ya know what, I take my first reply back. First, drawing on Kepler's astronomical data is not exactly the same as using the alphabet. The former is a tad more relevant. Second, was Newton collaborative in the sense of attending academic conferences, etc.? Probably not, but if he'd had access to today's transportation infrastructure I'm sure he would have been.

Newton's inference to universal gravity was based on Huygen's pendulum experiments (Huygens was not his pupil but a rival scientist), on measurements done in Paris (not done by him personally) of terrestrial gravity (the experimenter's name escapes me now), on astronomical data by Kepler and by Brahe, and also on the astronomical data compiled by his contemporaries.

The Principia is *full* of references to other men, mostly contemporaries. Have you ever read it?

Newton worked closely with Coates as well, whose criticisms of the first edition found their way into the second.

Before they became rivals, Newton corresponded regularly with Leibniz.

Newton was *not* in a bubble.

>Your quote from Newton about standing on the
>shoulders of giants is from a letter to Hooke, who
>was extremely short, whom Newton was trying either
>to flatter for political reasons, or possibly
>subtly insult.

lol. Oh, come on now.

>The second quote is a not-so-subtle put-down of
>Descarte, Leibniz and others whose conjectural
>claims Newton found pointless and stupid, and
>defence of his own approach of saying, "This is
>WHAT happens" rather than "This is WHY it
>happens."

yeah, hypotheses non fingo. I know, I know.

>According to your novel meaning of the word
>Newton also "collaborated" with the guy who
>invented the alphabet, because Newton's work was
>dependent upon that guy's work.

ok don't exaggerate. I was just trying to get the point across that Newton's theories were not just pulled out of thin air, or out of his rear end. He did draw heavily on many of his contempraries' work whether he gave them credit for it or not, e.g., Huygens' pendulum experiments, even on Hooke (though probably grudgingly). His original contribution was what he inferred from all of this, i.e., universal gravity and classical mechanics. Possibly the greatest contribution ever made by any one person. But he could not have done it all by himself.

Also, while he was no saint, I'm sure, I don't know if its fair to characterize him as the Thomas Edison of his day (i.e., as an asshole).

Perhaps 'collaborative' is the wrong word to use, if by collaborative you mean something like actively working together. Admittedly that is probably closer to what we normally mean when we use the word.

But again my point was that Newton built on the work of others, many of whom were his contemporaries. This may seem like an uninteresting thing to say given our current picture of science. But science was rather new back then, and traditional philosophical speculation was often not cumulative in this sense. In fact, this is part of what differentiates science as it was emerging then from what had come before, and part of what has made, and makes science so successful.

Newton was truly exceptional and head and shoulders above most if not all scientists of his age, but he did not work alone. He worked closely and/or drew on the work of Halley, Huygens, Leibniz, to name but a few, and his work built on the earlier work of Kepler and Brahe. The romanticized notion of the lone scientist toiling away in his lab is really a myth. Science has always been collaborative.

"If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
- Isaac Newton

"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing."
- Isaac Newton