Newton's Dog-Ears - Objectivity 191

We take a look at some really old books from Isaac Newton's personal library. More links below ↓↓↓
Featuring Rupert Baker from The Royal Society speaking with Brady.
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[@rfldss89]

serious newtonian dogears. What a great name for a band

[@barbie0619]

The illustrations in the book on alchemy (Rosarium philosophorum, Frankfurt 1550) refer to transmutation processes. For example, the (green) lion devouring the sun is a common way of showing aqua regia (regal or royal water) dissolving gold. If you're interested in these images, I recommend Jennifer Rampling's 'The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1700' (University of Chicago Press, 2020).

[@WhatAboutTheBee]

Brady, I have in my library a tome on Euclidean Geometry. By itself, its not interesting. However, it comes from the library of Nevil Maskelyne, Member of the Royal Society, Fifth Astronomer Royal and one of the persons instrumental in solving the Longitude problem. I keep it carefully wrapped up and preserved. It remains one of the treasures of my library!

[@karina4747]

That sounds super cool!

[@WhatAboutTheBee]

@@karina4747 Nevil Maskelyne signed (!) the book and it is for this reason I can be sure that the great man himself touched the book. There is little evidence he read it. Frankly, after devising a thoroughly workable lunars solution to longitude, which involves quite a bit of spherical trigonometry, a book on Euclidian trig may have held little interest for him. At least, that's my guess. For those interested in the lunars method for solving longitude, an excellent resource is NavList. Because the moon moves fairly rapidly against the heavens, we can measure the angular distance to other known celestial bodies. This swiftness of motion and angular distance provides the key to longitude. I won't bore the reader with the elegant mathematics. John Harrison invented the marine chronometer at nearly the same time, and the ease of the chronometer won out against the math. The math takes ~20 minutes to resolve without a calculator, but having time directly from the chronometer is much faster.

[@sundhaug92]

0:29 That's the swedish version. The tell-tales are "veten" and "matematiska"

[@Valve919]

Love these videos! Amazing to see such a direct connection to Newton

[@Vardagaladhiel]

Absolutely loved this! Rupert was hilarious with his dog-ear naming (carried on magnificently by Brady of course), and just so interesting to see the evidence of Newton interacting with books like this!

[@crispincain5373]

Thank you James and Brady et al, always a delight to view the latest production! Merry X-mas.

[@rowdy35967]

Ok, just gotta show this to my fiancé to defend my own dog-earring habits!

[@pharynx007]

never dog ear books! it damages them and makes them last less time. almost anything can be used as a bookmark!

[@keeflookeem]

@@pharynx007 Those books seem to have lasted long enough

[@pharynx007]

@@keeflookeem those books may have. but modern books won't. creasing the pages like that does damage books, and they didn't do anything to you!

[@WillisPtheone]

@@pharynx007 Modern books are printed in the hundres of thousands sometimes millions. Opening and using a book damages it. A book should be used and enjoyed not treated like a musum artifact from the moment it was printed. If not it might as well be fuel. Dog ear your books crack the spines write notes in the margins. That is what books are for.

[@tomgucwa7319]

No to dog ears ! Defacing books is bad , when I needed to..I would "tq" the I side margin !..when the professor read the book out loud , teachers quote. As in this will be on the test - this is what's most important to the brain testing me soon ...

[@celtgunn9775]

So awesome to see the Newton books. Great video today.

[@MegaFonebone]

"But, no pictures I’m afraid... What do you want to do next?" Lol, apparently Brady’s ADD kicks in when there are no pictures.

[@ibgmbl]

I had no idea that folding the corners of book sheets is called "dog earring" :0 (I'm from a non English speaking country) It is always amazing to know that objects connect people through time in this way ❤️

[@leppeppel]

I'm pretty sure the symbols at 6:44 are the symbols for the moon Mercury, Venus, the sun Jupiter, Saturn And alchemically, it would mean silver mercury, copper, gold tin, lead

[@gwheeler233]

Fig. 8 at 3:35 looks like a diagram of a sundog. Boy oh boy would I love a PDF of these books. I'd learn Latin for that.

[@Inexpressable]

I bet if it was put into PDF form, whoever made it wouldn't miss the opportunity to make a lot of money.

[@gwheeler233]

@@Inexpressable I'd pay a fair price to see it.

[@hyekang3850]

@@gwheeler233 miki will assist u in a ken 😶

[@klausolekristiansen2960]

But how would you dogear a PDF?

[@eideticex]

@@klausolekristiansen2960 Perhaps you and others would be happy to know that PDF does indeed support dog ears. There are plugins for each of the popular PDF readers to add support for it. However PDF bookmarks have long since surpassed dog ears in functionality so some of those plugins may no longer be supported or even work.

