Why were Newton's laws of motion discovered so late?

[CWatters]

But surely they would notice the balloon rising an falling as they flew in and out to them? Particularly the hydrogen balloons. Not to mention that hot air balloons rely on the same principle that hot air rises.

 

[rrogers]

I have been reading Walter Isaacson's "Leanardo De Vinci". Chapters 10, 11, 12 contain a delineation of various concepts Leanardo concluded from experiment and reasoning. Yes he could have revolutionized physics, and probably mathematics, but there was no "ecosystem" for these ideas; beyond a limited few. Leanardo was not entirely free to do as he wished; unlike some scholar's in later eras. He had other failings as well; quitting working on something when he understood it and not finishing treatises he started along the way was one. So his realizations didn't come to light until far later.
Having said all that, I find his discoveries and such astonishing and sort of mourn the opportunity lost, although I am not enamoured of the idea of getting Nuclear Weapons earlier than we did (which might have been too early for our cultural maturity anyway).
Like I always say: there are _some_ really smart people around!
Ray

 

[johnbbahm]

I think our theories precede our technical capability to test and effectively implement the ideas.
Scientist would see strange behavior with silicon in the early 1900's, but the results were not repeatable,
because we did not have pure enough silicon.
Advances in material science are what allow us to build the things already envisioned.

 

[lekh2003]

I think our theories precede our technical capability to test and effectively implement the ideas.
Scientist would see strange behavior with silicon in the early 1900's, but the results were not repeatable,
because we did not have pure enough silicon.
Advances in material science are what allow us to build the things already envisioned.

I think that this would extend from simply material sciences to basically every practical science.

 

[dschlink]

Much of what was "known" in science before that era, was based on opinions of Aristotle and people of his time, who never tested any of their positions. The idea that the ancients could be wrong (and you could question them without being burned at the stake) is as important as the development of the scientific method.

 

[r8chard]

CWattersm you and I know what a thermal lift does. Somebody pointed out at the sight of birds rising in a spiral. To explain it to us. However, an 18th century Parisian aeronaut had no one available to describe such phenomena. The early balloon experiments were launched from city parks, generally by rivers or canals.

It is easy to look back and critique our predecessors for their lack of foreknowledge. Confusing the modern abundance of knowledge is as much egotistical hubris as confusing technology with civilization.

Before any us can preen in pride of our entitled ownership of wisdom? Consider the gales of laughter three hundred years in the future as your descendants mock what they perceive as OUR primitive ignorance and failings...

 

[sophiecentaur]

an atomic physicist making preparations to build an "atom trap

That could involve ions traveling at speeds well below c, so why not? Electrons, otoh, can achieve near relativistic speeds when accelerated across fairly modest 'high' voltages because their masses are so low.

 

[jerromyjon]

As far as I can tell in the late 1800s scientists hadn't worked out that birds soar in thermals (rising pockets of warm air)... Yet hot air balloons were had been around for 100 years. Had nobody in a balloon noticed them?

I know very little about this but my intuition tells me that when a hot air balloon hits a warmer air pocket wouldn't the buoyancy of the hot air be reduced relative to the warmer updraft? Your next comment about about lighter than air gases I don't even know what the effect of temperature is.

 

[dgwsoft]

I feel the same about Einstein. He was first over the line but there were a number of others who could have got there after a bit of a delay. It has to be true that, without Einstein's existence, we would not be using Newtonian Science today - on PF .

Special Relativity, certainly. The Lorenz Transformation was already well known. But we could still be waiting for General Relativity.

 

[sophiecentaur]

CWattersm you and I know what a thermal lift does. Somebody pointed out at the sight of birds rising in a spiral. To explain it to us. However, an 18th century Parisian aeronaut had no one available to describe such phenomena. The early balloon experiments were launched from city parks, generally by rivers or canals.

Thermal currents and lighter than air machines would not go very well together, I think. Controlling the vertical position and velocity of a balloon is hard enough as it is. I would imagine that the early pioneers would have required stable air with low, constant windspeed.
But I would guess that thermals would have been no surprise in the past. Cumulus clouds, birds and smoke all will have been observed to 'rise naturally' (ancient jargon).

 

[FactChecker]

But I would guess that thermals would have been no surprise in the past. Cumulus clouds, birds and smoke all will have been observed to 'rise naturally' (ancient jargon).

It's possible that they were believed to 'rise naturally' due to different physical laws that were part of their nature, with no need for rising thermals. Believing that there must be external forces to explain their rise is a post-Newton habit.

