I am trying to better understand Newton's raw intelligence and put it in context of the raw intellect of scientist and mathematicians today. Can someone put in context his raw intelligence in comparison to modern day mathematicians raw intelligence? I am not talking about knowledge, but raw intellect.
Here are some excerpts about him:
"William Whewell (1794-1866) memorably commented on this aspect of Newton's work:
Nobody since Newton has been able to use geometrical methods to the same extent for the like purposes; and as we read the Principia we feel as when we are in an ancient armoury where the weapons are of gigantic size; and as we look at them we marvel what manner of man he was who could use as a weapon what we can scarcely lift as a burden.
There is a mathematical result in Book I of the Principia, about the algebraic non-integrability of smooth ovals, that was not appreciated until it was re-discovered 300 years later by V. I. Arnold and others. There, Newton makes a topological argument long before topology was invented as such. (Arnold points out that it was the first impossibility proof since the ancient Greeks.)
He generalized the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents. He contributed greatly to the theory of power series (the "Taylor series" is more Newton's than Taylor's). He classified most of the cubic plane curves (in the process helping to develop the techniques of projective geometry) and he showed how to construct the conic section for five given points or tangent lines. Those who work on numerical analysis are very familiar with "Newton's method" for approximating the roots of a real-valued function. Also well known are "Newton's identities" relating the powers of the roots of a polynomial with the coefficients of that polynomial."
I am sure Newton's IQ was off the chart but how the fuck did they arrive at that specific figure?
Nolan Nelson
In addition to that that site estimates people alive today who certainly are no where near Newton's level of intellect.
Luis Edwards
Well for starters, to be good at science implies a good IQ, to be a genius an even higher IQ and to do what Newton did, higher than that
Jaxson Flores
Still, that doesn't strike me as sufficient to arrive at an estimate of his IQ. The only thing we could say is that it must have been very high.
Dylan Butler
I love Newton the more I read about him:
"Later, Newton would include in a list of sins written in shorthand in a private notebook: "Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them."
"Newton was initially a poor student at Grantham, but after he became more interested in his schoolwork he rose to the top of the class. Several anecdotes indicate that the young Newton had a hot temper (he later accused himself in his private notebooks of hitting other children) as well as an unusually inquisitive mind. He was very fond of drawing, carving sundials, and building contraptions."
I put that method to use and concluded that your IQ is 68. Sorry, that's now your IQ.
Chase Bell
Newton was more or less as intelligent as 80th percentile human today. Read about flynn effect. But it's not just his intelligence that made him brilliant.
Caleb Brown
"While Newton was at the school, a windmill was being constructed at the top of Gonerby Hill on the Great North Road. Windmills were locally relatively unusual, where most mills were water mills. Isaac was fascinated by its construction and walked each day after school to observe the progress. He returned to Mr Clarke's house and built a replica of it. He used cloth for the sails and fixed it to the roof of his lodgings. Because its operation was reliant on the wind, Isaac built a wheel so that the sails could be turned by a mouse, which he called his mouse miller. The only problem was that the mouse ate the corn that he was grinding. Newton also made a lantern of 'crumpled paper' to light his way to school on dark winter mornings, which he used to fold up and put in his pocket during the day. He fastened his lantern to a kite and frightened the surrounding neighbours who were worried that it would set fire to their houses. On 3rd September 1658, the day that Oliver Cromwell died, there was a great storm throughout the country. By jumping first with the wind and then against it, and comparing leaps with those on a calm day, he measured 'the vis [i.e. force] of the storm'. He puzzled the other boys by telling them that the storm was a foot stronger than any he had known before. He then showed them the marks of his leaps."
Elijah Carter
People in the 80 percentile today are generally not that smart user.
Dominic Richardson
>Read about flynn effect Have you met any 80th percentile humans today? I suspect this post is bait but still.
Dominic Clark
We're talking about intelligence, not 'smartness' Yes, this is more or less the average here I'd estimate.
Carter Taylor
ok
Christian Lopez
Precisely. Do you think the average poster here could have done all the shit Newton did? It's one thing to learn something that someone else has already figured out, it's a different problem entirely when you're the first.
Tyler Watson
A person in the 80th percentile would have trouble completing a degree in an STEM field like physics, math, engineering, etc. let alone invent the field that these STEM majors study.
