Mortals! Rejoice at so great an ornament to the human race!

The title of this post is a translation of a Latin inscription on Sir Isaac Newton's tomb. This is the fourth year that we at 3QD celebrate the auspicious 25th day of December as Newton's Day, an idea that we coincidentally came to independently on the same day as Richard Dawkins proposed it. (Newton was born 365 years ago today.) Each year I have given some small snippet about Newton's life (previous years' posts here, here, and here in chronological order) and this year I'll present a simple experiment that changed our understanding of the nature of light. Even though Newton had done the experiment in 1666, he did not publish it as part of his first major bit of scientific writing until 1672. In fact, just as in a more fair world (with a more fair academy in Oslo!) Einstein should have won four Nobels for the work he published as a 26 year-old in 1905 (the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the derivation of the law of the equivalence of mass and energy, E=mc2, from the equations of special relativity), Newton's achievements of the summer of 1666 (which caused Murray Gell-Mann to joke about that annus mirabilis that Sir Isaac could have written quite a "What I did on my summer vacation" essay!) were no less astounding: the law of gravitation, the laws of motion, the work on optics, and the invention of the calculus!

In addition, Newton refined Galileo's notion of scientific method to the point where it is basically indistinguishable from a modern statement of it by a scientist today. He writes in the Opticks:

As in mathematics, so in natural philosophy, the investigation of difficult things by the method of analysis, ought ever to precede the method of composition. This analysis consists in making experiments and observations, and in drawing general conclusions from them by induction and admitting of no objections against the conclusions, but such as are taken from experiments, or other certain truths. For hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental philosophy. And although the arguing from experiments and observations by induction be no demonstration of general conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the nature of things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the induction is more general. And if` no exception occur from phenomena, the conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if` at any time afterwards any exception shall occur from experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced with such exceptions as occur. By this way of analysis we may proceed from compounds to ingredients, and from motions to the forces producing them; and in general, from effects to their causes, and from particular causes to more general ones, till the argument ends in the most general. This is the method of analysis: And the synthesis consists in assuming the causes discovered, and established as principles, and by them explaining the phenomena proceeding from them, and proving the explanations.

Now just look at the elegant simplicity of this beautiful experiment that Newton performed with just two prisms and a convex lens. This is from a University of California, Riverside, physics webpage:

Newton's first work as Lucasian Professor was on optics. Every scientist since Aristotle had believed light to be a simple entity, but Newton, through his experience when building telescopes, believed otherwise: it is often found that the observed images have colored rings around them (in fact, he devised the reflecting telescope to minimize this effect). His crucial experiment showing that white light is composite consisted in taking beam of white light and passing it through a prism; the result is a wide beam displaying a spectrum of colors. If this wide beam is made to pass through a second prism, the output is again a narrow beam of white light. If, however, only one color is allowed to pass (using a screen), the beam after the second prism has this one color again. Newton concluded that white light is really a mixture of many different types of colored rays, and that these colored rays are not composed of more basic entities.

So, once again, Happy Newton's Day to all!

Comments

[Robin]

Happy Newton Day!!!!

[Abbas Raza]

Now that I am done with the secular posturing for the year, Robin, onto more important things: I got

3 Bollywood DVDs
1 Rope-jumping rope
1 High tech long thermal underwear
1 Small leather notebook
1 Fountain pen
1 Very stylish Italian cap

What did you?

[Meremark]

True Newton -- a beam of brightness composed of the full spectrum of interest.

I've practiced astrology almost forty years, with a few thousand clients' 'readings.' One of my reference books is The Complete Planetary Ephemeris 1950-2000 A.D., [The Hieratic Publishing Co., 1975]. The frontispiece consists of quotations introduced on the subject, and includes this:

Isaac Newton's reply to comet-discoverer [Sir Edmund] Halley's questioning the basis of Astrology, ca. 1680 -- "Sir, I have studied it, you have not!"

Knowing the-powers-that-be's enacted suppression of practice of the Art in those times, my longstanding hunch is that the quote was delivered in the House of Lords, wherein all behaviors are above the law. Yet, I have not found a source citation. Any help? ideas? ... anyone? ... anyone? ....

