On: Why were Victorian elites so effective?

[GJim]

> Newton wrote his major work in Latin, for example.

Newton wrote in Latin because he was, famously, an arrogent bellend. The rest of the sensible scientific community had long since swiched to living langauges.

[dmurray → GJim]

That doesn't sound right. Newton's contemporaries like Leibniz, Huygens, Halley all wrote much of their most significant work in Latin.

Newton also wrote Opticks in English, perhaps because he was aiming at a more mass market audience.

[LtWorf → GJim]

Do you have a source for this made up information? Seems to contradict with this:

"Leibniz wrote mainly in three languages: scholastic Latin, French and German."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz

"Many of his writings were in Latin"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus