Alternative World - no Newton

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Nobody exists in a vacuum and nature is always there to teach us. Somebody else, or multiple somebodies do all the same work within a few decades of 1600 either way.

People had been working around the edges of relativity for about 50 years before Einstein figured it out, early electrical stuff was around in fragmented form for about 70 years before Faraday demonstrated it was all the same thing. It took about 140 years for the various gas laws to finally be rationalized. Newton's theory of gravity is about 60 years after people started working on the problem (he's born the year Galileo dies, though people were looking for the geometric patterns in orbits a little earlier).

It looks to me like the fragments of science *are* pretty much automatically generated - lots of people contribute bits, many of them essentially the same ones simultaneously - but the people who can reduce the confusion to a really fundamental theory may only show up a couple times a century. A timeline that delays physics 50, or maybe even 100 years by removing one of the half dozen most important of those synthesizers in history wouldn't strain plausibility that much. Newton basically performed three of those reductions to order - with calculus, orbits and gravity, and optics. You might well have to wait for three slightly lesser geniuses without him, though I do think Leibnitz might have pulled off calculus anyway.

[Not]

I'm in the minority, but I think that scientific theories are idiosyncratic things, like poems. Absent Newton (et. al) we might have different theories incommensurate with current ones that explain the phenomenal universe exactly as well.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Not

I'm in the minority, but I think that scientific theories are idiosyncratic things, like poems. Absent Newton (et. al) we might have different theories incommensurate with current ones that explain the phenomenal universe exactly as well.

What definition of 'incommensurate' are you using, that you think these incommensurate theories could 'explain the phenomenal universe exactly as well'?

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Not

I'm in the minority, but I think that scientific theories are idiosyncratic things, like poems. Absent Newton (et. al) we might have different theories incommensurate with current ones that explain the phenomenal universe exactly as well.

Well, there were five or ten theories of the structure of the solar system circulating in 16th and 17th century Europe. Other than relativity, has anyone made a theory which tries to do the same things as Newtonian gravitation and gets equivalent results through completely different assumptions?

Newtonian kinematics are a simple invention one one has the calculus and the Cartesian plane; gravity and optics are trickier.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by malloyd

It looks to me like the fragments of science *are* pretty much automatically generated - lots of people contribute bits, many of them essentially the same ones simultaneously - but the people who can reduce the confusion to a really fundamental theory may only show up a couple times a century. A timeline that delays physics 50, or maybe even 100 years by removing one of the half dozen most important of those synthesizers in history wouldn't strain plausibility that much. Newton basically performed three of those reductions to order - with calculus, orbits and gravity, and optics. You might well have to wait for three slightly lesser geniuses without him, though I do think Leibnitz might have pulled off calculus anyway.

Might have? Not to take sides in the priority dispute (an embarrassment to both sides), but I think it's pretty clear that Leibnitz did pull off calculus on his own, even if Newton got to it first.

Bill Stoddard

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Might have? Not to take sides in the priority dispute (an embarrassment to both sides), but I think it's pretty clear that Leibnitz did pull off calculus on his own, even if Newton got to it first.

Yeah, I think "might have" is right. Coming up with a brilliant theory that nobody pays any attention to can eventually make you famous (Cf. Mendel) but doesn't really do much to advance science. Leibnitz wasn't especially shy about sharing his ideas and was fairly famous for his other philosophical and mathematical contributions, so it's likely he'd have publicized his version of calculus even without his dispute with Newton, but not certain.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by malloyd

A timeline that delays physics 50, or maybe even 100 years by removing one of the half dozen most important of those synthesizers in history wouldn't strain plausibility that much. .

The thing is that there's quite bit of slack time between creation of Newtonian Science! and the practical use of it. Probably most of two hundred years.

So even with a later start it could all still be made up before practical developments were delayed.

As a more recent example if there had been no Tsiolkovsky does anyone think Oberth or Goddard or Ley or Von Braun wouldn't have done the math when the time came that they needed it?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The thing is that there's quite bit of slack time between creation of Newtonian Science! and the practical use of it. Probably most of two hundred years.

Huh? Newtonian optics went into use in telescopes pretty much instantly, he did it himself, and the delay between Principia and calculus and, say, gunnery calculations couldn't have been more than a couple decades.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Huh? Newtonian optics went into use in telescopes pretty much instantly, he did it himself, and the delay between Principia and calculus and, say, gunnery calculations couldn't have been more than a couple decades.

I did not mean literally anything done by Newton. I meant the general practical use of Newtonian mechanics.

Even literally, while Newton did design a an early form of reflecting telescope it had little if anything to do with Opticks (specifically the book but also the science). Many other people were fooling around in the area trying to bypass the limits of lens-grinding. It wasn't until the late 1800s until the issue was finally and irreversably decided in favor of the reflector.

Liebnitz's calculus ought to do gunnery calcs just as well as Newton's did.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Liebnitz's calculus ought to do gunnery calcs just as well as Newton's did.

Only if you have Newton's laws of motion to apply it to. I've never heard that Leibniz came up with those. On the Continent they were still messing around with nonsense like Descartes's vortices.

Bill Stoddard