Easton Cook
>Do you think the average poster here could have done all the shit Newton did? No, that's not what intelligence is about. Intelligence is only your capacity to reason and understand. Coming up with revolutionary theories is not a part of intelligence, but intelligence is necessary to understand them. If you learn and understand Newton's work, then you're as capable as him. Will you learn and understand his work? That depends on your interests, motivation, etc. Maybe they would. Doesn't mean they aren't as intelligent as Newton, intelligence once again is not the only thing that predicts your academic success.
Michael Sanders
Idk man it doesn't seem that hard, not to belittle Newton I feel like anyone that seriously concerned themselves with the motion of objects could've come up with Newton's laws developing calculus might be a different story
Gavin Walker
>this thread where brainlets compare themselves to newton
Justin Fisher
>t. brainlet who denies increase of human intelligence with time
Ayden Murphy
>If you learn and understand Newton's work, then you're as capable as him. No. Not at all. It takes much more brainpower to come up with a solution to a difficult problem than it does to understand an existing one. I am comfortable with calculus and understand it, but I would never have come up with it myself with no one to guide me.
Josiah Richardson
>I feel like anyone that seriously concerned themselves with the motion of objects could've come up with Newton's laws Except nobody did. Gallileo, Kepler, Hooke, Halley - smart men, didn't figure ut out.
Aiden Parker
Notice that you used the word brainpower, which does not mean intelligence.
Eli James
>increase of human intelligence with time except you can't prove that's what it is you retard
The most likely explanation is that it's a result of rapid advances in medicine and nutrition. You can't extrapolate it before the 20th century, or to the future.
Joshua Rogers
Sooo.....?
Jayden Morales
Do you think any mechanic who can fix an internal combustion engine could have invented it? That any grunt who can disassemble an m16 could have designed the intricate direct impingement system? I said brainpower as a vague proxy for intelligence because our understanding of the precise problem solving processes in our brains is still in its infancy. But on an intuitive level, higher intelligence lets you keep track of and manipulate more complicated patterns and data. This task takes a lot more processing power when you don't know what the solution is and have to dig more deeply in every facet of the problem, as opposed to just reconciling a set of known steps to your world model.
You are not even remotely equal to someone like Newton. Trying to extrapolate intelligence from the flynn effect is the same as predicting unbounded population growth in the western world back in the 19th century. You're taking what is most likely a local effect and applying it out of bounds. By that logic the ancients would have had the problem solving abilities of an amoeaba.
James Nguyen
>Sorry Archimedes but you didn't come up with calculus, therefore you're a brainlet
Adam Jackson
Hooke and Halley, along with the entire scientific comkunity, understood the solution perfectly after they'd been presented with it.
If you think solving the problem and understandig the solution are equivalent, you're the only brainlet here.
Jackson Parker
Notice how I picked smart people who studied the same problem at roughly the same time in history.
You think you're as smart as Newton just because you can follow his logic. You really are a brainlet.
Alexander Martinez
From what I've read of Newton, he had something more than just "smarts". He had the ability to focus on a problem, without distraction, for as long as it took. That's rare.
All accounts say he was a pretty unpleasant person; someone you could admire -- but at a distance. Y'know the sort of jerk who thinks and acts like he's smarter than everyone else? Imagine how obnoxious he'd be if he was right!
Nathan Baker
>except you can't prove that's what it is you retard Sure I can en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect >The most likely explanation is that it's a result of rapid advances in medicine and nutrition. You can't extrapolate it before the 20th century, or to the future. So? The reason for the increase is meaningless, nonetheless it is a fact. Just like increase in height. >Do you think any mechanic who can fix an internal combustion engine could have invented it? No retard, that's what I'm saying since the beginning. He would have absolutely 0 chance of inventing it. Could he understand it if he only pushed himself and was interested in it? If his intelligence is in the 80th percentile, yes. >You are not even remotely equal to someone like Newton. In what category? Curiosity, creativity and persistence? Absolutely agree, I'm nowhere close. Capability of understanding complex stuff? No, I'm above him. >Trying to extrapolate intelligence from the flynn effect is the same as predicting unbounded population growth in the western world back in the 19th century. You're taking what is most likely a local effect and applying it out of bounds. By that logic the ancients would have had the problem solving abilities of an amoeaba. See, I'm telling you the same stuff over and over and you just don't understand.
Jace Hernandez
Your arguments are so ridiculous I don't see how you actually believe them.
