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Sir Isaac Newton: Greatest Scientist of All Time? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: That is right. So we'll see you guys in Welcome
1:07
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hi,
1:16
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
1:22
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. This is the Stuff you should know.
1:26
Speaker 1: H that was my Isaac Newton press. Really yeah, you
1:30
Speaker 1: didn't have an accent, that was That's what he sounded like. Oh,
1:34
Speaker 1: it's very it's a very common misconception that British people
1:38
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century sound like British people today. They
1:42
Speaker 1: actually sounded exactly like how I existed. All right, well
1:46
Speaker 1: you did extra research, then it's pretty good. Let's travel
1:49
Speaker 1: back in time. We we just had a nice ten
1:54
Speaker 1: minute discussion Jerry and you and I about or me? Alright, uh,
2:01
Speaker 1: who cares? Yeah, about pop culture things that we've ingested
2:05
Speaker 1: since our break six weeks ago. Yep, And that could
2:09
Speaker 1: be a show. Everyone wants to know what we watched
2:12
Speaker 1: and absorbed and how we feel about it, but they
2:15
Speaker 1: never will. We talked about making of a Murderer or
2:18
Speaker 1: making a Murderer. We talked about Hateful Eight and Star
2:21
Speaker 1: Wars and The Revenant. People want to know, but they
2:27
Speaker 1: never will. You gotta keep him mysterious, right, guys, that's right.
2:33
Speaker 1: And all this leads to Isaac Newton, who it was.
2:38
Speaker 1: So you know, um Wolf from Science World. Who Wolf
2:42
Speaker 1: from Science World. It's a very very bona fide science website.
2:47
Speaker 1: No dumbing down there it so Wolf from put it
2:52
Speaker 1: like this, He's the bomb dignity. It is no, it
2:59
Speaker 1: is no exaggeration to say that Isaac Newton is the
3:03
Speaker 1: single most important contributor to the development of modern science.
3:07
Speaker 1: And Wolf from Science World knows what they're talking about
3:10
Speaker 1: when it comes to contributors to science. Yeah, you know what,
3:13
Speaker 1: I will agree with that, even though we will see
3:15
Speaker 1: he was many things, including a little screwy, super screwy.
3:20
Speaker 1: But um, what I gathered after researching this dude, is
3:23
Speaker 1: that science this is seventeenth century stuff going on. Science
3:27
Speaker 1: was the wild West. And he came in like a
3:31
Speaker 1: sheriff and basically brought order and discipline and said, this
3:36
Speaker 1: is the way we should do things if we want
3:38
Speaker 1: to be taken seriously, guys, varmints. Um, you can't just
3:42
Speaker 1: say things like the world's flat. You gotta prove it
3:46
Speaker 1: or or this is kind of the thinking. And he
3:49
Speaker 1: really kind of rose to prominence while the scientific revolution
3:52
Speaker 1: was already going, but he very much contributed to it
3:57
Speaker 1: because still at the time you could be like, well,
3:59
Speaker 1: the uh, the Earth spins because God spun it and
4:03
Speaker 1: it is God's will, and like people would be like,
4:06
Speaker 1: absolutely scientist. Not the case after Newton came along. Now
4:10
Speaker 1: it's like, you gotta prove the stuff. There's gotta be
4:12
Speaker 1: a method in place, you gotta test things again. And
4:14
Speaker 1: again he was I didn't know this. He was one
4:18
Speaker 1: of the or if not the first person to average data. Yeah,
4:23
Speaker 1: what did they do before that? Just cherry pick something?
4:25
Speaker 1: Probably they're like, oh, that looks like the nice round number.
4:27
Speaker 1: I'll go, I'll use this one. So like, if he measured,
4:30
Speaker 1: say the how long a top spun because that's what
4:34
Speaker 1: scientists measure a lot of top spinning. Um, if he
4:37
Speaker 1: measured it four or five times, then he got different
4:39
Speaker 1: measurements every time. Yeah, I guess before they would just
4:42
Speaker 1: pick whatever when they like the most. It just seems
4:44
Speaker 1: so he was the first one to average. Yeah. It
4:46
Speaker 1: just seems so second nature to think while averaging something
4:49
Speaker 1: is what you should do, But back then it wasn't. No,
4:52
Speaker 1: and that's that's so that came up a lot while
4:55
Speaker 1: I was reading this article. It's a very good article
4:57
Speaker 1: by Jacob Silverman one on Jeopardy. Pretty yeah, um he
5:03
Speaker 1: uh he he. The way that he portrayed Newton. I
5:08
Speaker 1: think it gets across that we take Newton's work so
5:13
Speaker 1: for granted these days as just that's the way the
5:17
Speaker 1: universe works. That to think otherwise, it's just totally alien
5:21
Speaker 1: to us. And it's that's just such evidence of how
5:24
Speaker 1: much that man single handedly changed the world. But you
5:29
Speaker 1: also can't say single handedly he's His genius is unequivocal, right,
5:35
Speaker 1: But he also did definitely stand on the backs of giants,
5:39
Speaker 1: on the shoulders of giants, people who came before him,
5:41
Speaker 1: a sis, and the work of his peers. But he
5:45
Speaker 1: also like to take a lot of the credit for himself,
5:49
Speaker 1: sometimes unnecessarily. He was a very complex man. He was
5:54
Speaker 1: a scientist who deeply believed in God. He believed that
5:58
Speaker 1: you that there was law in order that could be deduced,
6:02
Speaker 1: that could be investigated, but it was orderly and rational,
6:05
Speaker 1: because God was an orderly, rational creator. Yeah, he saw
6:11
Speaker 1: logic and he thought God was that logic. He also
6:15
Speaker 1: thought that the stuff that he was uncovering was actually
6:18
Speaker 1: ancient wisdom that was being recovered from pre Christian civilizations.
6:23
Speaker 1: That's it gets a little screwy. Yeah, that had um
6:26
Speaker 1: kind of da Vinci coded, uh, this knowledge in things
6:30
Speaker 1: like pyramids and stuff like that, and that he was
6:33
Speaker 1: hand selected as a select view to uncover this knowledge. Yeah,
6:36
Speaker 1: so much so that he made he made a name
6:40
Speaker 1: for himself, Chuck. And once you start to really investigate Newton,
6:46
Speaker 1: you can just kind of see him like tittering to
6:48
Speaker 1: himself as he's talking to himself in his chambers at Cambridge,
6:52
Speaker 1: calling himself this out loud to an empty room. Yeah,
6:55
Speaker 1: he was. He changed his name or didn't change it.
6:59
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. He had a special name for himself, Jehovah
7:02
Speaker 1: Sanctus Unice, which means Jehovah the Holy One. And he
7:06
Speaker 1: he got that name by rolling a twenty sided die
7:09
Speaker 1: several times. So that was his special uh. I guess
7:14
Speaker 1: Council of of Unique Scientists, like a league of extraordinary gentleman.
7:19
Speaker 1: That was a super hero name. Yeah, and he was.
7:22
Speaker 1: He was an alchemist as well. He very seriously pursued
7:25
Speaker 1: the study of turning plain old metal into gold of um,
7:30
Speaker 1: finding long life Elixer's. He was a very complex man,
7:34
Speaker 1: and a lot of people like to put him in
7:37
Speaker 1: in this this um rational scientists compartment as like how
7:42
Speaker 1: we view scientists today typically, And he wasn't that. You
7:46
Speaker 1: just can't look at science the same in the seventeenth
7:48
Speaker 1: century as you do today, No, because different. It wasn't
7:52
Speaker 1: like this guy was helping form science today, and at
7:55
Speaker 1: the time it was he was seeking answers to the
7:59
Speaker 1: universe where ever there it was. There weren't many boundaries
8:02
Speaker 1: to him, Like if he could come to conclusions about
8:06
Speaker 1: the universe through weird mysticism, then whatever. He still came
8:10
Speaker 1: to the same conclusions that he did through mathematics, which
8:14
Speaker 1: by the way, a major part of of which he
8:17
Speaker 1: helped develop single handedly. Almost. Yeah, it's kind of a
8:19
Speaker 1: weird time because you could on one hand, be a
8:22
Speaker 1: very rational thinker and say you have to prove this,
8:25
Speaker 1: but you can also say that lady didn't float, so
8:28
Speaker 1: she's a witch and that's why she drowned, and and
8:31
Speaker 1: be completely like normal, say it with a straight face. Yeah.