 

[sophiecentaur]

It's possible that they were believed to 'rise naturally' due to different physical laws that were part of their nature, with no need for rising thermals. Believing that there must be external forces to explain their rise is a post-Newton habit.

I guess our comments would have to depend very much on the decades of history that we're discussing. The age of enlightenment would have straddled early balloon flight so Montgolfier may well have had his success without a particularly Scientific approach.
Hah - no wonder so many balloonists fell out of the sky!

 

[r8chard]

Fact Checker, I'm not sure your exact meaning. Perhaps pre-Newton, some of the more observant and mechanically inclined might have opinionated that there may be natural causes for clouds or spiraling lines of birds.

If so, I have not seen that those observers wrote down their guesses. If just because it was damn dangerous to be accused of blasphemy! Everyone else knew God was in His element and directed the actions of birds and Clouds.

In my opinion the sea-change among us Common Folk was the Industrial Age. Having our noses rubbed into the fact that the machines only work by how well we put them together. And the need to constantly stoke that coal into the belly of the beast.

 

[FactChecker]

Fact Checker, I'm not sure your exact meaning. Perhaps pre-Newton, some of the more observant and mechanically inclined might have opinionated that there may be natural causes for clouds or spiraling lines of birds.

I'm not a physics history expert, so these are just my impressions. It may be wrong for me to give a non-expert opinion in this forum, but here it is anyway. Before Newton, people (even scientists) thought that different objects had different physical properties and laws. F=mA was not a universal law. So clouds floating, the Moon floating, etc. was just a natural property of those types of objects. They didn't have to find an explanation for it.

 

[jerromyjon]

It may be wrong for me to give a non-expert opinion in this forum, but here it is anyway. Before Newton, people (even scientists) thought that different objects had different physical properties and laws.

Many times questions have simple answers, sometimes the experts are bogged down with the complicated details and miss a simple association.

F=mA was not a universal law.

It still isn't, technically. It's just a simplified, works well in certain cases, approximation. I may be wrong but I think it took the open-minded generalization of the typical behavior of a wide array of interactions to finally get to the heart of reality, and a stroke of genius to come up with a numerical representation which F=ma exemplifies.

 

[r8chard]

FactChecker, It looks to me, that you are avoiding the reality that pre-Newton? People did voice an opinion about causation of natural phenomena.

Most of them, even the scholars, believed pr at least publicly claimed to believe. "It was all God, all the time." No dissenting argument or even neutral opinion was tolerated. Enforced the constant threat of excruciating execution.

 

[FactChecker]

FactChecker, It looks to me, that you are avoiding the reality that pre-Newton? People did voice an opinion about causation of natural phenomena.

Most of them, even the scholars, believed pr at least publicly claimed to believe. "It was all God, all the time." No dissenting argument or even neutral opinion was tolerated. Enforced the constant threat of excruciating execution.

Well. I have to admit that if I was threatened by the Church with torture, I would deny F=mA also.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Well. I have to admit that if I was threatened by the Church with torture, I would deny F=mA also.

What a chicken heart. If I were 'shown the instruments of torture', I would just refer them to you, tell them it was your idea and that I didn't understand the formula in the first place.

 

[lekh2003]

What a chicken heart. If I were 'shown the instruments of torture', I would just refer them to you, tell them it was your idea and that I didn't understand the formula in the first place.

Better to surrender scientific opinion than to not be able to have one ever again.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Whatever you say sir!
Now can you undo these shackles, please?

 

[votingmachine]

I would argue that Newton's greatest contribution was to the support of the scientific method, the idea that facts can be used to verify theories. Anyone can draw a perpetual motion machine (and they DO). Anyone can draw an aerial screw. Anyone can write any law of motion they chose.

Newton believed completely the idea that a THEORY OF MOTION was a testable hypothesis, and that experimental data was critical.

And of course, he helped deduce calculus, without which, describing motion becomes a sticky mess.

Early theories like the Greek-element idea that everything is made of fire+air+water+earth, were largely philosophy. Gradually, the idea that theories were a system applied to fact knowledge took over. It is the absolute mantra on this site: no philosophy, just science. Newton is certainly to be given a large amount of credit for his advances in physics. But he also advanced the idea of science and the scientific method.

The reason that his laws of motion were undiscovered were two-fold. One is that the math tools necessary were also undiscovered. The other is that the idea of science being a thing distinct from philosophy was slow to be understood.

