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Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? - Education - Nairaland

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Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by julybaba(m): 3:40pm On Mar 03, 2020
He did indeed. Or more accurately, he pushed a needle behind his eye and with it, indented the sclera. The needle never entered the eye.

By doing so, he stimulated his retina in many spots and noted a "phosphene" or glowing spot that resulted from the pressure. From this he was able to "map" his own retina against where he saw the spots.

This map conformed to the map on the back of a rabbit's retina that he made by shining light from a window, through a pinhole, into the rabbit's eye that had an opening cut away from the sclera allowing him to see into the rabbit's eye.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8aRRHKTxvc?t=24m15s

And thus Newton showed how the rays of light enter our eye by an optical system now called the camera design. And how the retina represents the outside world but with inversion (up is down and left is right).

Newton was a dedicated scientist who was willing to accept some pain and personal risk to satisfy his curiosity.

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Sir-Isaac-Newton-stick-a-needle-in-his-eye?q=Isaac%20Newton%20stick%20a%20needle


Why didn't Isaac Newton get married?

Let me start by pointing out that being unmarried was far from unusual for a scholar in Newton’s day.

In fact, the statutes of the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge required that students, college fellows, tutors, and professors be unmarried.

This was an inheritance from the Catholic university system of the Middle Ages, in which the members of a university were clergymen vowed to celibacy and living together as a quasi-monastic community.

Though the Protestant Reformation had done away with the requirement that Christian clergymen remain celibate, married life was still perceived as being at odds with the devotion to learning and the communal life expected within a university.

Thus, a graduate could be ordained as an Anglican priest, marry, and be assigned to a parish, but he then left the university.

Several other of the most eminent European scientists of the Renaissance and early modern period, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Christiaan Huygens, Gottfried Leibniz, and Robert Hooke, never married either.

Some of these, however, were sexually active: Galileo had three children with his long-time mistress, while Hooke had a clandestine relationship with his much younger niece.

After Newton moved to London and resigned his Cambridge professorship at the age of sixty, it would have been natural and socially deft for him to have married.

There is some indication that Newton’s friends John Locke and Samuel Pepys may have tried to introduce Newton to a suitable prospective wife (perhaps a respectable widow), but that Newton reacted very negatively.

There is a famous letter in which Newton recalls having been greatly upset by a sense that Locke had “endeavoured to embroil me with women”.

Newton’s private writings show that he regarded strict celibacy as part of the freely chosen ascetic lifestyle that he saw as suited to his vocation as a scholar.

Some of Newton’s 20th-century biographers suggested that he might have been homosexually inclined, but there is no real evidence for that.

The foremost expert today on Newton’s private manuscripts, Prof. Robert Iliffe of the University of Sussex (who is also the director of the Newton Project
(http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=1)) finds that Newton’s sexual impulses, which he deliberately restrained throughout his life, were directed towards women.

On this aspect of Newton’s personality, see the second half of this lecture delivered by Prof. Iliffe a few years ago at the University of California at Berkeley: Rob Iliffe, "Self-experiment, Sex, and the Care of the Self" (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8aRRHKTxvc?t=24m14s).

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Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by fulaniHERDSman(m): 3:42pm On Mar 03, 2020
shocked
Pinsure and video or U know the rest
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Frezhkid10(m): 3:53pm On Mar 03, 2020
Because of what grin
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by scoundrel(f): 5:14pm On Mar 03, 2020
No source. Fake news.

1 Like

Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Nobody: 5:46pm On Mar 03, 2020
Because his name 'Isaac,' is pronounced as 'EYE-ZIK'

4 Likes

Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by finalboss(m): 6:08pm On Mar 03, 2020
justnock:
Because his name 'Isaac,' is pronounced as 'EYE-ZIK'

grin grin
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by cRobo: 6:17pm On Mar 03, 2020
I won't say a word
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Osasnidas(m): 7:05pm On Mar 03, 2020
He is not the father of optics for nothing....
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Evangkatsoulis: 7:07pm On Mar 03, 2020
julybaba:
He did indeed. Or more accurately, he pushed a needle behind his eye and with it, indented the sclera. The needle never entered the eye.

