Talk:Isaac Newton

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This Physicists related article has been awarded BRONZE status for quality. It's getting there, but could be better with improvement. See RationalWiki:Article rating for more information.

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what happened? Where has this gone? Keep me in the dark 06:36, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

Ah! - wrong brackets/braces - thanks akj.

He did waste time on religion - checking - will get back to it. 193.113.235.168 12:10, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

try: http://www.biblecodedigest.com/page.php/74 - out of whack even by his own time's standards. Keep me in the dark 12:33, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

My impression is that he devoted the last half of his life to alchemy, but I'm going from memory.--Bob_M (talk) 13:06, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

He certainly did spend a lot of time and effort on questions of religion - just like Leibnitz, Gibbon, Napiers, Pascal, and a lot of other of his more-or-less-contemporaries did. Whether that is the same thing as "wasting time on religion"... well. --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 13:16, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

hmmmm[edit]

After copyediting this, I decided it was probably just unfunny snark, written in clumsy IPese:

"He also attributes his inspiration to being based upon the scientific "giants" of the classical period - i.e, not Robert Hooke, who was in fact a hunchback. Hooke was openly dismissive of Newton's attempts at Biblical commentary, astrology, and alchemy. After his death, Newton destroyed the only painting of Hooke, so we no longer even know what he looked like."

So I put it here in case it's worthy of salvation somehow. humanUser talk:Human 18:30, 13 December 2007 (EST)

Newton pinched Hooke's ideas and Hooke was a full-time straightforward scientific rationalist, whereas Newton was only part time- the resty of the time he was into astrology and cabbalism and Newton stitched him up simply by outliving him as part of a mainlander conspiracy against us Caulkheads from the Isle of Wight. Ok so maybe I made up the last bit, but not the rest.Streona 07:27, 21 January 2008 (EST)

Can you write it better and add some sort of citation (even if just to a WP article on Hooke)? Because if true, obviously it should be in there. Also, do we have an article on Hooke? humanUser talk:Human 10:08, 21 January 2008 (EST)
Yes we do. --BillOhannitygodvelocity. 10:29, 21 January 2008 (EST)

That opening paragraph is very unprofessional. It reads like a high school paper rather than a serious Wikipedia article. — Unsigned, by: 70.26.109.63 / talk / contribs

Thank you for your valuable contribution. ‎Capital punishment doesn't undermine the moral or legal foundations of a society. ‎It is the moral and legal foundation of society. 00:07, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Newton a homosexual?[edit]

I find it horrifically offensive that the article suggests that Isaac Newton may have been homosexual, and then provides nothing to substantiate the claim; just a link to a new-age psychobabble article that doesn’t even address homosexuality or Isaac Newton. Why is the topic brought up at all? Is it just to cast aspersions on his good name? As far as I know, his sexual habits were normal. If you have evidence to the contrary, then present it. Slings and Arrows (talk) 08:41, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

You find unsourced statements "horrifically offensive"? I just find them sloppy. Anyway, I've rewritten that bit and added a ref., but certainly Newton's "sexual habits" were not "normal" (for the expectations of that era, that is), since that would have entailed marriage. It's the lack of any such indication as well as no suggestion of any "kept woman" that opened the venue to speculation. The article already there actually does address Isaac Newton, but as an asexual, which is why I added a ref on the possible homosexuality. Also, I find the assertion that being a homosexual would somehow "cast aspersions on his good name" to be a particularly odd one. John Maynard Keynes was either bisexual or gay, which doesn't mean he was any less of an economist or "a bad sort", well, depending on who you ask, of course (e.g. this charming specimen). ScepticWombat (talk) 07:10, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
From what I have gathered, there is no evidence suggesting that Newton was a homosexual. Nerd (talk) 02:39, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Apples in Principia? Really?[edit]

"an apple fell and hit him on the head. Even though Newton himself mentioned this in his magnum opus" - as a long-time Wikipedian, I'd say "citation needed". This claim is usually Newton's biography by John Conduitt, to whom he reputedly reminisced about the incident several decades later. The only notable case in Newton's writings I can recall is in a letter where he discusses the suitability of different kinds of apples for making Cambridge's famous apple cider. --62.65.236.45 (talk) 21:54, 6 April 2018 (UTC)