
Newton, the Man (1946) - mr_golyadkin
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Keynes_Newton.html
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vmurthy
Hagiography aside, Newton, the Man was also mean-spirited and would go to
great lengths to ensure his "opponents" would suffer. I remember reading that
as President of the Royal Society, he politicized the Leibniz Calculus issue
so much that even our politicians can pick up a lesson or two :-) [1]

Why am I telling this? Well, I'd like people to realize that our heroes also
have flaws and we don't fall to blind hero-worship. There are, after all,
lessons to be learnt on how _not_ to be as well :-)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz%E2%80%93Newton_calculu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz%E2%80%93Newton_calculus_controversy)

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jhbadger
He also was pretty nasty to Robert Hooke (of Hooke's Law and microscopy fame).
Yes, he was probably a better scientist than Hooke, but Hooke wasn't nothing
either.

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mellosouls
The famous "shoulders of giants" quote has been seen by some as a mean dig at
the hunchbacked Hooke.

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masonic
(authored by John Maynard Keynes)

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gerikson
That’s a good recommendation, thanks for the heads-up.

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jbotz
This is a great story indeed, but I have to disagree with it in one respect. I
do not think that Newton was the "last of the magicians" because I don't think
you have to believe in a personal god in order to have the same sense that
creation is a meaningful mystery with "clues laid about the world". Seeing
"God" as an impersonal force or schema underlying existence (Spinoza's God)
can have an equivalent effect on the inquisitive mind, and many great
scientists to this day are driven to much the same treasure hunt as Newton
was. It is very much in this sense that Einstein said famously that "God does
not play dice".

The truth is that even today Existence remains a great mystery... the most
fundamental questions, such as the meaning of quantum indeterminacy, whether
or not infinity is a physical quantity, the ultimate nature of space and time,
all remain as mysterious as they ever were, and anyone who is driven to
explore them is thus as much a magician as Newton was.

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digitalengineer
Thank you, a great story. One man trying to find the ‘code’ the universe was
written with and discovering important parts.

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tw1010
This was likely posted because Michael Nielsen linked to it on his twitter,
just for the historical record.

