Newton and Buffon
Revival of an old post, and a book I put down almost a year ago.
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I’ve been learning a bit about Newton recently. Not having as natural a facility with physics as biology, and so having less immediate motivation to study it, I know very little about Newton compared to, say, Lamarck, Cuvier, Geoffroy St. Hillaire, Darwin, Owen, and other dons of biology. Nonetheless, because major advances in physics generally preceded those in biology, the methodologies and ruminations of great physicists (and the philosophic and cultural contributions of people influenced by these scientists) necessarily provide the relevant backdrop to advances in biological theory.
But really this is a post of cool quotes and tidbits in yet another riff on the awesomeness of reason, and people who live by reason, and heroes throughout the ages. I never get tired of those kinds of stories.
From Andrew Bernstein’s The Capitalist Manifesto (pg. 42-46, 2005):
"[T]he essence of the Enlightenment, and of its influence on the new nation [America], was its uncompromising commitment to man’s faculty of reason. For this, the 19th century philosophes owed much to Newton. It is not merely the birth of the principle of individual rights during this period that is important. As will be seen, capitalism rests fundamentally upon the reverence for the reasoning mind that is the hallmark of Enlightenment thought and culture."
Said Newton (quoted from Bernstein, pg. 42): "If the character of so intangible a thing as light could be discovered by playing with a prism, if, by looking through a telescope and doing a sum in mathematics, the force which held the planets could be identified with the force that made an apple fall to the ground, there seemed to be no end to what might be definitely known about the universe."
Voltaire called Newton the "greatest man who ever lived," and wrote "If true greatness consists of having been endowed by heaven with powerful genius, and of using it to enlighten both oneself and others, then a man like M. Newton (we scarcely find one like him in ten centuries) is truly the great man, and those politicians and conquerors…are generally nothing but celebrated villains."
Among my favorites: Alexander Pope the poet wrot,
Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night.
God said, Let Newton be!
and All was Light.
Edmond Halley (of Halley’s Comet fame, and who played a vital role in publishing Newton’s Principia) said "It is not lawful for mortals to approach divinity nearer than this."
And Thomas Jefferson hung Newton’s portrait in his study (as did many intellectuals of the day), along with ones of Sir Francis Bacon (perhaps the first philosopher of science - a man of applied reason) and John Locke (political philosopher).
On an early giant in my own field, Bernstein writes: "The spirit and achievements of the Enlightenment are perhaps best represented in the work of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788). The ough of nobel birth and made Comte de Buffon by Louis XV, his life was devoted to science, not to politics. ‘The thirty-six volumtes of Buffon’s Histoire Natuelle (1749-1785), which appeared during his lifetime, supplemented by eight volumes published (1788-1804) after his death, covered every subject in nuatre from man and birds to cetaceans, fishes and minerals." . . . Though a practicing Catholic, he sought natural causes for the world of nature he dearly loved. Buffon was tactful in dealing with the Church, but nevertheless claimed that the earth was vastly older than the religious belief of his day allowed and argued for a constantly-and-slowly-changing earth. Nature, he claimed, was not a finished product, but underwent caseleess processes of change, an idea that helped pave the way for the theory of evolution in the next century.
"Though fluent in Latin, Buffon wrote his empirical, encyclopedic work in French, seeking successfully to bring knowledge of natural facts and of scientific method to the literate common man. "For the first time in publishing history, books of popular science were best sellers." In the spirit of the age, Buffon not only immensely advanced the cause of scientific inquiry, he did so with the explicit conviction that knowledge was power, that it was not reserved for the aristocratic elite, but that it would bring practical benefit to mankind."
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I have always related more to Da Vinci.
I think Da Vinci did a lot, produced a lot, but I am not convinced he knew why.
Newton on the other hand was more into the “why.” The investigation of “why” was more his domain.
I think if both Newton and Da Vinci saw a bird die in mid-flight, Da Vinci would be more interested in the aerodynamics of the falling bird and would want to record that image and perhaps recreate it in a model, while Newton, of course, would be oh so interested in why the bird fell at all.
Newton’s interest = cause
Da Vinci’s interest = effect
Okay, I have no end to this…I am just sorta going with a thought here……..
But I think….
Both would use reason for different reasons.
Both with a different purpose.
Two humans with great minds seeing the world from that different perspective that only their individual minds could offer.
Hmmm? Someone with a great but different mind? Someone with a different perspective?
How great must that be?
I’m sorry…..who was I talking about?
