{"id":1481,"date":"2011-09-05T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2011-09-05T00:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/?p=1481"},"modified":"2012-09-25T02:10:58","modified_gmt":"2012-09-24T14:10:58","slug":"newton%e2%80%99s-method-in-three-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/newton%e2%80%99s-method-in-three-minutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Newton\u2019s Method in Three Minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kirsten Walsh writes…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last week I competed in the Otago University Three-Minute Thesis Competition<\/a>.\u00a0 I had to explain my PhD thesis in no longer than three minutes. \u00a0It was challenging indeed, in such a short length of time, to describe my research, communicate its significance and impart my enthusiasm for it \u2013 while pitching it at the level of an intelligent non-expert. Fortunately, I had great material to work with. There are so many interesting stories about Newton! Unfortunately, it\u2019s often difficult to figure out which stories are true.<\/p>\n

I opted to begin with the \u2018approximately true\u2019 story of Newton\u2019s anni mirabilis<\/em>, or miraculous years.\u00a0 The general thrust of the story is true, even if some of the particulars are false: the plague years mark a significant turning point in Newton\u2019s scientific work.\u00a0 As Whiteside<\/a> pointed out over forty years ago, we may<\/p>\n

    \u201csalute this first creative outburst \u2013 whether or not contained in one single marvelous year \u2013 of a man who twenty years afterwards was to construct a scientific Weltanschauung<\/em> which is, in its essentials, still ours.\u201d<\/ol>\n

    So, with apologies to those of you with \u2018historically sensitive\u2019 ears, here is my script for the three-minute thesis competition:<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    It\u2019s 1665.\u00a0 Cambridge has been struck by Plague, and Newton has been sent home from University.\u00a0 Summer is stretching out before him.\u00a0 Nice!\u00a0 What will he do on his extended summer holiday?\u00a0 Well, he did what I imagine most Scarifies* do on their summer holidays: he invented calculus, discovered the composition of light, and (after watching an apple fall from a tree) conceived the laws of universal gravitation…\u00a0 Okay, so perhaps Newton wasn\u2019t quite your typical undergraduate student.\u00a0 The story about the apple is controversial, but everyone agrees about the discoveries. \u00a0Scholars have called those years the \u2018years of miracles\u2019.<\/p>\n

    Why were they \u2018miraculous\u2019?\u00a0 Well, these were revolutionary discoveries \u2013 and there were so many of them.\u00a0 They provided the basic material for Newton\u2019s Principia<\/em>, and his Opticks. <\/em>Enough material for a lifetime of publications!\u00a0 And real<\/em> publications.\u00a0 Not just those \u2018puff pieces\u2019 that fill our journals nowadays.\u00a0 All in just 2 years!<\/p>\n

    Furthermore, these discoveries seemed to come out of nowhere.\u00a0 Newton was able to invent, discover and conceive things no one else could, because seemingly he had invented an entirely new scientific method.\u00a0 He had come up with a whole new way of mathematising physics, and claimed to have achieved mathematical certainty!\u00a0 Philosophers and scientists tried to emulate his method.\u00a0 But no one was as successful as Newton.\u00a0 Whatever Newton was doing, he was doing it right.\u00a0 But what was he doing?<\/p>\n

    This is the central question of my PhD, and it\u2019s a question that dominates discussions of scientific method even now, 300 years later.\u00a0 But scholars still barely<\/em> understand what Newton\u2019s method was.\u00a0 Did Newton really think his scientific theories were as certain as mathematical proofs?\u00a0 Why did he think his theory of gravity was true, when he couldn\u2019t even say for certain what gravity is? \u00a0And, at the centre of it all, the question that\u2019s been keeping me up at nights (as it has kept up generations of Newton-scholars before me): what did Newton mean when he wrote that enigmatic sentence at the end of Principia<\/em>: \u2018Hypotheses non fingo<\/em>\u2019; \u2018I do not feign hypotheses\u2019?<\/p>\n

    I do not feign hypotheses.\u00a0 What an odd thing to say.\u00a0 What does it even mean?\u00a0 \u2018I haven\u2019t invented these hypotheses\u2019?\u00a0 \u2018I didn\u2019t prove them\u2019?\u00a0 This sentence lies at the heart of my thesis.\u00a0 Unlike other Newton scholars, I think it describes a crucial aspect of Newton\u2019s method.\u00a0 What it tells us is that Newton made a distinction.\u00a0 On the one hand, theories: mathematical, certain, experimentally confirmed.\u00a0 On the other hand, hypotheses: non-mathematical, uncertain, non-experimental, and speculative.\u00a0 This distinction is a crucial feature of Newton\u2019s spectacularly successful scientific method.\u00a0 And I think it\u2019s this distinction that explains Newton\u2019s years of miracles.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    The idea of anni mirabiles<\/em> seems closely-related to the notion of a scientific revolution, which has been much discussed since Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions<\/a> <\/em>in 1962.\u00a0 Philosophers of science disagree philosophically over the importance of revolutions to science, and historically over the occurrence of any genuine scientific revolutions.\u00a0 However, it is interesting to note that historians have recognised several anni mirabiles<\/em> in the history of science.\u00a0 For example, 1543, the year that Vesalius published De Humani Corporis Fabrica<\/em><\/a> and Copernicus published De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 And 1905, the year that Einstein published his three ground-breaking papers in the Annalen der Physik<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 What role have these anni mirabiles<\/em> played in the history of science?\u00a0 What do they tell us about scientific progress?\u00a0 Norwood R Hanson<\/a> once said:<\/p>\n

      \u201cIt is possible both to be driven by intuition and at the same time to reason carefully.\u00a0 Most scientific discoveries, indeed, result from just such an intertwining of headwork and guesswork.\u201d<\/ol>\n

      What do you think?<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      *Otago Undergraduate Students<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Kirsten Walsh writes… Last week I competed in the Otago University Three-Minute Thesis Competition.\u00a0 I had to explain my PhD thesis in no longer than three minutes. \u00a0It was challenging indeed, in such a short length of time, to describe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4582,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[227,237,359,224],"class_list":["post-1481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","tag-history-of-science","tag-hypotheses-non-fingo","tag-hypothesis","tag-newton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4582"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/emxphi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}