I tend to agree with Paul Graham[0] on this one, and less on the "last of the magicians" moniker. The idea is Newton tried to uncover truth through multiple methods and avenues, and we remember him for the ones the bore fruit, and not for the ones that didn't seem to pan out.
After all, in Newton's time, how would you know alchemy didn't work until you tried it rigorously? Or, more generally, how would you have even known for sure that empiricism and mathematics would be so successful?
Newton could be called the first of the new magicians. The idea that some invisible unknown force is acting upon entities far away is rather a magical idea if you think about it.
The idea that the position of the moon influences events on earth sounds just like astrology as it does physics. The only difference is that the claim by physics can be replicated while the one by astrology cannot. But both are equally mystical.
> After all, in Newton's time, how would you know alchemy didn't work until you tried it rigorously?
Which is how chemistry started. Modern chemistry was born out of european alchemists primarily trying to reproduce porcelain from china - a major source of trade imbalance between china and europe.
Of course like the chinese, he kept his recipe a secret in order to enrich himself and other european alchemists continue their search for the recipe. Insatiable greed along with insatiable curiosity is how we ultimately got chemistry.
You raise a good point because as we’ve found in the 1930’s and I believe finally performed in the 50’s, alchemy can occur. (Seaborg with a particle accelerator). The method of discovery is performed by trial and error and building off the mistakes and successes of your predecessors and Newtown was just the first step in many of his discoveries.
Okay, alchemy doesn’t refer only to transmutation. It was a legitimate practice by early chemists who were playing around with materials. The mysticism is greatly exaggerated. And the scientific method goes back tens or hundreds of thousands of years .. for example early hominids fishing for tuna in Morocco. My point is that rudimentary scientific experiments are still science and should be appreciated. There was no transition from magic to science in the 17th century.
In the last paragraph of his Principia Mathematica (maybe the most important book in the history of science?), Newton claims that sensation and action comes from electrical vibrations in the nerves. It took hundreds of years before before his hypothesis could be accepted.
Nothing in science is ever proven. There can only be accumulating evidence and increased agreement among scientists. If something were to be considered proven, then we would not be open to re-interpretation if contradictory evidence were to appear. This would be anti-scientific.
Nah, now you are simply going down the rabbit’s hole of arguing definitions.
Nothing is ever proven, yet the probability of it being true is higher than the probability of you waking up tomorrow being Frodo who just realised he needs to bring that goddamn ring to Mordor.
It’s the same funny case of arguing that we live in a simulation: it’s a great idea, but the fact is that if that simulation is good enough, then you will never know you live in a simulation.
In my own experience, at the very beginning of my career, I have made the foolish mistake of taking theories for true -- in EVERY circumstance -- and been burned by it when I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting the results that matched my intuition.
Theories are only as good as their reproducibility, i.e their "probability of being true" percentage.
I strongly disagree. In science, an every-increasing number of ideas are, for all intents and purposes, totally accepted and taken for granted, and any argument they might be wrong is simply dismissed out of hand. For instance, take the idea that the Earth is round, or that matter is composed of atoms.
Now it is true that scientists sometimes say something similar to your claim, but if you look at how they actually think in the practice of science, it is something quite different.
People get this wrong because, like many words, "prove" has more than one meaning, and they mistakenly apply one that is appropriate to mathematics or pure logical to an empirical area where a more pragmatic meaning actually applies.
Matter isn't composed of atoms, that is uncut table, indivisible basic elements. Ironically, light is made of quanta, but light isn't matter. Or, actually it is?
Neither is the earth spherical, if that's what you mean by round. It is oblate.
There has been quite a bit of argumentation along these lines in the sciences. And yes, the arguments were dismissed out of hand until evidence was forthcoming.
That's why newton's ideas about electrical vibrations in nerve cells were dismissed out of hand. After all, scientists knew with great certainty that nerves were "too flaccid" to support vibration!
Oh come on. For atoms and the shape of the earth, you know perfectly well I was referring to the contemporary ideas.
And as far as argumentation goes, there was a lot, but then it got settled. Ditto for nerve cells. In each of these cases, the argumentation was because there wasn't enough empirical data to decide the matter. But then more empirical evidence got collected and the truth became clear.
The fact is, while scientists sometimes talk about nothing being really proven, in practice they believe an enormous and ever-expanding number of ideas actually are.
After all, in Newton's time, how would you know alchemy didn't work until you tried it rigorously? Or, more generally, how would you have even known for sure that empiricism and mathematics would be so successful?
[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/disc.html