#isaacnewton — Public Fediverse posts

Irked by both his character and his tendency towards corruption, Jonathan Swift spent years ruthlessly satirising #IsaacNewton.

🔓 Patricia Fara’s new Great Debates is free for 7 days

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/great-debates/isaac-newton-laputa

“Something that doesn’t actually exist can still be useful”*…

Gregory Barber on ultrafinitism, a philosophy that rejects the infinite. Ultrafinitism has long been dismissed as mathematical heresy, but it is also producing new insights in math and beyond…

Doron Zeilberger is a mathematician who believes that all things come to an end. That just as we are limited beings, so too does nature have boundaries — and therefore so do numbers. Look out the window, and where others see reality as a continuous expanse, flowing inexorably forward from moment to moment, Zeilberger sees a universe that ticks. It is a discrete machine. In the smooth motion of the world around him, he catches the subtle blur of a flip-book.

To Zeilberger, believing in infinity is like believing in God. It’s an alluring idea that flatters our intuitions and helps us make sense of all sorts of phenomena. But the problem is that we cannot truly observe infinity, and so we cannot truly say what it is. Equations define lines that carry on off the chalkboard, but to where? Proofs are littered with suggestive ellipses. These equations and proofs are, according to Zeilberger — a longtime professor at Rutgers University and a famed figure in combinatorics — both “very ugly” and false. It is “completely nonsense,” he said, huffing out each syllable in a husky voice that seemed worn out from making his point.

As a matter of practicality, infinity can be scrubbed out, he contends. “You don’t really need it.” Mathematicians can construct a form of calculus without infinity, for instance, cutting infinitesimal limits out of the picture entirely. Curves might look smooth, but they hide a fine-grit roughness; computers handle math just fine with a finite allowance of digits. (Zeilberger lists his own computer, which he named “Shalosh B. Ekhad,” as a collaborator on his papers.) With infinity eliminated, the only thing lost is mathematics that was “not worth doing at all,” Zeilberger said.

Most mathematicians would say just the opposite — that it’s Zeilberger who spews complete nonsense. Not just because infinity is so useful and so natural to our descriptions of the universe, but because treating sets of numbers (like the integers) as actual, infinite objects is at the very core of mathematics, embedded in its most fundamental rules and assumptions.

At the very least, even if mathematicians don’t want to think about infinity as an actual entity, they acknowledge that sequences, shapes, and other mathematical objects have the potential to grow indefinitely. Two parallel lines can in theory go on forever; another number can always be added to the end of the number line.

Zeilberger disagrees. To him, what matters is not whether something is possible in principle, but whether it is actually feasible. What this means, in practice, is that not only is infinity suspect, but extremely large numbers are as well. Consider “Skewes’ number,” eee79. This is an exceptionally large number, and no one has ever been able to write it out in decimal form. So what can we really say about it? Is it an integer? Is it prime? Can we find such a number anywhere in nature? Could we ever write it down? Perhaps, then, it is not a number at all.

This raises obvious questions, such as where, exactly, we will find the end point. Zeilberger can’t say. Nobody can. Which is the first reason that many dismiss his philosophy, known as ultrafinitism. “When you first pitch the idea of ultrafinitism to somebody, it sounds like quackery — like ‘I think there’s a largest number’ or something,” said Justin Clarke-Doane, a philosopher at Columbia University.

“A lot of mathematicians just find the whole proposal preposterous,” said Joel David Hamkins, a set theorist at the University of Notre Dame. Ultrafinitism is not polite talk at a mathematical society dinner. Few (one might say an ultrafinite number) work on it. Fewer still are card-carrying members, like Zeilberger, willing to shout their views out into the void. That’s not just because ultrafinitism is contrarian, but because it advocates for a mathematics that is fundamentally smaller, one where certain important questions can no longer be asked.

And yet it gives Hamkins and others a good deal to think about. From one angle, ultrafinitism can be seen as a more realistic mathematics. It is math that better reflects the limits of what people can create and verify; it may even better reflect the physical universe. While we might be inclined to think of space and time as eternally expansive and divisible, the ultrafinitist would argue that these are assumptions that science has increasingly brought into question — much as, Zeilberger might say, science brought doubt to God’s doorstep.

“The world that we’re describing needs to be honest through and through,” said Clarke-Doane, who in April 2025 convened a rare gathering of experts to explore ultrafinitist ideas. “If there might only be finitely many things, then we’d better also be using a math that doesn’t just assume that there are infinitely many things at the get-go.” To him, “it sure seems like that should be part of the menu in the philosophy of math.”

