Talk:The Parable of the Solar System Model

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[edit] formatting

I've altered the formatting on this page so it no longer breaks margins. Can somebody locate a source for this entry? I've looked but I can't find anything external to reference it with. --Davril2020 17:06, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I've altered the formatting and language again to make it more sane. I've removed the 'cleanup' tag but put it back in if you think it still needs attention. --Davril2020 15:10, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

Where is the source for this article? It should be merged with the main article (or, possibly, one on the history solar system modelling!) Zerbey 03:40, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Well that's my point - I can't find a source for it - at this point I don't even know if it is true or not. It's been some time now and nobody has offered a potential reference - I've put up a factual accuracy dispute to see if anyone can clear it up. I haven't seen this story anywhere else, though. --Davril2020 21:41, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dispute

Since my initial comment some time ago nobody has recommended a source and the main 'Newton' article does not mention this incidence. --Davril2020 21:44, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

The story is all over the internet, mainly on pro-creationism web sites, however I've not been able to find a reliable source. Some sites add that the friend was immediately converted to christianity. The story is also a favourite of e-mail forwarders. It is featured in the book, "God's Story" by Anne Graham Lotz BUT none of the books referenced in her bibliography are biographies if Issac Newton.
It is possible it has been fabricated, or otherwise embellished over the years but it's certainly plausible that it could have happened. I will dig out some of my Isaac Newton biographies and see what I can find. Zerbey 01:41, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
I've amended it and inserted a note that it is possibly apocryphal. I don't see any reason to keep the 'dispute' tag up any longer. If someone locates a source they can add it and remove the 'apocryphal' component. --Davril2020 15:10, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
It looks better now. Either way, it's too obscure to be given it's own article, IMHO. Zerbey 16:58, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Too suspicious? Probably not, w/o a more credible source.

It may be merely my suspicious mind, but internal aspects of this story make me doubt it.

A clockwork mechanism of the type suggested here is often called an orrey, and prior to a complete working out of a Newtonian account of Solar System body motions, could not have even been attempted. Several folk became famous for building them (Rittenhouse, for instance, impressed Thomas Jefferson by, among other things, doing so), but that was decades after Newton's death. I can recall no mention of any such effort by Newton in any account I've come across; and, such things being quite impressive even decades later, I expect it would have made an quite notable impression on Newton's contemporaries. Indeed, was the clockwork art (eg, gear design, gear fabricational precision, adequately low bearing friction, etc) good enough in Newton's time to build such a thing? On any but a pretty large scale, the precison required wasn't available then, I think. My sense of it is that it was very much a bleeding edge state of the art business for Rittenhouse and his fellows, those many decades after Newton's death. Someone with a better sense of the history of the mechanical arts will know better than I.

In any case, did Newton ever perform such a complete working out of planetary motion? I expect not, for the data gathering and reduction is something of a full time occupation in itself (eg, Herschel, LeVerrier / Adams (both in re Neptune), and even Gauss in re a comet's orbit) and my vague memory is that it also requires more mastery of analysis (ie, the calculus of motion) than was available to Newton. A major point of Laplace's Mechanique Celeste was just such an account and it, and Laplace, also date from many decades after Newton's death. My sense of it is that much of Laplace's work therein was new ca 1800.

Second, the idea of a smashed mechanism reversing its smashing spontaneously has a distinct tinge of explanations of entropy for layfolk in re statistical thermodynamics (eg, Boltzmann) more than a century after Newton's death. The famous reassembling teacup is such an example from the current holder of the Lucasian chair. I can't remember any account of such a conceit prior to the mid/late 1800s, if then. Now my memory is not what it used to be, and wasn't notable even then, but there is a discernable economy of explanatory metaphor in science_for_the_layman and I suspect this was so in Newton's time as well. Some would call it plagarism, but ideas and emtaphors don't of course fit the definition. Science writers for the non scientists are surely relieved.

