Whoops, Wrong Number

The Principia, is a three-volume series of mathematical proofs by Isaac Newton about his laws of gravity and motion. It’s what we base calculus on. The Principia is one of the greatest works in the history of science and has been studied by legions of scientists, mathematicians, and professors for the last three centuries.

If anything were wrong with it surely someone would have noticed the mistake by now!

That’s exactly what Robert Garisto thought. Garisto was a student working on a paper for a history of science class, when he noticed that Newton had mistakenly plugged the wrong number into an equation to find the mass of the Earth (Newton had used 10.5 seconds in his write-up, but 11 in the actual problem). Garisto didn't think much of the error when he found it -- he assumed it had been put in there intentionally by his instructor, and that spotting it was part of the assignment. It wasn’t, the instructor didn’t even catch the correction when Garisto’s turned in his paper.

It didn’t come up again until they were both at a lecture on the Principia. Then they realized that Garsito had seen what no other scholar in history had ever realized was there. 300 years of meticulous study and discussion, and not one person had ever noticed that Newton had put the wrong number into his own equation. While it didn’t change history's view of Newton, it does illustrate how easy it can be to accept what we are shown and never question if it is right.

I afraid that is what so many have done in religion today. They accept the traditions handed down from the past without giving them much thought, never realizing that they might contain much more significant mistakes than just a wrong number.

We need to not be afraid to check the work. In Acts 17:11, we read, “Now these (The Bereans) were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

We need to be as noble minded as these folks, checking if the doctrines we follow, no matter how long held, are actually in accordance with scripture. Many great religious thinkers have made mistakes. The one source we know to be unerring is the Word of God!

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

The Gift You Give Yourself

I always hated buying gifts for my Mom. If I got her something like a new set of pans, it was like saying “Here’s something you can use to go make me something to eat”. A gift for her was seemingly a gift for me. There are however gifts you give that benefit you more than the receiver. For example, forgiveness. When you give it, you are giving it to yourself as much as you are giving it to them. Jesus said that when we forgive others it means God is forgiving us our wrongs (Matthew 6:14-15). I once read: “ Heaven is where everyone's forgiven. Hell is where nobody's forgiven. So, when we forgive we pull heaven down into our lives. When we withhold forgiveness, we pull hell up into our lives ” Give yourself something nice today, Forgive.

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog