The discussion revolves around the exact year when Isaac Newton first worked on calculus, with participants exploring the years 1664, 1665, and 1666. The conversation touches on historical context, the nature of scientific discovery, and the reliability of sources regarding these dates.
Participants express differing views on the significance of the specific years in question, with no consensus reached on which year is definitively correct. The discussion remains unresolved regarding the exact timeline of Newton's work on calculus.
Participants highlight the ambiguity in historical records and the challenge of relying on letters and personal notes versus published works for establishing timelines.
We need a not dislike response!Mark44 said:Yes. In English we don't cotton to no double negatives, nohow.
Which year may depend on which calendar one uses as a reference.user079622 said:1665 or 1666
https://www.lan-opc.org.uk/dates.htmlPrior to 1752, the Julian calendar was in use in England. In this calendar, the new year began on 25 March each year, so 31 Dec would be followed by 1 Jan of the same year, and 24 Mar would be followed by 25 Mar the following year. This applied up to 31 Dec 1751, after which the Gregorian calendar was adopted. 31 Dec 1751 was followed by 1 Jan 1752.
The move to the Gregorian calendar had taken place in Europe some years earlier, in 1582. As part of this, a greater understanding of the true length of a year had resulted in ten days being 'removed' from the calendar in Europe between 4 Oct 1582 and 15 Oct 1582. After England moved to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, a similar change was made, to bring dates back into line with Europe, and 2 Sep 1752 was followed by 14 Sep 1752.
Probably, but perhaps a long time ago, e.g., the realization (or first developments) of algebra and mathematical equations, and some of the earliest insights (developments) in science.user079622 said:Is any discovery in math/physics comes out of vacuum, something completely new?
The offset is only eleven days, though.Astronuc said:Which year may depend on which calendar one uses as a reference.
Yes, but, note the example on dates before 1752.Vanadium 50 said:The offset is only eleven days, though.
To avoid any ambiguity, we record dates between 1 Jan and 24 Mar of each year prior to 1752 as dual dates. So for example, 31 Dec 1746 is followed by 1 Jan 1746/7, 2 Jan 1746/7 and so on until 24 Mar 1746/7, then 25 Mar 1747.
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#cite_note-OSNS-5Isaac Newton was born (according to the Julian calendar in use in England at the time) on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 (NS 4 January 1643)
During Newton's lifetime, two calendars were in use in Europe: the Julian ("Old Style") calendar in Protestant and Orthodox regions, including Britain; and the Gregorian ("New Style") calendar in Roman Catholic Europe. At Newton's birth, Gregorian dates were ten days ahead of Julian dates; thus, his birth is recorded as taking place on 25 December 1642 Old Style, but it can be converted to a New Style (modern) date of 4 January 1643. By the time of his death, the difference between the calendars had increased to eleven days. Moreover, he died in the period after the start of the New Style year on 1 January but before that of the Old Style new year on 25 March. His death occurred on 20 March 1726, according to the Old Style calendar, but the year is usually adjusted to 1727. A full conversion to New Style gives the date 31 March 1727.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Early_lifeIn 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became calculus. Soon after Newton obtained his BA degree at Cambridge in August 1665, the university temporarily closed as a precaution against the Great Plague.
https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04004/1By September 1664, Newton had started to use some of the pages for the optical and mathematical calculations, inspired by Descartes and van Schooten, that were beginning to occupy him (see Add. 3996 and Fitzwilliam Museum, MS. 1-1936). Over the next two years, Newton broadened his reading only slightly. Nevertheless, through the study of Wallis’ works and of the other authors (Johann Hudde, Hendrick van Heuraet, and Jan de Witt) whose writings were presented by van Schooten in his edition of Descartes’ Geometria (1639-41), Newton gradually mastered the analysis of curved lines, surfaces, and solids. He learned how to use the method of infinite series and extended it by discovering how to expand binomials with fractional indices. Most significantly, he developed an approach to the measurement of curved lines that mapped the motion that produced them. This arose out of dissatisfaction with the method of infinitesimals and the advances towards describing curves through their tangents that Newton had made with it. By autumn 1665, Newton had worked out a method for replacing the use of infinitesimal increments of space in his calculations with instantaneous changes in the velocity of a moving point by which curved lines were described. Stimulated entirely by his reading, Newton had invented the method of fluxions, or calculus, through the working in his ‘Waste Book’
Away from university life, and unbounded by curriculum constraints and professor’s whims, Newton dove into discovery. According to The Washington Post: “Without his professors to guide him, Newton apparently thrived.” At home, he built bookshelves and created a small office for himself, filling a blank notebook with his ideas and calculations. Absent the distractions of typical daily life, Newton’s creativity flourished. During this time away he discovered differential and integral calculus, formulated a theory of universal gravitation, and explored optics, experimenting with prisms and investigating light.
The bringing together, in an annotated and critical edition, of all the known mathematical papers of Isaac Newton marks a step forward in the publication of the works of this great natural philosopher. In all, there are eight volumes in this present edition. Translations of papers in Latin face the original text and notes are printed on the page-openings to which they refer, so far as possible. Each volume contains a short index of names only and an analytical table of contents; a comprehensive index to the complete work is included in Volume VIII. Volume I covers three exceptionally productive years: Newton's final year as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the two following years, part of which were spent at his home in Lincolnshire on account of the closure of the university during an outbreak of bubonic plague.
There is no doubt that Newton’s discoveries preceded those of Leibniz by nearly a decade. Stimulated by the Lucasian Lectures Isaac Barrow delivered in the fall of 1664, Newton developed his calculus between the winter of 1664 and October 1666. Two preliminary manuscripts were followed by the so-called October 1666 tract, a private summation that was not printed until 1962. Because of Newton’s dilatory path to publication, word of his calculus did not spread beyond Cambridge until 1669. In that year, Newton, reacting to the rediscovery of his infinite series for log(1 + x), composed a short synopsis of his findings, the De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas. The De analysi was written near the end of an era in which scientific discoveries were often first disseminated by networking rather than by publication. Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society, and John Collins, government clerk and de facto mathematical advisor to Oldenburg, served as the principal hubs of
correspondence in England. Dispatched by Barrow on behalf of a “friend of mine here, that hath a very excellent genius,” the De analysi reached Collins in the summer of 1669. “Mr. Collins was very free in communicating to able Mathematicians what he had receiv’d,” Newton later remarked.
That seems like ~1.5 years (August 1665 through ~March/April 1667)By 1664, Newton had begun reaching beyond the standard curriculum, reading, for example, the 1656 Latin edition of Descartes's Opera philosophica, which included the Meditations, Discourse on Method, the Dioptrics, and the Principles of Philosophy. By early 1664 he had also begun teaching himself mathematics, taking notes on works by Oughtred, Viète, Wallis, and Descartes— the latter via van Schooten's Latin translation, with commentary, of the Géométrie. Newton spent all but three months from the summer of 1665 until the spring of 1667 at home in Woolsthorpe when the university was closed because of the plague. This period was his so-called annus mirabilis.