Newton and Leibniz: Crash Course History of Science #17

The standard story of the Scientific Revolution culminates with the long life of one man: Sir Isaac Newton—a humble servant of the Royal Mint, two-time parliamentarian, and a scientific titan whose name, along with Einstein’s, is synonymous with physics today.


***

Thanks to the following Patrons for their generous monthly contributions that help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever:

Mark Brouwer, Erika & Alexa Saur Glenn Elliott, Justin Zingsheim, Jessica Wode, Eric Prestemon, Kathrin Benoit, Tom Trval, Nathan Taylor, Divonne Holmes à Court, Brian Thomas Gossett, Khaled El Shalakany, Indika Siriwardena, SR Foxley, Sam Ferguson, Yasenia Cruz, Eric Koslow, Caleb Weeks, Tim Curwick, D.A. Noe, Shawn Arnold, Ruth Perez, Malcolm Callis, Ken Penttinen, Advait Shinde, William McGraw, Andrei Krishkevich, Rachel Bright, Mayumi Maeda, Kathy & Tim Philip, Jirat, Eric Kitchen, Ian Dundore, Chris Peters
--

Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet?

[crashcourse]

Quick note that we learned later that we mispronounced "Principia" and have corrected it in subsequent episodes. WHOOPS! We actually had Allison Marsh, our consultant in the room for a later shoot and we were all very embarrassed. Thanks for understanding :)

- Nick Jenkins (Senior Producer)

[htrland]

Interesting historical note: Some sources argue that Leibniz was the first to come up with the principle of least action. In light of the Calculus Priority Dispute that Leibniz had with Newton, and the fact that Leibniz's work had historically been overshadowed by that of Newton, it's interesting to note that the principle of least action has outlived Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics was overthrown through the work of Einstein and others, but least action continues to be relevant in modern physics. It's intriguing how Leibniz came up with a principle that was more fundamental than Newton's laws, was overshadowed by Newton for centuries, and was finally vindicated by modern physics.

[julian_ossuna]

"Paved the way for Pink Floyd album art, amongst other accomplishments" LOL

[oskarhenriksen]

Funfact: The Principia almost didn't get published, because the Society had blown the budget on "The History of Fishes".

Which was, as you might suspect, not as groundbreaking

[Titamiva]

Leibniz : in German when e and i go walking, the latter does the talking.

[camiloiribarren]

Love learning history and science at the same time. Thanks, Hank

[HistoryNerd]

Newton's hometown sounds like either a Harry Potter spell or a new, horrible disease

[rdreher]

Now, "leeb-nits" is a very, very common mispronunciation of Leibniz, which should really be pronounced "Layb-nits" (as in a "long i" or /ay/ sound. However nobody pronounces Leipzig with an "ee" sound. <ei> always makes an "eye" sound in German, and also <z> is always a "ts" sound as in <pizza>. Thus in German, Leipzig is pronounced [láɪp.t͡siç] - where [ç] is the voiceless palatal fricative sound (called "ich-laut" in German), which is a kind of soft fricative K-sound, although in English a pronunciation of /láyp.sɪg/ is pretty common. (BUT NO LEEP-sig!)

While I'm at it, some more German advice: I'm glad you knew well enough that <w> makes a /v/ sound in German. However, another very common mistake you made is with the <v> in <von>. In German <v> makes an /f/ sound.

[ximoxativa]

8 minutes and i did not hear something from the real inventor of differential calculation

[angeluslupus]

Everybody is correcting the pronunciation of Leibniz and Principia, but I can't see anyone pointing out that Halley rhymes with Sally, not Bailey

[SaraBearRawr]

Imagine being in a position where the current well understood maths of the day don't support your theories so you just INVENT A NEW MATH, not a formula, AN ENTIRE BRANCH OF MATH.

[kimberlymartinez]

I'm really loving these videos! I'm obsessed with learning about history and science at the same time!

[warriorvenus]

He barely talked about Leibniz and seem to favor Newton....

[craigmooring]

Despite the linguistic problems therein, I really enjoyed this video.

[aspiahmacaurog]

I salute Isaacs Newton, He is so brave for wanting almost to understand everything even though Newton's dad died and her mother remarried, he pursue to study and manage to finished his study. And yet after a years of his graduation he develop the 7 invisible color of light. No wonder, how great he is!

[ludwigvr]

I love learning new things with your videos because they’re so informative yet brief. Through your videos I learned to have fun learning new things and even school became somewhat tolerable. Keep the great work up guys :-)

[HopDavid]

Neither Newton nor Leibniz deserve the title "inventor of calculus". Building this branch of mathematics was the collaborative effort of many people over many years. If anyone deserves the title it would be Fermat.

Fermat, Cavalieri, Barrow, Gregory and others had already laid the foundations of calculus in the generation before Leibniz and Newton.

The revolutionary innovation here was analytical geometry, in other words graph paper with an x and y axis. This was developed by Fermat and Descartes. With this tool curves like conic sections could be expressed algebraically. For example y=x^2 becomes a parabola. x^2 + y^2 = 1 is a circle of radius 1.

With this innovation it was only a matter of time before people used Eudoxus like methods of exhaustion to get slope of a curve. Which was done by Fermat. Ditto area under a curve. Which was done by Cavalieri in the generation before Leibniz and Newton.

Newton's instructor Isaac Barrow passed on to Newton the notion of fluxions or infinitesmals. He also likely gave Newton the fundamental theorem of calculus which was discovered by Barrow and Gregory.

[gajeebant]

As much as we in hindsight laugh at Newton's obsession with alchemy and the occult, back then his obsession with maths & physics would have been considered equally weird and crazy - that's how much religion dominated things. Be under no doubt, despite his (modern day) fantastical interests the guy was an absolute genius - a pioneer of his time who saw things that no other man could even contemplate and along with a few others (Faraday, Maxwell, Einstein, Darwin) - has gone to change the progress of humanity.

[balthasarrasahtlab]

Also, the "ei" in Leipzig is pronounced like the "ie" in "to lie".

[jankostanjevec]

Where did you get the idea that Newton starts "Mechanical intelligibility"? Newton's gravity was more like the end of mechanistic theories of gravity (such as Descartes' vorti and others' where everything had to be mechanically connected) and the start of mathematical physics i.e. principia "mathematica" of natural philosophy.