News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to do... by dotancohen on Friday October 12, 2018 @08:17AM (#18200871)
Actually, both you and GP got it wrong. There is no need to speculate what Newton was thinking, it was all recorded.

Newton was looking for methods to manipulate (push, pull) objects at a distance without touching them. He had strong ideas about the occult and what we today call black magic, in addition to being an alchemist. He devised that the Earth was manipulating the untouched Moon (capitalized, proper noun) and sought to explain the influence of the Earth on the Moon.

Re:Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to do... by rusk on Friday October 12, 2018 @10:58AM (#18201836)
LOL is that for real! Please please can you give me a couple of good citations for that?
Re:Oil droplets guided by pilot waves do not give rise to do... by dotancohen on Friday October 12, 2018 @07:49PM (#18205498)
Interestingly, I thought that I could simply point you towards Wikipedia [1] and call it a day. However, obviously Newton's viewpoints were controversial in his day and remain so. The controversy is hinted at in Wikipedia, without details. Even the "History of gravitational theory" [2] article completely eliminates this aspect and the "Newton's law of universal gravitation" concentrates completely on the dispute with Hooke.

Many science-related articles on Wikipedia suffer from good-meaning but over-zealous gatekeeping of religious influences on science. So I'll just recommend to you to read a biography or three on Newton. His entire story is fascinating and we can see how tiny events in his childhood (death of father, influence of priest uncle) have affected the history of physics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gravitational_theor... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gr...