[@gazzaboo8461]

I like that Newton both dogeared and annotated his books. He was a voracious scholar and the books were his tools, and he used them as such, even to the extent of writing his own index to make his study quicker. His books were a means to an end, not ends in themselves. He studied them and marked passages that were of particular note to him. I doubt that he was in the least concerned what happened to them after his death. They were relevant to him and his interests and likely saw them as not of any great historical importance. After all, these weren't some great works of fiction or poetry, they were essentially manuals to scientific understanding, much as a dictionary is to understanding words. I know I'm not overly careful with dictionaries, or physics books, or engineering books. I'm certainly not very concerned about their condition, or if I were to spill tea on them. Newton undoubtedly never saw himself as an historic figure, to be revered by future generations who would clamour for anything he made, wrote, touched or was associated with. These books from his library are prized by association, and I imagine a great many were of much lesser intrinsic value in and of themselves, they being of value mostly by virtue of their age and rarity, unless the author was also notably famous. He didn't just read books, he used books.

[@organon69]

The symbol around 06:40-06:47 looks like Quicksilver (mercury) - another alchemical reference.

[@cgibbard]

Yes, I agree, that's mercury/quicksilver.

[@JamesRedekop]

At one point I saw ☿ ♀ and I think ♃ ♄ -- which are Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn (used for planets and corresponding elements)

[@rtpoe]

I would give credit to the "dog ear pointing at specific word" theory if the dog ears were of markedly different sizes, and some pointed to words near the binding while others pointed to words near the edge of the pages.

[@short600]

I always dog ear to save pages and I will never stop. Unless it's borrowed from a friend or library then I write the number down in my phone because book marks annoy me for some reason

[@jeppetilby8198]

6:33 I think it's the symbol for the planet Mercury. 6:43 I think is Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Jupiter and Saturn in that order.

[@cgibbard]

Those symbols had an additional meaning in alchemy, referring to various substances. The moon referred to silver. Mercury is also, well, what we now call mercury -- quicksilver. Venus is copper. The sun is gold. Jupiter is tin. Saturn is lead. These are fairly common, but there are a large number of other symbols, and each alchemist often had their own conventions, as I understand it, often to keep things secret to themselves.

[@jeppetilby8198]

@@cgibbard Oh I didn't know. Thank you.

[@_infinitedomain]

So cool!

[@PhotonicCrystal1]

Quite interesting!

[@alimanski7941]

6:52 - Never seen the use of Hebrew letters in the context of astrology or alchemy. Probably something Kabbalistic or some such.

[@ObjectsInMotion]

It is rare but not unheard of. Newton believed, as many did at the time, that Hebrew was one of the oldest languages and thus closest to "Adamic" the prime, almost divine, original language.

[@DirtyRobot]

Awesome

[@iugoeswest]

Very cool

[@farpointgamingdirect]

@ 6:36 the symbol appears to be for Mercury the symbols @ 6:43 L to R from top are Luna (Moon), Mercury, Venus, Sun, Jove (Jupiter) and Saturn

[@CocoaBeachLiving]

Makes me feel a lot better 😂😂😂

[@PinkChucky15]

This is very cool to see :-)

[@chrismusix5669]

" I Triple Dog Ear ya to do it!"

[@NecrosAcolyte]

That weird picture with the 'heads on sticks" is the alchemical corruption of the original Naga symbols for the Genesis story. It's a story about a massive volcanic eruption that wiped out previous civilizations, including the one on the Antarctic continent, and the family that survived it. Eve is actually Adam's daughter in the Naga and Aboriginal versions of the story which are where the Christians stole it from.

[@user-cn5pm7zg1u]

Thanks!

[@artbochevarov8790]

What is the title of the book at 4:12 (this is a little alchemical textbook)?

[@allluckyseven]

Forget Newton. I wanna see some non-euclidian dogears. But seriously, Did anybody catalog what did Newton bookmark? If those pages had any particular importance?

[@fullerdb]

Are we likely to find a book called "The art of Dogears" by Newton?

[@whiteninjaplus5]

Good shit

[@Atis602]

Read in Latin or English? Which do the dog ears point to?

[@pharynx007]

all of those dog ears hurt my non-existent soul.

[@hyekang3850]

Such a boomerang

[@MisterTingles]

love me some alchemy shenanigans

[@michaelmelling9333]

He was prolific using a bird feature to write with. Imagine going back in time and handing him an Infinium Fisher Space Pen!

[@baganatube]

0:54 "IO November I942", did they not have "1" types or did they just look like "I"s?

[@Tevildo]

Bagana - Most typewriters of the day didn't have a '1', but the usual convention was to use 'l' (lower-case L) rather than "I" (upper-case I). Whoever typed the note wasn't a professional typist.

[@baganatube]

@@Tevildo I see. Thank you for the knowledge!

[@michaelwright2986]

@@Tevildo Indeed, and when small computers first came into general use, the manuals (remember manuals) used to point out, insistently, that you needed to type a proper numeral "1", not use "l" lower case. BTW, in the font on my screen at the moment, there's no *visible* difference between lc "l" and uc "i"; and what's the odds that that is an uc "O" rather than a proper zero? In the 1980s, this sort of stuff mattered, on a daily basis--you couldn't do searches properly unless you got it right.

[@ThePoesn]

How come all these old documents are always handles with bare hands?