Comment by FIDO — December 26, 2006 @ 10:05 pm
I know very little about DaVinci as well. But from what you describe, sounds like he took the Is for granted, and asked How? Newton then seems to have seen the Is, and asked How, so that he might answer Why. It has always interested me that for inanimate matter, the final explanation of Why something does x or y, always seems thisclose to being a How explanation. Now, I think of Identity (”Is-ing” as one professor put it) as a melding of Why and How (closer to “has-ing”). At which point we arrive at “Is-ing is has-ing” which just means that existence is identity, and identity is existence. I love it. And the same applies to animate matter, but I need to be more clear on that before I speak more about teleology (the what-for-ness of metaphysics) in biology. My words always lag behind my thoughts.
Comment by praxical — December 27, 2006 @ 12:22 am
Hey ya know, now that I think about it, Ol’ Leonardo and you do have the same sleep habits. ;-)
Comment by FIDO — December 27, 2006 @ 11:26 am
Newton’s great and all, but he’s no Aristotle ;)
Though he was certainly one of the most intelligent humans to have ever existed, I am hesistant to call him one of the greatest *humans* ever, since to me, humanity is more than just intelligence, even when considering the brilliance of Newton.
Because much of Newtons brilliance came from an abandonment of some of the other great qualities of being human. Intelligence and Reason are primaries, but so is love and passion, Newton, it is said, when asked what is greatest achievement was, replied that it was to die a virgin. He intentionally chose to abandon all emotional and human relationships in pursuit of his scientific investigations. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s his life after all, but the defining essence of humanity is not only being a scientist, and so the greatest of all humans ought to encompass qualities including that but beyond it in other realms. Most of the thinkers of the Enlightenment age were as passionately involved in matters of natural philosophy as they were in aesthetics, focusing or at least being much more cognizant of what it was to live a good life. Newton, though amazingly brilliant, was intentionally ignorant in matters of human relationships, he was angry, short tempered, despised all criticisms (even ones that turned out legitimate) and just in general seemed to me to have embraced the mind-body dichotomy himself (or perhaps even laid the foundation for such a split to occur and grow)
That is why I would suggest Aristotle as the greatest ‘human’ who has ever lived, though Newton was probably the most intelligent.
Comment by Matus1976 — November 26, 2007 @ 9:18 am
1. Historical context. In the context of the Enlightenment, Newton was without parallel, in his intellectual and applied achievement or in the quality of his influence on the intellectual culture. I omitted the quotes from Bernstein’s book giving examples of just how he much he inspired people, but it was astounding. That’s real, and non-trivial, and all that was in spite of Newton’s assholery and asceticism.
2. Historical impact. Newton’s assholery and asceticism wasn’t the important thing (to anyone but him) when he was a live, and it’s not the important thing about him now. I’ll assume you’re correct and all that is true about him. But it’s not why we’re talking about him over 300 years later. Whatever irrational wedge he used to split himself in two, he’s the only one who suffered.
3. The point of the post was not to draw up a ranking of the bestest people ever, but to call attention to one of the giants among men in history - particularly when in our day, you say “Newton” and people either think of a couple equations they had to memorize once, or some cookies. That’s a tragedy. Newton is under-known and under-rated today. Bernstein’s book has prompted me to learn more about Newton, and I wanted to pass some of that knowledge and excitement along.
4. Scope. Just because you say great things about one person, doesn’t mean you can drop the context of the conversation and infer that the judgment rendered would remain the same. I did not mention Aristotle, nor even so much as the Renaissance, nor did I attempt to make a survey of Western history (where a comparison with Aristotle would be warranted).
5. Champion the champion. Newton’s irrationalism regarding emotion and the rest don’t detract from what he actually achieved. Rather, they lead one to speculate what else he could have done, or how much more he could have enjoyed life, had he been more integrated in reason and emotion. I treat it as something that *wasn’t added* to his achievement, rather than something that *does subtract* from his achievement. I couldn’t care less how many people Newton did or did not have sex with, or what his attitude towards poetry was. The fact is, (to my knowledge) everything that he *did* produce was friggin spectacular. It’s not like we have the Principia, and a bunch of moralistic, man-hating, Descartes-inspired tripe that he also happened to publish that we have to work to ignore (or treat parenthetically) when we discuss his intellectual achievement. As far as I can tell, his productive achievements are untainted by his anti-emotionalism; if Newton had been fully integrated and otherwise the same Newton, I think it’s reasonable to expect that the Principia would still have been the Principia. The only person who suffered from Newton’s irrationalism was Newton, and presumably he did to one degree or another. So why dwell on it? Justice was served (in that respect), and it would be a terrible injustice to forever downplay his achievements because of a fault that did not impact his achievement in any substantial way.
