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136-460: By his own account, Hörbiger was observing the Moon when he was struck by the notion that the brightness and roughness of its surface were due to ice. Shortly after, he experienced a dream in which he was floating in space watching the swinging of a pendulum which grew longer and longer until it broke. "I knew that Newton had been wrong and that the sun's gravitational pull ceases to exist at three times

272-435: A Newtonian telescope , involved solving the problem of a suitable mirror material and shaping technique. Newton ground his own mirrors out of a custom composition of highly reflective speculum metal , using Newton's rings to judge the quality of the optics for his telescopes. In late 1668, he was able to produce this first reflecting telescope. It was about eight inches long and it gave a clearer and larger image. In 1671,

408-850: A mathematician , physicist , astronomer , alchemist , theologian , and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher . He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. Newton's book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ( Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy ), first published in 1687, achieved the first great unification in physics and established classical mechanics . Newton also made seminal contributions to optics , and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus , though he developed calculus years before Leibniz. He contributed to and refined

544-518: A quart mug. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough (née Blythe). Newton disliked his stepfather and maintained some enmity towards his mother for marrying him, as revealed by this entry in a list of sins committed up to the age of 19: "Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and

680-471: A brief exchange of letters in 1679–80 with Hooke, who had been appointed Secretary of the Royal Society, and who opened a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions. Newton's reawakening interest in astronomical matters received further stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 1680–1681, on which he corresponded with John Flamsteed . After

816-470: A circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier . In 1710, Newton found 72 of the 78 "species" of cubic curves and categorised them into four types. In 1717, and probably with Newton's help, James Stirling proved that every cubic was one of these four types. Newton also claimed that the four types could be obtained by plane projection from one of them, and this

952-525: A cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed. He was, however, noted by Cambridge diarist Abraham de la Pryme to have rebuked students who were frightening locals by claiming that a house was haunted. Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint during the reign of King William III in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax , then Chancellor of

1088-611: A complete story-line, with introductions and conclusions, reasons for the flood, and theologies. Scholars believe that the flood myth originated in Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period (c. 1880–1595 BCE) and reached Syro-Palestine in the latter half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Extant texts show three distinct versions, the Sumerian Epic of Ziusudra , (the oldest, found in very fragmentary form on

1224-503: A concluding General Scholium , writing that it was enough that the phenomena implied a gravitational attraction, as they did; but they did not so far indicate its cause, and it was both unnecessary and improper to frame hypotheses of things that were not implied by the phenomena. (Here Newton used what became his famous expression " Hypotheses non fingo " . ) With the Principia , Newton became internationally recognised. He acquired

1360-478: A correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions, which had the effect of stimulating Newton to work out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. But the two men remained generally on poor terms until Hooke's death. Newton argued that light is composed of particles or corpuscles, which were refracted by accelerating into

1496-423: A debt to corpuscular alchemy. He showed that coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects, and that regardless of whether reflected, scattered, or transmitted, the light remains the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This

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1632-467: A denser medium. He verged on soundlike waves to explain the repeated pattern of reflection and transmission by thin films ( Opticks Bk. II, Props. 12), but still retained his theory of 'fits' that disposed corpuscles to be reflected or transmitted (Props.13). However, later physicists favoured a purely wavelike explanation of light to account for the interference patterns and the general phenomenon of diffraction . Today's quantum mechanics , photons , and

1768-513: A heterogeneous group of writers from the early 19th century, most of whom lacked any background in geology and also lacked influence even in religious circles. The geologic views of these writers were ignored by the scientific community of their time. Flood geology was largely ignored in the 19th century, but was revived in the 20th century by the Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price , who

1904-576: A huge explosion that flung fragments of the smaller star out into interstellar space where the water condensed and froze into giant blocks of ice. A ring of such blocks formed, that we now call the Milky Way , as well as a number of solar systems among which was our own, but with many more planets than currently exist. Interplanetary space is filled with traces of hydrogen gas, which cause the planets to slowly spiral inwards, along with ice blocks. The outer planets are large mainly because they have swallowed

2040-501: A large number of ice blocks, but the inner planets have not swallowed nearly as many. One can see ice blocks on the move in the form of meteors, and when one collides with Earth, it produces hailstorms over an area of many square kilometers, while when one falls into the Sun, it produces a sunspot and gets vaporized, making "fine ice", that covers the innermost planets. It was also claimed that Earth had had several satellites before it acquired

2176-556: A large part of the reason for this enduring legacy. Newton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1672 . Newton's work has been said "to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied". His work on the subject, usually referred to as fluxions or calculus, seen in a manuscript of October 1666, is now published among Newton's mathematical papers. His work De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas , sent by Isaac Barrow to John Collins in June 1669,

2312-464: A mathematician, he generalized the binomial theorem to any real number, contributed to the study of power series , developed a method for approximating the roots of a function , classified most of the cubic plane curves , and also originated the Newton-Cotes formulas for numerical integration . Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at

2448-599: A mere week to recede in order to provide Noah his stage for God's covenant. It is the Priestly source which adds more fantastic figures of a 150-day flood, which emerged by divine hand from the heavens and earth and took ten months to finally stop. That the Jahwist source's capricious and somewhat simplistic depiction of Yahweh is clearly distinguished from the Priestly source's characteristically majestic, transcendental, and austere virtuous Yahweh. The Priestly flood narrative

2584-453: A more precise figure for the age of the Earth. Lux Mundi , an 1889 volume of theological essays which marks a stage in the acceptance of a more critical approach to scripture, took the stance that readers should rely on the gospels as completely historical, but should not take the earlier chapters of Genesis literally. By a variety of independent means, scientists have since determined that

