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Hop_David

Member
LO! Still ignoring why Newton said that he invented calculus in the first place. You even admitted as much. You do not need calculus to reason out that there is an inverse square relation in "circular orbits"

Yes, Newton developed calculus tools to study motion and acceleration.
But how does that demonstrate he worked out elliptical orbits in 1664 or 1666 (or whenever)? It doesn't follow.

And Newton didn't rely on calculus in Principia. His arguments were mostly geometric.

And one more time, the quote that you ignored:

" When Halley asked Newton's opinion on the problem of planetary motions discussed earlier that year between Halley, Hooke and Wren,[55] Newton surprised Halley by saying that he had already made the derivations some time ago;"

You keep trotting out that paragraph to demonstrate Newton derived elliptical orbits in 1664 or 1666 (or whenever).

It doesn't occur to you that 1676-1677 also occurs some time before the 1684 meeting of Newton and Halley?

Far from refuting my timeline that paragraph strongly supports it.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Yes, Newton developed calculus tools to study motion and acceleration.
But how does that demonstrate he worked out elliptical orbits in 1664 or 1666 (or whenever)? It doesn't follow.

And Newton didn't rely on calculus in Principia. His arguments were mostly geometric.



You keep trotting out that paragraph to demonstrate Newton derived elliptical orbits in 1664 or 1666 (or whenever).

It doesn't occur to you that 1676-1677 also occurs some time before the 1684 meeting of Newton and Halley?

Far from refuting my timeline that paragraph strongly supports it.
You keep forgetting why he made it. Various sources all say that he invented it to explain planetary motion. And you yourself admitted as much since you could supposedly determine that inverse square relationship without it (come to think of it you sound a lot like Hooke that made the same claim but could never show his work).

You had to change your false narrative and did not own up to your mistake, Now you pretend that you just did not make one.

Also you have as of yet to explain your rather odd hatred of Tyson. I am curious as to why.
 

Hop_David

Member
You keep forgetting why he made it. Various sources all say that he invented it to explain planetary motion.

Okay so he developed calculus tools to study planetary motion. So it follows Newton derived elliptical orbits in 1664 or 1666?

Repeating a non sequitur over and over again doesn't make it any less ridiculous. Quite the opposite.

If you're looking for the friend that prompted Newton to invent calculus you should take a look at Isaac Barrow.

Barrow was Newton's older colleague at Cambridge.

Barrow, Fermat, Descartes, Cavalieri, Gregory and others had laid the foundations of modern calculus in the generation before Newton and Leibniz.

Isaac Barrow worked on infinitesmals.

Fermat and Descartes invented graph paper with an x and y axis. Analytic geometry enabled use of algebraic tools to examine curves. A parabola could be described as y=x^2. x^2 + y^2 = 1 gives us a circle of radius 1.

Given Cartesian coordinates it was only a matter of time before someone used Eudoxus like methods of exhaustion to determine slope of a tangent to a curve. Which was done by Fermat. This is differential calculus.

It was also only a matter of time before someone used similar methods to determine area under a curve (integral calculus). This was done by Cavalieri.

Screen Shot 2022-08-13 at 8.24.10 AM.png


The fundamental theorem of calculus is that the derivative and integral are inverses of one another. This was discovered by James Gregory.

It seems that Isaac Barrow made Newton aware of this body of work and steered Newton in that direction.

So if you're looking for a record of an event where a friend asked Newton why are planetary orbits elliptical, might I suggest Isaac Barrow? That is the name that matches the 1665-1666 time frame.

However I doubt very much Barrow asked Newton this question. Tyson's story sounds very much like a horribly addled version of the Newton-Halley encounter.
 
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