Newton was a giant, period. He was probably among the top five most important people of the Enlightenment, and that will never go away. The Principia will always outshine such muckraking. How great would it be for a scientist today - one presumably with his own set of flaws and challenges - to have Newton’s acuity, cultural influence and respect? It would be a sign of a vastly healthier culture than we currently have, and a sign of great things to come.
Comment by praxical — November 26, 2007 @ 12:04 pm
I was hesistant to submit my post without adding some qualifiers, I did not suspect you would immediately interpret me as some Newton deconstructionist, especially considering my continual reference to his brilliance and then focus on the claim of ‘greatest human’ Now it seems I should have added those qualifiers.
I am not muckracking or belittling Newton, nor trying to downplay his tremendous achievements or undermine their influence in the history, progress, and well being of me and all humans. Newton was probably the greatest singular scientific contributor off all time, he remains without parrallel even today, and through all of history.
Newtons personality was certainly not important in the context of his scientific achievements, nor was I implying that it was, but his personality certainly *was* important in the context of his being a human, let alone being considered the ‘greatest human’ of all time, which is what Bernstein quoted Voltaire as saying. I am only making a comment on that point, not on Newton’s popularity, scientific achievements, overall contribution to physical knowledge nor on any assessment of who is great after a survey of western history. Only on this one particular singular point of that post.
So for scope, just because I am making a comment about a particular point in your blog, does not mean you should drop the context of my point and take it take it as an indictment of this entire post and the entirety of the contributions of the great man this post is centered on!
I have drawn incredible inspiration from reading of the life of Newton, in both lessons as a person who aspires to achieve great things and lessons as a person who aspires to be a great *human*.
Comment by Matus1976 — November 27, 2007 @ 8:16 am
So really, your point was against Voltaire, not Newton, not Bernstein’s quoting of Voltaire, and not my quoting Bernstein. But why argue with Voltaire? I think his judgment, for his time, was warranted. Aristotle was erroneously associated with the “scholastics,” a churchy group of intellectuals who tried to treat Aquinas’s take on Aristotle, philosophy and theology as the new Gospel. To fail to credit Aristotle is forgivable for a person living in the 1600s.
Furthermore, even if unknowningly over-stated, Voltaire’s praise of Newton highlights the discovery (or perhaps resounding confirmation) that reason is not limited in scope and is exceedingly practical (and not just a clerical exercise). Free will went from the essence of sin to a boon for life. People went from being ‘merely’ human to being gloriously human, from enduring ‘this’ life to furthering their lives.
In both his excellence and his shortcomings, Newton exercised the human trait on which rationality stands: the power to think, which rests on the power to decide to think: free will. And the triumph of reason, as demonstrated by Newton’s new physics, gave people a view of what was possible to anyone with a functioning mind: that with a certain method, you can discover, create and improve your life without end. The sky was no longer the limit. Whatever Newton suppressed or cut off in his own life, his achievements were, at minimum, an early and key step towards mind-body harmony. Ayn Rand said she couldn’t have derived her philosophy without the Industrial Revolution as evidence for the practical (and therefore moral) nature of reason. And Newton stands at the intellectual base of the Industrial Revolution.
Importantly, I’m very doubtful that Newton’s brilliance (whatever exactly that means) “came from an abandonment of some of the other great qualities of being human.” How do you know that? He may well have abandoned many important things, but I sincerely doubt that that abandonment gave rise to his brilliance. Newton might have thought so, but I disagree. In this regard, he was working on the mind-body dichotomy (which, btw, really got going with Descartes, a good 200+ years before Newton, though you can trace its roots to Plato and beyond). As I said in my first comment, I think Newton simply lost out on healthy relationships, greater happiness, etc. I don’t think these things would have hindered Newton’s work if he had had them, and I don’t think the act of abandoning them or simply not having them gave rise to his achievements.
