During this time of quarantine, I'd like to remind everyone that Isaac Newton was an asshole.
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Replying to @syzygay1
"Newton was, without doubt, one of the greatest geniuses that ever existed. His profound knowledge, and his acute penetration into the most hidden mysteries of nature, will be a just object of admiration to the present, and to every future age. But the errors...
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...of this great man should serve to admonish us of the weakness of the human understanding, which, after having soared to the greatest possible heights, is in danger of plunging into manifest contradiction." -- Euler (1760s)
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This was more about his work than about his personality though. The quote is from "Letters to a German Princess".
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And, to be fair, much of Euler's own work was in danger of plunging into manifest contradiction. Indeed, much of it actually did plunge into manifest contradiction -- before bursting back up into mysterious yet utterly compelling success. Just as Newton's work reliably did.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @syzygay1
In this case, Euler's comment was about Newton's belief that light behaves as a particle. Euler thought this was impossible (for reasons that sound strange now) and that light can only be a wave.
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Newton's most speculative physical intuitions were eerily prescient. It's amazing to read, in his optics, his prediction that the intensity spectrum of colors emitted by a heated body would be a crucial subject for future study.
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