Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 210.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: "Gerda Elata" <gerda@bgumail.bgu.ac.il>
Subject: Re: 14.0196 what if we succeeded?
[2] From: "Osher Doctorow" <osher@ix.netcom.com> (23)
Subject: The Newton-Fermat-Submarine Mystery
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2000 14:20:32 +0100
From: "Gerda Elata" <gerda@bgumail.bgu.ac.il>
Subject: Re: 14.0196 what if we succeeded?
According to a Jewish mystical tradition, the Torah - read aright - consists
of all the names of God.
When the Torah was revealed to Moses, he "saw" its letters written in one
single sequence in black fire on white fire, and "heard" (from the mouth of
God) the division of the sequence into words. The division into the names of
God will be revealed at the end of time.
Gerda Elata-Alster
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2000 09:44:12 +0100
From: "Osher Doctorow" <osher@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: The Newton-Fermat-Submarine Mystery
Dear Colleagues:
The Newton-Fermat or Fermat-Newton mystery of earlier discussions has a new
twist - submarines. To refresh your memory, Newton and Fermat had
remarkable similarities including extreme secretiveness, "meteoric" rise in
government service, invention/discovery of many branches of physics and
mathematics, considerable interest in optics/light (to which they
contributed greatly), etc. Fermat was in the 1600s, earlier than Newton
except for a short insignificant period. Fermat was about 350 years ahead
of his time, and Leonardo Da Vinci seems to have been the only creative
genius who came close in that respect. Newton was definitely far ahead of
his time, but it is difficult to estimate exactly how far ahead. Both men
had rather curious historical connections with the special theory of
relativity of Einstein, which was not invented until the 1900s, and probably
with his general theory also. I had raised the question of whether the
British and French governments respectively might have subsidized or at
least been interested in the work of these two for practical applications
but with secrecy in mind - as a partial explanation of the secretive
characteristics of Newton and Fermat, but also for other reasons including
the fact that phase differences, as between liquid and solid as gas phases
of matter, are important in optics/light and the possible
military/technological applications are attractive. Phase differences
happen to also be key to logic-based probability (LBP), which I introduced
in 1980.
It now appears unquestionable that submarines, which would be a natural
outgrowth of interest in liquid versus solid phase differences, were known
in the time of Fermat and had just been invented by William Bourne in 1578,
a British mathematician and naval writer. Cornelius (van) Drebbel
constructed the first real submarine around 1620 and successfully sailed it
beneath the surface of the Thames river from 1620 through 1624 - just in
time for Fermat to notice it. In the first 30 years of the 18th century,
numerous types of submarine had been patented in England and other
countries.
In the earlier discussion, I described a science fiction scenario in which
both Newton and Fermat turned out to be time travelers, and it is certainly
the case that phase differences yield some remarkable results equally as
unusual if not greater. LBP research indicates that the speed of light and
the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principles may both involve phase differences
rather than absolute upper limits on either light speed/velocity or
uncertainties/products of uncertainties. If so, then science fiction
hyperspace would be possible, and with it very rapid travel to stars and
even distant galaxies. It would not be surprising if time can be conquered
as directly, and likewise miniaturization to the quantum level and below
(the "sub-Planck" level).
The relevance of this to Humanist Discussion Group is multifold. Science
fiction, a branch of literature and science, kept the idea of hyperspace
alive when almost all of physics and mathematics had abandoned it. In fact,
science fiction (Jules Verne, etc.) inspired many innovations in submarines
and other technological developments of great importance. It inspired me
throughout my childhood and adulthood. The historical study of genius and
creativity, which I have emphasized in Humanities Discussion Group (along
with others), becomes much more urgent in relationship to technological
innovations, discovery, and so on. Genius and creativity cross science and
humanities. Interdisciplinary study becomes very important in practice as
well as theory.
Most interesting, perhaps, to detective novel readers like me, is the
question of what happened to the French and British government knowledge
about Fermat and Newton, if it existed. The French Revolution may have
destroyed it in France, but that revolution or its aftermath eventually lost
out in time thanks to Great Britain. Was the Scarlet Pimpernel only a
figment of a Countess' imagination in writing novels? Was there a French
Secret Service that survived the French Revolution? Why did Germany start
heavily pioneering in mathematics and physics in the 1700s after Newton was
gone? Was some of the knowledge carried to Germany from France, there to
ripen with A. Einstein in the early 1900s? I suggested Sir Arthur Stanley
Eddington as the British Secret Service's Man alongside Einstein in an
earlier discussion, but what about George Francis Fitzgerald of 1801-1901
Dublin whose formula Einstein used in special relativity and Henrik Antoon
Lorentz of 1853-1928 Arnhem in the Netherlands (who won the Nobel Prize in
1902 and who was the other half of Einstein's Lorentz-Fitzgerald
contraction, although Fitzgerald was first). Where in the world did the
Italians come from - Tullio Levi-Civita of 1873-1941 Padua/Rome and Gregorio
Ricci-Curbastro of 1853-1925 Papal States/Bologna, whose tensor analysis
(invented by Ricci mostly) was used by Einstein as the mathematics of his
general theory of relativity? Hundreds of years after Leonardo Da Vinci's
400-year-ahead-of-his-time genius, their mathematics was conveniently in
place so that Einstein's friend, the geometry expert Marcel Grossman, upon
being asked by Einstein what mathematics to use for general relativity,
could cite it as the one to use. The French-Italian connection, is it? The
French-German-Austrian-Italian connection?
Osher Doctorow
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