"Python" is not a good name, should rename to "Athon"

[MonkeeSage]

On Dec 2, 4:47 am, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:55:32 -0800, Russ P. wrote:
> > I neither know nor care much about Newton's personality and social
> > graces, but I can assure you that he was more than a "technician" (no
> > offense to technicians).
>
> > If you just read the Wikipedia preamble about him you will realize that
> > he is arguably the greatest scientist who ever lived.
>
> "Arguably" is right.
>
> Please, stop with the fanboy squeeing over Newton. Enough is enough.
> Newton has already received far more than his share of honours.
>
> He might have been a great intellectual but he was no scientist. It's
> only by ignoring the vast bulk of his work -- work which Newton himself
> considered *far* more important and interesting than his work on physics
> and mathematics -- that we can even *pretend* he was a scientist.
>
> Newton was arrogant, deceitful, secretive, and hostile to other peoples
> ideas. Arrogance sometimes goes hand in hand with intellectual
> brilliance, and there's no doubt that Newton was brilliant, but the last
> three are especially toxic for good science. His feuds against two of his
> intellectual equals, Leibniz and Hooke, held mathematics and the sciences
> back significantly. They weren't the only two: he feuded with Astronomer
> Royal John Flamsteed, John Locke, and apparently more tradesmen than
> anyone has counted. He held grudges, and did his best to ruin those who
> crossed him.
>
> Historians of science draw a fairly sharp line in the history of what
> used to be called "natural philosophy" (what we now call science). That
> line is clearly drawn *after* Newton: as John Maynard Smith has said,
> Newton was the last and greatest of the magicians, not the first of the
> scientists. He was first and foremost a theologian and politician, an
> alchemist, a religious heretic obsessed with End Times, and (when he
> wasn't being secretive and isolating himself from others) a shameless
> self-promoter unwilling to share the spotlight.
>
> The myth of Newton the scientist is pernicious. Even those who recognise
> his long periods of unproductive work, his wasted years writing about the
> end of the world, his feuds, his secrecy and his unprofessional grudges
> against other natural philosophers, still describe him as a great
> scientist -- despite the fact that Newton's way of working is anathema to
> science. The myth of science being about the lone genius dies hard,
> especially in popular accounts of science. Science is a collaborative
> venture, like Open Source, and it relies on openness and cooperation, two
> traits almost entirely missing in Newton.
>
> There is no doubt that Newton was a great intellect. His influence on
> mechanics (including astronomy) was grand and productive; that on optics
> was mixed, but his alchemical writings have had no influence on modern
> chemistry. Newton's calculus has been virtually put aside in favour of
> Leibniz's terminology and notation. The great bulk of his work, his
> theological writings, had little influence at the time and no lasting
> influence at all.

Being fair, the bulk of Liebniz' writings have also been rejected by
those in related fields. Most modern metaphysicians hold a view closer
to Boston Personalism or at least post-Kantian Personalism (a la
Buber), than monadic unity and pre-established harmony, a la Liebniz.
It is an instance of the genetic fallacy to reject the achievements of
a person in one field, simply because of their failures in another.

> Newton was lucky to live at a time of great intellectual activity. Had he
> lived thirty years earlier, his secrecy would almost certainly have meant
> that his discoveries, such as they were, would have died with him. Had he
> lived thirty years later, others like Leibniz, Hooke, the Bernoullis, or
> others, would have made his discoveries ahead of him -- perhaps a few
> years or a decade later, but they would have done so, as Leibniz
> independently came up with calculus.
>
> There's no doubt that Newton was a genius and an important figure in the
> history of science, but to describe him as a scientist is to distort both
> the way Newton worked and the way science works. By all means give him
> credit for what he did and what he was, but don't pretend he was
> something that he was not.
>
> --
> Steven

That said, I think this whole "rename python" thing is silly.

Regards,
Jordan