Mistranslation Of Newton's First Law Discovered After Nearly 300 Years:
For hundreds of years, we have been told what Newton's First Law of Motion supposedly says, but recently a paper published in Philosophy of Science (preprint) by [Daniel Hoek] argues that it is based on a mistranslation of the original Latin text. As noted by [Stephanie Pappas] in Scientific American, this would seem to be a rather academic matter as Newton's Laws of Motion have been superseded by General Relativity and other theories developed over the intervening centuries. Yet even today Newton's theories are highly relevant, as they provide very accessible approximations for predicting phenomena on Earth.
Similarly, we owe it to scientific and historical accuracy to address such matters, all of which seem to come down to an awkward translation of Isaac Newton's original Latin text in the 1726 third edition to English by Andrew Motte in 1729. This English translation is what ended up defining for countless generations what Newton's Laws of Motion said, along with the other chapters in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
In 1999 a new translation (Cohen-Whitman translation) was published by a team of translators, which contains a number of notable departures from the 1729 translation. Most notable herein is the change of the original (Motte) translation:
Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impress'd thereon.
to the following in the Cohen-Whitman translation:
Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by the forces impressed.
This more correct translation of the Latin nisi quatenus has significant implications for the law's effects, as while Newton's version does not require force-free bodies, the weak reading introduced by Motte's translation incites exactly the kind of debate which has been seen over the centuries about why the First Law even exists, when in this translated form it automatically follows from the Second Law, rendering it redundant.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday September 17 2023, @06:53AM (8 children)
The man was basically a crackpot alchemist and theologian, but somehow had a genius streak of actual science and has become a legend and a symbol of rational thinking.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Sunday September 17 2023, @09:55AM (5 children)
Many historical scientists were theologians, alchemists, astrologers and many other titles we now associate with "wrong" for science.
Like god does not play with dice? What about Darwin studied theology but is quite famous for something completely different. Copernicus was a catholic canon. Bruno was a priest. Most if not all early astronomers worked with astrology as it was part of their education. Etcetera... You need to see it in historical context.
Important for all these people is that they managed to think out of the box and make a good argument. That is where innovation exists. What is "obvious" today was totally obscure yesterday. That is how science works.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Sunday September 17 2023, @10:02AM (2 children)
You also pretty much needed to have some sort of religious connection at that point in time or risk getting excommunicated/executed/burnt alive for talking science, a.k.a. heresy as far as the church was concerned.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Sunday September 17 2023, @12:28PM
That didn't help Bruno... He met a rather flaming hot end.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Sunday September 17 2023, @07:31PM
This was one of the nice things about (protestant) England in late 17th century - while it was illegal to not attend church, and public offices required an oath of religion (Test Acts), there were many dissenters and they were not as radically suppressed as on the catholic continent. There were even powerful people arguing for leniency to papists! The printing presses of England were important in distributing texts by people like spinoza that fomented the wider enlightenment in europe.
(Score: 5, Informative) by hendrikboom on Sunday September 17 2023, @08:42PM (1 child)
Way back then, it was the Church that founded most of the institutions that have since developed int universities.
As for Newton, the funding that he received was as an astrologer to the English state. You have to get fed or starve, right?
Which prompted research into the movement of planets.
Which resulted in the science that he became famous for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 18 2023, @10:37AM
Not a good move even if you are right. And we know today Heliocentrism is itself wrong. Based on known science, from my perspective I am the center of my observable universe - unless somehow the speed of light is different in different directions... So since the Earth is closer to me than the Sun, Heliocentrism is more wrong by claiming the Sun is the center. 😉
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Opportunist on Sunday September 17 2023, @10:15AM
He was throwing shit at a wall and watched what stuck. Back in his day, this was probably the most sensible thing to do in terms of "doing science". The Scientific Method isn't that old, ya know...
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday September 17 2023, @04:03PM
He also demonstrates the importance of having some hobbies in life, because both physics and mathematics were side hustles for him.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Troll) by SomeGuy on Sunday September 17 2023, @12:49PM (3 children)
They actually revised the translation in order to be more inclusive and politically correct.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Freeman on Monday September 18 2023, @01:54PM
In his day, they would have revised the text to be more exclusive and politically correct. I.E. The Pope is god on earth and don't you forget it.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by SomeGuy on Tuesday September 19 2023, @11:26AM (1 child)
Yeish. That was supposed be a joke in reference to a story from a while back (can't find the link now) where books in school libraries were being revised and re-worded, specifically for "inclusiveness" and similar political correctness.
