Re: more squiggly lines

["Gunnar Tomasson" <gunnar.tomasson@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Barkley,

There is no mention in the index of Gale Christianson's thoroughly
researched biography of Newton of either the Three-Body Problem nor
Poincare.

Indeed, I am persuaded that the problem goes much, much deeper.

In this respect, and for what it is worth, my own independent research in
solar system mechanics in the 1970s led me to a conclusion which, several
years later, I was pleased to learn from Christianson's book was identical
to that of the one of his contemporaries whose talents Newton respected
without reservation:

"The Cartesian Christian Huygens, whose admiration for Newton's mathematical
and deductive skills was considerable, had nevertheless labeled his
principle of universal gravitation a "manifest absurdity."" (Op. cit., p.
529)

Gunnar

----- Original Message -----
From: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
To: "Gunnar Tomasson" <gunnar.tomasson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Post Keynesian Thought" <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 3:15 PM
Subject: Re: more squiggly lines


> Gunnar,
>       I don't think that I want to get into the philosophy/
> epistemology debate here.  But, all you have shown
> here is that Newton was aware of the "three body
> problem," a deep problem in Newtonian mechanics
> that he failed to solve and understood that he had
> failed to solve.  Its "solution" ("description," "explanation"?)
> came with Poincare in 1890, and involved the discovery/
> invention of qualitative differential equations, as well as
> of chaos theory, although that name would not be applied
> to it until the 1970s.
> Barkley Rosser
>