Why were Newton's laws of motion discovered so late?

[r8chard]

Shrevas Samudra, sort of the quandary about which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Now Evolution insists that the egg came first enclosing the first prototype chicken, laid by a dino-avian hen.

With Technology, we build the hen and then stand around scratching our heads. Wondering what the heck we're going to do with this new thing? Hey! Let's have it lay eggs for us. Yeah, that's the ticket to fame and fortune!

 

[paulo84]

Some thoughts:

-The value of logical reasoning should not be underestimated

-The value of a powerful imagination should not be underestimated

-The value of empirical evidence should not be underestimated.

I had a book about lesser-known Greek philosophers. One of them apparently came to the conclusion that humans evolved from sea creatures. We're talking B.C. and I'm not making this up.

Finally, I have found it to be little known but with a grain of truth that alchemy was the precursor to modern chemistry. I am not saying they're the same.

 

[r8chard]

paulo84, I do agree with the first three comments. I do not have knowledge sufficient of andient greek philosophers to agree or disagree with that half of your comments. However, they do sound reasonable to me.

I am ashamed to admit that within the last few months I read a novel, for which I cannot remember the Title or Author! Mea Culpa, Me Bad!

In which two of the characters are in an argument about whether or not a master craftsman needed quality tools to produce quality work.

And that is in my opinion, why Newton's Genius was able to take advantage of the tools being developed at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Too empirically prove or disprove common theories. And devise the mathematical formulas to explains how the mechanism of the Universe can work.

And again, I can not stress enough, that is was efforts of Émilie du Châtelet, to translate and correct Newton's works that brought hum to the attention of educated society, And made him the first pop star of popular science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émilie_du_Châtelet

 

[CWatters]

Here is one that surprised me...

As far as I can tell in the late 1800s scientists hadn't worked out that birds soar in thermals (rising pockets of warm air)... Yet hot air balloons were had been around for 100 years. Had nobody in a balloon noticed them?

 

[r8chard]

CWatters, I'd guess off the top of my head, that they did not have instruments that could measure, or even detect thermals . Research exploring the Infra-Red in the Spectrum were still rather primitive.

Also, I imagine that the first people riding the first balloons were frozen in fear? Or, to busy puking over the sides of the basket to pay a whole lot of attention to birds. Except for hopeful buzzards!

 

[CWatters]

But surely they would notice the balloon rising an falling as they flew in and out to them? Particularly the hydrogen balloons. Not to mention that hot air balloons rely on the same principle that hot air rises.

 

[rrogers]

I have been reading Walter Isaacson's "Leanardo De Vinci". Chapters 10, 11, 12 contain a delineation of various concepts Leanardo concluded from experiment and reasoning. Yes he could have revolutionized physics, and probably mathematics, but there was no "ecosystem" for these ideas; beyond a limited few. Leanardo was not entirely free to do as he wished; unlike some scholar's in later eras. He had other failings as well; quitting working on something when he understood it and not finishing treatises he started along the way was one. So his realizations didn't come to light until far later.
Having said all that, I find his discoveries and such astonishing and sort of mourn the opportunity lost, although I am not enamoured of the idea of getting Nuclear Weapons earlier than we did (which might have been too early for our cultural maturity anyway).
Like I always say: there are _some_ really smart people around!
Ray

 

[johnbbahm]

I think our theories precede our technical capability to test and effectively implement the ideas.
Scientist would see strange behavior with silicon in the early 1900's, but the results were not repeatable,
because we did not have pure enough silicon.
Advances in material science are what allow us to build the things already envisioned.

 

[lekh2003]

I think our theories precede our technical capability to test and effectively implement the ideas.
Scientist would see strange behavior with silicon in the early 1900's, but the results were not repeatable,
because we did not have pure enough silicon.
Advances in material science are what allow us to build the things already envisioned.

I think that this would extend from simply material sciences to basically every practical science.

 

[dschlink]

Much of what was "known" in science before that era, was based on opinions of Aristotle and people of his time, who never tested any of their positions. The idea that the ancients could be wrong (and you could question them without being burned at the stake) is as important as the development of the scientific method.

 

[r8chard]

CWattersm you and I know what a thermal lift does. Somebody pointed out at the sight of birds rising in a spiral. To explain it to us. However, an 18th century Parisian aeronaut had no one available to describe such phenomena. The early balloon experiments were launched from city parks, generally by rivers or canals.

It is easy to look back and critique our predecessors for their lack of foreknowledge. Confusing the modern abundance of knowledge is as much egotistical hubris as confusing technology with civilization.