8:34
Speaker 1: That was like like Newton, like I can turn this
8:38
Speaker 1: mercury into gold, right, there's an elixir that will let
8:41
Speaker 1: you live forever. And I can also say you should
8:44
Speaker 1: average data and write the principia. Right, I can also
8:48
Speaker 1: literally discover gravity, like there was no such thing as
8:52
Speaker 1: gravity as far as humans were concerned before Isaac Newton
8:55
Speaker 1: came along. All right, that's a great setup. That was
8:58
Speaker 1: even better than our field. So January four, which is
9:03
Speaker 1: yesterday in real time, was his actual birthday? Did not
9:05
Speaker 1: know that? Weird timing? Um, it depends on the calendar.
9:12
Speaker 1: Depends on the calendar Christmas Day or January four, right, yes,
9:15
Speaker 1: but like a year apart rather than like a week
9:18
Speaker 1: or so apart. Right, Because one of the great myths
9:21
Speaker 1: is that he was born on Galileo's the day he
9:24
Speaker 1: Galileo died, which means that he's not true, right. Galileo
9:28
Speaker 1: reincarnated is what people say. It's some people catch you,
9:32
Speaker 1: some people like Isaac Newton. Probably I don't think he
9:36
Speaker 1: said that, but yeah, that was using the old Julian calendar.
9:39
Speaker 1: When you use the Gregorian calendar, his birthday was actually
9:43
Speaker 1: Jane uh, January four of the following year, or no
9:47
Speaker 1: of the year before. I think, oh wow, he got younger.
9:51
Speaker 1: No of the same year. So like if he was
9:53
Speaker 1: born in December twenty on one calendar. For the other calendar,
9:57
Speaker 1: he would go back in time to the beginning ing
10:00
Speaker 1: of that same year, so almost a year apart. And
10:03
Speaker 1: the reason that there is a weird discrepancy is um
10:05
Speaker 1: in fifteen eighty two the Catholic nations converted from the
10:09
Speaker 1: Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, full hundred or so
10:12
Speaker 1: years before Newton, or a little less than hundred years,
10:17
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until the seventeen fifties that the British
10:20
Speaker 1: Isles Protestants converted to that Gregorian or Catholic calendar. We
10:25
Speaker 1: should do one of calendars. Oh, we definitely should. More
10:28
Speaker 1: complex than you think. But in the in in the
10:31
Speaker 1: in the continent, and in Great Britain or in the UK,
10:35
Speaker 1: um they I don't know still after all these years.
10:41
Speaker 1: So it's Great Britain in Northern Ireland, right, the United
10:45
Speaker 1: Kingdom and Northern Ireland. I'm just gonna let you go
10:48
Speaker 1: down this road anyway. Uh. They used to notate dates
10:53
Speaker 1: with um old style and new style, depending on what calendar.
10:59
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's the whole discrepancy between his birthday. No,
11:02
Speaker 1: that makes sense, Oh it sure it does. Uh, all right,
11:06
Speaker 1: so let's go back in time. Let's get in the
11:08
Speaker 1: way back machine and go back to one of those
11:10
Speaker 1: two days depending on our calendar that we have in
11:12
Speaker 1: the way back machine. How it's programmed, well, the way
11:15
Speaker 1: back machines programmed to um Gregorian. So it's fine. Great. Uh,
11:27
Speaker 1: So we are back when he was born as a
11:29
Speaker 1: little baby. He was a premature and very sickly. And
11:33
Speaker 1: here's how things can go in the world. He wasn't
11:35
Speaker 1: supposed to live. And like, what would the world have
11:37
Speaker 1: been like without Isaac Newton? Pretty dark? Yeah, or at
11:40
Speaker 1: least it would have taken them longer. Maybe, yeah, maybe
11:43
Speaker 1: it just would have been someone else, like the clapper
11:45
Speaker 1: would have been invented, but we would just assume it
11:47
Speaker 1: worked because God willed it too. That's right. Born uh
11:51
Speaker 1: in eighteen I'm sorry, sixteen forty three, not eight um.
11:57
Speaker 1: He was from a family of farmers that did pretty
12:00
Speaker 1: well for themselves, although his dad, Isaac died before a
12:04
Speaker 1: few months before he was born, and was an illiterate
12:06
Speaker 1: farmer who was successful at his work, but very big
12:10
Speaker 1: that his father died before he was born. Because he
12:12
Speaker 1: never quite got over that. He ended up um living
12:15
Speaker 1: for a short time with his mother and new stepdad,
12:19
Speaker 1: Reverend Barnabas Smith. But he sounded like a jerk who
12:23
Speaker 1: did not like Isaac said, I cast the out, And
12:25
Speaker 1: he was cast out and lived with his maternal grandmother
12:28
Speaker 1: for nine years from age three to twelve. Yeah, I
12:31
Speaker 1: mean it was pretty much raised by his maternal grandmother. Yeah,
12:34
Speaker 1: and he was apparently old enough to realize what was
12:37
Speaker 1: going on, because the any psychoanalyst would have a field
12:40
Speaker 1: day with Newton, because he grew up to be a
12:43
Speaker 1: very insecure man who had a tremendous amount of difficulty
12:48
Speaker 1: trusting people because he's rejected, yes by his mother. Um
12:53
Speaker 1: and who who who suffered from what you would probably
12:56
Speaker 1: call these days hostile attribution bias, where the any any
13:01
Speaker 1: slight or something was clearly intended by the other party.
13:06
Speaker 1: Everybody else was hostile and out. Again, I'm not necessarily
13:09
Speaker 1: making a paranoid but just any slight was intentional, even
13:13
Speaker 1: when it was unintentional. It's a way to live. Yeah,
13:15
Speaker 1: it took everything personally interesting. So this led over his
13:20
Speaker 1: life to a couple of nervous breakdowns. Um, and you
13:25
Speaker 1: know that also had to do with the fact that
13:27
Speaker 1: he worked tirelessly and didn't sleep well and was in
13:30
Speaker 1: a lot of ways a prototypical scientists like he never
13:33
Speaker 1: got married, was just consumed with his work and didn't
13:36
Speaker 1: take care of himself and uh, sort of obsessed with
13:40
Speaker 1: his with his life's work. Yeah, and some people have
13:44
Speaker 1: posthumously diagnosed him, including Simon Baron Cohen who's a um
13:48
Speaker 1: an expert on autism and uh uh Asperger's borat his relative. Interesting.