For mathematicians to take it seriously, though, ultrafinitists first need to agree on what they’re talking about — to turn arguments that sound like “bluster,” as Hamkins puts it, into an official theory. Mathematics is steeped in formal systems and common frameworks. Ultrafinitism, meanwhile, lacks such structure.

It is one thing to tackle problems piecemeal. It is quite another to rewrite the logical foundations of mathematics itself. “I don’t think the reason ultrafinitism has been dismissed is that people have good arguments against it,” Clarke-Doane said. “The feeling is that, oh, well, it’s hopeless.”

That’s a problem that some ultrafinitists are still trying to address.

Zeilberger, meanwhile, is prepared to abandon mathematical ideals in favor of a mathematics that’s inherently messy — just like the world is. He is less a man of foundational theories than a man of opinions, of which he lists 195 on his website. “I cannot be a tenured professor without doing this crackpot stuff,” he said. But one day, he added, mathematicians will look back and see that this crackpot, like those of yore who questioned gods and superstitions, was right. “Luckily, heretics are no longer burned at the stake.”…

Read on for the history of ultrafinitism, the critical dialogue surrounding it, and its implications: “What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?” from @gregbarber.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social.

* Ian Stewart (whose point was somewhat different from Zeilberger’s :-), Infinity: A Very Short Introduction

###

As we engage the endless, we might spare a thought for a man whose work touched on the infinitesimal, Isaac Barrow; he died on this date in 1677. A theologian and mathematician, he played a key role in the development of infinitesimal calculus (in particular, for a proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus). Barrow was the inaugural holder of the prestigious Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a post later held by his student, Isaac Newton (who, of course, shares primary credit for the development of calculus with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz).

source

“Something that doesn’t actually exist can still be useful”*…

Gregory Barber on ultrafinitism, a philosophy that rejects the infinite. Ultrafinitism has long been dismissed as mathematical heresy, but it is also producing new insights in math and beyond…

Doron Zeilberger is a mathematician who believes that all things come to an end. That just as we are limited beings, so too does nature have boundaries — and therefore so do numbers. Look out the window, and where others see reality as a continuous expanse, flowing inexorably forward from moment to moment, Zeilberger sees a universe that ticks. It is a discrete machine. In the smooth motion of the world around him, he catches the subtle blur of a flip-book.

To Zeilberger, believing in infinity is like believing in God. It’s an alluring idea that flatters our intuitions and helps us make sense of all sorts of phenomena. But the problem is that we cannot truly observe infinity, and so we cannot truly say what it is. Equations define lines that carry on off the chalkboard, but to where? Proofs are littered with suggestive ellipses. These equations and proofs are, according to Zeilberger — a longtime professor at Rutgers University and a famed figure in combinatorics — both “very ugly” and false. It is “completely nonsense,” he said, huffing out each syllable in a husky voice that seemed worn out from making his point.

As a matter of practicality, infinity can be scrubbed out, he contends. “You don’t really need it.” Mathematicians can construct a form of calculus without infinity, for instance, cutting infinitesimal limits out of the picture entirely. Curves might look smooth, but they hide a fine-grit roughness; computers handle math just fine with a finite allowance of digits. (Zeilberger lists his own computer, which he named “Shalosh B. Ekhad,” as a collaborator on his papers.) With infinity eliminated, the only thing lost is mathematics that was “not worth doing at all,” Zeilberger said.

Most mathematicians would say just the opposite — that it’s Zeilberger who spews complete nonsense. Not just because infinity is so useful and so natural to our descriptions of the universe, but because treating sets of numbers (like the integers) as actual, infinite objects is at the very core of mathematics, embedded in its most fundamental rules and assumptions.

At the very least, even if mathematicians don’t want to think about infinity as an actual entity, they acknowledge that sequences, shapes, and other mathematical objects have the potential to grow indefinitely. Two parallel lines can in theory go on forever; another number can always be added to the end of the number line.

Zeilberger disagrees. To him, what matters is not whether something is possible in principle, but whether it is actually feasible. What this means, in practice, is that not only is infinity suspect, but extremely large numbers are as well. Consider “Skewes’ number,” eee79. This is an exceptionally large number, and no one has ever been able to write it out in decimal form. So what can we really say about it? Is it an integer? Is it prime? Can we find such a number anywhere in nature? Could we ever write it down? Perhaps, then, it is not a number at all.

This raises obvious questions, such as where, exactly, we will find the end point. Zeilberger can’t say. Nobody can. Which is the first reason that many dismiss his philosophy, known as ultrafinitism. “When you first pitch the idea of ultrafinitism to somebody, it sounds like quackery — like ‘I think there’s a largest number’ or something,” said Justin Clarke-Doane, a philosopher at Columbia University.

