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<\/i>, by James Gleick.<\/p>\nWhat a fascinating man. I knew nothing about Newton the person – just knew his laws of motion, and the apple falling, and all that stuff that everybody knows. I know him because of the biographies I’ve read of Einstein and all the quantum physics shit I struggle through. Newton, of course, is a major player in all of that.<\/p>\n
But here’s some more about him from the biography:<\/p>\n
Solitude was the essential part of his genius. As a youth he assimilated or rediscovered most of the mathematics known to humankind and then invented the calculus — the machinery by which the modern world understands change and flow — but kept this treasure to himself. He embraced his isolation through his productive years, devoting himself to the most secret of sciences, alchemy. He feared the light of exposure, shrank from criticism and controversy, and seldom published his work at all. Striving to decipher the riddles of the universe, he emulated the complex secrecy in which he saw them encoded. He stood aloof from other philosophers even after becoming a national icon — Sir Isaac, Master of the Mint, President of the Royal Society, his likeness engraved on medals, his discoveries exalted in verse.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know what I may seem to the world,” he said before he died, “but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Einsten wrote:<\/p>\n
Fortunate Newton, happy childhood of science! Nature to him was an open book. He stands before us strong, certain, and alone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There are many things that do not knock me flat on my ass anymore … no matter how amazing the fact of them … they no longer have the power to stun me into total stillness.<\/p>\n
There are many things that I am “over”.<\/p>\n
Isaac Newton ain’t one of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are a couple of books I’ve been working on for a while – they’re the kinds of books it seems okay to just dip into, put down for a while, and pick back up again. One of these books … Continue reading