I also don’t think that people have any obligation to be multi-faceted in order to be happy humans, or good humans, or great humans. Just because many of Newton’s contemporaries had a hand in many pots professionally, doesn’t mean Newton made sacrifices professionally by focusing on physics. And just because someone doesn’t dabble in a bunch of things professionally, doesn’t mean they don’t seek, enjoy and benefit from those things as private individuals. Personally, I don’t know anything about Newton’s private life, whether he liked Mozart or daffodils or voted Tory or what. We are mainly cognizant of his monolithic work and achievement in physics. Maybe professionally focusing on physics 100% of the time is what it took for him to do it. Maybe not. Maybe that would be necessary for a person of lesser ability. Again, I don’t find it to be a terribly important evaluation, especially given how little is known (at least by me) of the rest of Newton’s life, and how little the rest of his life influenced the reception and use of his work. And that latter is mostly what is important from an historical point of view.
This is a minor point, but I am not personally interested in trying to figure out if Aristotle or Newton was ’smarter’ or ‘more intelligent’ or a ‘greater genius.’ The terms are usually muddled, and it’s not an important evaluation to me anyway. I can’t even say that I’m more interested in who, objectively, was the ‘better human.’ What would we gain from that, and how would the comparison be made anyway? As far as I know, about 99% of what we know of Aristotle comes from his works, and they tell us a lot about him, and not just about the subjects he wrote about. Is it critical to know about his personal life? I don’t think so. Yet if all we had of Newton was the Principia and some lecture notes, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. And, in my view at least, the writings of Aristotle and Newton are both so exemplary, and yet sufficiently different, that concluding anything more than “They’re both fabulous, and their strengths and weaknesses complement each other” is not terribly robust or productive. So I’m not worried about who was greatest - but then, that wasn’t my evaluation to begin with.
PS: The context of your point stretched from Aristotle to (your) present-day notions of what it means to be human. It’s hard to drop a context that big.
Comment by praxical — November 28, 2007 @ 11:13 pm
I have not read enough of Voltaire’s writing to know what he thought of Aristotle, so my comment wasn’t really even a critique of him, but more so just sharing my thoughts on the nature of what it is to be a great human, which your comment and post brought up. Voltaire’s praises for Newton could certainly be applied to Aristotle as well, Newton was, after all, a great admirer of Aristotle and was inspired by him. In fact when Newton realized his work on inertia contradicted Aristotelian physics he wrestled with it until he ultimately appealed to Aristotle’s rejection of Plato’s opinions in favor of the truth to help justify his rejection of Aristotle’s opinions in favor of the truth. Newton wrote in the margin of one of his notebooks “Aristotle is dear to me, but dearer still is the truth” in obvious reference to Aristotle writing the same of Plato. But like you say, we are not arguing who was the ‘greater human’ here, both Aristotle and Newton made tremendous contributions to science, reason, humanity, etc Instead I am just discussing what it means to be a great human, and that begs a few questions.
As for the degree of Newton’s achievement which came from his abandoning some aspect of being human, I suggest reading some biographies on Newton, and also to consider the nature of genius and expertise. James Glieck’s biography on Newton is an excellent place to start, and also some of the studies which have been done on expertise. The simple fact is, regardless of how much ‘innate’ intelligence you are endowed with, how much time you devote in life to achieving is directly related to how much you achieved. Newton’s life is a prime example of this, he essentially abandoned all human relationships in favor of his intellectual pursuits, he had no friends and no romantic interests, he remained introverted and extremely anti-social for most of his life. If you decided to have no friends, never see your family, and eat only the most sparse meals in favor of working perpetually on understand new things and discovering new ideas, how much further do you think you would get when compared to a life that you would ‘like; to do these things, but spend most of your waking hours not working on them, say relaxing with friends or going for hikes? To suggest that great genius and achievements come with no effort or time dedicated toward them is an appeal to mysticism. Newton was not born with the principia in his head, he spent nearly every waking moment of most of his life studying and working toward these ends. It was only much latter in his life that he appeared to relax and engage in personal relationships. This is not a judgement call, it is merely on observation, we have a finite amount of time to spend learning and growing and every moment you spend doing something other than that ultimately limits how far you will proceed. This pattern is clear when we look at the lives of the great achievers of humanity, Newton obviously, Einstein (whose most productive years were when he left his wife and family in another country) Tesla, (again had no personal relationships) DaVinci (who seems to have never had a romantic relationships) etc etc. The pattern is that the more they had not partaken in things not related to their achievements (which should be obvious) the more successful they were. Obviously its more complicated than that, when you have to weigh any innate ability and how young they started and how intelligent their directed efforts were (you can work very hard at something in a dumb manner and get nowhere) but it is clear that how much time you spend directly relates to how much you achieve, and Newton’s life, like that of most geniuses, is a testament of that.