[@gigglysamentz2021]

6:34 Mercury ?

[@thewordshifter]

Oh my goodness! I do the exact same thing. I've never seen anyone else who dog ears like me. I think I just learned I'm a genius :D

[@smaakjeks]

0:29 Swedish :-)

[@whiteninjaplus5]

Norse

[@whiteninjaplus5]

@@HenningStrandin horse

[@smaakjeks]

@@HenningStrandin Oh great going, Henning. You went and broke Whitninjathemovie.

[@konzetsu6068]

Swedish indeed, and also the Principia.

[@CosmiaNebula]

6:32 is the symbol for Mercury ☿

[@rivermundcatradora7061]

omg newton's de occulta

[@wbell539]

Maybe the dogears are being used to cover something up.

[@phoule76]

I wonder if any of those 16th century books were bound with human skin. I recently read that some such bound books were found in one of Harvard's collections.

[@johng7410]

I tried to dogear this video and broke my phone.

[@Pile_of_carbon]

0:28 Yup, that's Swedish.

[@baganatube]

7:22 How is that possible? Misprint?

[@andre3328]

What's weird about it?

[@pepperspray7386]

If you have ever read a book in bed until your eyes just couldn't be forced open, you would understand why the man would "dog ear" the page in order to point the corner of the page to the paragraph to read next.

[@Kumaryoku]

That doesn't really explain why he dog ears sometimes three pages in row

[@allluckyseven]

Nor why he kept them folded.

[@arcanics1971]

I used to fold pages to point to specific sections in exactly the same way. Fortunately I learnt better by the time I entered my mid-teens. Unfortunately, this terrible habit is the only thing I have ever had in common with Newton.

[@abu3qab]

As a non-native English speaker, the title threw me way off.

[@NoahSpurrier]

I used to use dog ears to point at key points. I think it’s plausible Newton did this.

[@phampton6781]

A less worthy channel would have titled this "Newton was into dogging".

[@PMW3]

I remember growing up I used to get in trouble from librarians and teachers for doing dog ears. Kind of feeling vindicated now

[@parthachakraborty1213]

নিউটনদা নাকি?

[@Thumbsupurbum]

6:35 Looks kind of like the symbol for Mercury, but it's a bit different.

[@Thumbsupurbum]

Has to be, at 6:41 that looks like Jupiter, Saturn, and The Moon symbols.

[@lzeph]

Also note that the letter 's' in those books looks like an 'f', as they did back then. Makes sense that the symbols for the planets might not yet have been standardized.

[@hyekang3850]

Less than a human being 😶

[@PorchPotatoMike]

I double reverse dog ear you!

[@deproissant]

Can anyone tell me what kind of items need gloves to be handled? Because I reckon the sweat from their palms would damage the centuries-old papers?

[@mb3581]

You never want to handle old books and paper with gloves because you risk damaging or tearing the paper from being too forceful with it. You lose a lot of the fine touch sensation wearing gloves so you might end up tugging on a page just a little too hard. This was addressed in some of Brady's earlier videos.

[@VincentGroenewold]

Indeed. It’s a trade-off, ideally you would want to preserve the pages somehow and never touch them but that’s not what the society is about, they believe all this information was meant to be read and shared. Which I love, hope to visit it once.

[@VincentGroenewold]

Kelly White depends on what is worse, small soap residues or just oily dirt. :)

[@jmalmsten]

"Naturvetenskapens Matematiska Principer"... Yeah, that's pretty much Scandinavian... Swedish to be more precise... And I am sure noone else in the comments have confirmed this so I can go on into youtube legends... Like the first one who commented "first!"...

[@Harani66]

It's often been noted that whilst a genius Newton was also a fairly terrible human being in a lot of ways. Up to now this has been largely anecdotal, however physical proof that he "dog-eared" books confirms it.

[@hyekang3850]

Some do out of jealousy over the achievement they never can reach 😨

[@abu3qab]

4:51 myth busted. Why would he point at the "&" symbol¿

[@Locut0s]

Who knew Newton was a monster!

[@hyekang3850]

U tube at least made someone a monster here...

[@RoelfvanderMerwe]

Rupert looks like the type of person who should be a keeper of books.

[@gimlination]

00:28 Swedish

[@ArmyCop]

No gloves? I shudder!

[@locouk]

I’m not sure about dog ears, Newton made a real dogs dinner of the books by folding the pages though.

[@Schaaschaa]

"enim" isn't exactly a word you'd specifically point to 😛

[@hyekang3850]

Maybe that points to the context the words have

[@CJT3X]

Do these people even know what they’re talking about‽ grumble grumble 😂

[@michaelmelling9333]

I was a little surprised to hear the one expert state that he wasn't sure of the years that Newton was boss at the Royal Mint.

[@Quasar.Chaser]

But why would anyone care wait what are dogeared pages worth? Do they add value?

[@SteelSkin667]

The interesting part is that these books belonged to Isaac Newton. Showing and detailing historical artifacts is kind of the point of this channel.