2720-538: A new version of Newton's Principia , and corresponded with Leibniz. In 1693, the relationship between Duillier and Newton deteriorated and the book was never completed. Starting in 1699, other members of the Royal Society , such as Duillier, accused Leibniz of plagiarism. Mathematician John Keill accused Leibniz of plagiarism in 1708 in the Royal Society journal, thereby deteriorating the situation even more. The dispute then broke out in full force in 1711 when

2856-548: A plaster death mask was moulded of Newton. It was used by Flemish sculptor John Michael Rysbrack in making a sculpture of Newton. It is now held by the Royal Society , who created a 3D scan of it in 2012. Newton's hair was posthumously examined and found to contain mercury , probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. Mercury poisoning could explain Newton's eccentricity in late life. Genesis flood narrative The Genesis flood narrative (chapters 6–9 of

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2992-509: A royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge. The knighthood is likely to have been motivated by political considerations connected with the parliamentary election in May 1705 , rather than any recognition of Newton's scientific work or services as Master of the Mint. Newton was the second scientist to be knighted, after Francis Bacon . As a result of a report written by Newton on 21 September 1717 to

3128-649: A series of " Quaestiones " about mechanical philosophy as he found it. In 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became calculus . Soon after Newton obtained his BA degree at Cambridge in August 1665, the university temporarily closed as a precaution against the Great Plague . Although he had been undistinguished as a Cambridge student, Newton's private studies at his home in Woolsthorpe over

3264-510: A single tablet dating from about 1600 BCE, although the story itself is older), and as episodes in two Akkadian language epics, the Atrahasis and the Epic of Gilgamesh . The name of the hero, according to the version concerned, was Ziusudra, Atrahasis, or Utnapishtim , all of which are variations of each other, and it is just possible that an abbreviation of Utnapishtim/Utna'ishtim as "na'ish"

3400-472: A unique version of the Mesopotamian flood story. Line 1 of the text says "At the start of the time of the disappearance of the moon, at the beginning of the month". This reference to the lunar date giving the specific date the protagonist released the bird is significant as it is the only variant of the flood story giving a specific date and the rest do not attribute specific dates or calendrical details to

3536-468: A very sick feeling. When he looked at the Moon's surface through a telescope, he found its surface looking troublingly familiar. When he learned of Hörbiger's idea in 1921, he found it a description of his dream. He explained the mythological support he found in such books as Moons, Myths, and Man , In the Beginning God , and The Book of Revelation is History . It was believed that our current Moon

3672-516: Is a pseudoscientific attempt to argue that such a global flood actually occurred. Some Christians have preferred to interpret the narrative as describing a local flood instead of a global event. Still others prefer to interpret the narrative as allegorical rather than historical. The story of the flood occurs in chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Ten generations after

3808-455: Is a property intrinsic to light – a point which had, until then, been a matter of debate. From 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics. During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that the multicoloured image produced by a prism, which he named a spectrum , could be recomposed into white light by a lens and a second prism. Modern scholarship has revealed that Newton's analysis and resynthesis of white light owes

3944-482: Is at rest or moves uniformly forward in a right line". (Newton adopted the "at rest" alternative in view of common consent that the centre, wherever it was, was at rest.) Newton was criticised for introducing " occult agencies" into science because of his postulate of an invisible force able to act over vast distances . Later, in the second edition of the Principia (1713), Newton firmly rejected such criticisms in

4080-420: Is established that Newton came to develop calculus much earlier than Leibniz. Leibniz's notation and "differential method", nowadays recognised as much more convenient notations, were adopted by continental European mathematicians, and after 1820 or so, also by British mathematicians. His work extensively uses calculus in geometric form based on limiting values of the ratios of vanishingly small quantities: in

4216-429: Is evidenced in the doublets (i.e., repetitions) contained within the final story. Many of these are contradictory, such as how long the flood lasted (40 days according to Genesis 7:17 , 150 according to 7:24 ), how many animals were to be taken aboard the ark (one pair of each in 6:19 , one pair of the unclean animals and seven pairs of the clean in 7:2 ), and whether Noah released a raven which "went to and fro until

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4352-425: Is known as Newton's theory of colour . From this work, he concluded that the lens of any refracting telescope would suffer from the dispersion of light into colours ( chromatic aberration ). As a proof of the concept, he constructed a telescope using reflective mirrors instead of lenses as the objective to bypass that problem. Building the design, the first known functional reflecting telescope, today known as

4488-560: Is no data to explain a finding, one should simply wait for that data, rather than guessing at an explanation. The full quote, translated from that section is, "Hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses, for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from

4624-480: Is of this calculus." His use of methods involving "one or more orders of the infinitesimally small" is present in his De motu corporum in gyrum of 1684 and in his papers on motion "during the two decades preceding 1684". Newton had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared controversy and criticism. He was close to the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier . In 1691, Duillier started to write

4760-485: Is that Genesis was composed around the 5th century BCE, but as the first eleven chapters show little relationship to the rest of the book, some scholars believe that this section (the so-called primeval history ) may have been composed as late as the 3rd century BCE. It is generally agreed that the history draws on two sources, one called the Priestly source , the other non-Priestly or Yahwist , and their interweaving

4896-454: Is the only Priestly text that covers dates with much detail before the Exodus narrative . This is perhaps due to a version of the flood myth that was available at the time. There is a text discovered from Ugarit known as RS 94.2953, consisting of fourteen lines telling a first-person account of how Ea appeared to the story's protagonist and commanded him to use tools to make a window ( aptu ) at

