Isaac Newton: World would end no earlier than 2060

Robert Israel wrote:
Rich Corinthian Leather writes:

666 wrote:
Papers show Isaac Newton's religious side
June 18, 2007

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Three-century-old manuscripts by Isaac Newton
calculating the exact date of the apocalypse, detailing the precise
dimensions of the ancient temple in Jerusalem and interpreting
passages of the Bible -- exhibited this week for the first time -- lay
bare the little-known religious intensity of a man many consider
history's greatest scientist.

Newton, who died 280 years ago, is known for laying much of the
groundwork for modern physics, astronomy, math and optics. But in a
new Jerusalem exhibit, he appears as a scholar of deep faith who also
found time to write on Jewish law -- even penning a few phrases in
careful Hebrew letters -- and combing the Old Testament's Book of
Daniel for clues about the world's end.

The documents, purchased by a Jewish scholar at a Sotheby's auction in
London in 1936, have been kept in safes at Israel's national library
in Jerusalem since 1969. Available for decades only to a small number
of scholars, they have never before been shown to the public.

In one manuscript from the early 1700s, Newton used the cryptic Book
of Daniel to calculate the date for the apocalypse, reaching the
conclusion that the world would end no earlier than 2060.

He's right so far...

"It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner," Newton
wrote. However, he added, "This I mention not to assert when the time
of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of
fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by
doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their
predictions fail."
Just another open-ended projection: the year 2060 or later, no time
certain or even a time frame!

It's all baloney.

And what if he had predicted a precise date in 2060? Would you have
said it wasn't baloney?

I would've given Newton's prediction more credence if he'd been more
specific, after all he was a scientist.

RCL

wrote:
On Jun 18, 11:03 pm, Rich Corinthian Leather
wrote:
Just another open-ended projection: the year 2060 or later, no time
certain or even a time frame!

That's not open-ended. What is states is precise: namely that the
world will NOT end before 2060.

It is *indeed* open-ended because 2060 is the *starting* point of
Newton's random choice based on obscure texts. Unless he had a
comprehensive knowledge of ancient Hebrew, he didn't have any business
making predictions based on it.

RCL

mike3 wrote:
On Jun 18, 9:49 pm, 666 wrote:
Papers show Isaac Newton's religious side
June 18, 2007

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Three-century-old manuscripts by Isaac Newton
calculating the exact date of the apocalypse, detailing the precise
dimensions of the ancient temple in Jerusalem and interpreting
passages of the Bible -- exhibited this week for the first time -- lay
bare the little-known religious intensity of a man many consider
history's greatest scientist.

Newton, who died 280 years ago, is known for laying much of the
groundwork for modern physics, astronomy, math and optics. But in a
new Jerusalem exhibit, he appears as a scholar of deep faith who also
found time to write on Jewish law -- even penning a few phrases in
careful Hebrew letters -- and combing the Old Testament's Book of
Daniel for clues about the world's end.

The documents, purchased by a Jewish scholar at a Sotheby's auction in
London in 1936, have been kept in safes at Israel's national library
in Jerusalem since 1969. Available for decades only to a small number
of scholars, they have never before been shown to the public.

In one manuscript from the early 1700s, Newton used the cryptic Book
of Daniel to calculate the date for the apocalypse, reaching the
conclusion that the world would end no earlier than 2060.

"It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner," Newton
wrote. However, he added, "This I mention not to assert when the time
of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of
fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by
doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their
predictions fail."

In another document, Newton interpreted biblical prophecies to mean
that the Jews would return to the Holy Land before the world ends. The
end of days will see "the ruin of the wicked nations, the end of
weeping and of all troubles, the return of the Jews captivity and
their setting up a flourishing and everlasting Kingdom," he posited.

The exhibit also includes treatises on daily practice in the Jewish
temple in Jerusalem. In one document, Newton discussed the exact
dimensions of the temple -- its plans mirrored the arrangement of the
cosmos, he believed -- and sketched it. Another paper contains words
in Hebrew, including a sentence taken from the Jewish prayerbook.

Yemima Ben-Menahem, one of the exhibit's curators, said the papers
show Newton's conviction that important knowledge was hiding in
ancient texts.