“A lot of mathematicians just find the whole proposal preposterous,” said Joel David Hamkins, a set theorist at the University of Notre Dame. Ultrafinitism is not polite talk at a mathematical society dinner. Few (one might say an ultrafinite number) work on it. Fewer still are card-carrying members, like Zeilberger, willing to shout their views out into the void. That’s not just because ultrafinitism is contrarian, but because it advocates for a mathematics that is fundamentally smaller, one where certain important questions can no longer be asked.

And yet it gives Hamkins and others a good deal to think about. From one angle, ultrafinitism can be seen as a more realistic mathematics. It is math that better reflects the limits of what people can create and verify; it may even better reflect the physical universe. While we might be inclined to think of space and time as eternally expansive and divisible, the ultrafinitist would argue that these are assumptions that science has increasingly brought into question — much as, Zeilberger might say, science brought doubt to God’s doorstep.

“The world that we’re describing needs to be honest through and through,” said Clarke-Doane, who in April 2025 convened a rare gathering of experts to explore ultrafinitist ideas. “If there might only be finitely many things, then we’d better also be using a math that doesn’t just assume that there are infinitely many things at the get-go.” To him, “it sure seems like that should be part of the menu in the philosophy of math.”

For mathematicians to take it seriously, though, ultrafinitists first need to agree on what they’re talking about — to turn arguments that sound like “bluster,” as Hamkins puts it, into an official theory. Mathematics is steeped in formal systems and common frameworks. Ultrafinitism, meanwhile, lacks such structure.

It is one thing to tackle problems piecemeal. It is quite another to rewrite the logical foundations of mathematics itself. “I don’t think the reason ultrafinitism has been dismissed is that people have good arguments against it,” Clarke-Doane said. “The feeling is that, oh, well, it’s hopeless.”

That’s a problem that some ultrafinitists are still trying to address.

Zeilberger, meanwhile, is prepared to abandon mathematical ideals in favor of a mathematics that’s inherently messy — just like the world is. He is less a man of foundational theories than a man of opinions, of which he lists 195 on his website. “I cannot be a tenured professor without doing this crackpot stuff,” he said. But one day, he added, mathematicians will look back and see that this crackpot, like those of yore who questioned gods and superstitions, was right. “Luckily, heretics are no longer burned at the stake.”…

Read on for the history of ultrafinitism, the critical dialogue surrounding it, and its implications: “What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?” from @gregbarber.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social.

* Ian Stewart (whose point was somewhat different from Zeilberger’s :-), Infinity: A Very Short Introduction

###

As we engage the endless, we might spare a thought for a man whose work touched on the infinitesimal, Isaac Barrow; he died on this date in 1677. A theologian and mathematician, he played a key role in the development of infinitesimal calculus (in particular, for a proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus). Barrow was the inaugural holder of the prestigious Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a post later held by his student, Isaac Newton (who, of course, shares primary credit for the development of calculus with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz).

source

“Something that doesn’t actually exist can still be useful”*…

Gregory Barber on ultrafinitism, a philosophy that rejects the infinite. Ultrafinitism has long been dismissed as mathematical heresy, but it is also producing new insights in math and beyond…

Doron Zeilberger is a mathematician who believes that all things come to an end. That just as we are limited beings, so too does nature have boundaries — and therefore so do numbers. Look out the window, and where others see reality as a continuous expanse, flowing inexorably forward from moment to moment, Zeilberger sees a universe that ticks. It is a discrete machine. In the smooth motion of the world around him, he catches the subtle blur of a flip-book.

To Zeilberger, believing in infinity is like believing in God. It’s an alluring idea that flatters our intuitions and helps us make sense of all sorts of phenomena. But the problem is that we cannot truly observe infinity, and so we cannot truly say what it is. Equations define lines that carry on off the chalkboard, but to where? Proofs are littered with suggestive ellipses. These equations and proofs are, according to Zeilberger — a longtime professor at Rutgers University and a famed figure in combinatorics — both “very ugly” and false. It is “completely nonsense,” he said, huffing out each syllable in a husky voice that seemed worn out from making his point.

As a matter of practicality, infinity can be scrubbed out, he contends. “You don’t really need it.” Mathematicians can construct a form of calculus without infinity, for instance, cutting infinitesimal limits out of the picture entirely. Curves might look smooth, but they hide a fine-grit roughness; computers handle math just fine with a finite allowance of digits. (Zeilberger lists his own computer, which he named “Shalosh B. Ekhad,” as a collaborator on his papers.) With infinity eliminated, the only thing lost is mathematics that was “not worth doing at all,” Zeilberger said.

Most mathematicians would say just the opposite — that it’s Zeilberger who spews complete nonsense. Not just because infinity is so useful and so natural to our descriptions of the universe, but because treating sets of numbers (like the integers) as actual, infinite objects is at the very core of mathematics, embedded in its most fundamental rules and assumptions.

