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Agreed, it’s astonishing intuition. It’s hard to call it a lucky guess when it is the last paragraph of Newton’s magnum opus. But very hard to explain. Choosin
by dr_dshiv 1y ago
Agreed, it’s astonishing intuition. It’s hard to call it a lucky guess when it is the last paragraph of Newton’s magnum opus. But very hard to explain.
Choosing my words carefully, I think it was a kind of deep and deliberate magic. Of the sort Newton ascribed to Pythagoras as the esoteric discoverer of the inverse square law of gravitation. (see “Newton and the pipes of pan”). Hooke also had a sort of musical, oscillatory, spiraling conception of mental phenomena. So it was in the Zeitgeist.
In any case, it is striking and amazing— and resonant in this age of vibes.
- dr_dshiv 1y agoAnd since I know the word “magic” is triggering, here’s a magical book by one of the founding members of the Royal Society: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Magick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Magick
- ahazred8ta 1y ago“Newton and the pipes of pan” (1966) McGuire & Rattansi https://www.enotes.com/topics/theology/criticism/criticism/j-e-mcguire-and-p-m-rattansi-essay-date-1966 https://www.enotes.com/topics/theology/criticism/criticism/j...