"the following is a conversation with jed buckwald a professor of history and a philosopher of science at caltech interested especially in the development of scientific concepts and the instruments use..."

"the science progress via paradigm shifts and uh revolutions as philosopher thomas kuhn said or does it progress gradually what do you think well i got into this field because i was tom coons research ..."

"and historians nowadays of science like to refer to scientific work as what scientists practice it's uh almost craftsmen like they can usually adapt in various ways and i can give you all kinds of exa..."

"you think of it as something scientists want to progress in the sense of finding new stuff to solve then i think what often happens is is that it's not so much that the prevailing view can't crack som..."

"they couldn't generate it from the beginning and so if you want to be somebody who is working a novel vein which increasingly becomes the case with uh people who become what we now call physicists in ..."

"um in a major way i think not it depends you can go very far back with this even into antiquity to see what goes on um the locus the major locus we always talk about from the beginning is if you're ta..."

"look at the history that's not entirely incorrect i suppose um i find it difficult to believe that had galileo not existed that eventually someone like huygens for instance given the context of the ti..."

"the materials and factors around us we can probe things in various ways does that mean that i don't think that the you know the standard model in quantum electrodynamics is in of course not uh i would..."

"maybe in the 1500s and when it was first held it was held by people we now call alchemists so alchemy was the first the early days of the theory of everything of a dream of a theory of everything i wo..."

"so where are we today in your sense to jump around a little bit with the theory of everything okay maybe a a quick kind of uh sense you have about the journey in the world of physics that we're taking..."

"how deep does it go if you are very mathematically inclined the prevailing notion for several decades now has been what's called string theory but that has not been able to figure a way to generate pr..."

"of course the theory of everything like with a lot of things in science captivates the dreams of those who are perhaps completely outside of science it's the dream of discovering the key to how the yo..."

"by our senses or even except in the most remote way through the complex instruments that we make as to what it is that underlies everything can we corral it with mathematics and experimental structure..."

"is it me or the dragonfly well the dragonfly is certainly very impressive so i don't know but yes it's uh the observer matters well how does what is that supposed to tell us about objective reality we..."

"i'm a materialist in the deepest sense of the term i don't think there is anything out there except material structures which interact in various ways do i think for example that this bottle of water ..."

"consciousness must be something whatever it is that occurs as a result of some particular organizational structure of material elements does materialism mean that it's all within within the reach of s..."

"right well i like to think of events that have a major impact and involve both beautiful conceptual mathematical if we're talking physical structures work and are associated as well with probing exper..."

"so you could buy them at county fairs and things very popular oh so they were modifying the white light well to create colors they were creating colors from it well known um and what he did was the fo..."

"of measurement he's the only one i know of doing anything like that at the time yeah well even still there's very few people that are able to have to calculate as well as he did to be a theoretician a..."

"just step back can you say who was isaac newton what are the things he contributed to this world in the space of ideas wow uh who was he he was born in 1642 in and near the small town of grantham in e..."

"geometry and so on no calculus huh there are elements of what turned into the calculus that predate newton but how much how much rigor was there how much uh well rigor no and then of course no scienti..."

"the way you're describing is so powerful this makes makes me realize how liberating that is as a as a scientist as somebody who's trying to understand reality that our senses is just our senses are no..."

"at two successive meetings of the royal society he hauls the members out into the courtyard and he takes a card and he makes successive black and white stripes on the card and he pastes the card up on..."

"you can't tell except a few people much better than that yeah but he was observing the wrong thing yes what hevelius was observing was a bright dot a star moving past a pointer our eyes are rather sim..."

"modern day that may pay off in the end okay uh as a small aside is the newton and the apple story true no was it a different fruit as a colleague of mine named simon shaffer in england once said on a ..."

"after that first of all was not very interested in questions of motion he was working actually in all chemical relationships or what is called by historians chymistry a kind of early modern chemical s..."

"newton wouldn't have cared about that if that's all they said but it was when hook mentioned this different way of thinking about the motion a way he could certainly have thought of because it does no..."

