Re: more squiggly lines

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Gunnar,
      I don't care what this bio says.  What you
described Newton worrying about, the fact
that in properly modeling the motion of the moon
around the earth one must take into account the
fact that the earth is going around the sun, which
is also exerting a gravitational pull on the moon,
is indeed the original three body problem, whatever
Newton called it.
Barkley Rosser
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gunnar Tomasson" <gunnar.tomasson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
Cc: "Post Keynesian Thought" <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 4:41 PM
Subject: Re: more squiggly lines


> 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
> >
>
>