The one as much as it advances that of the other. If a body impinge upon another, and by its force change the motion of the other, that body also (because of the equality of the mutual pressure) will undergo an equal change, in its own motion, towards the contrary part.
isaac Newtonquotes
1643 – 1727
Sir Isaac Newton’s mother wanted him to become a farmer, but the English boy was miserable at it, so thanks to the urging of an uncle, Newton was allowed to go back to school, and the world is indebted to him for it. As one of the greatest minds of the Scientific Revolution, Newton’s principles of gravity were unparalleled, and his book Principia became one of the most important scientific books on physics ever written.
It was during his own private research, back home on the farm after college, that Newton developed infinitesimal calculus, his theories on light and color and much of his research on gravity. Fear of the Black Plague at Cambridge, his alma mater, drove him home and kept him healthy while his fiery genius set to work inventing, developing, testing, and theorizing. Newton was foremost a mathematician and physicist, but interestingly enough spent a number of years fascinated and focused on alchemy, or the transformation of matter, which is now considered a pseudoscience.
Isaac Newton rose to international and unchallenged fame in his lifetime, but even more so afterward. Though Albert Einstein later refuted some of Newton’s theories, Newton undoubtedly laid a framework for other scientists to push the limits of thought to discover just how vast the universe really is. He has been called an “extraordinary genius.” He was not only influenced by Plato and Aristotle, but also held in the same esteem and likened to their own great minds.
They who search after the Philosopher’s Stone [are] by their own rules obliged to a strict and religious life.
Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion.
For I see not what there is desirable in publick esteeme, were I able to acquire & maintaine it. It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly study to decline.
If I have come further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.
No old Men (excepting Dr. Wallis) love Mathematicks.
In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions. This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses.
There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible that in any profane history.
authenticity / Bible / history
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.