"He believed there was wisdom in the world that got lost. He thought
it was coded, and that by studying things like the dimensions of the
temple, he could decode it," she said.

The Newton papers, Ben-Menahem said, also complicate the idea that
science is diametrically opposed to religion. "These documents show a
scientist guided by religious fervor, by a desire to see God's actions
in the world," she said.

More prosaic documents on display show Newton keeping track of his
income and expenses while a scholar at Cambridge and later, as master
of the Royal Mint, negotiating with a group of miners from Devon and
Cornwall about the price of the tin they supplied to Queen Anne.

The archives of Hebrew University in Jerusalem include a 1940 letter
from Albert Einstein to Abraham Shalom Yahuda, the collector who
purchased the papers a year earlier.

Newton's religious writings, Einstein wrote, provide "a variety of
sketches and ongoing changes that give us a most interesting look into
the mental laboratory of this unique thinker."

Find this article at:http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science....ap/index.html

Well, the only way we'll know for sure whether or not
Newton was right is when 2060 rolls around...


Unless I live to be 92 or more, I don't care.

RCL

Rich Corinthian Leather wrote:

I would've given Newton's prediction more credence if he'd been more
specific, after all he was a scientist.

How do you know he wasn't specific?
Have you read the documents in question?
Are their contents in fact available anywhere?

It is well-known that Newton had strange religious views,
which he very sensibly kept to himself, unlike Galileo,
thereby ensuring a long and prosperous life.

I remember reading of a "black box" of religious writing
found in his rooms at Trinity College Cambridge after his death.
(I seem to recall that Bertrand Russell wrote about this.)
Surely these documents did not finish up in Israel?


--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail (80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

666 wrote:
In one manuscript from the early 1700s, Newton used the cryptic Book
of Daniel to calculate the date for the apocalypse, reaching the
conclusion that the world would end no earlier than 2060.

Given the large number of published upper bounds on the lifespan of the
world, it's good to see an occasional lower bound. Putting all these results
together, I suppose we can conclude that the world will never end, or
perhaps that it doesn't exist at all.

-- Ben

In article ,
Ben Rudiak-Gould wrote:

666 wrote:
In one manuscript from the early 1700s, Newton used the cryptic Book
of Daniel to calculate the date for the apocalypse, reaching the
conclusion that the world would end no earlier than 2060.

Given the large number of published upper bounds on the lifespan of the
world, it's good to see an occasional lower bound. Putting all these results
together, I suppose we can conclude that the world will never end, or
perhaps that it doesn't exist at all.

Good evidence that the sun will expand, put out more
heat, and drive the Earth's water out in 3.1 x 10^9
years.

--
Michael Press

Newton, the secular icon of the Anglican Communion,
set the British back a 100 years in calculus
with the Royal Society defamation of Leibnitz, and his "dots;"
_Principia_ has only the rectangle, dxdy.... he was rewarded
with the minding of the mint: see the joke-commemorative,
2-pound coin with the relief on the edge.
"On the shoulders of giants," '99 minting!

Gailileo was also not much of a scientist,
with his "hereticism" created by Cardinal Bellarmine --
he had tried to get his bud, Pope Urban,
to make his work on Copernicus into some sort of writ.

well, you can hear about Leibnitz and
the American Revolution, he
http://wlym.com/mp3/20030621-mark-liebniz.mp3

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science....ap/index.html

really the first of the great modern scientists, but rather the last of the
medeival wonder-workers.

thus:
bicycle!... or is it a tricycle?...
wish I knew nore math, but I'd use a different coordination. also,
don't ride "no hands" on a your tricycle!

seriously, are you trying to determine both coordinates of the point
of lowest sagging for the bottom part of the chain, being driven,
with a given tension when not driven --
where is the tension in your equation, and "g" ??

OK, I can see that the pure shape, without actual links
in the chain (or teeth in the gear), can be given parametrically,
given the length etc., so ... have fun!

We have two sprockets and a chain and need to find the sag. The support points of the chain are at different elevations (different diameter sprockets). We are iterating through the following equation in Visual Basic to find a, the y-coordinate of sag measured from the horizontal centerline of the two sprockets.