(It is sure common knowledge Newton 'elected' the date for laying the cornerstone of Greenwich Observatory, and judging by the ensuing veneration of the 'Greenwich' hallmark, Newton's prescience(?) was impeccable.)

In another matter, since I'm here and ranting Newtonian physics, would that my wish for peace on earth, gather support in a wider popular recognition that the Law of Particle Motion, (a zero-tolerance requirement that every action couples an equal and opposite reaction), is violated in the 'official' legend of nine-eleven events where the total reported (known sources of) potential energy causing a Tower's collapse (less than 150,000 KWH), is at least an order of magnitude less than, (not equal), the recorded and measured kinetic energy released, (sinked, more than 1,000,000 KWH), as calculated in the thermodynamics analysis here: TinyURL.COM/2p8kep

Pass it on. Thank you. Happy Newton's Day, one and all.

[Azra Raza]

Abbas,
Thanks for this lovely reminder about one of the two greatest scientists ever to have lived. The stature of Newton is summed up by the English poet, Alexander Pope in his famous epigram:

Nature, and Nature's Laws lay hid in Night,
God said, Let Newton be! and All was Light

Happy Holidays!
Aps.

[Winfield J. Abbe]

It should also be kept in mind that Issac Newton stood on the shoulders of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), another genius, who set the stage for the scientific method, with his enormous and varied contributions too in virtually everything in physics and astronomy; invention of the telescope, optics, inclined plane experiments, and yes, he even wondered about the speed of light and sent an assistant to another mountaintop in a failed attempt to measure it with lanterns, etc., etc., etc.
Yet, with all these remarkable discoveries and all the money spent on public and private "education", take a glance at the website of James Randi
http://www.randi.org/joom/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,80/. At this website Mr. Randi publishes a document called "An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural". Take a look, for example at what this book has to say about dowsing or the law of parsimony. Yet, many people today still believe dowsing is a valid and accurate way of identifying where water is under the ground and many others, even "scientists" routinely disregard the law of parsimony, which is a corollary to the scientific methods of Galileo and Newton.
For an example of these just look at the "scientists" and the failed war on cancer. And right here where I live in Athens, Georgia, it was just reported in the local newspaper that the local head of the public hospital, one John Drew, who earns about $ 1 million a year as head of this hospital, used dowsing to find the place to drill a well on their property. Of course since water is almost everywhere under the earth, if you have enough money, as the hospital does, and drill deep enough, you will likely find water almost anywhere you drill! Oddly, James Randi is reported to have only a high school education but has given talks at most of the major universities! I guess the physicists are too busy to "get into the fray" of all this. A concise statement of Newton on all this was: "the main Business of Natural Philosophy is to argue from Phaenomena...we must learn from the Phaenomena of Nature what are the Laws and Properties of the Attraction before we enquire the Cause by which the Attraction is perform'd." (I.Newton, 1713).
Note that even today, 2007, we still do not understand the underlying cause of the attractive force between all masses. Fortunately we don't need that information to get out of the way of a falling rock or put up a space shuttle!

[Dave Ranning]

Abbas--
Dawkin's beat you
to it, but Happy Newton Day!
Great thinker but kind of a jerk, as one of my prof's pointed out.
Better to celebrate someone who appears in the historical.
Congratulations on the Long Underwear and Italian Cap!

[Dave Ranning]

1925 -- Carlos Castaneda lives. Anthropologist & author of number of book describing the teachings of Don Juan, a Yaqui sorcerer & shaman. Castaneda kept himself out of the public eye & there has been much debate as to whether or not his books are documented fact or entirely fiction.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/castane.htm

[aguy109]

OK, so 3QD has succeeded in deliberately ignoring Christmas on Dec.25th. But what about the Greek and Russian Orthodox, who celebrate it on Jan 7th ? Don't they deserve to be studiously ignored?
So here's a toast to Millard Fillmore, 13th President of the United States, born January 7th, 1800.

[Dave Ranning]

aguy--
Greek and Russian what? Other than some bland Icons and funny clothes, never really enter my visual reality.
Bring on Fillmore! I had great times at the Fillmore in San Francisco in the 60's---
watched many a act melt into the floor.