13:56
Speaker 1: I don't think it's his brother, but there are related Yeah,
14:00
Speaker 1: I was totally kidding. Well, you're totally right. So what
14:02
Speaker 1: are he diagnosed with Asperger's? But that's definitely come under
14:07
Speaker 1: fire lately. They think that So there's something UM called
14:12
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it's called. But in sixteen his
14:15
Speaker 1: second his second nervous breakdown in the sixteen nineties, he
14:20
Speaker 1: um they he stopped doing any kind of scientific research
14:24
Speaker 1: I for that, and he apparently declined mentally compared to
14:29
Speaker 1: his previous state, which means that he came down to
14:31
Speaker 1: about normal levels I would guess. But they think that
14:34
Speaker 1: it was actually mercury poisoning. Yeah, and that he wasn't
14:39
Speaker 1: necessarily autistic. It's an easy catch all to put him
14:44
Speaker 1: in that in that again in that compartment these days,
14:47
Speaker 1: but we don't know enough about him to say that
14:51
Speaker 1: whether he was autistic, like like one of the um
14:54
Speaker 1: one of the evidences was that he didn't play with
14:57
Speaker 1: the other kids, Um, he just kept two himself. So
15:01
Speaker 1: they're like, well, that that shows a lack of social
15:04
Speaker 1: communication skills or or um, you know, being able to
15:08
Speaker 1: connect with others. But then if you look back at
15:11
Speaker 1: historical data, he he he tried to hang out with
15:15
Speaker 1: his peers at school, but they didn't like hanging out
15:17
Speaker 1: with them because he was too smart for them, so
15:20
Speaker 1: they shunned him. So, you know, does that make him
15:23
Speaker 1: autistic or does does that mean he had autism spectral
15:27
Speaker 1: disorder spectrum disorder or aspergers. You can't say he may have,
15:31
Speaker 1: but easy to go back now and put people on
15:34
Speaker 1: the on the spectrum. But they do think because he
15:36
Speaker 1: was exhumed a few hundred years after his death and
15:40
Speaker 1: they found a lot of mercury still like in his
15:45
Speaker 1: um system or in his bones, I would guess, um,
15:49
Speaker 1: and they think that he inadvertently poisoned himself and that
15:52
Speaker 1: that led to his second nervous breakdown and mental decline. Interesting, Yeah,
15:56
Speaker 1: all right, Well, let's take a break here and uh
15:59
Speaker 1: we'll talk about his schooling years right after this. All right,
16:18
Speaker 1: so Newton in school, Uh wasn't a great student in
16:21
Speaker 1: high school? Um? He who was the mascot? Was there
16:29
Speaker 1: was there one? I don't think so, okay, because I
16:31
Speaker 1: thought they were God that would be like really great
16:34
Speaker 1: trivia Newton's high school mascot? What was yours in Silanto's mind?
16:39
Speaker 1: What you remember Silanto? The kid who's like watching me,
16:44
Speaker 1: watching me night. You guys went to the same high school.
16:46
Speaker 1: Remember I told you we were the Red and Raiders Raiders? Okay? Yeah,
16:50
Speaker 1: and my elementary school was the Red and Little Raiders. Ah.
16:54
Speaker 1: That is cute, isn't it? H l I l Um.
16:58
Speaker 1: So he wasn't a great student. He was also a
17:01
Speaker 1: terrible farmer because of course, being uh the son of
17:04
Speaker 1: a farmer. They were like, you need to work on
17:07
Speaker 1: the farm. And there are some people that think he'd
17:09
Speaker 1: purposefully like he was clearly smart enough to do this,
17:12
Speaker 1: but purposely failed at it. So he didn't have to
17:14
Speaker 1: do it because he was really into book learning. Uh
17:17
Speaker 1: so that makes sense to me. Um, he did continue
17:20
Speaker 1: his education because he wasn't farming I went on to Cambridge,
17:23
Speaker 1: but UM had to act as a valot to wealthy
17:27
Speaker 1: students for a little while. Yeah, way through basically what
17:31
Speaker 1: we would consider undergraduate school. Yeah, and then he got
17:34
Speaker 1: a scholarship which allowed him to continue UM through his
17:39
Speaker 1: uh graduate studies. But all that didn't happen in like
17:42
Speaker 1: some smooth things. So he went to school first. His
17:45
Speaker 1: mom came back for him, took him out of school,
17:47
Speaker 1: tried to set him up as a farmer. He failed
17:50
Speaker 1: at that, ended up going to Cambridge, working his way,
17:53
Speaker 1: working to pay his own way to Why though, if
17:55
Speaker 1: they had money, did they not want to pay for school?
17:57
Speaker 1: I wonder. I think maybe his mom wasn't happy about
18:00
Speaker 1: it or something. I'm not sure because that's the only
18:01
Speaker 1: thing I couldn't figure out, because she didn't have money
18:04
Speaker 1: for sure. Um, but he had to pay his own
18:07
Speaker 1: way through Cambridge, at least undergrad. And while he was
18:10
Speaker 1: there as an undergrad, chuck, he he pursued his own studies. Yeah.
18:15
Speaker 1: He basically got a syllabus each quarter, tore it up
18:17
Speaker 1: and said, you guys don't know this yet, but I'm
18:19
Speaker 1: Isaac Newton and I'm gonna invent a great figgy cookie
18:25
Speaker 1: and a lot of other great stuff. That is a
18:27
Speaker 1: great figgy cookie. Um So, so he almost he basically
18:31
Speaker 1: failed out or almost self educating himself. But there is
18:35
Speaker 1: a man named Isaac Barrow who was the Lucazian chair professor,
18:41
Speaker 1: and he took a notice of Newton and said, I
18:44
Speaker 1: think there's a little more to this kid than appears
18:46
Speaker 1: to meet the eye. He was the Robin Williams to
18:49
Speaker 1: Newton's Matt Damon precisely, you know, precisely, except Damon was
18:54
Speaker 1: a custodian and Newton was an actual student. But he
18:58
Speaker 1: did clean rooms too. Yeah, so there is a pretty
19:01
Speaker 1: deep parallel there. But um so, Newton got his hands
19:06
Speaker 1: on something by the guy who came up with the
19:07
Speaker 1: Mercader projection I can't remember his first name, and basically
19:11
Speaker 1: took this book and expounded on it um and it
19:15
Speaker 1: was just mind blowing stuff that he did. And he
19:17
Speaker 1: did it as like a year old. And Barrow got
19:20
Speaker 1: his hands on it and said, you need to stick around.
19:23
Speaker 1: So he ended up getting him basically a four year
19:26
Speaker 1: scholarship for postgraduate studies. Yeah, and not only that, but
19:30
Speaker 1: he uh for various reasons which we'll get into here,
19:33
Speaker 1: and there. Newton was reluctant to publish a lot of times,
19:37
Speaker 1: and Barrow was the one that really helped him say, like,
19:40
Speaker 1: you know, you need to get this out there. This
19:41
Speaker 1: is great stuff you've got, ye, Matt Damon. Yes, Like
19:46
Speaker 1: you know what kind of movies you're going to be
19:47
Speaker 1: in after this? Yeah, you're going to be Private Ryan. Yeah.
19:52
Speaker 1: You give me Jason Bourne and The Martian. You can't
19:57
Speaker 1: think of any other Matt Damon movies. Sure, uh uh
20:02
Speaker 1: of course. Oh you're gonna be The Scoundrel and The Departed. Yeah,
20:07
Speaker 1: great movie it is. I thought Jack really overdid it
20:11
Speaker 1: in that one. Oh. I loved it. Although, dude, I'll
20:14
Speaker 1: tell you something. Another movie I saw recently was The Shining. Yeah,
20:18
Speaker 1: I did say I saw it recently because I see
20:20
Speaker 1: The Shining probably every three months. Yeah, I saw it
20:22
Speaker 1: again recently. I think that that might be the best
20:26
Speaker 1: movie ever made. It's pretty great, and no joke, I
20:30
Speaker 1: really think The Shining might be at least my favorite
20:33
Speaker 1: movie of all time. Boy he uh, he can set
20:38
Speaker 1: a mood. It is so good and you can watch it.
20:42
Speaker 1: I can watch it anytime, any time of year, any
20:46
Speaker 1: time of day, any day of the week. Christmas morning exactly. Yeah,
20:52
Speaker 1: and I'll enjoy it just as much as I would
20:53
Speaker 1: on like Halloween or something. You know, it's my honeymoon night.