Third, there is a very avidly argued controversy in contenporary times between, on the one hand, scientifically supported accounts of the Big Bang (in re Newton's account of motion which does not thus far require a Prime Mover), and evolutionalry processes in biology (which also don't require a Prime Designer, also thus far), and on the other those who feel such accounts are at odds with one or more religious accounts of such matters. In particular, Creationists feel very strongly that any account consistent with scientifically supported evidence is wrong as non-religious if not actively anti-religious, specifically with Judeo-Christian accounts. More recently, in respect to species origins and to scientific accounts of evolutionary processes, advocates of intelligent design have claimed that biological complexity is too much to account for by any natural (ie, non-supernatural) process with which science is concerned, and so, by default, the only remaining possibility is an intelligent designer somewhere -- though not necessarily a Judeo-Christian sort. The present story is an almost exact fit with the intelligent design arguement. In fact, it is congruent (ie, "famous authority thought to be against, really is for") with the story of Darwin's recantation of natural selection (and so of evolution), and his born again conversion to (more or less Wilberforcean orthodoxy), on his death bed.

Fourth, this parable reflect Newton's quite dangerous non orthodoxy which he was lucky to be able to avoid potentially fatal conflict about. Whether the exact details of his heresy differ from orthodoxy (which of those available in his times is a matter of some interest I suspect, but it's clear it wasn't an Anglican (nor certainly a Puritan) one) in regard to creation issues is not at all even dimly clear to me. More work with his surviving unexamined papers may clarify things on this point. But nothing of this conflict (if there was any) is apparent from this story. An important point, for Newton spent more time and effort on his theology and related investigations than on his science, and so any conflict would have mattered to him.

But, to be clear in a much convoluted matter, there is a long history (and probably prehistory, if assorted interpretations of cave paintings and prehistoric sculpture are included) of human conviction that someone or something must be in charge at a higher level than ours. Long before, and long after, Newton. Voltaire's observation about man inevitably inventing a god in the absence of one is psychologically apposite here. It's not that long extant issue precisely, but rather the details (or lack thereof) in this parable which evoke my suspicion.

Pending better references, I'm inclined to think this story is, in origin, actually a contemporary rhetorical weapon in the conflict seen by some of the religious between science and their religion. At heart a reificational confusion in my view, but this is obiter dicta in regard to the point I'm making here. Again, pending such better references, I strongly oppose including it on WP (except in an article on such weaponry) and especially oppose inclusion in any factual article on Newton. ww 19:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)


I'm neutral on adding it to the Newton main article. So long as it has a note stating it may be apocryphal then I don't see a reason to delete. I'd put in for not notable before factually inaccurate anyway. --Davril2020 20:14, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Further to the above comments I have deleted the merge tag. Everyone involved is either opposed to the move or at least, not thrilled about the prospect - to say nothing about the fact that we still have no source for it. A number of people have noted it is widely disseminated on certain websites but that doesn't itself make it factual.

I personally am opposed to deleting it entirely as it is a well-known story. I've increased the scepticism of the story again and made it explicit. If anyone feels there is a serious reason to delete it please say so. --Davril2020 22:38, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why are these links considered to be spam?

I recently added these external links to the article page:

Afterwards, I noticed that they were apparently identified as spam. I have no affiliation with these websites. I added them after I read on the talk page that someone would be interested in seeing some documented support for the story (see "Where is the source for this article?" under "Merge"), and I did a Google search and found them. I did not intend to promote any commercial site. If I was in error, please remove one or both of the links as needed, but please explain to me on this talk page why I should consider either or both of these links to be spam. (If it is this easy to add spam links unintentionally, an editor could become apprehensive about adding any external links.) -- Wavelength 19:41, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I discovered the apparent spam identification by clicking on "What links here" on the article page, and then seeing links to the following pages.

-- Wavelength 05:23, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Newton's belief in divine design is not "supposed"

While this parable is probably not true, there is little doubt that Newton firmly bellieved that the arrangement of the Solar System depended quite directly on the hand of God. In the General Scholium of the Principia, he describes the orderly layout of the planets and moons and then concludes that...

"... it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions[...]. [...] This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. "


72.225.141.55 20:26, 31 August 2007 (UTC) D. Morgan, Professor of Physics

Source for the above, is the General Scholium, added to the Principia in 1713. [1] —Duae Quartunciae (talk · cont) 20:45, 31 August 2007 (UTC)