By doing so, he stimulated his retina in many spots and noted a "phosphene" or glowing spot that resulted from the pressure. From this he was able to "map" his own retina against where he saw the spots.

This map conformed to the map on the back of a rabbit's retina that he made by shining light from a window, through a pinhole, into the rabbit's eye that had an opening cut away from the sclera allowing him to see into the rabbit's eye.

And thus Newton showed how the rays of light enter our eye by an optical system now called the camera design. And how the retina represents the outside world but with inversion (up is down and left is right).

Newton was a dedicated scientist who was willing to accept some pain and personal risk to satisfy his curiosity.
That means the guy na genius.
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Appelmoik(m): 7:09pm On Mar 03, 2020
He went too far I would say.

Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by teemotee: 7:42pm On Mar 03, 2020
undecided mtcheeew
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Makavelli25: 8:04pm On Mar 03, 2020
My baba for heaven. Give me half baba quarter sef of this man brain
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Iceyjay(m): 8:13pm On Mar 03, 2020
Appelmoik:
He went too far I would say.
Life of a scientist.
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by julybaba(m): 8:21pm On Mar 03, 2020
He was born the way he was.

His life experience and his innate and unique and very great talent drove him towards a highly intellectual life.

He had a very difficult childhood. His father died before Newton ever got to know him, his mother remarried to a wealthy man, and she went to live at her new husband’s house.

She abandoned Newton, or so it certainly seems that Newton felt she did. He never forgave his mother. He became a driven man.

This may have made a difference to what he did, to what he accomplished, but his brilliance was inborn. There is little doubt of that.


Only people who have never met first rate mathematicians or physicists talk about them as if they are the same as all others, the only difference being the application of hard work at the right time, or some uniquely lucky position in history that makes them stand out.

If you once talk to a really brilliant mathematician or physicist, watch them solve a problem, then your opinion changes.
At the same time he was quite capable of fighting and he is famous for having defeated a class bully physically.

He became top of his class. He was a very hard man in later life when he was offered what was undoubtedly intended to be a sinecure at the Mint. He found out counterfeiters and had one of them executed, he wouldn’t listen at all to the man’s plea for a pardon, or a reduction of the sentence.


Contrary to other opinions expressed here, Isaac Newton was not simply the right man at the right place and time. This is a comforting myth. He was certainly unusually intelligent, this was recognized early on by his teachers, and he became a brilliant and original thinker in mathematics.

He was unusually suited for the work that he did in physics, which was a tiny fraction of his intellectual output. People like to believe that all are created equal, when it comes to intellectual abilities.

This idea cannot be farther from the truth. Genius is quite real, and Isaac Newton was one of the unique geniuses in human history.

There is no answer to explain why he was the way he was, but it remains the truth that he was unique.

Why is it that people find this simple truth difficult to accept when it is said about a physicist or a mathematician, that they were simply much more talented than others, but find it easy to accept when it concerns figures in athletic endeavors, or in music?

A voice like Caruso, or Pavarotti, or Ella Fitzgerald? We know that such things are unique. We know that not everyone dances like Nureyev or Baryshnikov. Not everyone can, no matter how they try.


We know that there was only one Johann Sebastian Bach, only one Mozart, only one Rachmaninov. No one really questions such things. But when it comes to intellect …

I could have worked like a madman trying to run a sub 4 minute mile, but I was not born with the same ability, the same physique that made it possible for Roger Bannister.

Five minutes to run a mile was torture for me to accomplish, even with huge amounts of practice, and I have a heart abnormality to boot.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfCMtaNiMDM

Do people really think that performances like the one above are commonplace or are or can be achieved merely by training and by hard work?

3 Likes

Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by julybaba(m): 8:31pm On Mar 03, 2020
These are the Positions held by Newton::
* 1667 -- Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
* 1669 -- Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge (a position now held by Stephen Hawking)
* 1689 -- Member of Parliament representing Cambridge
* 1699 -- Master of the Mint
* 1701 to 1702 -- Member of Parliament for the second time
* 1703 -- President of the Royal Society of London, the United Kingdom’s national academy of science
* 1705 -- Knighted

It was an outstanding track record in case of an academic career. Newton had one of the most celebrated educational backgrounds.

**I can not believe that a person can achieve all this with just intelligence.**

So why was Newton unique?