20:56
Speaker 1: Let's watch the shining right all the normal times. So um,
21:01
Speaker 1: Newton eventually, uh, well, actually not eventually. He was forced
21:04
Speaker 1: to leave Cambridge for um a little while because the
21:07
Speaker 1: bubonic plague swathed through London to the tune of about
21:13
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand people dead in six months. That's qui.
21:17
Speaker 1: So they closed Cambridge and said everyone go home. He
21:21
Speaker 1: went home, and everyone go home to London. He went
21:26
Speaker 1: home and h had a what they called later a
21:29
Speaker 1: year of miracles. He and us mirabilis uh. And it
21:33
Speaker 1: was a little bit mythical, and that supposedly he came
21:38
Speaker 1: up with all the great stuff of his career in
21:40
Speaker 1: this one year, probably played up for the newspapers or
21:46
Speaker 1: you know, for his own reputation of of the age,
21:48
Speaker 1: because in reality he did come up with a lot
21:51
Speaker 1: of great stuff, but he clearly didn't come up with
21:53
Speaker 1: everything in that year. He might have started a lot
21:55
Speaker 1: of good uh conversations in his head about things, but um,
22:00
Speaker 1: it was a little trumped up that that was the
22:02
Speaker 1: year of miracles. So it probably, like you said, there
22:06
Speaker 1: were some things I'm sure that he thought of during
22:08
Speaker 1: this year. But again, he placed his entire career in
22:13
Speaker 1: this one year, including the apple falling from the tree.
22:17
Speaker 1: Should we go and cover that? Sure? Did it happen? Uh?
22:22
Speaker 1: Probably not, And even if it did, it didn't. Historians
22:26
Speaker 1: are like, that is a fairy tale. On its face,
22:30
Speaker 1: you can tell it's a fairy tale. But Newton himself
22:33
Speaker 1: is like, oh no, this happened. That, this is really true.
22:36
Speaker 1: This is where the theory of gravitational um force sure
22:42
Speaker 1: came from. Yeah, Like he was laying on the ground,
22:44
Speaker 1: supposedly looking up at the moon, wondering, how's that thing
22:48
Speaker 1: just sitting up there? Spin off into space? Yeah, apple
22:52
Speaker 1: falls and he puts it all together. Sounds kind of unbelievable.
22:56
Speaker 1: Sounds like folklore to me, it does. But again he
22:58
Speaker 1: promoted this story. He was definitely for somebody who was
23:04
Speaker 1: just a hair's breath away from being uh shut in.
23:09
Speaker 1: And there was a d in there. It was breadth
23:11
Speaker 1: not breath, I know the difference. Um And and he
23:16
Speaker 1: didn't have virtually any friends. He had not one, but
23:21
Speaker 1: two nervous breakdowns in his lifetimes. Very insecure. He was
23:25
Speaker 1: also like an astute self promoter. Yeah, he he had
23:30
Speaker 1: a lot of contradictory sort of traits I think so. Um.
23:35
Speaker 1: Like we said earlier, he was very much noted for
23:39
Speaker 1: his precision with notes and experimentation. Um, with the averaging
23:44
Speaker 1: of data and uh what else the scientific method of course,
23:50
Speaker 1: putting these things into place. Yeah, the scientific method was
23:52
Speaker 1: already around. He didn't come up with a scientific method,
23:55
Speaker 1: but he definitely refined it and created the scientific method
23:59
Speaker 1: as we recognize as it today under ideal scientific inquiry,
24:03
Speaker 1: when when a scientist today follows that scientific procedure, what
24:07
Speaker 1: he's doing basically or she is following in Newton's footsteps.
24:12
Speaker 1: Like Newton took this thing and said, here's the best
24:14
Speaker 1: way to do this. Like you, you make some observations.
24:20
Speaker 1: From these observations, you come up with a theory, and
24:23
Speaker 1: then you figure out an experiment to test that theory,
24:27
Speaker 1: and then you either discard the theory or you um
24:31
Speaker 1: you yeah, you test it again until the theory becomes
24:35
Speaker 1: basically for all intents of purposes proven, And like you said,
24:38
Speaker 1: as a result, after after this coming up with it,
24:40
Speaker 1: when he laid this stuff down in his Principia mathematica UM,
24:45
Speaker 1: which is his big his not his life's work, but
24:48
Speaker 1: his his biggest published work as far as being widely
24:53
Speaker 1: accepted and remarkable and game changing. Yes, universe changing quite literally,
25:00
Speaker 1: or at least it changed our understanding of the universe. Um.
25:05
Speaker 1: When he when he laid all this stuff down, it's it's.
25:08
Speaker 1: It wasn't like you could just say it is because
25:11
Speaker 1: God wills it anymore. It was like, here is the
25:13
Speaker 1: framework for science from here on out. Follow this, this
25:17
Speaker 1: is the best practice, and there's math behind all of it.
25:20
Speaker 1: And that was another thing too, Like, so let's talk
25:23
Speaker 1: about you want to talk about his Principia mathematica. Well, yeah,
25:27
Speaker 1: I mean there was just a little thing in there
25:29
Speaker 1: called the three laws of motion. No biggie physics at all. Right,
25:34
Speaker 1: So there's inertia um, a body that is at rest
25:39
Speaker 1: tends to say at rest, acceleration which means things go
25:43
Speaker 1: super fast sometimes when they're falling, and action and reaction,
25:49
Speaker 1: which is uh, the cub ball theory. Yeah, and those
25:53
Speaker 1: are while he didn't completely invent those he he you know,
25:56
Speaker 1: Galleo started a lot of that talk, a lot that
25:58
Speaker 1: jibber jabber, but Newton really solidified at all, and it's
26:02
Speaker 1: remarkable to think that all these years later that's still
26:05
Speaker 1: the thing. Well, he solidified it. And so what Galileo
26:09
Speaker 1: did was he said, I've observed this, and it seems
26:12
Speaker 1: to be universally applicable that if if a ball is
26:17
Speaker 1: sitting there on a table and nothing's moving it, no
26:20
Speaker 1: wind is blowing, there's no force acting upon it, it's
26:23
Speaker 1: not going to spontaneously move. And people went, Galileo, that
26:26
Speaker 1: was that's amazing. Can you explain why? And Galileo was like, no.
26:33
Speaker 1: Newton came along and he said, I can explain why.
26:37
Speaker 1: And he added a third law of motion to that.
26:39
Speaker 1: And the whole point was he figured out that everything
26:44
Speaker 1: has mass. Everything that has mass has some sort of
26:48
Speaker 1: force acting upon it, and as a result, also can
26:51
Speaker 1: exert force on other bodies that have mass. And what
26:55
Speaker 1: he figured out that force was, or that magical thing,
26:58
Speaker 1: was gravity universal gravitation, right, which his law of universal gravitation,
27:04
Speaker 1: which is also in the principia Um. And again, I
27:08
Speaker 1: don't think you can overstate this, Chuck. People knew that
27:13
Speaker 1: like the moon went around the Earth and that it
27:17
Speaker 1: was somehow adhered to the Earth, but they didn't really
27:22
Speaker 1: know why. And out of nowhere, like no one before
27:26
Speaker 1: him had ever suggested, maybe it's this thing called gravity. Newton,
27:30
Speaker 1: his perspective of the universe, gave us the idea of gravity.
27:36
Speaker 1: It wasn't there before Newton. It's amazing it was there
27:39
Speaker 1: because of Newton. It's here now. Like that's a huge contribution,
27:44
Speaker 1: just that alone. And he's not one of these scientists.