5032-476: Is the visible manifestation of light's wavelength. Science also slowly came to realise the difference between perception of colour and mathematisable optics. The German poet and scientist, Goethe , could not shake the Newtonian foundation but "one hole Goethe did find in Newton's armour, ... Newton had committed himself to the doctrine that refraction without colour was impossible. He, therefore, thought that

5168-401: Is unclear if Newton ever lectured in geography, the 1733 Dugdale and Shaw English translation of the book stated Newton published the book to be read by students while he lectured on the subject. The Geographia Generalis is viewed by some as the dividing line between ancient and modern traditions in the history of geography , and Newton's involvement in the subsequent editions is thought to be

5304-542: The Geographia Generalis , a geography textbook first published in 1650 by the then-deceased Bernhardus Varenius . In the Geographia Generalis, Varenius attempted to create a theoretical foundation linking scientific principles to classical concepts in geography, and considered geography to be a mix between science and pure mathematics applied to quantifying features of the Earth. While it

5440-533: The Black Sea deluge hypothesis may elaborate on the historicity of the flood narrative. Localized catastrophic floodings have left traces in the geological record: the Channeled Scablands in the southeastern areas of the state of Washington have been demonstrated to have been formed by a series of catastrophic floods originating from the collapse of glacial dams of glacial lakes in the region,

5576-469: The Book of Genesis ) is a Hebrew flood myth . It tells of God's decision to return the universe to its pre- creation state of watery chaos and remake it through the microcosm of Noah's ark . The Book of Genesis was probably composed around the 5th century BCE, although some scholars believe that primeval history (chapters 1–11), including the flood narrative, may have been composed and added as late as

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5712-550: The Church of England was sufficient. He made the commitment that "I will either set Theology as the object of my studies and will take holy orders when the time prescribed by these statutes [7 years] arrives, or I will resign from the college." Up until this point he had not thought much about religion and had twice signed his agreement to the Thirty-nine Articles , the basis of Church of England doctrine. By 1675

5848-441: The Epic of Gilgamesh , where at the end of rain "all of mankind had returned to clay," the substance of which they had been made.) The Ark itself is likewise a microcosm of Solomon's Temple . In Jewish folklore , the sins in the antediluvian world included blasphemy, occult practices and preventing new traders from making profit. Children also had the ability to talk and walk immediately after birth and battle with demons. When

5984-475: The Hörbiger Institute . The first was formed in 1921 by a group of enthusiastic adherents of the idea, which included engineers, physicians, civil servants, and businessmen. Most had been personally acquainted with Hörbiger and had attended his many lectures. According to the idea, the solar system had its origin in a gigantic star into which a smaller, dead, waterlogged star fell. This impact caused

6120-598: The Industrial Revolution which soon followed and were not improved upon for more than 200 years. Many of these advances continue to be the underpinnings of non-relativistic technologies in the modern world. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) for the effect that would become known as gravity , and defined the law of universal gravitation . In the same work, Newton presented a calculus-like method of geometrical analysis using 'first and last ratios', gave

6256-651: The Peshitta New Testament, such as Matthew 24 :38 and Luke 17 :27). The story of Noah and the Great Flood is related in the Qur'an in the surah Nūḥ . Academic scholars and researchers consider the story in its present form to be exaggerated and/or implausible. The story of the Deluge describes either a severe genetic bottleneck event or the origins of a founder effect among the descendants of

6392-444: The Principia itself, Newton gave demonstration of this under the name of "the method of first and last ratios" and explained why he put his expositions in this form, remarking also that "hereby the same thing is performed as by the method of indivisibles." Because of this, the Principia has been called "a book dense with the theory and application of the infinitesimal calculus" in modern times and in Newton's time "nearly all of it

6528-654: The Royal Society (1703–1727). Isaac Newton was born (according to the Julian calendar in use in England at the time) on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 ( NS 4 January 1643 ) at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth , a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. His father, also named Isaac Newton, had died three months before. Born prematurely , Newton was a small child; his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that he could have fit inside

6664-667: The University of Cambridge . He was a devout but unorthodox Christian who privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity . He refused to take holy orders in the Church of England , unlike most members of the Cambridge faculty of the day. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences , Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology , but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. Politically and personally tied to

6800-684: The University of Cambridge . His uncle the Reverend William Ayscough, who had studied at Cambridge, recommended him to the university. At Cambridge, Newton started as a subsizar , paying his way by performing valet duties until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, which covered his university costs for four more years until the completion of his MA . At the time, Cambridge's teachings were based on those of Aristotle , whom Newton read along with then more modern philosophers, including Descartes and astronomers such as Galileo Galilei and Thomas Street . He set down in his notebook

6936-566: The Whig party , Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge , in 1689–1690 and 1701–1702. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696–1699) and Master (1699–1727) of the Royal Mint , in which he increased the accuracy and security of British coinage, as well as president of

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7072-617: The biblical chronology , which placed the Creation and the flood no more than a few thousand years back in history. In 1823 the English theologian and natural scientist William Buckland interpreted geological phenomena as Reliquiæ Diluvianæ (relics of the flood) "Attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge". His views were supported by others at the time, including the influential geologist Adam Sedgwick , but by 1830 Sedgwick considered that

7208-445: The scientific consensus that they believe contradict their interpretation of religious texts was first established by the publication of the 1961 book, The Genesis Flood . Most scientific fields, particularly those contradicted by flood geology, rely on Charles Lyell 's established principle of uniformitarianism , which for much of their history was seen to contrast with the catastrophism inherent in flood geology. However, with

