Alternative World - no Newton

[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

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Only if you have Newton's laws of motion to apply it to. I've never heard that Leibniz came up with those.

Robert Hooke did. And Newton in Principia credits Wren, Hooke, and Halley with priority for the inverse square law of gravity with respect to heavenly bodies.