Word: motion
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Einstein's postulate that the laws of nature should appear the same to all freely moving observers was the foundation of the theory of relativity, so called because it implies that only relative motion is important. Its beauty and simplicity were convincing to many scientists and philosophers. But there remained a lot of opposition. Einstein had overthrown two of the Absolutes (with a capital A) of 19th century science: Absolute Rest as represented by the ether, and Absolute or Universal Time that all clocks would measure. Did this imply, people asked, that there were no absolute moral standards, that everything...
...being forced to work not just at the frontier of physics but at the frontier of mathematics as well. Indeed, it may be that they lack some absolutely essential tool and will have to develop it, just as Isaac Newton was pushed by his investigations of the laws of motion to develop the calculus. As if that weren't hard enough, there is yet another major impediment to progress: unlike quantum mechanics, string theory and its offshoots have developed in the virtual absence of experimental evidence that could help steer theorists in productive directions...
...year Newton was born). Riding on the shoulders of giants--and correcting the giants where they went wrong--Newton began assembling and perfecting the Newtonian universe, a miraculously predictable and rational clockwork creation held together by his universal gravitation and regulated by his elegant laws of motion...
...four scientific revolutions--in mathematics (he invented the calculus, as did Leibniz in Germany, independent of Newton), in optics (he invented the reflecting telescope, and his experiments with spectrums established the nature of color and the heterogeneous components of sunlight), in mechanics (his three laws of motion changed the world) and with his understanding of gravity. The last explained the phenomena of heaven and earth in a single mathematical system--or did until Einstein arrived...
...case, is pervasive. W.H. Auden in 1939 wrote lines that might have been composed about, say, Kosovo last winter: "I and the world know/ what every schoolboy learns./ Those to whom evil is done/ do evil in return." What is that but Newton's third law of motion? Einstein's image of Newton as a child occurred, oddly enough, to Newton himself. Maybe that's where Einstein got it. Just before he died, Newton remarked, "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy, playing...