3 ms·
"The original has no value for the learner (other than a historical curiosity) because the revised versions are simply better expressions of the same thing." I
by davidivadavid 4y ago
"The original has no value for the learner (other than a historical curiosity) because the revised versions are simply better expressions of the same thing."
I mean, how would we decide that? Do modern learners understand Newtonian physics better than Newton did? By what metric?
- drdeca 4y agoThere are people who understand the implications of Newtonian mechanics better than Newton did, yes. We can tell because they can make predictions within that framework which he could not.
- davidivadavid 4y agoMaking predictions within a framework, however extrapolated from the beginning, and coming up with a framework is precisely the qualitative difference that separates them and that is not being taught when people ask for recipes instead of understanding.
- drdeca 4y agoBy “framework” I don’t mean “sequence of steps”, but overall structure of the theory. Newton did not know e.g. the formulation of stuff in terms of Hamiltonians, even though it is still in a sense in the same framework. I don’t think studying the Latin is helpful in coming up with reformulations of physics things.
- davidivadavid 4y agoYou're proving my point for me: "At age ten, he stumbled across a Latin copy of Euclid; and at twelve he studied Newton's Arithmetica Universalis. He moved on to read the Principia, and by age 16 he had covered much of it, as well as some more recent works on analytic geometry and the differential calculus." (from the Wikipedia article about Hamilton).