Talk:Isaac Newton

Regarding "Newton was a devout Christian who said his discoveries were inspired by God"

I am not changing anything yet, but my (christian) science book says that Newton had a firm belief in God, but denied the Trinity, and the Deity of Christ. Not exactly the beliefs of a "devout Christian" --TimSvendsen 20:41, 6 March 2007 (EST)

That's a big surprise to me. My understanding is that Newton was a Christian who relied on the Bible daily.--Aschlafly 21:05, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Relied on the Bible daily? yes. Accepted the Trinity? Definitely not. Whether that makes him a "devout Christian" is presumably therefore very much a defintional issue of how you define Christian. JoshuaZ 21:08, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Well, we don't need to take sides on that matter. We can just report his beliefs and leave it at that; readers can decide for themselves whether he's Christian by their own standards. Tsumetai 21:11, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Newton and Falsification

I’ve added the following paragraph (or a version of it) at the end of this article a number of times:

Newton’s Laws stood as “laws” for years after his death, but in 1816 the discovery of Mercury’s anomalous perihelion provided evidence that Newton’s laws did not always correctly predict behavior in the observed, external, world. It was not until 1919, however, that a series of experiments designed to test General Relativity provided the scientific community with enough evidence to replace those laws. Once a theory could better predict the external world than Newton’s Laws, they were fully falsified and replaced as the dominant theory in physics.

The first time it was deleted because I had not sourced it correctly, which is fine. So I sourced it properly and it stood for awhile. Then part of it was deleted because it was to quote the editing comment “Heresy” and “unintelligible”. Since I figured heresy was a bad reason to delete information, especially when properly sourced, I tried to make my comments more intelligible and replaced them. Then part of it was deleted—I am informed because the 1919 experiments have been discredited. But, after researching the matter, I can find no evidence to support this claim (That, of course, doesn’t mean that the evidence doesn’t exist—just that I can’t find it). Even if, however, the 1919 experiments have been discredited that is not, especially relevant to this article, as the 1919 experiments are only important as a turning point in scientific opinion about Newton’s Laws—in particular it marks the date a theory was better able to predict new information than Newton’s Laws could—since then numerous experiments have supported general relativity (though if past is prologue it will soon be on the way out in favor of a better theory itself) but here the only important thing is that it seems to predict better than Newton’s Laws predict and I think it belongs here. However, before I could post this discussion a third contributor deleted the remainder of my paragraph, with only the comment “1816 observation did not falsify Newton”. I’ve linked to two reputable sources for this point, including Dr. Hilary Putnam—second only to Popper himself in the field of philosophy of science—on this point. Whereas the person who deleted the 1816 claim did not provide any evidence to support this deletion—nor can I find any (again, it may be out there, but I can’t find it).

For those reasons, I believe this information belongs in the article—but since it has been repeatedly deleted I’ve chosen to put it on the talk page for now. Can anyone cite a reason to believe this paragraph is false, or explain why it does not belong here? Or can anyone cite to more reputable sources to bolster this paragraph? Or can anyone offer suggested changes that would make it palatable to all parties to this debate?