Newton QQC

Quote- "He published some of his discoveries, but they were greeted with such contentious stupidity by the leading scientists of the day that he retired back into his shell with a strengthened resolve to work thereafter for his own satisfaction alone."

Comment- I chose this quote because I thought it was interesting how Newton was so smart and did so many findings but he wouldn't really publish them because his findings were way above what people could understand at the period in time. This caused him to battle with Leibniz and fight for his reputation for the final 25 years of his life. He was the first one to have come up with differential and integral calculus during the two years that universities were closed because of the plague, but he didn't publish his work and therefore at the time it seemed as Leibniz had been the first one because his papers of 1684 and 1686 were the earliest publications on the subject. He would have avoided this whole battle with Leibniz and everyone else if he had just published his work.

It is also interesting how he knew the answer to Halley's question, that he had had in mind for years, but had not published anything about his findings and had even lost his notes. In pg.134 it says, "It is interesting to speculate on Halley's emotions when he realized that the age-old problem of how the solar system works had at last been solved--but that the solver hadn't bothered to tell anybody and had even lost his notes." This makes me wonder if there might have been a lot of other findings he had made but had just forgot about and lost his notes for them that they were just lost. What if he found out a lot more stuff than the ones we know about? It is good that he decided to publish the Principia, "The Principia was written in 18 incredible months of total concentration, and when it was published in 1687 it was immediately recognized as one of the supreme achievements of the human mind."

Connection- In page 134 when it said, "The Principia has always been a difficult book to read, for the style has an inhuman quality of icy remoteness, which perhaps is appropriate to the grandeur of the theme," I thought about how in chapter #5 of the Bryson reading it talked about how Hutton had great ideas and insights but he just didn't know how to explain himself in his books, it was very difficult for people to read his work and understand it. They wouldn't make much sense so therefore no one really paid attention to them.

Questions- Why did Newton keep turning away from Science? What made him decide to go back to it each time? How did his mental illness start and why? How was Newton able to concentrate on one problem for up to weeks?