“Newton's version of gravity violates common sense. How can one thing tug at another across vast spans of space? …Newton's formalism nonetheless provided an astonishingly accurate means of calculating the orbits of planets; it was too effective to deny.”

— John Horgan (journalist)

Source: The End of Science (1996), p. 66

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John Horgan (journalist) 14

American science journalist 1953

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

“Sir Isaac Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravity. He replied, "By thinking about it all the time.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

“Einstein is the only figure in the physical sciences with a stature that can be compared with Newton. Newton is reported to have said "If I have seen further than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants." This remark is even more true of Einstein who stood on the shoulders of Newton. Both Newton and Einstein put forward a theory of mechanics and a theory of gravity but Einstein was able to base General Relativity on the mathematical theory of curved spaces that had been constructed by Riemann while Newton had to develop his own mathematical machinery. It is therefore appropriate to acclaim Newton as the greatest figure in mathematical physics and the Principia is his greatest achievement.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

"Newton's Principia" in 300 Years of Gravitation. (1987) by S. W. Hawking and W. Israel, p. 4

“Perfect knowledge of the space an object should occupy in a picture, and of the space that separates one object from another, establishes a new astronomy of things attached to our planet by the magic law of gravity. Canons of the Metaphysical aesthetic lie in the minutely-accurate and precisely-estimated use of surfaces and volumes.... We are building in paint a new Metaphysical psychology of things.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 233
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

“In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and the stars is the distortion of space and time.”

Michio Kaku (1947) American theoretical physicist, futurist and author

“The predecessors of Newton and Leibnitz knew perfectly well how to determine tangents and areas, but they had to approach each problem from first principles. The great contribution of Newton and Leibnitz was precisely to make the procedures for finding tangents, areas, etc. into a calculus, that is, a systematic way of calculating—a collection of algorithms, to use the currently fashionable word.”

Ralph P. Boas Jr. (1912–1992) American mathematician

[Calculus as an Experimental Science, 78, 6, 1971, 664–667, The American Mathematical Monthly, 10.2307/2316582]

“I was like a lost moon — my planet destroyed in some cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation — that continued, nevertheless, to circle in a tight little orbit around the empty space left behind, ignoring the laws of gravity.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Bella Swan, p. 201
Twilight series, New Moon (2006)

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

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

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

“What is meant by "the representation of space"? What distinguishes one representation from another? Does this mean "how does one see that one thing is not another thing?" What constitutes a change of focus?… What about "another way of establishing (?) "thingness"? "Something" can be either one thing or another (without turning the rabbit on its side)..”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Book B (sketchbook), c 1967: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 62
1960s

“Newton's own motto, "hypotheses non fingo" was, in a sense, disregarded by Newton himself: he rejected hypotheses only where they violated his own "regula philosophandi", that is to say, his principle of their strict parsimony. In terms of present-day methodology, we reject hypotheses as scientifically meaningless if they are incapable even of indirect test; and we reject them as superfluous or as implausible if they are too complex and artificial to conform with well established canons of inductive probability. But freedom of scientific theorizing must be preserved wherever the conditions of meaningfulness and of economy appear to be satisfied.”

Arthur Beer (1900–1980) German astronomer

Arthur Beer (ed.), Vistas in Astronomy (1955) Introduction to Vol.1 https://ia600304.us.archive.org/35/items/VistasInAstronomy-Volume1/Beer-VistasInAstronomyVolume1.pdf

“Newton's version of gravity violates common sense. How can one thing tug at another across vast spans of space? …Newton's formalism nonetheless provided an astonishingly accurate means of calculating the orbits of planets; it was too effective to deny.”

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John Horgan (journalist) 14

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