But like you say, nobody has any obligation to be multi-faceted, and I am absolutely not implying that, and from what I understand of Newton’s life he was very aware of this and enjoyed not having a lot of time consuming or annoying friends so he could focus on his work. But appealing back to our discussion of the proper psychological roles in relationships, it is an aspect of identity that Newton is a human being, and as such being a great one implies the integration and adoption of aspects of the identity of being a human and being male, since he is, after all, a sentient human male. To suggest women should feel something particular in the best kind of relationships suggests that she ought to, as a sentient being, adopt and integrate and aspect of being a female sentient being in order to be a good one of those partaking in a good relationship. Similarly as a sentient human male, Newton could choose to adopt and integrate various aspects of being those, some of which might be necessary for a psychologically healthy life, others not. To be a great human, he must necessarily embody to a great degree those characteristic qualities of humanity, which ought to include being human and being a male. Humans are not merely computers. Newton obviously chose to embrace very few aspects about being a human male, and instead focused almost entirely on being a thinking being. Again, nothing is wrong with this, I think its great for every person to be very well aware of what they are and what they choose to adopt and integrate, but to suggest he was the greatest human of all time begs defining human.
It is up to each of us to decide what what aspects to adopt and fully integrate. Newton chose to focus his life on essentially being a focused computer of discovery and investigation and his achievements were consequently monumental. The whole entire context of my comment was just a response to the general sentiment that to be a great human, let alone the greatest, implies that you must be the greatest intellectual contributor of all time, promulgating the greatest material and practical advancements ever. To suggest Newton was the greatest human of all time, especially if espoused by an objectivist like Bernstien, suggests this. Newton was an almost classical example of the mind body split, and to call him the greatest human because of the benefits we have reaped from his intellectual contributions suggests that the core of being a great human is either intellectual achievement or a form of altruistic benefit to humanity.
Not knowing anything about Newton’s personal life makes it perfectly acceptable to focus on his monumental achievements in physics, but not really acceptable to make a value judgment about how well a life he lived as a ‘human’ since being a human is more than just being a scientist. I realize this assessment was not the focus of your post, but mentioning it only brought this (I think) critical distinction to light. I believe you can be a great human, yet not contribute at all to the intellectual or material well being of a single other human on the planet, though more than likely you will as a consequence, it is not necessarily so. Such a thing begs a clear understanding and definition of both great and human. I did not make my comment with the intention of starting up a large discussion on it, I only made it because this distinction which I think important of and wanted to share my opinions on the matter.
Comment by Matus1976 — November 30, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
Ok, we’re going to have to quit this conversation after this post, because at minimum, you’re not hearing my points, and you’d likely charge that I’m not hearing yours.
You clearly misread the post, and my last comment: Berstein was not quoting Voltaire in support of Bernstein’s opinion that Newton was the greatest human of all time; I don’t recall Berstein making that point. He quoted Voltaire in order to show the degree of support and excitement about Reason during the Enlightenment, with Newton as a terrific example of What Reason Alone Can Do. I wrote in the post, “This is a post of cool quotes and tidbits in yet another riff on the awesomeness of reason, and people who live by reason, and heroes throughout the ages.”
I think it’s bizarre that you first critique Newton for not being more integrated (”he was almost a classical example of the mind-body split”), and then basically say (in agreement with one of Newton’s biographers) that you can’t be intellectually fabulous *and* be a fabulous (integrated) human also, because one almost perforce *has* to cut himself off from the rest of the world in order to do great work. I think this is preposterous, and indicates a variant of the mind-body split on *your* part, since I don’t think you overlooked your own opinions on both aspects of this subject.
I am not contesting that doing great work often consumes a majority of a person’s time. So what. Doesn’t mean you have to be unhappy or socially cut off. Aristotle had a family, and was significantly more integrated than Newton. Ayn Rand was also involved in many areas of intellectual inquiry, but also had a husband for 50 years, and socialized regularly. I also think that the amount of time spent working, while strongly influencing the amount and quality of work one can do, it is a non-linear relationship. Sometimes the best thing you can do to help your thinking along is to set it aside, get some sleep, do something else for a while. Intellectual achievement is not a freight train.
I must go now. But I hope we can bury this bickering about a rather trivial side-point in a post intended to celebrate reason and call attention to an under-appreciated scientist.
Comment by praxical — November 30, 2007 @ 5:01 pm