I understand the logic for higher level results in algorithms and mathematics to make As on questions surrounding them during exams and homework problem sets. Would I have ever came up with them? No. Never.
Jason Ramirez
Ridiculous because you refuse to believe the facts that human intelligence has been raising ever since, or because you feel that your authority and self-identity have been threatened? Look, literally 4th time I'm telling you this, better read it carefully now. Just because you wouldn't be able to come up with the same stuff as Newton doesn't mean you aren't as intelligent. Intelligence is a variable that you possess, independent of what you do or what you achieve. Are there plumbers with 95th percentile intelligence? Sure there are. Does it mean they are less intelligent than a 90th percentile mathematician? No.
Easton Clark
Newton believed the bible had a code and that god was trying to talk to him directly through this numerical bible code.
He was a brainlet.
"If I see further it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." No one man is responsible for large discoveries. It's just we, as humans, that like to make cults around people we admire or that exemplify traits we like. In reality there are no supermen. The march of human progress is never ending, and is done one step at a time.
Nathaniel Watson
You're so dumb it physically hurts to read your post.
Mason Bailey
You're an imbecile. Seriously consider getting sterilised. We don't need your retard genes in the future generations.
Adrian Rogers
brainlets on suicidewatch
Ryan Morgan
Underrated post. Intelligence is not the sole determiner of scientific discoveries. You need a huge support team that only grows as we march farther on in the search for knowledge.
Charles Thompson
>Newton was a brainlet. Get a load of this guy.
Chase Reed
>He was a brainlet.
Then god help us all.
Jackson Jenkins
He was a nutjob, but definitely not a brainlet cmon user
Kayden Brooks
Newton built upon the works of others. He isn't different from the other greats from the enlightenment era on. More accurately, it is probably related to the printing press and not so much the era. I am guessing Newton, like other pre-19th century minds read a lot of books.
Kayden Parker
Are you actually implying that determined study has an effect on your level of intelligence? I'm afraid you're on the wrong imageboard, desu.
Aaron Ward
You can get to Newton's laws from Kepler's laws.
Ryan Sanchez
Newton is the Newton of science. That cunt was so smart his brain made a constant whirring sound
Owen Howard
Well, if anything I'd argue that this is a sign of his intellect. Schizophrenia has an evident link with genius. Terry does basically the same. There is much higher percentage of schizophrenics in math and physics fields than in general population. Besides, I've never heard of him suffering from schizophrenia, while this is rather obvious evidence that he was schizophrenic or schiz-X.
Caleb Gonzalez
>while this is rather obvious evidence that he was schizophrenic or schiz-X. lmao you couldn't tip harder if you tried, faggot.
Tyler Ward
Newton improved Kepler's laws such that the center of rotation would be the barycenter rather than the center of the larger primary. So no, you couldn't derive Newton's laws from the original formulation of Kepler's laws.
Aiden Martinez
And if you managed to clone Newton it's quite improbable that he'd accomplish anywhere near as much. He was a product of his environment, circumstances, and time as much as his genes. And, yes, he wasted a good deal of his life on alchemy and theology. What we honor him for is the stuff he got right.
Grayson Torres
But Newton did it so...?
Isaiah Kelly
Kepler's laws, as they were originally stated, does not follow Newton's 3rd law; the planets are attracted to the Sun, but the Sun is not attracted to the planets. Although the effect is small (at least from the observations available at the time), Newton did not consider this reasonable, and improved upon it by stating that the center of rotation should be the center of mass of the rotating bodies.
Grayson Stewart
Newton, clever guy really. Although he believed that Jesus Christ sat above the earth and personally operates the "levers of gravity", so who knows. Maybe he wasn't all that clever.
Landon Brooks
Fuck off to reddit.
Isaiah Fisher
A titan. Read his own writings if you can. Reading about geniuses is a hobby of mine, and I put Newton above all others.
Dominic Hernandez
Only newfags say that. First year on 4chins?
Luis Fisher
>implying he was wrong
Isaiah Wilson
He was undeniably the smartest man who ever lived. And don't give me any bullshit about people dying young. Smart people find ways to survive.
Juan Green
>Newton was more or less as intelligent as 80th percentile human today. You're such an imbecile. Can you imagine 1 in 5 people today inventing calculus, advancing physics like crazy, etc?
Jason Perez
What are good resources to learn more about his life?
