Albert Einstein may have made the discoveries that led to nuclear and solar power, lasers and even a physical description of space and time, but Sir Isaac Newton had a greater impact on science and mankind, according to a poll published Wednesday.
Posted on 11/23/2005 6:04:12 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Newton, the 17th-century English scientist most famous for describing the laws of gravity and motion, beat Einstein in two polls conducted by eminent London-based scientific academy, the Royal Society.
More than 1,300 members of the public and 345 Royal Society scientists were asked separately which famous scientist made a bigger overall contribution to science, given the state of knowledge during his time, and which made a bigger positive contribution to humankind.
Newton was the winner on all counts, though he beat the German-born Einstein by only 0.2 of a percentage point (50.1 percent to 49.9 percent) in the public poll on who made the bigger contribution to mankind.
The margin was greater among scientists: 60.9 percent for Newton and 39.1 percent for Einstein.
The results were announced ahead of the "Einstein vs. Newton" debate, a public lecture at the Royal Society on Wednesday evening.
"Many people would say that comparing Newton and Einstein is like comparing apples and oranges, but what really matters is that people are appreciating the huge amount that both these physicists achieved, and that their impact on the world stretched far beyond the laboratory and the equation," said Royal Society president Lord Peter May.
Pro-Newton scientists argue he led the transition from an era of superstition and dogma to the modern scientific method.
His greatest work, the "Principia Mathematica", showed that gravity was a universal force that applied to all objects in the universe, finally ruling out the belief that the laws of motion were different for objects on Earth and in the heavens.
Einstein's supporters point out that his celebrated theory of relativity disproved Newton's beliefs on space and time and led to theories about the creation of the universe, black holes and parallel universes.
He also proved mathematically that atoms exist and that light is made of particles called photons, setting the theoretical foundations for nuclear bombs and solar power.
I don't mean to imply that he did and his work is lost; I should have said "Had he lived long enough...". He was quite ill (tuberculosis) the last few years of his life.
Quantum mechanics took a left turn at some point after Einstein quantized light, though. It wasn't his idea to turn particles into probability waves. Personally, I don't fault Einstein for thinking it was a little bit too bizarre. Afterall, Einstein was very logically oriented, and there are aspects of quantum mechanics that seem inconsistent with relativity, so it is an easy step to say quantum mechanics must be wrong.
The problem is that when you start talking about probability, you are in the netherworld. Personally, I believe that probability is just a way to account for factors you cannot understand. We filter out all of those that we can understand and incorporate them into the theoretical structure. But we're still left with a certain amount of arbitrariness, and if it follows a normal distribution, then the likelihood that you are going to isolate the factors that give rise to it is slim. So we just deal with it using probability theory. I don't have any problem with that, but quantum mechanics goes one step further and says that it is not simply a residual that we can't explain. It's part of the structure. To me, that is a hard thing to accept. And obviously, it was for Einstein, too.
I suspect that someday, the notion that a particle is nothing but a probability wave will be relegated to the trash bin. We'll probably be long dead by then, though. It took almost 2,000 years to put the last nail in Aristotle's coffin. Once we did, it opened up a whole new series of insights, though. I think something like that has got to happen for quantum mechanics in order to get to the theory of everything.
There doesn't seem to be too much interest in getting to that point, though, right now. Your average physicist says that quantum mechanics is good enough. Those that don't agree are even further in left field, though, wasting their efforts on the even more bizarre string theory.
As I understand it, Newton did not date much at all.
String theory doesn't contradict quantum mechanics in any way - it is a variant of quantum theory that attempts to incorporate gravity (and is hence extremely complex). I don't think any physicist really says quantum mechanics is "good enough" - all physicists realize that standard QM doesn't address gravity (and most don't work in fields that require one to do so).
Definitely hard-to-understand stuff, but QM works, no doubt about that.
Newton gave us the refractive telescope the theory of relativity the word Gravity but wasted most of his time trying to turn simple minerals into gold through alchemy tha vast part of his life in later years he was an alchemist !
A new monogrammed wastebasket would do.
Your attitude is noted, and recorded in your personnel file.
Poincare also predicted some of the aspects of special relativity late in his career.
"Quantum mechanics took a left turn at some point after Einstein quantized light, though. It wasn't his idea to turn particles into probability waves."
I know you're using shorthand. But of course it was Planck who "quantized" light. Or rather his math. E just tried to explain it.
