Alternative World - no Newton

[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.