Meditations on Isaac Newton’s Work

In the book I will be writing over the next months and probably years, I intend to share the core ideas behind disciplines and how they may relate to investing. However, while reading these remarkable people, I come across numerous anecdotes or little ideas in such a form. In today’s post, I’ll give an account of some of these, mostly derived from Newton’s The Principia and Newton’s Philosophy of Nature.

Newton and the System of the World

What’s so remarkable about Newton’s work is that, before him, man lived in darkness. Little was there known about the underlying causes of things. Newton put together a “System of the World,” or how the world works. He had to think his way through everything, crafting his own instruments. Newton invented calculus and an immense number of concepts, so ordinary today, like mass, and theorems through the most varied phenomena; from the laws of motion to how celestial bodies move, the sea and tides, what light is. Incomprehensibly large a task.

Phenomena and Science

Ever since reading Feynman, I’ve been with the idea that investing resembles theoretical physics. And I suspect that’s because the motor behind each is the thinking apparatus. The scientific method Newton followed was one of continuous, attentive observation, where he takes note of the dots and tries to come up with a plausible explanation for observed phenomena. It’s the same thing Darwin did.

“In all philosophy we must begin from phenomena and admit no principles of things, no causes, no explanations, except those which are established through phenomena”

Charlie’s Method of Inversion

Munger’s method of inverting problems is deeply rooted in physics and mathematics. I came across an interesting anecdote where Hooke had the intuition that the orbits in which planets travel are the effect of an inverse square force, but he didn’t have the skill to prove it. Halley and Wren were baffled by this problem and took it to Newton. Isaac inverted the problem:

Instead of calculating the path that an inverse-square force would produce, he assumed the path planets took in an elliptic shape, and then tried to find the force that caused it.

Gravity

I have two interesting tales related to gravity. Firstly, although Newton was religious, he wrote The Principia as a purely mathematical treatise. Gravity is a force of occult qualities, and he knew people would be reluctant to accept a force as universal whose root remained unknown. But it’s nonetheless true, so he clarified repeatedly that the principia is about the mathematical conception of physics, which seems to me a cover.

Isaac did not manifestly express his opinion about the cause of gravity in the principia until the end of the book, where he includes a separate essay called “General Scholium,” where he includes his “Hypotheses Non Fingo,” meaning “I’m not making hypotheses.” In these, he attributes the cause of gravity to a “physical spirit,” whose laws hadn’t yet been determined by experiment. Side note, the author claims Newton was thinking about electricity.

In his other writings, Newton long arguments in favor of an Intelligent Being by examining himself the perfection under which this system works. Indirectly, Isaac seemed to suggest that gravity could be caused by this as well.

Alchemy, Theology, and Newton’s Thinking

Isaac Newton spent much of his time doing alchemical experiments; another big chunk was spent thinking and writing (thousands of pages) about theology and drawing inferences from biblical stories. The general view is that Newton wasted his time with both endeavors.

My suspicion is that they are wrong, which led me to think how one’s capacity to come up with hypotheses and ideas evolves in a non-linear and unpredictable fashion. It is very likely that the inputs one expects the least from cause the biggest effects on output. With pure logic, rationality, and physics, I do not know how he could have come up with a system for the world. His inspiration, moreover, was purely religious. From the beginning Newton thought the world had an intelligent design and could therefore be explained by man.

“His studies of matter, and in particular of alchemy, had made the existence of these forces seem reasonable”

Final Remarks

These and several other ideas have come to mind while reading his work. I do not pretend to make this a long read and therefore stop here. Studying Newton’s writing is a fascinating inquiry. I strongly suspect that we can extract tons of utility from the ideas in Physics, many of which are starting to come to mind. My hope is to develop a decent understanding of Newtonian physics to try explain how his ideas can serve us for other purposes, including investing.