Newton's Gift

Newton's Gift

Author: David Berlinski

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 0684843927

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In this portrait of scientist Isaac Newton, the author explores Newton's childhood, his intellectual competitions, his political escapades, and how his discoveries "unlocked the system of the world".


Newton's Clock

Newton's Clock

Author: Ivars Peterson

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0716723964

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With his critically acclaimed best-sellers The Mathematical Tourism and Islands of Truth, Ivars Peterson took readers to the frontiers of modern mathematics. His new book provides an up-to-date look at one of science's greatest detective stories: the search for order in the workings of the solar system. In the late 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton provided what astronomers had long sought: a seemingly reliable way of calculating planetary orbits and positions. Newton's laws of motion and his coherent, mathematical view of the universe dominated scientific discourse for centuries. At the same time, observers recorded subtle, unexpected movements of the planets and other bodies, suggesting that the solar system is not as placid and predictable as its venerable clock work image suggests. Today, scientists can go beyond the hand calculations, mathematical tables, and massive observational logs that limited the explorations of Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and others. Using supercomputers to simulate the dynamics of the solar system, modern astronomers are learning more about the motions they observe and uncovering some astonishing examples of chaotic behavior in the heavens. Nonetheless, the long-term stability of the solar system remains a perplexing, unsolved issue, with each step toward its resolution exposing additional uncertainties and deeper mysteries. To show how our view of the solar system has changed from clocklike precision to chaos and complexity, Newton's Clock describes the development of celestial mechanics through the ages - from the star charts of ancient navigators to the seminal discoveries of the 17th century from the crucial work of Poincare to thestartling, sometimes controversial findings and theories made possible by modern mathematics and computer simulations. The result makes for entertaining and provocative reading, equal parts science, history and intellectual adventure.


Newton's Darkness

Newton's Darkness

Author: Carl Djerassi

Publisher: Imperial College Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9781860943904

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?What purpose is served by showing that England's greatest natural philosopher is flawed ? like other mortals?? asks one of the characters in Newton's Darkness. ?We need unsullied heroes ? But what if the hero is sullied? At stake is an issue that is as germane today as it was 300 years ago: a scientist's ethics must not be divorced from scientific accomplishments. There is probably no other scientist of whom so many biographies and other historical analyses have been published than Isaac Newton ? all of them in the standard format of documentary prose because of their didactic purpose to transmit historical information. Newton's Darkness, however, illuminates the darker aspects of Newton's persona through two historically grounded plays dealing with two of the bitterest struggles in the history of science.The name of Isaac Newton appears in virtually every survey of the public's choice for the most important persons of the second millennium. Yet the term ?darkness? can be applied to much of Newton's personality. Adjectives that have been used to describe facets of his personality include ?remote?, ?lonely?, ?secretive?, ?introverted?, ?melancholic?, ?humorless?, ?puritanical?, ?cruel?, ?vindictive? and, perhaps worst of all, ?unforgiving?. The trait most relevant to the present book is Newton's obsessively competitive nature, which was often out of proportion to the warranted facts, as demonstrated in three of Newton's best-known bitter conflicts: with the physicist Robert Hooke, the astronomer royal John Flamsteed, and a German contemporary of almost equal intellectual prowess, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ? the last fight eventually turning into an England vs Continental Europe competition. It is two of these three relentless drawn-out battles that are illuminated in Newton's Darkness in the form of historically grounded drama.After a summary of the historical evidence, the book starts with the Newton-Hooke struggle (Chapter 2), which was conducted mano a mano, and is then followed by little-known aspects of the Newton-Leibniz confrontation (Chapter 3), which was fought largely through surrogates ? notably the infamous, anonymous committee of 11 Fellows of the Royal Society.


Newton's Rainbow

Newton's Rainbow

Author: Kathryn Lasky

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Published: 2017-04-18

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 1466896949

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Famed for his supposed encounter with a falling apple that inspired his theory of gravity, Isaac Newton (1642–1727) grew from a quiet and curious boy into one of the most influential scientists of all time. Newton's Rainbow tells the story of young Isaac—always reading, questioning, observing, and inventing—and how he eventually made his way to Cambridge University, where he studied the work of earlier scientists and began building on their accomplishments. This colorful picture book biography celebrates Newton's discoveries that illuminated the mysteries of gravity, motion, and even rainbows, discoveries that gave mankind a new understanding of the natural world, discoveries that changed science forever.


Certain Philosophical Questions

Certain Philosophical Questions

Author: J. E. McGuire

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-02-13

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13: 9780521530668

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Isaac Newton wrote the manuscript Questiones quaedam philosophicae at the very beginning of his scientific career. This small notebook thus affords rare insight into the beginnings of Newton's thought and the foundations of his subsequent intellectual development. The Questiones contains a series of entries in Newton's hand that range over many topics in science, philosophy, psychology, theology, and the foundations of mathematics. These notes, written in English, provide a very detailed picture of Newton's early interests, and record his critical appraisal of contemporary issues in natural philosophy. Written predominantly in 1664-5, they give a significant perspective on Newton's thought just prior to his annus mirabilis, 1666. This volume provides a complete transcription of the Questiones, together with an 'expansion' into modern English, and a full editorial commentary on the content and significance of the notebook in the development of Newton's thought. It will be essential reading for all those interested in Newton and the intellectual foundations of science.


Newton's Notebook

Newton's Notebook

Author:

Publisher: History Press Limited

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13:

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Newton's Notebook is a biography of the great man, but a biography with a difference. As you would expect, it provides a full and detailed account of Newton's life and discoveries, but it is written, designed and illustrated to look like - as the title suggests - a personal notebook or journal.By mining the rich sources of his own journals and incorporating a wide range of quotations and primary sources, Newton's Notebook brings its subject to life more vividly than any ordinary history book or biography, revealing the man who 'discovered' gravity. Additional chapters examine Newton's early life and education, his achievements in mathematics and optics, the publication of the Principia and the long-term impact of his revolutionary theories.


Newton's Riddle

Newton's Riddle

Author: Neill G. Russell

Publisher: Tate Publishing

Published: 2008-03

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 1602478945

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Before his death in 1727, Sir Isaac Newton, the notorious physicist, concealed a prophetic script in an alchemy journal. This mysteriously coded script detailed crucial future events involving both Israel and the United States...and their relation to the return of Jesus Christ. During a trip to England to visit an old friend, Dr. Ezra Schroeder, a National Security Administration code breaker, happens upon the cryptic contents of Newton's final work. With each passing day, as the political clouds around the United States and Israel grow increasingly ominous, Ezra knows what he must do. With this vital knowledge in hand, he must become a modern-day Moses and implore the reluctant president of the United States to come to the aid of the Jewish state of Israela "which is on the brink of total annihilation...


Life After Gravity

Life After Gravity

Author: Patricia Fara

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2021-02-24

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0198841027

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The story of Isaac Newton's decades in London - as ambitious cosmopolitan gentleman, President of London's Royal Society, Master of the Mint, and investor in the slave trade. Isaac Newton is celebrated throughout the world as a great scientific genius who conceived the theory of gravity. But in his early fifties, he abandoned his life as a reclusive university scholar to spend three decades in London, a long period of metropolitan activity that is often overlooked. Enmeshed in Enlightenment politics and social affairs, Newton participated in the linked spheres of early science and imperialist capitalism. Instead of the quiet cloisters and dark libraries of Cambridge's all-male world, he now moved in fashionable London society, which was characterized by patronage relationships, sexual intrigues and ruthless ambition. Knighted by Queen Anne, and a close ally of influential Whig politicians, Newton occupied a powerful position as President of London's Royal Society. He also became Master of the Mint, responsible for the nation's money at a time of financial crisis, and himself making and losing small fortunes on the stock market. A major investor in the East India Company, Newton benefited from the global trading networks that relied on selling African captives to wealthy plantation owners in the Americas, and was responsible for monitoring the import of African gold to be melted down for English guineas. Patricia Fara reveals Newton's life as a cosmopolitan gentleman by focussing on a Hogarth painting of an elite Hanoverian drawing room. Gazing down from the mantelpiece, a bust of Newton looms over an aristocratic audience watching their children perform a play about European colonialism and the search for gold. Packed with Newtonian imagery, this conversation piece depicts the privileged, exploitative life in which this eminent Enlightenment figure engaged, an uncomfortable side of Newton's life with which we are much less familiar.


Force and Motion

Force and Motion

Author: Jason Zimba

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2009-04-28

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 0801891590

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Jason Zimba offers a new visual presentation of Newton's three laws of motion, allowing students a new perspective on the conceptual underpinnings of laws that fundamentally explain the workings of the universe.