7344-436: The scientific method , and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science. In the Principia , Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity . He used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion , account for tides ,

7480-699: The silver standard to its first gold standard . It is a matter of debate as to whether he intended to do this or not. It has been argued that Newton conceived of his work at the Mint as a continuation of his alchemical work. Newton was invested in the South Sea Company and lost some £20,000 (£4.4 million in 2020 ) when it collapsed in around 1720. Toward the end of his life, Newton took up residence at Cranbury Park , near Winchester , with his niece and her husband, until his death. His half-niece, Catherine Barton , served as his hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn Street in London; he

7616-526: The trajectories of comets , the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System 's heliocentricity . He demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles. Newton's inference that the Earth is an oblate spheroid was later confirmed by the geodetic measurements of Maupertuis , La Condamine , and others, convincing most European scientists of

7752-417: The "waters above" and the "waters below" the earth is removed, the dry land is flooded, most life is destroyed, and only Noah and those with him survive to obey God's command to "be fruitful and multiply." The flood is a reversal and renewal of God's creation of the world. In Genesis 1 God separates the "waters above the earth" from those below so that dry land can appear as a home for living things, but in

7888-695: The 1690s, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal and symbolic interpretation of the Bible. A manuscript Newton sent to John Locke in which he disputed the fidelity of 1 John 5:7 —the Johannine Comma —and its fidelity to the original manuscripts of the New Testament, remained unpublished until 1785. Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England for Cambridge University in 1689 and 1701, but according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about

8024-462: The 17th day of the second month, Marcheshvan , when "the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened", and after 40 days the ark floats (Genesis 7:11–12). The waters rise and then recede, and on the 17th day of the seventh month (or the 27th day in the Greek version) the ark rests on the mountains (Genesis 8:4). The waters continue to fall, the ark is uncovered on

8160-530: The 1st day of the 1st month of Noah's 601st year, and is opened on the 27th day of his 601st year (Genesis 8:13–14). The period from the beginning of the flood to the landing on the mountain is five months (the second month to the seventh, Genesis 7:11 and 8:4) and 150 days (8:3), making an impossible five months of 30 days each; the number is schematic, and is based on the Babylonian astronomical calendar of 360 days (12 months of 30 days each). This means that

8296-425: The 3rd century BCE. It draws on two sources, called the Priestly source and the non-Priestly or Yahwist , and although many of its details are contradictory, the story forms a unified whole. A global flood as described in this myth is inconsistent with the physical findings of geology , archeology , paleontology , and the global distribution of species . A branch of creationism known as flood geology

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8432-598: The Archons, revealing to Norea that she is a divine child of the great spirit . A different view is found in the Secret Book of John ; instead of an ark, Noah hides in a bright cloud. Mandaeism teaches that the flood of Noah was the last of three events where the world's population was reduced to a single family. Thirty generations after Adam, most of the population was killed by pestilence and war, leaving only Ram and his wife Rud. Twenty-five generations later, most of

8568-515: The Ark in his six hundredth year [of life], and on the 17th day of the second month of that year "the fountains of the Great Deep burst apart and the floodgates of heaven broke open" and rain fell for forty days and forty nights until the highest mountains were covered to a depth of 15 cubits , and all life perished except Noah and those with him in the Ark. After 150 days, "God remembered Noah ... and

8704-600: The Bible ). Jesus and the apostles additionally taught on the Genesis flood narrative in New Testament writing ( Matthew 24:37–39 , Luke 17:26–27 , 1 Peter 3:20 , 2 Peter 2:5 , 2 Peter 3:6 , Hebrews 11:7 ). Some Christian biblical scholars suggest that the flood is a picture of salvation in Christ —the Ark was planned by God and there is only one way of salvation through the door of the Ark, akin to one way of salvation through Christ. Additionally, some scholars commenting on

8840-474: The Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old . Flood geology (a pseudoscience which contradicts a number of principles and discoveries of fact in the fields of geology, stratigraphy, geophysics, physics, paleontology, biology, anthropology, and archaeology in an attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features on Earth in accordance with a literal understanding of the Genesis flood narrative) can be traced to " Scriptural geologists ,"

8976-649: The Exchequer . He took charge of England's great recoining, trod on the toes of Lord Lucas, Governor of the Tower, and secured the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for Edmond Halley. Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon the death of Thomas Neale in 1699, a position Newton held for the last 30 years of his life. These appointments were intended as sinecures , but Newton took them seriously. He retired from his Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercised his authority to reform

9112-501: The Flood . The last such impact, of the "Tertiary" or " Cenozoic Moon" and the capture of our present Moon, is supposedly remembered through myths and legends. This was worked out in detail by Hörbiger's English follower Hans Schindler Bellamy ; Bellamy recounted how as a child he would often dream about a large moon that would spiral closer and closer in until it burst, making the ground beneath roll and pitch, awakening him and giving him

9248-485: The Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury, the bimetallic relationship between gold coins and silver coins was changed by royal proclamation on 22 December 1717, forbidding the exchange of gold guineas for more than 21 silver shillings. This inadvertently resulted in a silver shortage as silver coins were used to pay for imports, while exports were paid for in gold, effectively moving Britain from

9384-754: The Modern Age . Hans Schindler Bellamy , a Jewish member of the Austrian Social Democratic Party , was also a proponent. He continued to advocate the viewpoint after he had fled Vienna following the Anschluss . On the left wing Raoul Hausmann also supported the theory, and corresponded with Hörbiger. Two organizations were set up in Vienna concerned with the idea: the Kosmotechnische Gesellschaft and