"the other side of things which is calculus that you begin to talk about so newton brought a lot of things to this world one of them is calculus what is calculus and uh what was role what was newton's ..."

"enables him to move ahead with the notion that if i take something that has a certain value and i add a little bit to it and i use this binomial theorem and expand things out i can begin to do new thi..."

"that was for the mechanics so that means his mind allows for that kind of thing some people you're breaking some news today you're starting some people some people think so i think most historians of ..."

"controversies happen people get angry i can think of a number of others including in the development of optics in the 19th century and so on and it can get hot under the collar sometimes one character..."

"of science and b.o his career started to peter out after about the late teens now they are sent on an expedition which was one of the expeditions involving measuring things to start the metric system ..."

"and cohorts to write a note in the published journal saying oh excuse us um actually arago et cetera et cetera blah blah so arago continues to just hold this antipathy and fear of beo so what happens ..."

"well in this particular story it's um maybe even more interesting because fresnel himself the young guy he knew what arigo was doing with him and he didn't like it yeah he didn't want to get with he w..."

"he was famous by then the 1690s he moves to london he becomes first warden of the mint the mint is what produces coins and coinage was a complicated thing because there was counterfeiting going on and..."

"relationships with either women or men in uh anything other than a formal way uh the only those get in the way relationships right well i mean he was he he was i don't know if he was close to his moth..."

"what difference but uh also not a great teacher huh i if you look at his optical notes if that's what he's reading from oh boy okay no so what uh what can you say about that whole journey through the ..."

"and we know that the rooms that he had there at cambridge uh subsequently because rooms are still there he built an all chemical furnace outside did all sorts of stuff in those rooms uh and don't forg..."

"is a powerful work in itself you can see this uh this guy coming to grips with and pushing through and working his way around complicated and difficult issues melding experimental situations which nob..."

"procedure which is calculus but it's a geometrically structured although it's clearly got algebraic elements in it as well and that makes the principia's mathematical structure rather hard for people ..."

"death by french mathematicians like laplace newton tried to apply his structure to the sun earth moon because the moon's motion is very complicated the moon for instance exactly repeats its observable..."

"uh mention data as part of the scientific method how important was data to newton okay so like you mentioned uh prism and playing with it and looking at stuff and then coming up with calculations and ..."

"devices it's like leads you down uh i think so principally uh i mean you may have data if you will like astronomical data obtained otherwise and so on but yes and but but but number two here is this q..."

"you're going to average all of these numbers why statistics well yes statistics there's lots of ways of going around it but the average is the best estimate on the basis of what's called the central l..."

"average results we have huygens notes he did make a lot of measurements one after the other after the other but when he came to use the numbers for calculations and indeed when he published things at ..."

"me ask you again for a friend about uh this alchemy thing you know it'd be nice to create gold but also seems to uh come into play quite a bit throughout the history of science perhaps in positive way..."

"they learned how to uh create complex amalgams of various kinds they used very elaborate apparatus glass olympics in which they would use heat to produce chemical decompositions they would write down ..."

"um i uh well right but um so that's the way they're thinking about these things there's a kind of mix and newton engages extensively in those sorts of manipulations in fact more in that than almost an..."

"and was able to do it and it's very shiny there you go proves the theorem i can ask you about god religion and its role in newton's life was there helpful constructive or destructive influences of rel..."

"newton does not think that miracles have happened since maybe the time of christ if then and not in the same way he was for instance an anti-trinitarian he did not hold that christ had a divine being ..."

"i want to be precise about it we always on this this is a serious program we always want to be precise uh okay let me ask another ridiculous question if uh if newton were to travel forward in time and..."

"history think that not much oh that's totally wrong a lot huge amounts in multifarious ways involving fundamental conceptions mathematical structures the evolution of novel experimentation and devices..."

"uh structured way i think you really don't find it in the fullest sense until uh well into the 1500s and really not fully until the 17th century later on so newton had this uh year of miracles i wonde..."

"yeah how the heck does that happen who knows jed i'd like to say thank you so much for spending your valuable time with me today it was a really fascinating conversation i've learned so much about isa..."