>>Okay, that didn't make sense. Calculus is calculus is calculus. It
>>gets a little bit more advanced every day, but the basics haven't
>>changed since Newton and Liebnitz laid them down. Newton's Limit Method
>>for determining the slope of a curve at a given point is still perfectly
>>accurate, if tedious and extremely difficult to use under certain
>>circumstances. What does Eienstein have to do with this?
>
>
> 1) I shouldn't have put those two sentences together. I didn't mean that
> there is a relationship between them. I actually never should have
> included it in the first place. I was just trying to make a point that
> everything they teach in class isn't 100% correct either. That doesn't
> mean that we shouldn't teach it in class though. Because what we are
> really teaching is a way to think and try to inspire new ideas and possible
> new answers. The best part is that new answers create new problems. Which
> is great. Again this is just my opinion. But if one's argument is, let's
> not teach creation in school because it's wrong then it would be
> irresponsible to teach anything that isn't 100% proven to be correct.
I totally agree.
> 2)
>
> http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/men/newton.html
>
> Some of Newton's discoveries were later refuted by Albert Einstein in
> reference to his theories of gravitational pull. However, Einstein and
> others still contend that Newton was indeed a very important force in man's
> quest for knowledge and is highly regarded for his contributions in many
> different areas of science.
>
> I shouldn't have taken it at face value but my calc prof did say that
> Einstein refuted Newton's physics by proving some of this integral calculus
> to be incorrect or incomplete.
My understanding is that it has more to do with incompleteness than
incorrectness. The observations that Newton had to work with weren't
accurate enough to take into account all the intricacies. Nor had the
speed of light been reliably established, which plays a big part in the
whole plane-of-reference bit that's crucial to most of Newton's
mechanics. The math was correct, and accurately described what was
known at the time, but we now know more. This all goes back to my
comment about scientific laws being the best descriptors currently
available.
Um. I should probably take a moment to disclose that I took a course on
Newton's mathematics and the scientific revolution in college. :-)
--Ben
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