9520-410: The Moon; they began as planets in orbits of their own, but over long spans of time were captured one by one and slowly spiralled in towards Earth until they disintegrated and their debris became part of Earth's structure. One can supposedly identify the rock strata of several geological eras with the impacts of these satellites. It was believed that the destruction of earlier ice-moons were responsible for

9656-575: The Nazi elite at the time, and WEL appealed to them because it represented a "Germanic" all-encompassing alternative to a natural science viewed as Jewish and soulless. Despite Hitler's claim that the WEL constituted an "Aryan" theory, a number of Jewish intellectuals supported the theory: for example, Viennese author Egon Friedell , who explained the World Ice Theory in his 1930 Cultural History of

9792-472: The Principia were in fact divided in sections headed by hypotheses. But he clearly seems to have gone away from that, as further evidenced from his famous line in his "Opticks", where he wrote, in English, "Hypotheses have no place in experimental science." These ideas are in line with the scientific philosophy of Francis Bacon , who advocated for an inductive, or data-drivien, approach to science. In

9928-433: The Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope. Their interest encouraged him to publish his notes, Of Colours , which he later expanded into the work Opticks . When Robert Hooke criticised some of Newton's ideas, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. Newton and Hooke had brief exchanges in 1679–80, when Hooke, appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence, opened up

10064-585: The Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Newton who was the true discoverer and labelled Leibniz a fraud; it was later found that Newton wrote the study's concluding remarks on Leibniz. Thus began the bitter controversy which marred the lives of both Newton and Leibniz until the latter's death in 1716. Newton is generally credited with the generalised binomial theorem , valid for any exponent. He discovered Newton's identities , Newton's method , classified cubic plane curves ( polynomials of degree three in two variables ), made substantial contributions to

10200-729: The Solar System—developed in a somewhat modern way because already in the mid-1680s he recognised the "deviation of the Sun" from the centre of gravity of the Solar System. For Newton, it was not precisely the centre of the Sun or any other body that could be considered at rest, but rather "the common centre of gravity of the Earth, the Sun and all the Planets is to be esteem'd the Centre of the World", and this centre of gravity "either

10336-538: The WEL's truth. Some followers even attended astronomical meetings to heckle, shouting, "Out with astronomical orthodoxy! Give us Hörbiger!" Supporters of the idea were Houston Stewart Chamberlain , the leading theorist behind the early development of the National Socialist Party in Germany in 1923, and later both Hitler and Himmler . Esoteric and pseudo-scientific views were quite popular among

10472-765: The climate change phenomena associated with the Piora Oscillation , which triggered the collapse of the Uruk period , with the Biblical flood myth. The current understanding of the prehistoric cataclysmic flooding from the Altai Mountains is that several glacial lake outburst floods from the Altai Mountains caused massive flooding along the Katun River (in the present-day Altai Republic ) some time between 12000 BC and 9000 BC, as demonstrated by

10608-606: The complexity of applying his theory of gravity to the motion of the moon was so great it affected Newton's health: "[H]e was deprived of his appetite and sleep" during his work on the problem in 1692–93, and told the astronomer John Machin that "his head never ached but when he was studying the subject". According to Brewster, Edmund Halley also told John Conduitt that when pressed to complete his analysis Newton "always replied that it made his head ache, and kept him awake so often, that he would think of it no more ". [Emphasis in original] Newton made clear his heliocentric view of

10744-465: The creation of Adam , God saw that the earth was corrupt and filled with violence, and he decided to destroy what he had created. But God found one righteous man, Noah , and to him he confided his intention: "I am about to bring on the Flood ... to eliminate everywhere all flesh in which there is the breath of life ... ." So God instructed him to build an ark (in Hebrew, a chest or box), and Noah entered

10880-563: The currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters. As Warden, and afterwards as Master, of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20 percent of the coins taken in during the Great Recoinage of 1696 were counterfeit . Counterfeiting was high treason , punishable by the felon being hanged, drawn and quartered . Despite this, convicting even the most flagrant criminals could be extremely difficult, but Newton proved equal to

11016-416: The discovery of evidence for some catastrophic events, events similar to those on which the flood narrative may be based are accepted as possible within an overall uniformitarian framework. In relation to geological forces, uniformitarianism explains the formation of the Earth's features by means of mostly slow-acting forces seen in operation today. By the 17th century, believers in the Genesis account faced

11152-423: The distance of Neptune ", he concluded. He worked out his concepts in collaboration with amateur astronomer and schoolteacher Philipp Fauth whom he met in 1898, and published it as Glazial-Kosmogonie in 1912. Fauth had previously produced a large (if somewhat inaccurate) lunar map and had a considerable following, which lent Hörbiger's ideas some respectability. It did not receive a great deal of attention at

11288-489: The emergence of biogeography in the 18th century. Natural historians began to draw connections between climates and the animals and plants adapted to them. One influential theory held that the biblical Ararat was striped with varying climatic zones, and as climate changed, the associated animals moved as well, eventually spreading to repopulate the globe. There was also the problem of an ever-expanding number of known species : for Kircher and earlier natural historians, there

11424-572: The enemy." Astronomers generally dismissed his views and the following they acquired as a "carnival". As Martin Gardner argued in Chapter Three of his Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science , Hörbiger's ideas have much in common with those of Immanuel Velikovsky . Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27 ) was an English polymath active as

11560-410: The evidence suggested only local floods. Louis Agassiz subsequently explained such deposits as the results of glaciation . In 1862, William Thomson (later to become Lord Kelvin ) calculated the age of the Earth at between 24 million and 400 million years, and for the remainder of the 19th century, discussion focused not on the viability of this theory of deep time , but on the derivation of