27:47
Speaker 1: It's like a seven century scientist said this, and he
27:50
Speaker 1: was close. But it turns out he was wrong in
27:52
Speaker 1: every way. But it was a good start, like Einstein,
27:55
Speaker 1: although Einstein did go on to change and uh uh
28:01
Speaker 1: not adapt well, I guess he adapted. But Newton was
28:04
Speaker 1: wrong in some cases. But some of these laws are
28:06
Speaker 1: still spot on right. And this is like the mid
28:09
Speaker 1: to late six yea. Our understanding of gravity has been
28:14
Speaker 1: refined tremendously by by Um Einstein and the idea of
28:18
Speaker 1: relativity and quantum mechanics and all that. But for what
28:21
Speaker 1: Newton was doing, yes, he explained the universe. He was uh.
28:27
Speaker 1: He was the first person to say, you know what, uh,
28:31
Speaker 1: this white light you see isn't actually white. It's actually
28:34
Speaker 1: a spectrum of colors and everyone's like, what he did
28:38
Speaker 1: this as a student, and he said watch this and
28:40
Speaker 1: he got out of prism and bam and everyone went, whoa,
28:44
Speaker 1: he got out of prison prism. He oh, I got it. Yeah,
28:48
Speaker 1: And then we had the Dark Side of the Moon
28:50
Speaker 1: album cover, so you can thank Newton for that as well.
28:53
Speaker 1: That's right. And he published that in seventeen o four,
28:55
Speaker 1: and which is way after he experimented with prisms because
28:59
Speaker 1: he was reluctant to publish things a lot. So let's
29:02
Speaker 1: talk about that. Was published an optics. Yeah, like magic.
29:06
Speaker 1: I guess they dropped magic. Yeah, sometimes magic spelled with
29:11
Speaker 1: a K, which you know, it's like the real thing.
29:16
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that, chuck. He published um Optics
29:20
Speaker 1: in seventeen o four, but he was doing these experiments
29:24
Speaker 1: in like the sixteen sixties um, and he didn't publish
29:27
Speaker 1: this stuff in part because he could not handle being
29:32
Speaker 1: challenged criticized. He did not like it, and he got
29:36
Speaker 1: into it a lot. Like part of the scientific revolution
29:39
Speaker 1: that was going on was that scientists around the world,
29:42
Speaker 1: well at least in the West, we're arguing with one another,
29:45
Speaker 1: we're picking apart one another's theories were um corresponding with
29:49
Speaker 1: one another about ideas and sharing all these thoughts, but
29:53
Speaker 1: a lot of it was contentious and um his first
29:57
Speaker 1: Newton's first nervous breakdown came because Robert Hook said that
30:03
Speaker 1: he stole some of his ideas, and then they had
30:07
Speaker 1: it out in the journals through letters back and forth
30:10
Speaker 1: through the life. Yeah, and then he also the Jesuits
30:14
Speaker 1: didn't accuse him of stealing any of their ideas, but um,
30:18
Speaker 1: he was. He was corresponding with the monastery and they
30:20
Speaker 1: were like, we like your your thoughts, but we think
30:23
Speaker 1: your experiment might be slightly flawed. And he went for zerk.
30:26
Speaker 1: He's like what And then he had a nervous breakdown,
30:30
Speaker 1: which was finally completed in sixteen sixty nine. I believe
30:35
Speaker 1: with the our sixteen seventy nine, I'm sorry, with the
30:37
Speaker 1: death of his mother, so he was doing experiments. He
30:41
Speaker 1: started to kind of come out with him publicly. They
30:44
Speaker 1: they were challenged in question, he lost his his he
30:48
Speaker 1: went berserk. It's probably stems from his rejection from childhood.
30:51
Speaker 1: Of course, he withdrew and then throughout the sixteen seventies
30:57
Speaker 1: didn't do any kind of um publishing or research. Yeah,
31:01
Speaker 1: it kind of went dark. Yeah, then his mom dies
31:04
Speaker 1: and then um, he finally comes back out of it
31:07
Speaker 1: thanks to the help of like Isaac Barrow, and then
31:09
Speaker 1: later on other colleagues like Edmund Haley of Haley's comment,
31:12
Speaker 1: and then finally publishes. But if you notice the date
31:15
Speaker 1: of the publication of Optics, that comes after Robert Hook,
31:19
Speaker 1: who is his lifelong arch nemesis, has died, and they
31:24
Speaker 1: never worked it out. There wasn't some like, uh, leave
31:27
Speaker 1: on Helm, Robbie robertson deathbed, Hey, I still love you, man,
31:32
Speaker 1: Like they died, now, come on, they died bitter rivals. Yeah,
31:38
Speaker 1: Newton and uh Hook. I know a band reference is
31:43
Speaker 1: probably lost on most people. Just google it. Google the band. Yeah.
31:47
Speaker 1: And there's also like a hundred dudes that are like, yes,
31:51
Speaker 1: what a reference? What else did he do? How about
31:54
Speaker 1: a little something called the reflecting telescope. Yeah, that's a
31:57
Speaker 1: big one. Back in the day, refracting tell us hopes
32:00
Speaker 1: were all the rage. But you couldn't really focus that
32:03
Speaker 1: well on him, which is sort of key with a telescope,
32:05
Speaker 1: would be like, is that a stock? Sure, let's call
32:07
Speaker 1: it a stock. Uh, and let's name it after me. Um.
32:12
Speaker 1: But these mirrors that he said, you know what, dudes,
32:14
Speaker 1: let's use lenses. It can be about one twelfth size
32:19
Speaker 1: and in focus. Boom, and all of a sudden, like
32:22
Speaker 1: if you dropped the average size of a telescope down,
32:25
Speaker 1: that would be good enough. Yeah, even if it's still Yeah,
32:30
Speaker 1: but he actually improved it as well. That's right, and
32:32
Speaker 1: that got him into the Royal Academy when he presented
32:34
Speaker 1: it at the urging a Barrow again, I think that
32:38
Speaker 1: was Barrow that actually did the presenting, but he said
32:42
Speaker 1: it's this guy and just stood off to the side
32:45
Speaker 1: with his security blanket around his shoulders. He had his woobie. Uh.
32:49
Speaker 1: And he also created a little something that I hate
32:53
Speaker 1: called calculus. I and you don't even hate calculus because
32:57
Speaker 1: I am that unfamiliar with it. Yeah, had to take
33:00
Speaker 1: a calculus class and I wasn't good at it. The
33:02
Speaker 1: remarkable thing is he created calculus because the limits of geometry.
33:07
Speaker 1: He was like, we need more higher level of math
33:12
Speaker 1: to figure this out, and I'm gonna invent it, not
33:14
Speaker 1: to figure it out, to explain it makes sense of
33:17
Speaker 1: it what he figured out. Yeah, so he's like calculus,
33:21
Speaker 1: it's great with things in motion and geometry. Isn't. And
33:24
Speaker 1: he was all about, well not all about. He was
33:26
Speaker 1: keen on things in motion. Yeah, well you kind of
33:29
Speaker 1: needed him, Like you could say, well this, you know,
33:31
Speaker 1: an ellipse is is Um. You can describe it geometrically,
33:35
Speaker 1: but you can't really describe an orbit of something. It's
33:39
Speaker 1: motion in the in an ellipse, just through normal geometry.
33:43
Speaker 1: So I'll just invent a supersized version of geometry to
33:48
Speaker 1: help explain my discoveries. Yeah, and um, it wasn't nuts. Yeah,
33:53
Speaker 1: it wasn't called calculus though. It was called the fluxions,
33:57
Speaker 1: which I think, Uh, we should bring back, totally bring
34:01
Speaker 1: it back. We should call it. Everyone should call it
34:04
Speaker 1: the fluxions. You might as well. I refer to calculus
34:07
Speaker 1: so infrequently that I can just call it the flex
34:10
Speaker 1: and people be like, what does that mean? I'll say,
34:13
Speaker 1: look it up. All right, let's take a break here
34:15
Speaker 1: and we will get into the later years of Newton's
34:19
Speaker 1: life when things got a little weird. All right, So
34:38
Speaker 1: we mentioned his lifelong rivalry with Robert Hook. Um, not
34:43
Speaker 1: the pirate, not the pirate? Uh? Was there a pirate
34:47
Speaker 1: named Robert Hook? Captain Hook from Peter Pan? Was it Robert.
