Skip to main content

Isaac Newton - the Most Random Approach

 Isaac Newton (Small Works List)

Let me tell you something from the jump here, I am not a scientist. I pulled the name Isaac Newton from the Small Works List because, you know, whatever and I called an astronomer that I know, Stephen Case, and asked him what do I have to read to get to know Isaac Newton. Newton wrote prolifically in his life, but the main thing he wrote was the Principia which is a 400 page ancient math text book. I thought I might read this. He said no. He gave me an abridged version that breaks it down into his physics stuff which was 70 pages. I read 20 pages of this and stopped. I am not a physics person. I then found a copy of the Principia whose whole edition is 900 pages long with 400 of which the manuscript itself. I looked at every page of this text for longer bits of prose in between the math stuff. This was still impenetrable.

I found two sections worth reading, one the Scholium in between Book 2 Section 6 and 7. Here he talks about how he set up his experiment with wooden balls and 10 feet of thread. Also, he dropped some of these balls of the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, 220 ft high. They used hog bladders for this, and one was too wrinkly to be considered part of the data. Newton had some strange ideas but his math works out and that is what he is remembered for. This man could not have existed in the internet age which raises some interesting questions about the types of ideas we find receptive.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lady Hyegyong - The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong (Small Works List)

 I went on a roller coaster ride with this pick. As it is often said about the Small Works List, I have no idea where this name came from or in what context it was meant to be read. I imagine if I went back to find where I found this name it would be from the Norton World Literature Anthology and it would be a short clipping of the incident that this whole text swirls around. What I find enchanting about this idea is that it sort of places as the fulcrum of Korean history this family drama and from the locus of this event there is a father and son struggling to understand their humanity together, the nature of good and evil is being wrestled with and the hope of a family and a nation hang in the balance of one simple act. Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong   When I pulled this name in the Henri Michaux  Youtube Video , I was a 0% knowledge of who this person was, I didn’t even know how to pronounce the name and did not try in that recording. I watched a few Youtube videos to get a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amy Lowell - A Dome of Many Colored Glass (Small Works List)

Amy Lowell represents a sort of strange character in the fabric of Modern Poetry. Of 20th Century Poetry, I am most familiar with the modernist movement like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot which I assume most Americans my age who read poetry would be. In Amy Lowell's Wikipedia page which isn't her official biography but it is usually the place I start just to get a sense of a person. Apparently, Ezra Pound had some unkind words about Lowell during her life. I took this at face value, but thought to bring an open mind to the collection of poetry that I found most readily available. There seem to be two significant works that jump out from this poet, her early collection A Dome of Many Colored Glass  and What's O'Clock  which I think was from later in her life. I chose to read A Dome of Many Colored Glass because it seemed easier to secure in my channels of resources. Again, for this volume of poetry, I listened to an audiobook version through the Libravox app and looked at an...
Post a Comment
Read more

James Baldwin - If Beale Street Could Talk (Big Book List)

The next longer book that the random number generator selected was James Baldwin’s   If Beale Street Could Talk , which I checked out from the Kankakee Public Library through their curbside pick up program. I will do this again today that we will bring two of the books that we selected yesterday. I hope that this will be a consistent activity for Penny and I. We will select a book from one of the libraries, read it cover to cover here at home and then bring it back to rent out another one the next day. There is a bit more planning involved in this now because of COVID but we will make it work. This reminds me of the movements people have to make in order to visit someone in prison as is depicted in the book I am reading.     “But, at the same time, and even on the self-same day – and that is what is hard to explain – you see people like you never saw them before. They shine as bright as a razor. Maybe it’s because you see people differently than you saw them before your t...
Post a Comment
Read more