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No, Newton is exceptional. It can be argued that he did more to progress physics and maths than everyone before him combined. He did so many things, but people
by username90 5y ago
No, Newton is exceptional. It can be argued that he did more to progress physics and maths than everyone before him combined. He did so many things, but people just say "Oh Leibniz replicated one of the things after having seen the derived works of Newton" and dismiss him after that.
Newton started the Calculus of Variations, one of the most powerful methods we have for calculating things. It wasn't until Euler 100 years later that the rest of the world began to properly understand what he did then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_variations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_variations
- HWR_14 5y agoNewton was around (preceded by and followed by) great scientific discovery. Calculus of variations was also worked on by Bernoulli, for instance, who discovered it independently. And Leibniz seems to have as good a claim to being first as Newton does. Newton built heavily on Kepler for both math and the sciences. I'm not saying Newton didn't do great work. He just seems a poor example of a single lone genius. He was brilliant and alive at a time when a lot of exciting changes were coming around. Those combined to make him great. Just not a sole genius.