Quotes About Newton

Newton's achievement was not in discovering the phenomenon of gravity, it was in formulating the phenomenon as a law.

Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians.

Yet even Newton's great intellect did not fully illuminate gravity. He couldn't explain how it operates instantaneously and invisibly across a vacuum. He admitted as much in his masterwork on gravity from 1687, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. He wrote, "I have not been able to discover the causes of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses.

The gravitational field of Earth will determine the direction of the rock that you drop from your hand. Aristotle concluded, from the simple fact that the rock "knows" in which direction to move, that space cannot be empty where it transmits that knowledge. Both Newton and Einstein would agree-the former because the gravitational field of Earth acts at the location of the rock, the latter because Earth's gravitational field actually curves space in that location.

The Born interpretation of the Schrödinger equation is the single most dramatic and major change in our world view since Newton.

Classical mechanics gave us a deterministic view of the world. Quantum mechanics, conversely, gives us a probabilistic view instead. According to Newton, if you know the cause af an event, you can predict the outcome. According to M.Born, you can only predict how likely that outcome will be.

Newton took no exercise, indulged in no amusements, and worked incessantly, often spending eighteen or nineteen hours out of the twenty-four in writing.

Mr Newton, a fellow of our College, and very young, being but the second year master of arts; but of an extraordinary genius and proficiency.

Halley had become England's second astronomer royal in 1720, after John Flamsteed's death. The puritanical Flamsteed had reason to roll over in his grave at this development, since in life he had denounced Halley for drinking brandy and swearing "like a sea-captain." And of course Flamsteed never forgave Halley, or his accomplice Newton, for pilfering the star catalogs and publishing them against his will.

Newton died in 1727, and therefore did not live to see the great longitude prize awarded at last, four decades later, to the self-educated maker of an oversized pocket watch.

Newton appeared more nervously emphatic in his manner since Sunday when the Senegambians left him in his underwear and Delta had to hurry down to bring him another suit. Before his wife arrived the superintendent had removed the gag from his mouth and the experience had apparently made him more loquacious. He felt as if he had earned his medal as a hero of the cause. He talked unceasingly, agitating his hands.

it may be comforting to recall that detailed longitudinal analysis of the behavior of a single solar system was the foundation stone for Kepler's laws, and ultimately Newton's.

Our generation is witness to a development of physical knowledge such as has not been seen since the days of Kepler, Galileo and Newton, and mathematics has scarcely ever experienced such a stormy epoch. Mathematical thought removes the spirit from its worldly haunts to solitude and renounces the unveiling of the secrets of Nature. But as recompense, mathematics is less bound to the course of worldly events than physics.

The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveler from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.

recent popular biography by a fine science writer is James Gleick's Isaac Newton (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003)

Newton's Third Law of Conversation, if it existed, would hold that every statement implies an equal and opposite statement. To say that I'd turned the offer down raised the possibility that I might not have done.

Are not rays of light very small bodies emitted from shining substances?

Millions saw an apple falling but only Newton asked why; because the apple didn't fall onto his head but into his mind.

O Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest the mischief done!

This principle of nature being very remote from the conceptions of Philosophers, I forbore to describe it in that book, least I should be accounted an extravagant freak and so prejudice my Readers against all those things which were the main designe of the book.

Gravity must be caused by an Agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this Agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the Consideration of my readers.

Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches per sec.

Joule, that is the work done when one Newton acts through one metre.*

the SI (System International) habit is to make the unit of force the Newton.