On Sun, 25 Dec 2011 18:35:38 +0000 (UTC) 123hop at comcast.net writes:
> He was a bastard, born on Xmas day, 1642. After his mother's death,
> he sunk into a depression from which he never recovered. He did have
> fun directing the torture of counterfeiters toward the end of his
> life.
Given all that, you'd think they would make his birthday a national holiday, with most people taking the day off from work or school.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math
>
> Joanna
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> Pope did a wonderful epitaph for him:
>
> Nature & Nature's God lay hid in night;
> God said, let Newton be, and all was light.
>
> Newton was also personally vengeful; I think he not only wanted to
> disprove
> Leibnitz's priority in 'inventint' calculus, he wanted to utterly
> humiliate
> him.
>
> Carrol
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org
> [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Michael Smith
> Sent: Sunday, December 25, 2011 1:36 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Have a happy and merry December 25
>
> On Sun, 25 Dec 2011 05:24:17 +0000 (UTC)
> 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
>
> > Actually, he was a bit of a nutter.
>
> Really? He was quite religious, certainly, in his
> own odd way. And he thought there was something
> to alchemy. Is that what you're thinking of?
>
> To be sure, he was a hard-money man. Certainly
> the least attractive trait in an otherwise
> fascinating character.
>
> There's a nice 18th-century statue of old Isaac in
> the antechapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. Wordsworth
> (who was a student at the neighboring and less grand
> St John's college) could see it from his window:
>
> ----------
> And from my pillow, looking forth by light
> Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
> The antechapel where the statue stood
> Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
> The marble image of a mind for ever
> Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
> -----------
>
> By all means let's hoist a glass to Isaac. Perhaps
> he couldn't have been so brilliant if he hadn't been
> so nutty. Considered in the round, he doesn't seem
> a very Hitchens-esque or Dawkinsonian figure.
>
> --
> --
>
> Michael J. Smith
> mjs at smithbowen.net
>
> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org
> http://www.cars-suck.org
> http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com
>
> Any proposition that seems self-evident
> is almost certainly false.
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