Been recently interested in things historical scientists/astronomers got weirdly wrong. For instance, Kepler thought the sun magnetism is the reason behind orbit ellipticity. Galileo was very wrong about tides, and about Kepler's work. Newton got all of that right, but he was a vengeful arsehole 🔭🧪 - ThreadSky

astrohoss.bsky.social • 60 days ago

Been recently interested in things historical scientists/astronomers got weirdly wrong. For instance, Kepler thought the sun magnetism is the reason behind orbit ellipticity. Galileo was very wrong about tides, and about Kepler's work. Newton got all of that right, but he was a vengeful arsehole 🔭🧪

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keepingitpos.bsky.social•60 days ago

! What was Newton vengeful about?!!

astrohoss.bsky.social•60 days ago

Particularly his feud with Robert Hooke over who came up with the idea of a 1/r^2 gravitation law, and with Gotfried Leibniz over who came up with Caculus first. He also used his position within the Royal Society to anonymously draft a report claiming Leibniz plagiarised these ideas

keepingitpos.bsky.social•55 days ago

geesh humanity is just soooo flawed’

vrooje.net•60 days ago

For an undergrad paper on the history of science I read the Newton-Hooke correspondence on Optics, and … yeah. Neither of them came across as particularly pleasant colleagues. I have also heard that Newton’s “on the shoulders of giants” quote was actually a snipe at Hooke’s short stature.

astrohoss.bsky.social•60 days ago

That's hilarious and would make so much sense!

ashuman1180.bsky.social•59 days ago

Payne 1925 in PhD: Sun is made mainly of hydrogen.
Russel+co: No no no. Iron etc like Earth is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin

jdnicoll.bsky.social•60 days ago

Eddington's open hostility to Chandrasekhar's model of the final stages of stellar life comes to mind...

astrohoss.bsky.social•60 days ago

Absolutely, and the way he treated Chandrasekhar was beyond abhorrent

oldionus.bsky.social•60 days ago

What this illustrates is that what, with hindsight and the benefits of systematic education seems obvious to us, was actually REALLY REALLY hard to figure out, and what Newton allegedly said, that he stood on the shoulders of giants, is always almost literally true.

oldionus.bsky.social•60 days ago

Science is built up from one hard won little insight after another, over centuries. I suspect that while the general outlines of scientific development proceed in a predictable order, some things were discovered "out of order" due to genius, or, sometimes, due to LACK of insight. But we get there.

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