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

[Dotan Cohen]

On 02/12/2007, Steven D'Aprano <steve 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.

The work of Newton that is ignored is no different than the work of
others that has been ignored (with the notable exception of Gauss). In
studying Leonardo's contributions to science, for instance, one must
ignore his contributions to music, art, and other fields. Shall I go
on about Pythagoras?

> 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.

Newton was the bridge between science and superstition. Without him,
we would not have science. For that he is notable. He is both magician
and scientist. It was Newton's belief in the occult that led to his
discovery of gravity: the fact that distant objects could influence
one another. Even today, science has a hard time accepting that. And
gravity _still_ has not been incorporated into a theory of everything
/ grand unified theory.

> 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.

Newton's calculus has most certainly _not_ been put aside in favour of
Leibniz's calculus! Leibniz's calculus methods are all but forgotten.
All that remains used today is his notation. We are essentially using
Leibniz's notation with Newton's methods.

> 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.

If we are already imagining that Newton had lived 30 years earlier,
imagine what he could have done for Kepler. Have you ever tried
proving the 3 Kepler laws _without_ calculus? I've seen it done. And
Kepler wasn't proving his laws, he was devising them from measurements
of the sky. From scratch.

> 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.

Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?