>Sir Isaac Newton needed **3-4 hours of sleep daily**. He worked so long and hard, often without sleep for days that he became ill from exhaustion.

>"He was suddenly struck by an amazing thought. Perhaps the moon was trying to fall to earth (a much larger mass than the moon).

Perhaps there was some other force preventing it from doing so.
What if the centrifugal force pulling the moon away from the earth was perfectly balanced with gravity force pulling the moon toward the earth?

If that were true it might also account for the movement of the earth around the sun, in fact, all the planets.

How about the entire universe? Wow! What a concept.

No wonder he couldn’t sleep."

(Reference: Isaac Newton (http://www.famouslives.com/isaacnewton.html))

**What did we learn from this?**
1. Newton’s dedication level was insane.

2. Newton took his work seriously, and believe it or not, making your work seriously can give you an insane amount of positive motivation.

Sufficient convincing assumptions…

2 Likes

Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Hisduchess(f): 8:47pm On Mar 03, 2020
If you can control your sexual urge you are likely able to control 70-80% of life decisions with clear eyes especially for a man so I think that's why some of them great scientists chose that path.celibacy is more about control than anything.that's my thought anyway

4 Likes 2 Shares

Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by julybaba(m): 8:53pm On Mar 03, 2020
Hisduchess:
If you can control your sexual urge you are likely able to control 70-80% of life decisions with clear eyes especially for a man so I think that's why some of them great scientists chose that path.celibacy is more about control than anything.that's my thought anyway

Yes.
Smarter teens, in fact, tend to delay their initiation of coital activities. A 2012 study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that high working memory decreases the likelihood of early adolescent sexual debut.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/282889/

1 Like

Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by ObinnaObinna(m): 11:42pm On Mar 03, 2020
scoundrel:
No source. Fake news.
Did you even care to check any of the attached links? Over sabi!
This post is quite articulate.
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by scoundrel(f): 11:48pm On Mar 03, 2020
ObinnaObinna:

Did you even care to check any of the attached links? Over sabi!
This post is quite articulate.
The sources were posted before you entered the thread and after I left.
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by ObinnaObinna(m): 11:52pm On Mar 03, 2020
scoundrel:

The sources were posted before you entered the thread and after I left.

But what would even make you think the article was fake in the first place?
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Papadoh(m): 11:59pm On Mar 03, 2020
huh?!
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Okechukwu87: 11:59pm On Mar 03, 2020
Evangkatsoulis:

That means the guy na genius.
Yeah
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by scoundrel(f): 12:25am On Mar 04, 2020
ObinnaObinna:


But what would even make you think the article was fake in the first place?
“That the man knoweth did not put him above the creator.”.
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Nobody: 12:55am On Mar 04, 2020
The first act of self control is disciplining the eyes of the body. Mind conceived and is pricked by what the eyes sees (good or evil) because of its force attached to it.

Matthew 6:22-23. Eyes are the windows to the body and soul. Left eye is intellectual and right eye is affection. Specifically, the right eye mostly causes men to sin. If thy "right eye" cause you to sin, cut it off- Jesus Christ, meaning to discipline or subdue it. Intellectual reasoning of the left eye illuminates brighter when the affectionate right eye is subdued. Retina is a receiver and dispatcher of light captured by the eyes to the body and soul, reason the right eye is more prone to evil/sin. Newton subdued his right eye


Hisduchess:
If you can control your sexual urge you are likely able to control 70-80% of life decisions with clear eyes especially for a man so I think that's why some of them great scientists chose that path.celibacy is more about control than anything.that's my thought anyway

1 Like

Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by femi4: 5:48am On Mar 04, 2020
Hisduchess:
If you can control your sexual urge you are likely able to control 70-80% of life decisions with clear eyes especially for a man so I think that's why some of them great scientists chose that path.celibacy is more about control than anything.that's my thought anyway
And for women ....
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by Renforce: 6:19am On Mar 04, 2020
No pain no gain
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by ignis: 7:10am On Mar 04, 2020
Fake unverified report
Re: Why Did Sir Isaac Newton Stick A Needle In His Eye? by oyatz(m): 3:29pm On Mar 04, 2020
Appelmoik:
He went too far I would say.


Because he wanted to become BLIND.

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