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Tuesday September 19 2023, @07:05PM
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=23/08/17/1439256 [soylentnews.org]
An Iowa School District is Using ChatGPT to Decide Which Books to Ban
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2023, @02:19PM
From the link, here are the two versions:
From my (engineering) perspective, I'm hard pressed to see any practical difference.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Sunday September 17 2023, @02:35PM (1 child)
Gotta say Newtons first law does NOT follow from the 2nd.
2nd law: When a body is acted upon by a net force, the body's acceleration multiplied by its mass is equal to the net force.
NOTHING in that law says ANYTHING about what a body can do when NOT acted on by a net force. A marble sitting on a perfectly flat table experiences no net force, and thus according to the second law alone could dance a jaunty jig in honor of the glory of God's creation.
It's sort of like the old logic example of "If an shape is a square, then it is a rectangle" doe NOT mean that just because a shape is a rectangle it is also a square.
The 1st law establishes that a net force is the ONLY cause of acceleration, which was absolutely not a generally accepted truth before Newton's time. A time when it was commonly believed among natural philosophers that objects fell not because of a gravitational force, but because being in contact with the ground was the "natural state" of all things, which they strove to return to. And that things like cannonballs traveled in a straight line until they ran out of energy and plunged straight down to the ground.
You could combine the first and second laws into just " a body's acceleration multiplied by its mass is equal to the net force acting upon it", but then you bury the incredibly important implication that spontaneous motion is impossible as an exercise for the astute reader. Worse, you've incorporated the first law as a silent assumption within the second.
You've got to remember that natural philosophy (the rigorously understood parts of which we now call science) largely grew from applying the sort of rigorous abstract logic characteristic of mathematics to understanding the natural world. And as any mathematician can tell you, it's best to limit your axioms to only one assumption each. Otherwise it makes it very difficult to tease out which axioms are flawed when logical inconsistencies are discovered.
Keep in mind that today we only teach Newtons Three Laws of Motion - but Newton didn't formulate three laws, he formulated six. It's just that the latter three have since been proven false - heck, I can't even find a list of the original six laws on Google anymore. I do recall that one (two?) stated that distance and time were inviolate concepts - i.e. that all observers would measure a particular rod as being the same length, or a clock to be ticking at the same speed, which thanks to GR we now know to be false.
Nevertheless, they are assumptions inherent in Newton's model of the universe, and thus deserving of being *explicitly* stated as such. It's something sadly lacking in a lot of modern science, especially in the teaching of it, when things are usually taught as just "this is the way things work", completely ignoring the mountain of assumptions that were made to reach that point. Assumptions which the original inventors of the models were generally extremely careful to explicitly spell out because they are in fact assumptions with no scientific foundation to justify them.
In the case of Newton's absolute space and time it turns out that even though he was wrong, mutable spacetime still behaves in a manner such that all observers will still see the first three laws obeyed in all cases, even though they disagree as to how much things are moving through space versus time. But by stating his assumptions clearly he made sure that, once that flaw was discovered, the rest of his laws would be gone over with a fine-toothed comb to see if removing those assumptions broke anything else.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Zinho on Monday September 18 2023, @02:24PM
Thanks for pointing me at that rabbit hole, it was fun to dive down! Here's what I found, on StackExchange [stackexchange.com] of all places:
If this translation is accurate, then laws 4 and 5 generalize the previous 3 laws to closed systems; i.e. we can treat a group of bodies in motion as if they were a single body located at its center of mass. These two were supposedly demoted from "law" to "corollary" in the final draft, and I was taught them as principles in my Mechanical Engineering courses at University (although I don't recall them being attributed to Newton).
Also note that this is yet a 3rd version of the 1st Law's translation :P
Law 6 is interesting, as I have heard of it being used today as a decent method of estimating how deep an object will penetrate a given medium. The Wikipedia article on impact depth [wikipedia.org] still credits Newton for its formulation. The previous StackExchange link notes that Newton removed it from his list of "Laws of Motion" since it was more of an engineering estimate than a mathematically exact Law. I have to say that I agree with that decision. Still useful, but not a fundamental law.
TMYK!
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mrpg on Monday September 18 2023, @04:40AM (1 child)
I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to you about a troubling situation. Insofar that English is not my first language, I am having difficulty seeing the difference between both translations of the Latin text. Could someone please enlighten me on this matter? Thank you. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 18 2023, @10:42AM
(joking) -- diff the two versions, that will tell you what words are different (/joking).
(Score: 1) by ssvt on Monday September 18 2023, @02:46PM
It looks like the science wasn’t decided.