Born to do Math 138 – Kinks in the Personality
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/10/01
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about personality and intelligence flaws in Newton?
Rick Rosner: Newton, according to most sources, was a prick – vindictive, arrogant, and kind of a shit. He lived for a long time. So, he could get revenge on people. He had a long time to work out his grudges.
Did this mess with his physics? I don’t think so. He did a lot of shit. He didn’t revolutionize math alone via Calculus and physics via Universal Gravitation. He ran the Royal Mint. He spent decades to research the Bible looking for hidden messages.
Jacobsen: Did he find anything?
Rosner: I don’t know.
Jacobsen: Do you think it’s even possible or just a fruitless endeavour?
Rosner: No, it is a fruitless endeavour, because guys wrote the Bible. You could argue that they were inspired by the Word of God, but they did not include secret codes. It was translated from Aramaic or whatever to English and from Latin to English.
So, no, there’s no pulling legit signals out of the frickin’ Bible.
Jacobsen: So, it is a dumb endeavour.
Rosner: Well, so is most stuff, apparently, Newton didn’t want or have sex with anybody. Maybe, that freed up time to do shit. He was kind of iconoclastic in terms of behaviour. He got up when he wanted to, laid in bed and thought when he wanted to. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University.
He had that position. In that position, he had servants who would bring him hot milk, whatever he wanted. I don’t know what his responsibilities were, but he, probably, did mostly whatever he wanted – maybe delivering one lecture a year.
There’s no way he would have put up with teaching classes, which may have freed him up to get shit done.
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