And the irony of E getting a Noble Prize for that, since he never believed that light was a particle, but a wave. (And not an unmeasurable wave.)
Nope. Here are just a few examples:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/op/heads/techGMR-c.html
"Here's how the GMR head works in a nutshell (without getting into quantum physics that would make your brain melt--and mine. :^) ) When the head passes over a magnetic field of one polarity (say, a "0" on the disk), the free layer has its electrons turn to be aligned with those of the pinned layer; this creates a lower resistance in the entire head structure. When the head passes over a magnetic field of the opposite polarity ("1"), the electrons in the free layer rotate so that they are not aligned with those of the pinned layer. This causes an increase in the resistance of the overall structure. The resistance changes are caused by changes to the spin characteristics of electrons in the free layer, and for this reason, IBM has named these structures spin valves. If you imagine a plumbing pipe with a rotatable shut-off valve, that's the general concept behind the name."
http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/00/q1/0217-display.htm
"The efficiency of light-emitting devices depends on a detail of quantum mechanics: How well do molecules take advantage of two "excited" states that they enter when they receive an electric charge? The two states are called singlets and triplets; they always occur with three triplets for every singlet. The material emits light when the singlets or triplets release their energy and return to a "ground state." Fluorescent materials are inefficient because only singlets produce light and the three triplets are wasted."
(Note: I have an OLED display in my Vette)
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~dws/class/133/qm.html
"Pretty much all of modern technology is founded on quantum mechanics, one way or another. And that statement, broad as it is, doesn't exhaust the reasons why quantum mechanics is important. The list below captures none of this. It just describes a few things I thought you might find interesting."
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~ianb/history/
"A thorough understanding of quantum mechanics is necessary to engineer solid state devices such as transistors. Transistors are the building blocks of electronics and computers. It is impossible to understanding semiconductors (the building blocks of transistors), or any material for that matter, with classical physics alone (i.e. physics known before the discoveries of quantum mechanics and relativity). The physics of lasers and the interaction of light with matter are described by what's called quantum electrodynamics. Even the light entering your eye from this computer screen requires quantum mechanics to understand! Elementary particle physics describes the fundamental building blocks of the universe in the language of relativistic quantum field theory, which is basically quantum mechanics mixed with Einstein's relativity. Without quantum mechanics, the "information age" (and much of modern science) would not exist today."
I realize where you are coming from. And those examples are largely true. But it could be argued that some even much of that could be accomplished with CM. That is, despite the claims, some/much does not *require* QM.
For instance, semiconducters I've read, do not. But only a certain aspect of some of them -- a gateway. (I'm obviously foggy, I'll try to find it.)
It's clear there is hyperbole at work in some of your quotes. Such as "Even the light entering your eye from this computer screen requires quantum mechanics to understand!"
In fact, some (like Einstein) would even claim that QM keeps you from "understanding" such things, since "the quanta are a mess."
But even accepting all of those instances as fact, arguendo, my point still stands. And again, I was originally talking about relativity (this thread is about Einstein versus Newton) not QM. And I did say that things were quickly changing.
Even so, the overwhelming vast majority of things being done/made using applied physics can be (and are done) by using Classical Mechanics as opposed to QM.
Since QM subsumes CM, you could say it is still involved. But my point is that they do not *require* QM.
Fair enough. :-)
(However, I use QM and relativity in my field so I am prob a bit biased here :-))
Well, you're an extremist -- out there pushing the boundaries.
:-)
Is there no possiblity their contributions were equally important?
Having said that, though, if there had been no Newton, who would Einstein have built on/springboarded from?
And having said that, Newton was definitely hotter than Einstein. Of course a woman would get more action from Einstein, so that's a tossup too. And for my money, Edmond Halley (as a young man) was hotter than both of them.
So I should get my raise soon. Thank you.
Perhaps a monogrammed mop bucket will be your reward.
To be sure: some of Einstein's status derives from his status as a kind of cultural icon.
As important as Newton? Certainly not. Even Einstein would not agree. In fact, it's not enterely clear that Einstein is the most important physicist of the 20th century (you could make solid arguments for Dirac, Feynman, Fermi and Bethe, among others).
But his breakthrough was a big one, and he deserves to be ranked among the greats of science for it.
So far... . But there is still time.
Newton would have greatly appreciated Einstein's Gen. Rel. explanation of action-at-a-distance by way of mass-distorted spacetime expressed as tensors.
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