http://192.168.2.6/english/牛顿趣谈 - 6.rm

But for Newton it wasn't just a scientific basis in trying to find the portion that could turn lead into gold, that was also a mystical sight to understanding the power that God used to keep apples on the ground. He had one foot in the science of the future and the other in the sorcery of the past. And even the Royal Society revered as the highest scientific body in the land had pursued an experiment to make insects out of cheese.

As well as all these, Newton had a very earthly problem to deal with. He had a rival, Rovert Huk, who claimed to have come up with similar theories first. So Newton became more obssesive than ever about proving his theories. Huk and Newton disliked each other partly because they were opposites in character. Huk liked to spend all day socializing in coffee houses. He had several mistresses and he kept a special diary in which he marks the quality of his orgasms.

He do you measure a thing like that? Do you have a line of judges, 5.7, 5.8, oh, and 5.2 from the Bulgarian, he won't be happy with that. Partly as a result of his rivalry with Huk, Newton became more obssessed than ever with proving his theories, a friend wrote at the time.

I never saw him take any recreational pastime. He seldom left his chamber and so intent with it that he ate very sparingly. Sometimes he forgot to eat at all. When I reminded him, He said" no,had I /?" So in 1687 he published his book called the Prinkepia in which he set out his theories about gravity. In particular he was trying to find a theory that would apply to all objects whether on earth or in space. Part of this theory concerns his laws about motion. The first of which was...

Everybody continues in its state of rest or a uniform motion in a stright line unless it is compelled to change that state by a force. So he was saying that there is nothing natural about staying still. That if something is moving, it's not natural for it to stop. Leave it along and it will carry on, which seems mad. Because everything around us seems to want to stop and it takes a huge effort to get it moving again. Roll a ball and it will stop, watch a train it will stop. But said Newton things only stop if something makes them stop. If you roll something it stops because of friction and things fall to earth and then stay on earth because some force must be pulling them to the earth.

Well, if you took these forces away, as it happens in / space then the ball or the weight or the apple or the train would just keep going. None of the train that will go:" We like to apologize for the delay outside Saturn. We appeared to have found a popular space where Newton's laws don't apply for some reason" And if this was true for small objects, Newton said, it could also be true for huge objects. Like planets, the earth for example, keeps going without needing to be pushed by anything. It would go off in a traight line. But the force from the sun pulls it back and the result is it goes around in an orbit. So Newton was saying the opposite from Descartes that planets move not because they are pushed but because they are attracted by bigger bodies.