Jaxon Davis
>galois >blasted in the stomach by some whores man >dies >dumby >mfw
Jacob Gray
The only thing that impresses me about Newton is the binomial theorem thing Like seriously wtf And to prove I know what I'm talking about I'm going to mention the gamma function he was brilliant but he's not the only person in the world that could've done that shit, I am team anti-dickriders
>call someone an imbecile >can't comprehend 3 simple sentences
Christopher Johnson
>His father, who had died shortly before Newton was born, was a yeoman farmer, and it was intended that Newton should carry on the paternal farm. He was sent to school at Grantham, where his learning and mechanical proficiency excited some attention. In 1656 he returned home to learn the business of a farmer, but spent most of his time solving problems, making experiments, or devising mechanical models; his mother noticing this, sensibly resolved to find some more congenial occupation for him, and his uncle, having been himself educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, recommended that he should be sent there. uncle hadn't been educated/existed = newton lives a life of a smart farmer top kek
Landon Howard
C'mon the laws of motion are obvious bro But I guess Newton did a bunch of other shit (mostly math)
Jose Thompson
also TIL newton didn't learn any math until 19
Ian Morgan
>newton had no kids
Sums up why the west is such a shithole today
Evan Hill
Indeed. He is born to uneducated parents, one dies, and his path is set to be a farmer. He enrolls in school, and goes from
>"there picked up a book on astrology, but could not understand it on account of the geometry and trigonometry. "
(i.e. not knowing any math)
to
>"He therefore bought a Euclid, and was surprised to find how obvious the propositions seemed."
to
>"written in the same year as that in which he took is B.A. degree, which is the earliest documentary proof of his invention of fluxions. It was about the same time that he discovered the binomial theorem."
and to think if it weren't for his uncle he'd just be a farmer as mention
Eli Hall
kids are the mind killer my spawn will be raised by the academy
Chase Bailey
Imma letcha finish but Carl Friedrich Gauss had the greatest intellect of all time.
Chase Taylor
>He was a brainlet. You need to be shot
Xavier Richardson
You mean GauB, brainlet
Cameron Ross
You can't read. Try again
Elijah Wood
What language are we writing in right now? I bet you think that Spanish speakers who insist on using the Spanish pronunciation while speaking English are doing nothing wrong. Aside from the fact that the ß is not a B.
Liam Edwards
>you can't read >he angrily and tearfully wrote to the guy who cannot read
Xavier Kelly
Gauss is not a living scientist and the point of the thread was to compare Newton's raw intelligence to living scientist raw intelligence. Instead you / it came in and just made a comment that is offtopic
Julian Flores
He was clearly brilliant, but the fact that Leibniz independently created calculus makes me feel that he wasn't head and shoulders above his contemporaries. His brilliance largely comes from the his ability to synthesize post-Galileo knowledge in a novel way. It wasn't like Einstein, who basically pulled relatively out of his hat.
Gabriel Wood
This
Daniel Rodriguez
>can't spot obvious bait
John Watson
Unironically this. Anyone who believes in God, even 400 years ago, is a retard.
Camden Robinson
>Einstein, who basically pulled relatively out of his hat. But, he didn't you twit. Einstein's theory is even less original than Newton's. How jewish are you and why are you lot such lying pieces of shit? Of all the people to develop a higher average IQ it had to be the snivelling, tribalist jews. I bet the west would have been a lot better were the dominant cast Farsis instead of jewish pricks.
Caleb Kelly
I cringed
Matthew Walker
>>>THE utility of biography, Dr. Johnson argued, rests on the fact that we can enter by sympathy into situations in which others have found themselves. Parallel circumstances to which we can conform our minds shape every life. Even the great are not removed from the factors common to all: "We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure." I must confess that twenty years devoted to the biography of Newton have not in my case confirmed Dr. Johnson's dictum. The more I have studied him, the more Newton has receded from me. It has been my privilege at various times to know a number of brilliant men, men whom I acknowledge without hesitation to be my intellectual superiors. I have never, however, met one against whom I was unwilling to measure myself, so that it seemed reasonable to say that I was half as able as the person in question, or a third or a fourth, but in every case a finite fraction. The end result of my study of Newton has served to convince me that with him there is no measure. He has become for me wholly other, one of the tiny handful of supreme geniuses who have shaped the categories of the human intellect, a man not finally reducible to the criteria by which we comprehend our fellow beings, those parallel circumstances of Dr. Johnson.