34:50
Speaker 1: I don't know, he didn't have any on it. Know,
34:52
Speaker 1: I think I want to say that's James Hook. I
34:54
Speaker 1: think James Hook. I think you're right. Um so not
34:58
Speaker 1: the pirate U. He also had a rivalry with um. Well,
35:03
Speaker 1: he had a rivalry with many scientists. But another dude
35:06
Speaker 1: who claimed he invented calculus, Oh Liban's. So that's a
35:12
Speaker 1: weird story, the story of calculus. Who invented calculus? Because
35:17
Speaker 1: think about it, people don't invent new, more refined forms
35:21
Speaker 1: of math every day, do they. Well, they don't. They
35:24
Speaker 1: think they might not even the state. Well, when they
35:26
Speaker 1: come down off the acid, they realized that it's all
35:28
Speaker 1: just chicken scraps and get this tinfoil hat off my head.
35:31
Speaker 1: So when when not only Newton said that he created calculus,
35:38
Speaker 1: Liban said that he did as well. Within a decade
35:40
Speaker 1: or some of each other, there was quite a bit
35:42
Speaker 1: of hubbub over who actually created calculus. And to make
35:46
Speaker 1: the whole thing even more murky, they had corresponded with
35:49
Speaker 1: one another about the ideas of calculus. And scientists aren't
35:55
Speaker 1: not all scientists, but polease, don't write in and say
35:57
Speaker 1: I'm not like that, but scientists a lot of times
36:00
Speaker 1: in history, some of the more notable scientists aren't big
36:02
Speaker 1: on being like, yeah, we we totally like help each other.
36:05
Speaker 1: It's usually like, no, I invented that, because that's their legacy.
36:09
Speaker 1: I think that they're fighting for sure, and sometimes it's
36:12
Speaker 1: definitely pride themselves on their legacy. And Newton was probably
36:15
Speaker 1: one of them, and big money so he um he
36:20
Speaker 1: and Leban's had this ongoing dispute and they had their
36:23
Speaker 1: supporters as well. Who who disputed? And it wasn't just
36:26
Speaker 1: a Leban's versus Newton in who created calculus. It was
36:30
Speaker 1: also the Aisles versus the continent, the Catholics versus the Protestants.
36:36
Speaker 1: There were a lot more divisions to it than just
36:38
Speaker 1: these two men. But from what I can gather, historians
36:42
Speaker 1: now believe that um Liban's and Newton independently developed calculus
36:49
Speaker 1: on their own. Really is that the modern way of thinking? Yeah,
36:53
Speaker 1: Newton probably beat his notes suggests that he came up
36:56
Speaker 1: with calculus before Liban's, but that Leban's came up with
37:00
Speaker 1: it on his own as well. Wow, that's pretty remarkable.
37:03
Speaker 1: It is. It's almost like a soccer score. Everybody wins,
37:06
Speaker 1: you know, Uh. He also in the dark years we
37:11
Speaker 1: talked about when he sort of fell off the radar
37:13
Speaker 1: and wasn't publishing much. That's when he was getting into
37:15
Speaker 1: the alchemy um, which we said, um range is what
37:19
Speaker 1: really was was sort of a precursor to chemistry in
37:21
Speaker 1: some ways, UM And now we look back on it
37:25
Speaker 1: with a little more understanding. At the time though it
37:28
Speaker 1: was illegal up until like I think of right before
37:33
Speaker 1: his birth, was actually illegal because it was I guess
37:36
Speaker 1: like one of the dark arts or something, and they
37:38
Speaker 1: were burning people at the stake for practicing alchemy, right,
37:42
Speaker 1: which again at the time it was a little fruity,
37:45
Speaker 1: you know, but it wasn't so much so that uh,
37:51
Speaker 1: it wasn't science wasn't necessarily so close to the concept
37:54
Speaker 1: of mystical truths as it is today. Um, So you
38:00
Speaker 1: could conceivably be involved in scientific inquiry and find yourself
38:05
Speaker 1: going down this alley of alchemy. Even still, Newton was like,
38:09
Speaker 1: this would be bad for my name, and I might
38:11
Speaker 1: be fired if they found out that I was into alchemy,
38:13
Speaker 1: and so he kept it a closely guarded secret. Yeah.
38:16
Speaker 1: Not only did he, but his family after his death
38:18
Speaker 1: kind of kept that stuff quiet for a while, and
38:20
Speaker 1: I think it was the early ninety nineties when all
38:23
Speaker 1: of his works were finally published and they were like whoa, Yeah,
38:26
Speaker 1: it was really all over the place, well out there. Uh.
38:30
Speaker 1: We also mentioned earlier briefly that he thought that um,
38:34
Speaker 1: he thought that alchemy was like any ancient riddle, um,
38:39
Speaker 1: and it was up to him and other uh, up
38:42
Speaker 1: to him, Jehovah sank this unus Yeah, to figure it out,
38:45
Speaker 1: and the answer is out there. And he's one in
38:47
Speaker 1: a line of great men chosen to do so little
38:50
Speaker 1: screwy Yeah at this point, right, m I being cold,
38:56
Speaker 1: He believed in the Philosopher's Stone. I have a tremendous
38:58
Speaker 1: amount of respect for him, having a scientific mind that
39:03
Speaker 1: was open to all sorts of stuff. And again, this
39:06
Speaker 1: was the seventeenth century, so let's cut him some slack.
39:10
Speaker 1: But he did believe in the Philosopher's Stone, which was
39:11
Speaker 1: thought to aid in alchemy cure disease, and um, somethink
39:18
Speaker 1: or thought that like the key to eternal life was
39:20
Speaker 1: in the Saucerer's stone, Philosopher's Stone. Sorry, that's a whole
39:25
Speaker 1: different things, a little different, and chuck um. Not only
39:29
Speaker 1: was he into alchemy and mysticism as well. Um, he
39:35
Speaker 1: also was very much into uh like obscure Christian stuff too. Yeah. So,
39:43
Speaker 1: like one of his pursuits that he amused himself with
39:45
Speaker 1: on the side was chronology. He wanted to he believed
39:50
Speaker 1: the Bible was a literal history of um the world,
39:57
Speaker 1: and that the prophecies in the Bible were directly from
40:00
Speaker 1: God who could who who could see to the end
40:03
Speaker 1: of time and knew everything that was gonna happen already.
40:06
Speaker 1: So everything in the Bible he called a history of
40:09
Speaker 1: future events basically. And so his whole thing was, if
40:14
Speaker 1: you can go back, now that we understand time keeping
40:17
Speaker 1: better and astronomy, you could go back and sink, um,
40:23
Speaker 1: things that happened in the Bible to current astronomical dates.
40:26
Speaker 1: You can put a current date on them, so you
40:28
Speaker 1: could say when, um, you know this happened, when the
40:33
Speaker 1: walls of Jericho actually fell, because he believed all this
40:35
Speaker 1: stuff happened, or when something might happen in the future exactly.