Before any us can preen in pride of our entitled ownership of wisdom? Consider the gales of laughter three hundred years in the future as your descendants mock what they perceive as OUR primitive ignorance and failings...

 

[sophiecentaur]

an atomic physicist making preparations to build an "atom trap

That could involve ions traveling at speeds well below c, so why not? Electrons, otoh, can achieve near relativistic speeds when accelerated across fairly modest 'high' voltages because their masses are so low.

 

[jerromyjon]

As far as I can tell in the late 1800s scientists hadn't worked out that birds soar in thermals (rising pockets of warm air)... Yet hot air balloons were had been around for 100 years. Had nobody in a balloon noticed them?

I know very little about this but my intuition tells me that when a hot air balloon hits a warmer air pocket wouldn't the buoyancy of the hot air be reduced relative to the warmer updraft? Your next comment about about lighter than air gases I don't even know what the effect of temperature is.

 

[dgwsoft]

I feel the same about Einstein. He was first over the line but there were a number of others who could have got there after a bit of a delay. It has to be true that, without Einstein's existence, we would not be using Newtonian Science today - on PF .

Special Relativity, certainly. The Lorenz Transformation was already well known. But we could still be waiting for General Relativity.

 

[sophiecentaur]

CWattersm you and I know what a thermal lift does. Somebody pointed out at the sight of birds rising in a spiral. To explain it to us. However, an 18th century Parisian aeronaut had no one available to describe such phenomena. The early balloon experiments were launched from city parks, generally by rivers or canals.

Thermal currents and lighter than air machines would not go very well together, I think. Controlling the vertical position and velocity of a balloon is hard enough as it is. I would imagine that the early pioneers would have required stable air with low, constant windspeed.
But I would guess that thermals would have been no surprise in the past. Cumulus clouds, birds and smoke all will have been observed to 'rise naturally' (ancient jargon).

 

[FactChecker]

But I would guess that thermals would have been no surprise in the past. Cumulus clouds, birds and smoke all will have been observed to 'rise naturally' (ancient jargon).

It's possible that they were believed to 'rise naturally' due to different physical laws that were part of their nature, with no need for rising thermals. Believing that there must be external forces to explain their rise is a post-Newton habit.

 

[sophiecentaur]

It's possible that they were believed to 'rise naturally' due to different physical laws that were part of their nature, with no need for rising thermals. Believing that there must be external forces to explain their rise is a post-Newton habit.

I guess our comments would have to depend very much on the decades of history that we're discussing. The age of enlightenment would have straddled early balloon flight so Montgolfier may well have had his success without a particularly Scientific approach.
Hah - no wonder so many balloonists fell out of the sky!

 

[r8chard]

Fact Checker, I'm not sure your exact meaning. Perhaps pre-Newton, some of the more observant and mechanically inclined might have opinionated that there may be natural causes for clouds or spiraling lines of birds.

If so, I have not seen that those observers wrote down their guesses. If just because it was damn dangerous to be accused of blasphemy! Everyone else knew God was in His element and directed the actions of birds and Clouds.

In my opinion the sea-change among us Common Folk was the Industrial Age. Having our noses rubbed into the fact that the machines only work by how well we put them together. And the need to constantly stoke that coal into the belly of the beast.

 

[FactChecker]

Fact Checker, I'm not sure your exact meaning. Perhaps pre-Newton, some of the more observant and mechanically inclined might have opinionated that there may be natural causes for clouds or spiraling lines of birds.

I'm not a physics history expert, so these are just my impressions. It may be wrong for me to give a non-expert opinion in this forum, but here it is anyway. Before Newton, people (even scientists) thought that different objects had different physical properties and laws. F=mA was not a universal law. So clouds floating, the Moon floating, etc. was just a natural property of those types of objects. They didn't have to find an explanation for it.

 

[jerromyjon]

It may be wrong for me to give a non-expert opinion in this forum, but here it is anyway. Before Newton, people (even scientists) thought that different objects had different physical properties and laws.

Many times questions have simple answers, sometimes the experts are bogged down with the complicated details and miss a simple association.

F=mA was not a universal law.

It still isn't, technically. It's just a simplified, works well in certain cases, approximation. I may be wrong but I think it took the open-minded generalization of the typical behavior of a wide array of interactions to finally get to the heart of reality, and a stroke of genius to come up with a numerical representation which F=ma exemplifies.

 

[r8chard]

FactChecker, It looks to me, that you are avoiding the reality that pre-Newton? People did voice an opinion about causation of natural phenomena.

Most of them, even the scholars, believed pr at least publicly claimed to believe. "It was all God, all the time." No dissenting argument or even neutral opinion was tolerated. Enforced the constant threat of excruciating execution.

