What If Newton and Einstein Were Alive Today?

[zoobyshoe]

Newton is a product of his time, as Aristotle was. Had it not been for the likes of Copernicus, Descartes, Galileo and Kepler who came before him, Newton would not have been able to state his laws of motion or gravity. This is why there aren't many Western scholars in the domain of science that we remember from, say, the Middle Ages; those were times where people like these were unlikely to live. Putting it like you did is absurd; Newton stood on a higher mountain than did those who lived before him by as little as a century.

No. Newton, et al, are remarkable to the extent they refused to be products of their time and thought independently of the people around them. They changed the religio-mystical downward trend started by Aristotle that lead to the middle ages: they changed their times.

 

[Pyrrhus]

Newton, a physicist?, you mean alchemist..

 

[WhoWee]

If Einstein were alive today he'd still be getting nowhere on his Theory of Everything.

Can you prove that?

 

[Werg22]

No. Newton, et al, are remarkable to the extent they refused to be products of their time and thought independently of the people around them. They changed the religio-mystical downward trend started by Aristotle that lead to the middle ages: they changed their times.

The shift away from the middle ages is due to more than a few men of science appearing at the right time. You are inverting cause and effect. Factors such as the recapture of Spain, the introduction in Europe of Indo-Arab numerals, the invention of the printing press, and so forth are what pushed Europe away from the middle ages. It's the circumstances created by those events that brought us "Newton et al", not so much the other way around. Newton is very much a factor of his time: he devoted much of his time to alchemy and obscure studies of the Bible. As shown by Leibniz's independent discovery of the calculus some twenty years after Newton, Newton's results came in a time that was propitious to their discovery. Poincaré was very close to Einstein's results, which we now know as special relativity, when the latter published his 1905 paper.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The shift away from the middle ages is due to more than a few men of science appearing at the right time. You are inverting cause and effect. Factors such as the recapture of Spain, the introduction in Europe of Indo-Arab numerals, the invention of the printing press, and so forth are what pushed Europe away from the middle ages. It's the circumstances created by those events that brought us "Newton et al", not so much the other way around. Newton is very much a factor of his time: he devoted much of his time to alchemy and obscure studies of the Bible. As shown by Leibniz's independent discovery of the calculus some twenty years after Newton, Newton's results came in a time that was propitious to their discovery. Poincaré was very close to Einstein's results, which we now know as special relativity, when the latter published his 1905 paper.

In all cases you mention the "circumstances" were created by the actions of men. Men create the times. "Circumstances" do not just happen, unless you're talking about floods and climate changes. People either accept circumstances and adapt to them, or they take circumstances and change them. When circumstances change it's because of the actions of prominent people. Sometimes it's a little nudge, sometimes it's great, startling revolution.

Newton's pursuit of alchemy and Bible Numerology, unfortunate as they are to us, does nothing to invalidate Principia Mathematica. He stands apart from his times, and the 2000 years preceding it, for his physics.

 

[Hurkyl]

True in principle, but what is "Bible code"?

(To my knowledge) a field of study only recently settled by a clever application of modern statistics.

 

[Pinu7]

If ANYONE can live a century or more after their natural time(and keep sanity), I believe they could be making great strides in Physics.

Man, if only I could live 200 years.

 

[tribdog]

Can you prove that?

Can I prove that? hmmm what do you think?

 

[WhoWee]

Can I prove that? hmmm what do you think?

I think it's easy to sit here decades after Einstein has passed and discredit his work. How many of today's best could work without a computer?

 

[Werg22]

In all cases you mention the "circumstances" were created by the actions of men. Men create the times. "Circumstances" do not just happen, unless you're talking about floods and climate changes. People either accept circumstances and adapt to them, or they take circumstances and change them. When circumstances change it's because of the actions of prominent people. Sometimes it's a little nudge, sometimes it's great, startling revolution.

Newton's pursuit of alchemy and Bible Numerology, unfortunate as they are to us, does nothing to invalidate Principia Mathematica. He stands apart from his times, and the 2000 years preceding it, for his physics.

Of course the circumstances are created by men. The argument, I will remind you, is on whether Newton and Einstein were irreplaceable - to which I answer no, because it appears clear to me that they both lived in times propitious to their discoveries, this being evidenced by the work of their respective contemporaries.