Surlethe wrote:The good Sir Isaac. Had an idea, and then invented the math to describe it: he single-handedly developed calculus. Alone. What a fucking genius.
Er, what about Leibniz?
IIRC, Newton developed it on his own years before Leibniz, but kept it in a drawer along with the rest of his physical work because he was a perfectionist and afraid of being laughed out of London.
In any case, they developed it independently of each other.
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Surlethe wrote:The good Sir Isaac. Had an idea, and then invented the math to describe it: he single-handedly developed calculus. Alone. What a fucking genius.
Er, what about Leibniz?
Pretty much simultaneous development IIRC. Leibniz also helped define which symbols meant what.
Both were wacky in their own right, though...Leibniz had his monadology and Newton was, as mentioned, an alchemist.
EDIT: I like Einstein. He had a great sense of humor.
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The Wookiee wrote:
Pretty much simultaneous development IIRC. Leibniz also helped define which symbols meant what.
Yeah, if I recall my decade-old calculus classes correctly, Leibniz's symbology was vastly superior to Newton's, and is the system we use today.
In fact, because of the controversy of who's discovery calculus was, and the British/Continental rivalry that it evoked, English mathematicians used Newton's clumsy "fluxion" notation exclusively. This allowed the Continental mathematicians to surpass them, thanks partly to the more elegant dx/dy-style notation they used.
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WyrdNyrd wrote:
Leibniz's symbology was vastly superior to Newton's
Somebody has been watching a little too much Boondock Saints, methinks.
Very funny.
No, I did not mean "symbolism", although I do suspect that "symbology" may not actually be a word. I knew what I meant, and the rest of you should have just read my mind
