“I do not mind at all that [Newton] is not a Cartesian provided he does not offer us suppositions like that of attraction.”

Letter to Fatio de Duillier (11 July 1687), quoted in René Dugas, Mechanics in the seventeenth century (1958), p. 440

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I do not mind at all that [Newton] is not a Cartesian provided he does not offer us suppositions like that of attractio…" by Christiaan Huygens?
Christiaan Huygens photo
Christiaan Huygens 16
Dutch mathematician and natural philosopher 1629–1695

Related quotes

Christiaan Huygens photo

“I esteem his [Newton's] understanding and subtlety highly, but I consider that they have been put to ill use in the greater part of this work, where the author studies things of little use or when he builds on the improbable principle of attraction.”

Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) Dutch mathematician and natural philosopher

(1692) writing five years after the appearance of Newton's Principia, as quoted in A. R. Manwell, Mathematics Before Newton (Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 56 – «He [Huygens] said, indeed, that the idea of universal attraction [gravitation] 'appears to me absurd'.»

Pope Francis photo

“The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

As quoted in "Pope at Mass: Culture of encounter is the foundation of peace" at Vatican Radio (22 May 2013) http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/05/22/pope_at_mass:_culture_of_encounter_is_the_foundation_of_peace/en1-694445
2010s, 2013
Context: The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. "But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good." Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this "closing off" that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.

James McCosh photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“The evil that we do does not attract to us so much persecution and hatred as our good qualities.”

Le mal que nous faisons ne nous attire pas tant de persécution et de haine que nos bonnes qualités.
Maxim 29.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Noam Chomsky photo

“The central doctrine of Cartesian linguistics is that the general features of grammatical structure are common to all languages and reflect certain fundamental properties of the mind.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

"Acquisition and use of language"
Quotes 2000s, 2007-09, (3rd ed., 2009)

Anu Garg photo

“Scientifically speaking, an overweight person is more attractive than a skinny one. Newton's Law of Gravitation.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

Facebook post https://www.facebook.com/wordsmithorg/posts/10157765608546840

“What attracted me the most of all to the detective story, was the protective covering offered to the author.”

Margery Allingham (1904–1966) English writer of detective fiction

The Oaken Heart

Jonas Salk photo

“I look upon ourselves as partners in all of this, and that each of us contributes and does what he can do best.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

The Open Mind interview (1985)
Context: I look upon ourselves as partners in all of this, and that each of us contributes and does what he can do best. And so I see not a top rung and a bottom rung — I see all this horizontally — and I see this as part of a matrix. And I see every human being as having a purpose, a destiny, if you like. And what my hope is that we can find some way to fulfill the biological potential, if you like — the destiny that exists in each of us — and find ways and means to provide such opportunities for everyone. Now at the moment the world is suffering from large numbers of people who have no purpose in life — for whom there is no opportunity — and that's sad.

“Nazi ideology offered redemption from a national ontological crisis, to which it was attracted like a predatory shark to blood.”

Michael Burleigh (1955) American historian and writer

Source: The Third Reich: A New History (2000), p. 12

Related topics