Q&A: Newton
Newton
Question
I’m at the beginning of my engineering studies, and I have a few questions.
Newton, who founded calculus and discovered gravity—could he have done that without divine inspiration? How rare is it to discover and formulate a law of nature mathematically?
It really doesn’t seem normal that one person would be responsible for so many discoveries about the universe, unless he had cheats enabled (without knowing it himself—what people call “God touched him”). And all this in such a primitive period, when he didn’t even have toilet paper. Euler also gives me thoughts like that.
Is the scope of Newton’s work considered exceptional even among physicists today, or only among laymen like me?
Answer
Completely exceptional.
Discussion on Answer
A. Yes. Statistically, one person out of tens of billions can achieve extraordinary things.
B. It definitely can be improved. Like improving and training AI. Give it tasks and check whether it got things right. The more knowledge and intellectual skill you have, in my opinion that also improves intuition.
Despite how exceptional Newton was, let’s remember that there were several other people in his time who paved the way, like Galileo, Descartes, Brahe, Kepler, Huygens, and others. And regarding calculus, there was also Leibniz, who arrived at it as well. There’s a nice post by “A Teacher, Not an Educator” about the transition from Leibniz and Newton to the modern high school:
Another excellent post by the same person on the subject:
Okay.
A) Does it seem plausible to you that one person could both discover gravity, kinematics, etc., and also develop calculus without the Creator giving him some sort of special help? (Muse / inspiration / special intuition / divine inspiration / a revelation from Elijah—you name it.)
B) On the subject of intuition, you’re the recognized authority. Can the quality of intuition be improved, or is it something you’re born with and whatever you got is what you have?