11696-539: The exchanges with Hooke, Newton worked out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. Newton communicated his results to Edmond Halley and to the Royal Society in De motu corporum in gyrum , a tract written on about nine sheets which was copied into the Royal Society's Register Book in December 1684. This tract contained

11832-507: The fact that much of the gravel deposited along the Katun valley lacks a stratigraphic structure, instead showing characteristics of a deposition directly after suspension in a turbulent flow. In 2020, archaeologists discovered evidence of a tsunami that destroyed middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B coastal settlements in Tel Dor , Israel as it traveled between 3.5 to 1.5 km inland. The tsunami

11968-484: The first analytical determination (based on Boyle's law ) of the speed of sound in air, inferred the oblateness of Earth's spheroidal figure, accounted for the precession of the equinoxes as a result of the Moon's gravitational attraction on the Earth's oblateness, initiated the gravitational study of the irregularities in the motion of the Moon , provided a theory for the determination of the orbits of comets, and much more. Newton's biographer David Brewster reported that

12104-528: The flood commenced, God caused each raindrop to pass through Gehenna before it fell on earth for forty days so that it could scald the skin of sinners. It was a punishment that befitted their crime because like the rain, humanity's sensual desires made them hot and inflamed to immoral excesses. The Genesis flood narrative is included in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible (see Books of

12240-403: The flood lasts 36 weeks according to the flood calendar, in which an extra day is added to every third month. The number of weeks is symbolically significant, representing the biblical cypher for destruction (the number 6, expressed as 6x6=36), while the number 7 (the number of days in a week) represents the persistence of creation during this time of destruction. Scholars have long puzzled over

12376-418: The flood story the "windows of heaven" and "fountains of the deep" are opened so that the world is returned to the watery chaos of the time before creation. Even the sequence of flood events mimics that of creation, the flood first covering the earth to the highest mountains, then destroying, in order, birds, cattle, beasts, "swarming creatures", and finally mankind. (This parallels the Babylonian flood story in

12512-512: The house over them." Newton's mother had three children (Mary, Benjamin, and Hannah) from her second marriage. From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The King's School in Grantham , which taught Latin and Ancient Greek and probably imparted a significant foundation of mathematics. He was removed from school by his mother and returned to Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth by October 1659. His mother, widowed for

12648-603: The idea of wave–particle duality bear only a minor resemblance to Newton's understanding of light. In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles. The contact with the Cambridge Platonist philosopher Henry More revived his interest in alchemy. He replaced the ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles. John Maynard Keynes , who acquired many of Newton's writings on alchemy, stated that "Newton

12784-458: The issue could not be avoided, and by then his unconventional views stood in the way. His academic work impressed the Lucasian professor Isaac Barrow , who was anxious to develop his own religious and administrative potential (he became master of Trinity College two years later); in 1669, Newton succeeded him, only one year after receiving his MA. Newton argued that this should exempt him from

12920-569: The issue of reconciling the exploration of the New World and increased awareness of the global distribution of species with the older scenario whereby all life had sprung from a single point of origin on the slopes of Mount Ararat . The obvious answer involved mankind spreading over the continents following the destruction of the Tower of Babel and taking animals along, yet some of the results seemed peculiar. In 1646 Sir Thomas Browne wondered why

13056-635: The last of which has been estimated to have occurred between 18,200 and 14,000 years ago. Another geologic feature believed to have been formed by massive catastrophic flooding is the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet . As with the Channeled Scablands of the state of Washington, breakthroughs of glacial ice dams are believed to have unleashed massive and sudden torrents of water to form the gorge some time between 600 and 900 AD. Some also relate

13192-560: The name was changed from the Graeco-Latin Glazial-Kosmogonie to the Germanic Welteislehre [WEL] ("World ice theory"). The followers of WEL exerted a great deal of public pressure on behalf of the ideas. The movement published posters, pamphlets, books, and even a newspaper The Key to World Events . Companies owned by adherents would only hire people who declared themselves convinced of

13328-404: The natives of North America had taken rattlesnakes with them, but not horses: "How America abounded with Beasts of prey and noxious Animals, yet contained not in that necessary Creature, a Horse, is very strange". Browne, among the first to question the notion of spontaneous generation , was a medical doctor and amateur scientist making this observation in passing. However, biblical scholars of

13464-521: The next two years saw the development of his theories on calculus, optics , and the law of gravitation . In April 1667, Newton returned to the University of Cambridge, and in October he was elected as a fellow of Trinity. Fellows were required to take holy orders and be ordained as Anglican priests, although this was not enforced in the Restoration years, and an assertion of conformity to

13600-452: The notions of covenant, law, and forgiveness. The Genesis creation narrative (Genesis 1–2) deals with God's creation and God's repentance is the rationale behind the flood narrative, and in the Priestly source (which runs through all of Genesis and into the other four books of the Torah) these two verbs, "create" and "forgive", are reserved exclusively for divine actions. Intertextuality is

13736-449: The nucleus that Newton developed and expanded to form the Principia . The Principia was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Halley. In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion . Together, these laws describe the relationship between any object, the forces acting upon it and the resulting motion, laying the foundation for classical mechanics . They contributed to many advances during

13872-457: The object-glasses of telescopes must forever remain imperfect, achromatism and refraction being incompatible. This inference was proved by Dollond to be wrong." Newton had been developing his theory of gravitation as far back as 1665. In 1679, Newton returned to his work on celestial mechanics by considering gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets with reference to Kepler's laws of planetary motion. This followed stimulation by

