I'm looking at a copy of Newton's principia and it's pretty obvious from the first chapter that y'all are fucking idiots. (Except OP, OP is cool).
Try reading it sometime. Imagine leveling this kind of critique at any other book you've never read.
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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This wasn't the revolutionary part about Newton's conception of inertia. It was the counterpart: that an object in motion will tend to keep going forever unless acted upon by a force. This was pretty staggering in a world where an arrow fired from a bow (below escape velocity, you snitty little pedants) will slow down and fall to the ground as though getting tired on its own.
The prevailing theory in Europe at time was still Aristotle’s idea that a force was necessary for objects to remain in motion. The theories on how an arrow or any other thrown object remained in motion involved an impromptu Rube Goldberg contraption involving the object and the atmosphere.
a force was necessary for objects to remain in motion.
Pretty much every science fiction film too. With very few notable exceptions.
You picked the wrong pendants. Bows are shot, not fired
Bows aren't shot, not unless you're doing it wrong. You shoot the arrow, the bow should stay in your hand.
You loose an arrow, not shoot it. Pedantry ahoy!
Actually... pushes up glasses... the word shot is Middle English and describes the flinging of a projectile, including from a bow. It predates the use of gunpowder weaponry and derives from the Old English gesceot.
Akchooally, "ahoy" is derived from, "chips ahoy", where chips are not thin potato slices nor potato sticks, but pieces of chocolate.
Ackshulie they're called chips not because they're chunks of chocolate but rather because they resemble Chip Gaines' finished products.
Hmm, I'd like to invest in pedantic internet comment chains please.
Oh, I've been doing it wrong all this time. No wonder my bows are cross.
Oh dear, I have heard they like to quarrel.
*pedant, not pendant
You're a pendant!
They didn’t pick jewellery.
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These are the same people that believed in spontaneous generation - that life just popped into existence from nonliving matter, such as dirt, grain, or dirty clothing. It wasn't considered fully disproven until the 19th century.
As uneducated as many people are now, they're practically savants compared to your average person just 200 years ago.
Just read the opening parts of the bible and you begin to understand how backwards peoples knowledge was in the past.
Read the novel [or watch the movie] 'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco.
One of the themes of the story is showing the shift from educated Europeans getting their knowledge from ancient books to them doing science and investigating the world.
Does the big bang also count as spontaneous generation?
Uncertain, as no one knows about the causes or condition before it.
That's the nice thing about science, it just says what the evidence shows and is happy to label the rest: TBC.
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I feel like this when hearing about "art of war"
"Have some sort of strategy"
"If at all possible have a larger army than the enemy"
"If step two is not possible, see step one"
This is basically the whole book.
There is one point in it I found actually useful even today in everyday life. It was something like: When you have surrounded or entrapped your enemy always leave them a way out for retreat so they won't fight as hard as if their only other option is defeat/death.
A good lesson for people that seek to assert absolute authoritarianism over folks. Corner folks too hard and given no viable alternative, desperation drives unexpected outcomes.
Woah, that hits hard. I guess I'll have to read the book now...
That's because it was written at a time when nobles were considered the only natural choice of leadership class, so you've got military forces being lead by people with zero practical military knowledge. It's literally meant to be babies first strategy and logistics guide. Sun Tzu is intentionally dumbing shit down for his audience.
I think this is the most important factor, but at the same time anyone responsible for complex tasks should be well familiar with the value of a simple list of the task's fundamentals. It's not that they don't know these principles, but that reminders can break tunnel vision or prevent simple mistakes born of complacency.
TBF it’s technically a Daoist philosophical treatise, rather than a how-to on war. To really understand it you have to look at it from that perspective.
Maybe it was more a manual a general could hand to the rich dumbass in charge who was about to bet everyone killed and say "please review the wisdom of the great sage before making your battle plan."
if combat is required it is best to be victorious
Why are we A.I. upscaling all the memes now? It looks so bad
This version of it has existed for years. Earliest uses of the "upscaled" (but probably redrawn/traced version) go back to 2019 when the original blurry version was causing issues on Twitter and Reddit being marked as NSFW for some reason
Fair enough. There's been a lot of upscaled memes appearing on Lemmy recently, just my luck I comment on the only non-A.I. one
I mean living on Earth where things fall for seemingly no reason at all, that’s pretty damn revolutionary
Revolutionary like the Earth going around the sun
There is a subtle genius in establishing the concept of "net force" as something that can be treated mathematically, and that fully predicts an object's motion. He framed the problem
That's a pretty gross oversimplification of inertia. The more mass an object has, the more energy that's required to accelerate it.
The genius lies in the understanding that a heavy object, once moving, will prefer to continue moving than come to a rest. This is why an 18-wheeler needs more distance to stop than a small car. Some people's intuition tells them that a heavy object will come to a rest quickly.
One must only observe rocks rolling down a hill to see heavier things have more momentum at the same speed, it's surprising it was not documented even earlier
The importance Newton's work wasn't in the pithy phrasing, but in the equasions of motion that he worked out. In other words, yes, most people could see that a big rock is harder to get moving than a small one, but keeps going more, but Newton was the one to devise the equasiobs that explained the why and how much.
Everyone knew how it worked ,in practice, Newton figured out how it worked in theory ;-)
holds up stone
let's go of stone
stone starts moving to the floor
Explain this, Isaac!
Newton:
Witch!
The floor provides the necessary force
At least he's not that creepy pedo Shakespeare.
When Shakespeare makes up 500 words for one of his crappy plays he's called a hero.. When I drunkenly say a word that doesn't exist I'm called a drunk lunatic.
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