Hacker News Reader

Although rather dysfunctional as a human being, Newton is undoubtedly the greatest physicist of all time. And probably one of the greatest mathematicians. I wonder what else he would have achieved if he hadn't so much of his time and energy on alchemy and bible study.

View on HN

I also wonder what benefit the study of alchemy, the Bible etc may have had on his other discoveries? Sometimes ‘flashes of insight’ come from patterns developed in other fields.

Gutenberg, for example, made a breakthrough with the printing press because his earlier career as a goldsmith taught him enough metallurgy to develop movable type; Charles Babbage credited his work on silk weaving machines with helping him visualise his adding machine (with Ida Lovelace, creating the first ‘computer’).

I agree that knowledge of a different field can be very useful. I don't think I would pick alchemy or scripture as that other field though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com