it inspiring that some people today (but more a couple of
| generations ago) still learn geometry from (usually translations
| of) Euclid's _Elements_. I just love the idea that people still
| study math from a book more than 2,000 years old.
| jfengel wrote:
| At St. John's College, their mathematics textbooks are Euclid
| and Ptolemy, in the original. (They also read Plato, Homer, and
| Herodotus.)
|
| They also use Principia for physics, but in English. Slackers.
| leephillips wrote:
| Ah, yes. I've had colleagues who went to this unique college.
| [deleted]
| tropianhs wrote:
| I remember I wanted to read Principia in my first year as a
| Physics student. Never got my hands on it but got my hands on
| other old physics books and I think it a bad idea to study on
| those.
|
| The new ideas are usually not presented in the clearest way. They
| often are shown from the point of view of the author, who is a
| genius and has his own way of seeing things.
|
| Better to study from people that have digested them, discussed
| them with peers and have a point of view on things that has
| become the standard in the scientific community
| hertzrat wrote:
| I found his work on gravity (I think it was the Principia but I'm
| not 100%) to be a difficult read and did not finish it. It did
| not seem to cover every point he made comprehensively and I had
| to fill in some gaps as I went. Some of his terminology was prone
| to having multiple meanings and the intended one wasn't always
| immediately apparent. It still was fun in a nerdy way to have
| given it a shot. It is possible I was simply not in the right
| headspace for it and the fault is my own
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