This is a quote from a man who spent 20 years of his life studying Newton as a biographer. Newton was completely other wordly. It makes one question whether his birth on December 25 was a coincidence or not
Brody Sanders
Newton didn't learn math until he was 18. In his early twenties he revolutionized the field.
Ryder Jones
>Coming up with revolutionary theories is not a part of intelligence You're a fucking retard.
Samuel King
Well, he believed in God so I would estimate that his IQ couldn't be above 85.
Alexander Turner
reported
Jason James
What would the IQ of a person in the 80th percentile be? Memes aside, anything like 120 or above is pretty impressive to me. It seems that Veeky Forums makes it look like people in the 140s or beyond are way more common than they actually are while in fact they are VERY rare, even among PhDs in places like MIT or Harvard. Just hyphothesizing, not affirming anything though.
Matthew Reyes
Very rare? Assuming a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15 an IQ of 140+ would be 1/261 people, it's fairly rare but you probably know several, especially if you're in academia or another profession that attracts more intelligent people, and 80th percentile would be 113.
Wyatt Sullivan
Not them, but I don't really believe IQ test fully measures intelligence.
You have disability kids with ADHD/Anxiety that are in 130+ range that would score 90-100 range due to slow processing speeds or anxiety. Some IQ test give "boost" for quickness vs just testing for correctness. IQ test tend to miss and underestimate the scores of deep, slow thinkers.
James Carter
1/261 people would be 0.38% of the population. How is that not very rare? A person in that level is smarter than 99.62% of the world population. For me, that's incredibly smart. An IQ of 113 seems impressive too. Being smarter than 80% of the entire population is a big deal. Being smarter than 99.6% instead of 99.5% (hell, even 90%) of humans is hardly something. I do understand now why people say that IQs too high are meaningless. It just means that you have a couple less autism points than a handful of people, but in general you are still very much above most people.
Chase Wright
Wouldn't ADHD people have higher processing speed than most people? I figure that being able to jump from one subject to another all the time requires a very fast brain.
Nicholas Walker
IQ is dumb. See You know smart people when you come across them. Newton was clearly above many others, and is no doubt a genius.
Also, I think the point is getting at, is while it is rare in general to find smart people, it is more common to find them in any top 50 PhD program in an STEM field as graduate students and obviously professors. I think it is pretty common to see smart grad students in top 50 programs. Does it matter what their IQ is? Absolutely not. Because IQ doesn't really measure full blown intelligence accurately and isn't also correlated with finding the Newton's of the world. There are some very unconventional thinkers IQ test would underestimate.
Joshua Diaz
>Wouldn't ADHD people have higher processing speed than most people?
Not necessarily. ADHD can prevent you from fully focusing. IQ test can dock you for not answering in a quick manner. When you have to continuously focus and refocus this works against you in IQ test. It would deflate your scores artificially.
Ian Flores
Then AHDH will keep you from arriving at the answer to a given problem, meaning that the "distance" you have to run is longer due to constant detours, but it doesn't mean that your speed is low. Your average speed will be lower, obviously, but your instantaneous speed won't. I do think that AHDH brains are faster than most, and they are so fast they will easily end up in places very far from where they started (but also from what they want to get).
Josiah Murphy
I agree, but IQ test tend to punish such deviations in their strict grading. That is one reason not to put much stock in them. You know smart people when you come across them. Doesn't matter what their IQ test says, when you come across a smart person, you know it.
Grayson Garcia
The brain has finite attention resources. ADHD people use up those resources on impulse so there's not much left for other things. t. armchair shrink
Wyatt Sullivan
I do understand your point, but I also understood that smart people are rare (even the slightly above average) even in academia, that's why they are so praised. I mean, Newton wouldn't be regarded as the way he is if he was in the same percentile (of IQ or any other measure of intelligence you may) as his academic peers.
James Williams
The average grad student at a top 50 school is probably fairly gifted. But compared to someone like Newton, Newton is levels beyond them.
I believe Gauss and Newton both grew up to uneducated/poor families and in Newton's world, he studied math later than probably other kids because he was set to be a farmer. It didn't take him very long to learn what his peers knew and surpass them.
Eli Thompson
Idk either of their situations but they were mathematicians (even Newton mostly) and some people just click with math I think Newton's farmer upbringing probably helped his scientific research into motion. He knew how to work with his hands and experiment, you just don't get that nowadays as much.