 

[FactChecker]

FactChecker, It looks to me, that you are avoiding the reality that pre-Newton? People did voice an opinion about causation of natural phenomena.

Most of them, even the scholars, believed pr at least publicly claimed to believe. "It was all God, all the time." No dissenting argument or even neutral opinion was tolerated. Enforced the constant threat of excruciating execution.

Well. I have to admit that if I was threatened by the Church with torture, I would deny F=mA also.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Well. I have to admit that if I was threatened by the Church with torture, I would deny F=mA also.

What a chicken heart. If I were 'shown the instruments of torture', I would just refer them to you, tell them it was your idea and that I didn't understand the formula in the first place.

 

[lekh2003]

What a chicken heart. If I were 'shown the instruments of torture', I would just refer them to you, tell them it was your idea and that I didn't understand the formula in the first place.

Better to surrender scientific opinion than to not be able to have one ever again.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Whatever you say sir!
Now can you undo these shackles, please?

 

[votingmachine]

I would argue that Newton's greatest contribution was to the support of the scientific method, the idea that facts can be used to verify theories. Anyone can draw a perpetual motion machine (and they DO). Anyone can draw an aerial screw. Anyone can write any law of motion they chose.

Newton believed completely the idea that a THEORY OF MOTION was a testable hypothesis, and that experimental data was critical.

And of course, he helped deduce calculus, without which, describing motion becomes a sticky mess.

Early theories like the Greek-element idea that everything is made of fire+air+water+earth, were largely philosophy. Gradually, the idea that theories were a system applied to fact knowledge took over. It is the absolute mantra on this site: no philosophy, just science. Newton is certainly to be given a large amount of credit for his advances in physics. But he also advanced the idea of science and the scientific method.

The reason that his laws of motion were undiscovered were two-fold. One is that the math tools necessary were also undiscovered. The other is that the idea of science being a thing distinct from philosophy was slow to be understood.

Think of Archimedes discovering buoyancy and displacement ... people already were building boats ... you would think it was obvious. But that is retrospect. Hopefully, I have not violated the site policies and drifted into philosophy!

 

[ISamson]

Why were Newton's laws of motion discovered so late?

I think because of the Dark Age that ruled Europe for centuries. The Church stopped all scientific activity.

 

[brainpushups]

Others have pointed out some important points about the role of theory and practical application. A few comments about the discovery of the three laws:

1) The first law was well accepted decades before Newton. For example, Huygens states it in his laws that govern collisions. (see hypothesis 1)

2) Newton did NOT state F = m a. Take a look at how he phrased the second law. Further, if you look at how he applied it in examples throughout the Principia he used a sort of impulse approximation, essentially using F = m ∆v.

3) His third law is essentially his formulation of the conservation of momentum (see corollary III in the link above). This was also summarized by Huygens (and others, e.g. John Wallis) and emerged from the study of collisions which, if you read how Newton uses the second law in the Principia and also conceptualizes a continuous force as a series of impulses (see, for example Book I, Section II, Proposition I on centripetal forces) is clear evidence of how his mechanical conception of the world was heavily influenced (as was everyone else's at the time) by Descartes.

Point being, Newton did not have a flash of insight to develop these laws. He did indeed stand on the shoulders of giants. Also, Newton did not develop the 'final version' of the laws (or at least the second law). The concept of force was still not well understood and often mischaracterized in these early days (e.g. Leibniz' living forces and dead forces). As far as I know it was Euler who stated Newton's second law in the form that we recognize.

 

[FactChecker]

Point being, Newton did not have a flash of insight to develop these laws. He did indeed stand on the shoulders of giants. Also, Newton did not develop the 'final version' of the laws (or at least the second law). The concept of force was still not well understood and often mischaracterized in these early days (e.g. Leibniz' living forces and dead forces). As far as I know it was Euler who stated Newton's second law in the form that we recognize.

That being said, Newton's contribution was more than just another step in a continuum. Putting all the odds and ends together into a unified, consistent theory of physics and math that had no exceptions was a great step. Others may have contributed parts earlier or polished the results later, but Newton's understanding was exceptional.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Newton's laws of motion require a couple things that were in short supply or non-existent for most of history before him:

1. Infinitesimal calculus.
2. Accurate quantitative measurements of motion that were good enough to compute velocity and acceleration.

Development of new mathematical tools required for theory and new quantitative measurements are often essential for scientific progress and often new discoveries are made shortly after they become available.

Most of the excitement in experimental physics comes after a new tool is invented to look at something more accurately than has been done before.