Think of Archimedes discovering buoyancy and displacement ... people already were building boats ... you would think it was obvious. But that is retrospect. Hopefully, I have not violated the site policies and drifted into philosophy!

 

[ISamson]

Why were Newton's laws of motion discovered so late?

I think because of the Dark Age that ruled Europe for centuries. The Church stopped all scientific activity.

 

[brainpushups]

Others have pointed out some important points about the role of theory and practical application. A few comments about the discovery of the three laws:

1) The first law was well accepted decades before Newton. For example, Huygens states it in his laws that govern collisions. (see hypothesis 1)

2) Newton did NOT state F = m a. Take a look at how he phrased the second law. Further, if you look at how he applied it in examples throughout the Principia he used a sort of impulse approximation, essentially using F = m ∆v.

3) His third law is essentially his formulation of the conservation of momentum (see corollary III in the link above). This was also summarized by Huygens (and others, e.g. John Wallis) and emerged from the study of collisions which, if you read how Newton uses the second law in the Principia and also conceptualizes a continuous force as a series of impulses (see, for example Book I, Section II, Proposition I on centripetal forces) is clear evidence of how his mechanical conception of the world was heavily influenced (as was everyone else's at the time) by Descartes.

Point being, Newton did not have a flash of insight to develop these laws. He did indeed stand on the shoulders of giants. Also, Newton did not develop the 'final version' of the laws (or at least the second law). The concept of force was still not well understood and often mischaracterized in these early days (e.g. Leibniz' living forces and dead forces). As far as I know it was Euler who stated Newton's second law in the form that we recognize.

 

[FactChecker]

Point being, Newton did not have a flash of insight to develop these laws. He did indeed stand on the shoulders of giants. Also, Newton did not develop the 'final version' of the laws (or at least the second law). The concept of force was still not well understood and often mischaracterized in these early days (e.g. Leibniz' living forces and dead forces). As far as I know it was Euler who stated Newton's second law in the form that we recognize.

That being said, Newton's contribution was more than just another step in a continuum. Putting all the odds and ends together into a unified, consistent theory of physics and math that had no exceptions was a great step. Others may have contributed parts earlier or polished the results later, but Newton's understanding was exceptional.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Newton's laws of motion require a couple things that were in short supply or non-existent for most of history before him:

1. Infinitesimal calculus.
2. Accurate quantitative measurements of motion that were good enough to compute velocity and acceleration.

Development of new mathematical tools required for theory and new quantitative measurements are often essential for scientific progress and often new discoveries are made shortly after they become available.

Most of the excitement in experimental physics comes after a new tool is invented to look at something more accurately than has been done before.

 

[bhobba]

Well the answer you can more or less figure out when you look at the laws themselves.

Newton's First Law of Motion states that in order for the motion of an object to change, a force must act upon it, a concept generally called inertia.
Newton's Second Law of Motion says F=MA
Newton's Third Law of Motion states that any time a force acts from one object to another, there is an equal force acting back on the original object. If you pull on a rope, therefore, the rope is pulling back on you as well.

Well let's look at them - law 1 follows from law 2 and law 2 is just a definition of force. Law three uses the concept of force and is experimentally testable - so it seems there is just one law. There really isn't, but we will not go into it here. The point of the first 2 laws is to say, when analysing classical mechanics problems etc is - get thee to the forces. That is a very deep observation about nature that is far from obvious. It took a long time to distill it from all the, what was generally little understood phenomena at the time. Only a person of the highest intellect like Newton could do it, and then only after being preceded by other greats like Galileo and inventing a new branch of math - Calculus - although I seem to remember rather than using it in the Principa he preferred ingenious geometrical arguments. Once the concept of force was seen as the correct paradigm then law 3 was not that difficult from everyday experience. The hard part was knowing - get thee to the forces.

Once that was done then mathematicians got a hold of it and developed the equivalent Principle of Least Action formalism - that is the deepest statement of all. Once Noether came along it was seen that using the PLA, symmetry was its real basis. And Feynman (well actually Dirac - but again we will not go into it) showed the PLA follows from QM. So we now know the true basis is QM and symmetry.

Again it took a long time to realize that very deep fact about nature - a lot of water needed to pass under the bridge first - not the least of which was Noether's discovery that stunned even Einstein. When students first encounter it its not uncommon for them just to sit there in awe struck silence as its import sinks in.

Thanks
Bill

 

[sophiecentaur]

1. Infinitesimal calculus.

Newton and Leibniz both developed methods of calculus independently (but not according to Sir Isaac, of course) at around the same time. Iirc, Leibniz's notation was so much easier to use that it is a version of that which we use these days.

