As Newton Appeared to Himself

[ForbidenRea]

Isaac Newton
1642-1727

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding of a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

[Blair]

Is that what he said about himself? 'tis a little anthropomorphic and precious don't you think?

He clearly was oblivious to absolute truth.

[ForbidenRea]

No. I think pretty much its a fable of what he was going through-
anamorphic

[Dan Rowden]

Newton was actually quite a lunatic. You can do perfectly effective, even ground-breaking science and still be a total loon in other intellectual respects.

[cousinbasil]

Newton was actually quite a lunatic. You can do perfectly effective, even ground-breaking science and still be a total loon in other intellectual respects.

In other developmental respects, not just intellectual. He was personally isolated, often suffered debilitating depression and emotional breakdowns, during which he did not eat, something he also neglected during periods when he was feverishly productive. He was also pathologically vindictive, especially against competitors and detractors. His famous quote goes something like this: "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Newton scholars roundly consider this as mocking swipe at his professional nemesis Robert Hooke. Newton was not only claiming to "see farther" than Hooke, but referring to Hooke's curved spine and small, crooked stature.

My memory might fail here, but wasn't it Newton who while immersed in the study of optics scooped out his own eye with a spoon...? A loon indeed! Makes the chronically absent-minded Einstein seem quite sane by comparison.

[ForbidenRea]

The revovling heretic.

I established the moon. LIke the One.

[ForbidenRea]

A real treasure, "Newton!"