14008-400: The ordination requirement, and King Charles II , whose permission was needed, accepted this argument; thus, a conflict between Newton's religious views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted. The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge position included the responsibility of instructing geography . In 1672, and again in 1681, Newton published a revised, corrected, and amended edition of

14144-505: The phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of motion and of gravitation, were discovered. And to us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea." This idea that Newton became anti-hypothesis has been disputed, since earlier editions of

14280-401: The population was killed by fire, leaving only Shurbai and his wife Sharhabeil . Fifteen generations later, most of the population was killed by flood, leaving only Noah and Shem, in addition to the latter's wife Nuraitha . Noah and his family are saved because they were able to build an ark or kawila (or kauila , a Mandaic term; it is cognate with Syriac kēʾwilā , which is attested in

14416-408: The second time, attempted to make him a farmer, an occupation he hated. Henry Stokes, master at The King's School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school. Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked student, distinguishing himself mainly by building sundials and models of windmills. In June 1661, Newton was admitted to Trinity College at

14552-461: The significance of the flood lasting one year and eleven days (day 17 of year 600 to day 27 of year 601); one solution is that the basic calendar is a lunar one of 354 days, to which eleven days have been added to match a solar year of 365 days. The "original", Jahwist narrative of the Great Deluge was modest; a week of ostensibly non-celestial rain is followed by a forty-day flood which takes

14688-421: The superiority of Newtonian mechanics over earlier systems. Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum . His work on light was collected in his highly influential book Opticks , published in 1704. He formulated an empirical law of cooling , which

14824-399: The survivors, in that the survivors are related. There is no evidence of such a severe genetic bottleneck at that period of time (~7000 years before the present day) either among humans or other animal species; however, if the flood narrative is derived from a more localized event and describes a founder effect among one population of humans, certain explanations such as the events described by

14960-504: The task. Disguised as a habitué of bars and taverns, he gathered much of that evidence himself. For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and separating the branches of government, English law still had ancient and formidable customs of authority. Newton had himself made a justice of the peace in all the home counties . A draft letter regarding the matter is included in Newton's personal first edition of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica , which he must have been amending at

15096-503: The teaching of the apostle Peter ( 1 Peter 3:18–22 ), connect the Ark with the resurrection of Christ; the waters burying the old world but raising Noah to a new life. Christian scholars also highlight that 1 Peter 3:18–22 demonstrates the Genesis flood as a type to Christian baptism . In the 3rd century Gnostic codex now referred to as the Hypostasis of the Archons , it is the corrupt rulers ( Archons ) who decide to flood

15232-449: The theory assumes a redactor who combined the sources inconsistently (in some cases extensively editing together the text and in some cases faithfully preserving contradictory versions) for unclear reasons. Similarly, the complete Genesis flood story matches the parallel Gilgamesh flood story in a way which neither of the proposed biblical sources does. The following table compares the proposed Yahwist and Priestly sources. Each provides

15368-432: The theory of finite differences , with him regarded as the "single most significant contributor to finite difference interpolation ", with many formulas created by Newton. Newton was also the first to use fractional indices and to employ coordinate geometry to derive solutions to Diophantine equations . He approximated partial sums of the harmonic series by logarithms (a precursor to Euler's summation formula ) and

15504-622: The time, but following World War I Hörbiger decided to change his strategy by promoting the new "cosmic truth" not only to people at universities and academies, but also to the general public. Hörbiger thought that if "the masses" accepted his ideas, then they might put enough pressure on the academic establishment to force his ideas into the mainstream. No effort was spared in popularising the ideas: "cosmotechnical" societies were founded, which offered public lectures that attracted large audiences, there were cosmic ice movies and radio programs, and even cosmic ice journals and novels. During this period,

15640-404: The time, such as Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) and Athanasius Kircher (c. 1601–1680), had also begun to subject the Ark story to rigorous scrutiny as they attempted to harmonize the biblical account with the growing body of natural historical knowledge. The resulting hypotheses provided an important impetus to the study of the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and indirectly spurred

15776-704: The time. Then he conducted more than 100 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers, and suspects between June 1698 and Christmas 1699. Newton successfully prosecuted 28 coiners. Newton was made president of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French Académie des Sciences . In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed , the Astronomer Royal , by prematurely publishing Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis Britannica , which Newton had used in his studies. In April 1705, Queen Anne knighted Newton during

15912-486: The top of the construction he was building, and how he implemented this directive and released a bird. Antoine Cavigneaux 's translation of this text made him propose that this fragment belongs to a Mesopotamian flood myth , perhaps Atrahasis or Tablet IX of Gilgamesh , which has a version found in Ugarit (RS 22.421) that contains a first person account of the flood. If this suggestion is correct, then RS 94.2953 represents

16048-456: The two sources was earlier and therefore influenced the other. Some scholars have even questioned whether the story is actually based on two different sources, noting that some of the doublets (such as the dove and raven) are not actually contradictory and in fact appear as linked motifs in other biblical and non-biblical sources, that the method of doublets is inconsistently applied in that the alleged sources themselves contain doublets, and that

16184-456: The various stages of the flood. Both RS 94.2953 and Genesis 8 are about the flood protagonist releasing a bird on a specific calendrical date in order to find land in the midst of the flood. The primeval history is first and foremost about the world God made, its origins, inhabitants, purposes, challenges, and failures. It asks why the world which God has made is so imperfect and of the meaning of human violence and evil, and its solutions involve

16320-415: The waters subsided" until the Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat, and on the 27th day of the second month of Noah's six hundred and first year the earth was dry. Then Noah built an altar and made a sacrifice, and God made a covenant with Noah that man would be allowed to eat every living thing but not its blood, and that God would never again destroy all life by a flood. The consensus of modern scholars

