Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 176.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 07:38:27 +0100
From: "Osher Doctorow" <osher@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Possibilities - O. Doctorow
Dear Colleagues:
I have obtained so much from Humanist that I would like to give back some of
what I have learned over the last few months in my fields if I can.
Unfortunately in a way, my fields are mathematics/statistics and physics.
I have been researching in a few fascinating (for me) directions. I will
only mention the first direction here and may continue if anybody is
interested. 1. The Fermat-Newton Mystery. Here it is important for
mathematics and physics as well as humanities to know more about Fermat,
Newton, and their relationship. Pierre De Fermat of 1600s France was an
amateur mathematician and physicist and professional lawyer/civil servant
who, in my opinion, was the greatest genius of all time in mathematics and
physics. He discovered parts of the calculus and optics before Newton (the
"inventor" of calculus), analytic geometry before Descartes (the "inventor"
of analytic geometry), co-founded probability theory, founded modern number
theory which is related to crytology, etc., etc. He was approximately
350-400 years ahead of his time and in my opinion anticipated parts of the
modern special theory of relativity which was not invented until the early
1900s (by Einstein). He was fascinated with light (optics) and correctly
figured out that light slows down in water (Descartes concluded the
opposite). I will be delivering a paper at the December 2000 Orbis
Scientiae Global Foundation meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on the
dependence of light speed on energy, which will also relate to the recent
superluminal (above light speed) experimental results which have been in the
press since they were first demonstrated by Professor Nimtz at U. of
Cologne/Koln in 1997 (later confirmed experimentally, although theorists
differ as to whether objects or only pulses/groups are exceeding light
speed).
Science fiction writers can have a field day speculating on whether Fermat
was merely smarter than Einstein (apparently he was - Einstein was only a
few years ahead of his time or "one step" ahead of the mathematicians and
physicists whose equations he used, including the Italians Ricci and Levi
Civita and the the Englishman/Scotsman Fitzgerald and Lorentz from somewhere
else) or whether he was a time traveller. By the way, Leonardo Da Vinci was
about 400 years ahead of his time in my rough calculations, so Fermat
definitely had a rival. There is certainly enough material for a time
travel cinema. Fermat and Newton were both extremely secretive - so much
so for Fermat that he enraged Descartes (and also upstaged him, and
Descartes was forced to apologize) who spent the rest of his life trying to
ruin Fermat's reputation and position. Newton was too secretive to publish
until Leibniz upstaged him. Both Newton and Fermat rose "meteorically" in
government/politics, Newton to Lord Chancellor. Both were obsessed with
optics. Both founded branches and branches of mathematics and physics.
Only problem: Newton lived after Fermat except for a slight and
insignificant overlap. An even "wilder" scenario: were both Newton and
Fermat promoted meteorically because their governments were rewarding them
and recognizing their discoveries secretly? If so, what became of the
French government's knowledge after the French Revolution? Who "knew too
much" in Great Britain? Suggested hint for cinema: Sir Arthur Stanley
Eddington, Einstein's right-hand man whose experiments verified general
relativity's predictions and who was the first person to write a book on
general relativity (the book extended Einstein's theory far beyond what
Einstein thought at the time). Second hint: Eddington and Paul Dirac of
Cambridge were quite similar. Paul Dirac and Stephen Weinberg later won the
Nobel Prize in physics and were the two greatest quantum theorists of the
last 30-40 years. Guess who Paul Dirac's student was (and also partly
Albert Einstein's)? Professor B. N. Kursunoglu, President of the Global
Foundation. Anyone care to attend the December lecture?
Cheers and God bless,
Osher
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