this special day

Today we celebrate the birth of one of the greatest persons to have ever lived – indeed, one of the architect’s of the modern world: Isaac Newton.

Among his accomplishments, Newton helped establish a mechanistic foundation for the universe, by providing mathematical descriptions of motion. His ideas helped push back the darkness of pre-Enlightenment thought, and are still very much applicable today. Even if they had been fully surpassed by the theories of later physicists like Einstein, however, that is just further evidence of the strength of the scientific method that Newton helped exemplify, for science does not hold onto ancient ideas just because they are tradition and make one feel good about oneself.

So today, we celebrate by finding something that is staying at rest, as objects that are at rest tend to stay, and, by applying an external force and witnessing the equal and opposite reaction of the object, we observe that that the force of its new momentum is equal to the external force applied.

And then we eat an apple. (That part may be myth, but at least we will acknowledge that fact.)