40:38
Speaker 1: And apparently he did just that. He interpreted this one
40:42
Speaker 1: section of the Bible about the end of the world coming,
40:45
Speaker 1: and he dated it to coming up. We'll see, So uh,
40:51
Speaker 1: I read a little blurb from a scholar of on
40:55
Speaker 1: Newton who said, like he, this is something he did
40:58
Speaker 1: to amuse himself in private. It was never meant for
41:00
Speaker 1: perfect consumption. But he probably would have believed that he
41:03
Speaker 1: got that date right. Oh really, Yeah, he he worried
41:07
Speaker 1: about getting dates wrong and didn't think that people should
41:11
Speaker 1: mess around with stuff like that because you are fallible
41:14
Speaker 1: and in setting dates like that. Um, which is probably
41:19
Speaker 1: why he never meant it for publication. But he probably
41:23
Speaker 1: thought he was right. Yeah, and that had he lived
41:25
Speaker 1: in twenty six he would have seen the end of
41:26
Speaker 1: the world. He also dabbled in something called arianism, which uh,
41:32
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with white people. Um, it was,
41:35
Speaker 1: it was. It was actually a priest named Arius from
41:38
Speaker 1: Libya is the Olivian priest who came up with this.
41:41
Speaker 1: And the idea is that um the Holy Trinity, Father, Son,
41:46
Speaker 1: holy Spirit. And in Christian theology it disrupted that and
41:50
Speaker 1: said that Jesus may have been created by God, but
41:52
Speaker 1: he is not divine. If you believe in arianism, that's
41:56
Speaker 1: what you believe. And Newton was an adherent of arianism,
41:59
Speaker 1: which super popular at the time or ever. Probably it
42:03
Speaker 1: was basically stamped out by the seventh century, and here's
42:06
Speaker 1: Newton in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century. Yeah, he's like,
42:12
Speaker 1: oh this, this makes a lot of sense to me.
42:14
Speaker 1: What an obscure, arcane thing to think of. And he
42:17
Speaker 1: got into a religion in college. Actually another weird thing
42:21
Speaker 1: to do, even at that time. Yeah, that's when you
42:24
Speaker 1: get out of religion. Sure, that's when you started to
42:26
Speaker 1: question things, right, that's when he got into it. Apparently
42:29
Speaker 1: one of the first things that he did he was
42:31
Speaker 1: a bit of a prude. One of the first things
42:32
Speaker 1: he did was um, right down a list of every
42:35
Speaker 1: sin he ever committed. And they weren't exactly groundbreaking, like
42:40
Speaker 1: um Silverman points out that one of them was he
42:43
Speaker 1: broke the Sabbath by baking pies one Sunday. How dare
42:48
Speaker 1: he like? This is the kind of sins that he's like.
42:51
Speaker 1: He also said he wanted to burn his mother and
42:53
Speaker 1: stepfather alive in their home, which was one of the
42:56
Speaker 1: sins he recorded. So he did have a darker side,
42:59
Speaker 1: did he really? Oh yeah, oh we really did. That
43:02
Speaker 1: wasn't a joke. I thought. I was like, that was
43:03
Speaker 1: a weird joke. No, he had quite arranged from baking
43:06
Speaker 1: pies to burning his parents alive, like just wanting to though, right, yeah, Okay,
43:11
Speaker 1: he didn't make an attempt to r no, no, no, no,
43:14
Speaker 1: that was yeah, the sin was threatening to her, wanting
43:17
Speaker 1: to I'm not sure if he got verbalized it or
43:19
Speaker 1: if he just thought it in his head. Yeah, but
43:22
Speaker 1: like he was a rejected little kid, and yeah, yeah,
43:27
Speaker 1: who wouldn't want So we're talking about arianism though there's
43:31
Speaker 1: um it's a very heretical thought that Jesus isn't divine,
43:38
Speaker 1: but that you should still worship him, right, Yeah, it
43:42
Speaker 1: was a very unusual line of thinking, right, and and
43:45
Speaker 1: like critics of that kind of thinking say, well that
43:48
Speaker 1: that worships um poly or that creates poly theism because
43:53
Speaker 1: you're worshiping God, but you're also worshiping Jesus, who's not divine.
43:57
Speaker 1: You're a wrong wrong wrong, wrong wrong. And the Council
43:59
Speaker 1: of New See you UM, which was a learned council
44:02
Speaker 1: that basically decided what went into the Bible UH in
44:05
Speaker 1: the fourth century, said uh, no, the Trinity is absolutely
44:09
Speaker 1: correct and anything against that is heresy and you should
44:13
Speaker 1: be burned at the state. So even that, UM, I
44:16
Speaker 1: get the impression that his fellow dons at Cambridge I
44:20
Speaker 1: knew that he was into Arianism, or if they didn't,
44:23
Speaker 1: they may have suspected that he had unorthodox beliefs about Christianity,
44:27
Speaker 1: and so that just created an even wider gulf between
44:30
Speaker 1: him and and the people who he saw on a
44:33
Speaker 1: daily basis. Well, he definitely thought that Catholicism and uh
44:37
Speaker 1: some other like branches of major religions were very corrupt
44:41
Speaker 1: and not to be trusted. Uh, yeah, he was. He
44:45
Speaker 1: was an odd guy. Uh, we can't get that across enough. Um.
44:50
Speaker 1: Later in life, but he did not sit on his laurels.
44:52
Speaker 1: Later in life, he was made uh he accepted a
44:55
Speaker 1: position at the mint um and apparently that that sort
45:00
Speaker 1: of sounds like the old I'm going to retire as
45:04
Speaker 1: the CEO and work as a consultant, Like I'll make
45:07
Speaker 1: more money than I did ever before for not doing
45:10
Speaker 1: much work. Um. Apparently that was the deal with the mint.
45:13
Speaker 1: He got appointed later on in your life to the
45:15
Speaker 1: mint and he kind of just made a lot of
45:16
Speaker 1: dough and didn't do much. He was like, no, no,
45:18
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, I'm gonna actually do something. He like
45:20
Speaker 1: three years later became master of the Mint and he
45:23
Speaker 1: is the one responsible for changing the English pound standard
45:27
Speaker 1: from sterling to gold. Is that right? Yes, he was
45:30
Speaker 1: actually trying to get things done and he went after counterfeiters,
45:33
Speaker 1: went after counterfeiters. Pretty interesting. Yeah, not bad. He was
45:37
Speaker 1: also later in life elected the president of the Royal
45:39
Speaker 1: Society of London, which is the Academy of Sciences in
45:43
Speaker 1: in the UK. Yeah, he was a member of parliament.
45:46
Speaker 1: He's elected to parliament, but he yes, he was twice.
45:49
Speaker 1: And actually he was knighted in seventeen o five and
45:52
Speaker 1: the Queen apparently knighted him for political reasons. She wanted
45:57
Speaker 1: to help He was standing for parliament again and she
46:00
Speaker 1: wanted to help his chances of being elected, so she
46:04
Speaker 1: united him, not for his scientific achievements because of the
46:07
Speaker 1: election of se five. It didn't help. He still didn't
46:11
Speaker 1: unseat the guy that she wanted out of office, but
46:14
Speaker 1: he got knighted anyway. Good for him. Yeah, what a
46:17
Speaker 1: complex dude. Yeah, there's a T shirt just a picture
46:23
Speaker 1: of him complex dude underneath, and we should We didn't
46:27
Speaker 1: really talk quite enough about it, but he definitely stole
46:32
Speaker 1: people's ideas in certain ways. There's a guy named um
46:36
Speaker 1: John Flamsteed, and he, like Newton, used a lot of
46:40
Speaker 1: his work to help form the basis of his theory
46:43
Speaker 1: of universal gravitation, and Um Flamsteed, I guess, rubbed Newton
46:48
Speaker 1: the wrong way, and Newton just removed any reference to
46:52
Speaker 1: Flamsteed in his second edition of the Principia. I think
46:56
Speaker 1: all scientists build on the backs of those who came
46:59
Speaker 1: before them. But it's been it'd be cool to say, like,
47:02
Speaker 1: and this would not have been possible without the work
47:04
Speaker 1: of Flamsteed, not like, oh you know what, let's redact
47:07
Speaker 1: that and took his name out of there because I
47:09
Speaker 1: think it's a jerk. I don't like how it's spelled. Yeah.
