Sci. American, Sept 2004, page 108, Einstein and Newton
Genius Compared, Alan Lightman.
Abstracted ideas about vitalism and determinism.
Prior to Issac Newton most
thinkers assumed that gods controlled events and how the
world worked was beyond the understanding of "mere mortals."
-
Adam and Eve were banished from Eden for eating from the
tree of knowledge, God's knowledge.
-
Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock for giving fire, the secret
of the Gods, to mortal man.
-
This inaccessibility was one of the themes in Milton's Paradise
Lost."
Sir Issac Newton ..."conquered
the notion that some areas of knowledge were inaccessible to the human
mind, an idea ingrained in Western culture for centuries. Newton,
with his monumental work "The Principia" (1687) swept all this aside.
It now appeared that all things in the physical world
were comprehensible, mechanistic, predictable, deterministic.
Albert Einstein
brought about another transition with his special relativity theory (1905).
Physical things could no longer be revealed by observation
of the external world.
space-time
relativity
Einstein showed that scientists must begin within their
own minds, and use mathematics to pursue hypotheses.
Einstein overturned centuries of thought about the supremacy
of observation, empirical study and experience.
Probability replaced Newton's predictability.
The universe could not be understood intuitively but
only mathematically. (Plato's Cave)
| Isaac Newton was the greatest English mathematician
of his generation. He laid the foundation for differential and integral
calculus. His work on optics and gravitation make him one of the greatest
scientists the world has known. 1643 - 1727 |
 |
| Albert Einstein contributed more than
any other scientist to the modern vision of physical reality. His special
and general theories of relativity are still regarded as the most satisfactory
model of the large-scale universe that we have. 1879 - 1955 |
 |