 

[Aikiman007]

Leonardo got his inspiration from nature like the spinning seed pod and was able to understand the structure of nature rather than understand the actual physics of air pressure and force. Clearly as shown in history you don't have to understand the nature of force in order to develop a cart with wheels to carry hay, it just works.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Leonardo got his inspiration from nature like the spinning seed pod and was able to understand the structure of nature rather than understand the actual physics of air pressure and force. Clearly as shown in history you don't have to understand the nature of force in order to develop a cart with wheels to carry hay, it just works.

Technology has often been way ahead of the Science which 'explains' what is happening. Steel production was achieved long before modern Chemistry. Etc., Etc..

 

[mark!]

In addition, in Da Vinci's time, 'reason' was only allowed if it didn't contradict the word of the Bible and thus the rule of the aristocracy, who of course had the undoubted mandate from heaven, which Da Vinci's inventions weren't affecting at all. As a matter of fact, he was pretty close with the French King at that time. Newton on the other hand started a whole new view on on the natural world, and the justification of rule itself, because if gravity on Earth could really be the same force which makes the planets orbit in the heavens above, then perhaps this whole God thingy could be wrong. So, people started to doubt the mandate of the church, and 'belief' really started to make way for 'belief'.

The onset of the age of Enlightenment was therefore innovative as well as a rejection of aristocratic rule in general, and the clergy had a hard time imprisoning people like Voltaire who were spreading more and more Enlightenment ideas. Galilei (who appeared between Da Vinci and Newton) was found suspect of heresy of having the opinion that the Sun lies at the centre of the universe, not the Earth, in contrast to Holy Scripture, and was therefore imprisoned. But eventually, reason won. This very important period in history would later be the inspiration for the declaration of independence and the French Revolution.

'Science', and the scientific method, really started with Newton's and his new perspective on the natural world, and unintentionally along with that the justification of aristocratic rule. No longer would truth be something only to be found in the Bible, but rather something that is present right before our eyes, in the material world around us. This was not yet the case with Da Vinci's inventions.

 

[sophiecentaur]

'reason' was only allowed if it didn't contradict the word of the Bible and thus the rule of the aristocracy,

Precisely the situation these days - just in different contexts. Immunisation and climate change are not approved of by many governments. But Science always tends to get the last laugh.
Funny thing, these days, is that the people who deny the parts of Science that suit them will still use all the tools presented to them by modern technology which, of course, hangs on Modern Science. People are odd creatures.

 

[slow]

Archimedes lived centuries before Da Vinci. There is a water pump called Screw of Arquímedes. Basically it is to place inside a pipe a helical screw, whose diameter is slightly smaller than the inside diameter of the pipe. We assume the obligation to use only the vocabulary and practical notions that were available to an educated person in the Da Vinci era.

If the assembly prevents the screw from moving inside the pipe, then the water will move and the system will be used for pumping. If the screw were loose with the pipe full of water, instead of pumping it would travel inside the pipe when it started to turn.

Now think of an Archimedean screw submerged in the water and without the pipe. The screw rotates and the water is displaced perpendicular to the axis of the screw (radial direction). If the turn is fast enough, the volume of water water displaced radially in a time $\Delta t$ will be less than the volume of material of the propeller that tries to push the water to occupy a given region, in that same $\Delta t$. This means that the screw encounters opposition when it rotates in the water, as does an oar. Turning quickly enough, the screw in the water will serve to propel a boat, as the paddle serves. Actually it will serve as a driver in any situation within the water. If the hull of a sunken ship, which is at the bottom of the sea, is fitted with a screw that turns rapidly, the ship could be brought to the surface.

Now let's recognize Da Vinci's mental breadth and knowledge. In the metal workshops of the time bellows were used to propel air and blow the fire of the forge, the furnace, etc. That same bellows propels water when it is submerged in water. The same bellows, used in the same way, do the same in the water and in the air. Could the same thing happen with the screw? That is, if it rotates in the air quickly enough, could it serve as an impeller, just as it does in the water? The air and water are fluid. They differ in density, in viscosity, etc. , but when they are displaced by the helix, they respond in the same way. A properly designed screw, rotating with the proper speed, should serve as an impeller in the open air. This way of reasoning was available to an educated person at that time. And much more within reach of someone as prepared as Da Vinci. To devise his screw-like helicopter did not need to raise what Newton raised later.