47:11
Speaker 1: We'll end with his epitaph, though, because it definitely gets
47:14
Speaker 1: the point across I think correctly. His epithap says, mortals rejoice.
47:19
Speaker 1: That's so great an ornament to the human race. Wow.
47:22
Speaker 1: I thought it was business in front, party in the rear. No,
47:28
Speaker 1: he invented the mullet. You know. Oh, I know, you're ready.
47:33
Speaker 1: I'm ready. If you want to know more about Isaac Newton,
47:36
Speaker 1: type those words into the search part how stuff works
47:39
Speaker 1: dot Com. Since I said search parts time for listener mail.
47:45
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this don't yuck someone's yum. Hey, guys,
47:50
Speaker 1: after listening, after listening for years, love you guys. Your
47:54
Speaker 1: Christmas episode had me yelling at my iPhone and I
47:57
Speaker 1: decided I need to send a note. You were both
47:59
Speaker 1: adamant about ever even trying fruitcake and then went on
48:02
Speaker 1: to insult it with open barrels. I probably would have
48:05
Speaker 1: agreed with you three weeks ago, because I also never
48:07
Speaker 1: touched a fruitcake or eating one. However, last week I
48:09
Speaker 1: finally looked at the ingredients was amazed. Sugar, molasses, ginger,
48:13
Speaker 1: fruit loaded with rum. Uh, there is rum in the batter,
48:17
Speaker 1: and when done baking, you actually drizzle with more rum,
48:20
Speaker 1: wrap it and cheeseball to soak it in even more
48:22
Speaker 1: with rum. The only bad thing I can figure out
48:25
Speaker 1: about fruitcake is that this particular recipe needs to sit
48:28
Speaker 1: and rum for ten weeks before eating. So just because
48:33
Speaker 1: you have not tried fruitcake, you shouldn't be such naysayers.
48:35
Speaker 1: Give fruitcake a break. My nephew has several rules, and
48:39
Speaker 1: rule number four is don't yuck someone's yum. You know
48:43
Speaker 1: that that's absolutely true. We were total youm yunkers. Uh.
48:47
Speaker 1: And as soon as I read this, I was like, man,
48:49
Speaker 1: I was a young yunker. I need to try fruitcake.
48:51
Speaker 1: Apparently there's this thing going on where Slate was like
48:55
Speaker 1: beer is too much hops in it? What's the deal?
48:57
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of some somebody like that. It's
49:00
Speaker 1: hate down of it. That went viral. That was like,
49:02
Speaker 1: what what is it to you? If you don't like
49:03
Speaker 1: hops and your beer drinking different kinds of beer, why
49:06
Speaker 1: do you have to publish an article about how you
49:09
Speaker 1: don't like hops. At the same time, it's like, really,
49:13
Speaker 1: is that taking away from your enjoyment of your happy
49:15
Speaker 1: beer to know that somebody at Slate doesn't like it.
49:18
Speaker 1: I think what I've heard the complaint of, and this
49:21
Speaker 1: is on the Stuff you Should Know message board and otherwise,
49:24
Speaker 1: is that non hops enthusiasts are aggravated that the craft
49:27
Speaker 1: beer movement these days is way too hoppy and it's
49:31
Speaker 1: hard to find things other than pale ales and I
49:34
Speaker 1: p a s. But that's not true. There's plenty of
49:37
Speaker 1: craft beers out there that aren't p seems to be
49:40
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of i pas, but it seems
49:42
Speaker 1: like a lot of people love them. That's probably what
49:43
Speaker 1: they're making them, right, Like I can't stand barley wines.
49:46
Speaker 1: But you don't hear me saying I can't stand barley wines.
49:50
Speaker 1: They're discussed much. Let's take the time to write an
49:52
Speaker 1: article about it. Yeah, who cares? Yeah, I guess I'm
49:55
Speaker 1: conflicted about all this. They're both sides are wrong. Big
49:59
Speaker 1: shout out to our friend at Creature Comforts and Athens
50:01
Speaker 1: and they're delicious Tropicalia, which made I think their brewery
50:06
Speaker 1: was one of the top five best new breweries according
50:09
Speaker 1: to uh maybe Forbes some big magazine and a huge
50:13
Speaker 1: shout out checked the Bowler Beer Company, who sent us
50:16
Speaker 1: a bunch of huge bombers that were awesome. And um,
50:20
Speaker 1: I gave the barley wine one to know by the way,
50:22
Speaker 1: I really he like just soaked his beard in it
50:25
Speaker 1: and let it seep in. Yeah. And while we're talking
50:27
Speaker 1: about free booze, I was lucky enough to take home
50:31
Speaker 1: the shaker and spoonbox that got sent to us. What
50:34
Speaker 1: it's like Blue Apron, but for cocktails. They send you
50:38
Speaker 1: everything but the booze, including like a zester. I needed
50:41
Speaker 1: a zester, like all the different kinds of like, um,
50:44
Speaker 1: Demoera syrup and everything you need plus cocktail recipes. You've
50:49
Speaker 1: been enjoying it. Oh, I, it's already long gone enjoyed.
50:52
Speaker 1: They were great. It's just like ad bourbon and follow
50:55
Speaker 1: the recipes, but they're like really sophisticated smart recipes that
50:58
Speaker 1: you may never try that are like all the ingredients
51:01
Speaker 1: you need an easy instructions. So it was good. And
51:04
Speaker 1: the guy said, I think his name is Mike. He said,
51:07
Speaker 1: if you and Jerry wanted to box, he was totally
51:09
Speaker 1: hooked up. I strongly recommend. Yes, there were more than
51:13
Speaker 1: one tincture in the box. Uh and um to follow up,
51:17
Speaker 1: there's the longest list you mail ever on the Brooklyn
51:19
Speaker 1: or I'm sorry the Boulder h Beer Company. Uh, You're
51:24
Speaker 1: hoodie T shirt that you sent me is one of
51:26
Speaker 1: my favorite new shirts. Yes and where all the time. Yes,
51:29
Speaker 1: he does alright, so that wait, hold on, it might
51:32
Speaker 1: as well. Thank Little Bit Sweets for the nice and
51:35
Speaker 1: thank you very much to Mona Collin Tinne and her
51:39
Speaker 1: family for sending the box. The annual box of Christmas
51:43
Speaker 1: goodies that's always the precursor to our administring industry. Oh
51:49
Speaker 1: and thank you to the hex they sent us like
51:51
Speaker 1: a bunch of Corrabas gift certificates that we're gonna use
51:54
Speaker 1: for lunch. Oh really Yeah, and a bunch of other
51:56
Speaker 1: stuff too. But I mean like they sent us a
51:58
Speaker 1: significant amount of Rob's gift. Ki, you got this in
52:01
Speaker 1: your wallet? Yeah, I got them tucked in my cheek. Uh.
52:05
Speaker 1: So that is from Caroline from New York and her nephew.
52:10
Speaker 1: We didn't mean to yuck the yum. Yeah, you're right, nephew. Yep.
52:14
Speaker 1: Sometimes kids can set adult straight. Yeah, just don't do
52:17
Speaker 1: it much or you'll get the old belt. Just kidding. Uh.
52:23
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us to
52:26
Speaker 1: send us stuff, to send us an email to take
52:28
Speaker 1: us task coop cares. You can send us an email
52:31
Speaker 1: to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. You
52:33
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
52:36
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can tweet to us at s y
52:38
Speaker 1: s K podcast, and you can hang out with us
52:40
Speaker 1: at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
52:42
Speaker 1: dot com