2 * a * (sinh(L/(2 * a)))=(y1-y2)/sinh(arctanh((y1-y2)/S))

However, we keep getting a value above the highest support point. This equation should be valid for our scenario, so why is the solution so inaccurate?

thus:
after Bucky spent 9.37 years hacking away at the Cheese Tetrahedron
-- in order to minimize handling, oxidation etc. of his store --
he got sick of cheese & moved it ... to the root cellar.

of course, if you do aim the vectors at the vertices of the
hexahedron,
you get the four axes *voila*; they are the same system,
differently accounted. most things should probably be quantized
using the tetrahedron, firstly, why it's a "simplex." however,
like the self-duality of it, you mention, the infinite matrix
of hexahedra is self-dual, begetting its pythagorean props.

quaternions actually has four perpendiculars,
even though the "+1" of timespace is the "scalar;"
Hamilton's terminology, later deployed by Gibbs. well,
it's symmetrical with the other threee, but
they are not related to it like they are to each-other;
I mean, Time!... don't blame herr doktor-professor Minkowski,
blame Onemug -- since he seems to have agreed to that.

I mean, even Newton's dots are good for some thing,
according to Conway!

start Euclid with Hypsicles in the usual edition;
no coordination -- all construction....
how many of you have got a copy of _Modern Pure Solid Geometry_?

how many still get this maillist?

thus quoth:
which include the words: "In the future, Humanity will see in our
Epoch an Era of superstition, essentially associated with the
names of Marx, Freud and Einstein.. in which the last seven
decades of the 20th century will be characterized in history as the
dark ages of physics, which cannot be based on the field concept"
(the latter part & view is by Einstein himself, some 25 years later)

Almost everyone who has written anything about this says vectors from
the origin of the coordinate system in the directions of the
tetrahedron's vertexes should be added, but they don't add vectors
pointed in the directions of the cube's vertexes in the Cartesian
(Footnote 4: It was a mathematical requirement of XYZ rectilinear
coordination that in order to demonstrate four-dimensionality, a fourth
perpendicular to a fourth planar facet of the symmetric system must be
found--which fourth symmetrical plane of the system is not parallel to
one of the already-established three planes of symmetry of the system.
The tetrahedron, as synergetics' minimum structural system, has four
symmetrically interarrayed planes of symmetry--ergo, has four unique
perpendiculars--ergo, has four dimensions.)
http://bfi.org/node/574
http://library.wolfram.com/infocente..._person_id=607

thus:
mine is a lot simpler & analogous
to the trilateral ineq.
(we uncovered this in a Buckafka Fullofit maillist,
which has since been made more private;
one of the correspondents spent some hours
to derive it by programming,
which was kinda strange .-)...
I am still not sure,
how many sets of the the basic tetrahedral inequality,
it has to satisfy, but probably six.

thus:
ah, this looks like a good exercise
for comprehending "absolute value" function,
as well as of the trilateral inequality....
| x - y | = | |x| - |y| |
means these two things:
| x - y | = |x| - |y|
| x - y | = |y| - |x|


thus:
in Sudan, Iran and possibly all other once and
future British quagmires.... Belize, Canada, Trinidad
AND Tobago; when we get there,
be sure to ask if it's more than one country, and
did we miss Trinidad andOR Tobago?
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/wa.../01/pentagon_s
tudy_says_oil_reliance_strains_military?mode=PF

thus:
look, up in the sky -- it's Googoltude (TM) ?!?
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/LCSN/Eq...C_LDEO_KIM.pdf

--n~nerfman~n!

On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 10:15:56 -0700, Michael Press
wrote:

In article ,
Ben Rudiak-Gould wrote:

666 wrote:
In one manuscript from the early 1700s, Newton used the cryptic Book
of Daniel to calculate the date for the apocalypse, reaching the
conclusion that the world would end no earlier than 2060.

Given the large number of published upper bounds on the lifespan of the
world, it's good to see an occasional lower bound. Putting all these results
together, I suppose we can conclude that the world will never end, or
perhaps that it doesn't exist at all.

Good evidence that the sun will expand, put out more
heat, and drive the Earth's water out in 3.1 x 10^9
years.

Perhaps we should start praying again to the Sun gods as in days of
old.

quasi