16456-424: The waters were dried up" or a dove which on the third occasion "did not return to him again," or possibly both. But despite this disagreement on details the story forms a unified whole (some scholars see in it a " chiasm ", a literary structure in which the first item matches the last, the second the second-last, and so on), and many efforts have been made to explain this unity, including attempts to identify which of

16592-461: The way biblical stories refer to and reflect one another. Such echoes are seldom coincidental—for instance, the word used for ark is the same used for the basket in which Moses is saved, implying a symmetry between the stories of two divinely chosen saviours in a world threatened by water and chaos. The most significant such echo is a reversal of the Genesis creation narrative ; the division between

16728-423: The world in order to dispose of most of mankind. However, Noah is spared and told to build an ark. But when his wife Norea wants to board the ark, Noah attempts to not let her, thus she uses her divine power to blow on the ark, causing it to be consumed by fire. Noah later builds the ark a second time. When the Archons try to seize Norea, she calls out to God for help, then the angel Eleleth appears and scares away

16864-428: Was approximately 16 m high. Recovery in the affected areas was slow but overall, it did not significantly affect the social development of the southern Levant. Whilst the tsunami is not identified with the Biblical flood, it is believed to contribute to the flood myths found in numerous cultures. The development of scientific geology had a profound impact on attitudes towards the biblical flood narrative by undermining

17000-710: Was her "very loving Uncle", according to his letter to her when she was recovering from smallpox . Newton died in his sleep in London on 20 March 1727 ( OS 20 March 1726; NS 31 March 1727). He was given a ceremonial funeral, attended by nobles, scientists, and philosophers, and was buried in Westminster Abbey among kings and queens. He was the first scientist to be buried in the abbey. Voltaire may have been present at his funeral. A bachelor, he had divested much of his estate to relatives during his last years, and died intestate . His papers went to John Conduitt and Catherine Barton . Shortly after his death,

17136-400: Was identified by Barrow in a letter sent to Collins that August as the work "of an extraordinary genius and proficiency in these things". Newton later became involved in a dispute with Leibniz over priority in the development of calculus. Most modern historians believe that Newton and Leibniz developed calculus independently, although with very different mathematical notations . However, it

17272-604: Was inspired by the visions of Ellen G. White . As Price's career progressed, he gained attention outside of Seventh-day Adventist groups, and by 1929 he was a popular scientific author among Christian fundamentalists , though those who were not Seventh-day Adventists rejected his young Earth theories. Through the middle of the 20th century, despite debates between Protestant Christian scientists, Flood geology maintained traction amongst evangelical Christian circles. Historian Ronald Numbers argues that an ideological connection by evangelical Christians wanting to challenge aspects of

17408-470: Was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, ... and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?" Newton also constructed a primitive form of a frictional electrostatic generator , using a glass globe. In his book Opticks , Newton

17544-428: Was not the first of the age of reason: He was the last of the magicians." Newton's contributions to science cannot be isolated from his interest in alchemy. This was at a time when there was no clear distinction between alchemy and science. In 1704, Newton published Opticks , in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter

17680-498: Was pointed out that there existed photographic evidence that the Milky Way was composed of millions of stars, he responded that the pictures had been faked by "reactionary" astronomers. He responded in a similar way when it was pointed out that the surface temperature of the Moon had been measured in excess of 100 °C in the daytime, writing to rocket expert Willy Ley : "Either you believe in me and learn, or you will be treated as

17816-473: Was pronounced "Noah" in Palestine. Numerous and often detailed parallels make clear that the Genesis flood narrative is dependent on the Mesopotamian epics, and particularly on Gilgamesh, which is thought to date from c. 1300–1000 BCE. Numbers in the Bible often have symbolic or idiomatic meaning, and the 40 days and nights for which rain fell on the Earth indicates a complete cycle. The flood begins on

17952-457: Was proved in 1731, four years after his death. Starting with the second edition of his Principia , Newton included a final section on science philosophy or method. It was here that he wrote his famous line, in Latin, "hypotheses non fingo", which can be translated as "I don't make hypotheses," (the direct translation of "fingo" is "frame", but in context he was advocating against the use of hypotheses in science). He went on to posit that if there

18088-430: Was the first heat transfer formulation and serves as the formal basis of convective heat transfer , made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound , and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid . Furthermore, he made early investigations into electricity , with an idea from his book Opticks arguably the beginning of the field theory of the electric force . In addition to his creation of calculus, as

18224-513: Was the first to show a diagram using a prism as a beam expander, and also the use of multiple-prism arrays. Some 278 years after Newton's discussion, multiple-prism beam expanders became central to the development of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers . Also, the use of these prismatic beam expanders led to the multiple-prism dispersion theory . Subsequent to Newton, much has been amended. Young and Fresnel discarded Newton's particle theory in favour of Huygens' wave theory to show that colour

18360-445: Was the first to use power series with confidence and to revert power series. His work on infinite series was inspired by Simon Stevin 's decimals. In 1666, Newton observed that the spectrum of colours exiting a prism in the position of minimum deviation is oblong, even when the light ray entering the prism is circular, which is to say, the prism refracts different colours by different angles. This led him to conclude that colour

18496-418: Was the sixth since Earth began and that a new collision was inevitable. Believers argued that the great flood described in the Bible and the destruction of Atlantis were caused by the fall of previous moons. Hörbiger had various responses to the criticism that he received. If it was pointed out to him that his assertions did not work mathematically, he responded: "Calculation can only lead you astray." If it

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