At the very least, even if mathematicians don’t want to think about infinity as an actual entity, they acknowledge that sequences, shapes, and other mathematical objects have the potential to grow indefinitely. Two parallel lines can in theory go on forever; another number can always be added to the end of the number line.

Zeilberger disagrees. To him, what matters is not whether something is possible in principle, but whether it is actually feasible. What this means, in practice, is that not only is infinity suspect, but extremely large numbers are as well. Consider “Skewes’ number,” eee79. This is an exceptionally large number, and no one has ever been able to write it out in decimal form. So what can we really say about it? Is it an integer? Is it prime? Can we find such a number anywhere in nature? Could we ever write it down? Perhaps, then, it is not a number at all.

This raises obvious questions, such as where, exactly, we will find the end point. Zeilberger can’t say. Nobody can. Which is the first reason that many dismiss his philosophy, known as ultrafinitism. “When you first pitch the idea of ultrafinitism to somebody, it sounds like quackery — like ‘I think there’s a largest number’ or something,” said Justin Clarke-Doane, a philosopher at Columbia University.

“A lot of mathematicians just find the whole proposal preposterous,” said Joel David Hamkins, a set theorist at the University of Notre Dame. Ultrafinitism is not polite talk at a mathematical society dinner. Few (one might say an ultrafinite number) work on it. Fewer still are card-carrying members, like Zeilberger, willing to shout their views out into the void. That’s not just because ultrafinitism is contrarian, but because it advocates for a mathematics that is fundamentally smaller, one where certain important questions can no longer be asked.

And yet it gives Hamkins and others a good deal to think about. From one angle, ultrafinitism can be seen as a more realistic mathematics. It is math that better reflects the limits of what people can create and verify; it may even better reflect the physical universe. While we might be inclined to think of space and time as eternally expansive and divisible, the ultrafinitist would argue that these are assumptions that science has increasingly brought into question — much as, Zeilberger might say, science brought doubt to God’s doorstep.

“The world that we’re describing needs to be honest through and through,” said Clarke-Doane, who in April 2025 convened a rare gathering of experts to explore ultrafinitist ideas. “If there might only be finitely many things, then we’d better also be using a math that doesn’t just assume that there are infinitely many things at the get-go.” To him, “it sure seems like that should be part of the menu in the philosophy of math.”

For mathematicians to take it seriously, though, ultrafinitists first need to agree on what they’re talking about — to turn arguments that sound like “bluster,” as Hamkins puts it, into an official theory. Mathematics is steeped in formal systems and common frameworks. Ultrafinitism, meanwhile, lacks such structure.

It is one thing to tackle problems piecemeal. It is quite another to rewrite the logical foundations of mathematics itself. “I don’t think the reason ultrafinitism has been dismissed is that people have good arguments against it,” Clarke-Doane said. “The feeling is that, oh, well, it’s hopeless.”

That’s a problem that some ultrafinitists are still trying to address.

Zeilberger, meanwhile, is prepared to abandon mathematical ideals in favor of a mathematics that’s inherently messy — just like the world is. He is less a man of foundational theories than a man of opinions, of which he lists 195 on his website. “I cannot be a tenured professor without doing this crackpot stuff,” he said. But one day, he added, mathematicians will look back and see that this crackpot, like those of yore who questioned gods and superstitions, was right. “Luckily, heretics are no longer burned at the stake.”…

Read on for the history of ultrafinitism, the critical dialogue surrounding it, and its implications: “What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?” from @gregbarber.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social.

* Ian Stewart (whose point was somewhat different from Zeilberger’s :-), Infinity: A Very Short Introduction

###

As we engage the endless, we might spare a thought for a man whose work touched on the infinitesimal, Isaac Barrow; he died on this date in 1677. A theologian and mathematician, he played a key role in the development of infinitesimal calculus (in particular, for a proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus). Barrow was the inaugural holder of the prestigious Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a post later held by his student, Isaac Newton (who, of course, shares primary credit for the development of calculus with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz).

source

“Something that doesn’t actually exist can still be useful”*…

Gregory Barber on ultrafinitism, a philosophy that rejects the infinite. Ultrafinitism has long been dismissed as mathematical heresy, but it is also producing new insights in math and beyond…

Doron Zeilberger is a mathematician who believes that all things come to an end. That just as we are limited beings, so too does nature have boundaries — and therefore so do numbers. Look out the window, and where others see reality as a continuous expanse, flowing inexorably forward from moment to moment, Zeilberger sees a universe that ticks. It is a discrete machine. In the smooth motion of the world around him, he catches the subtle blur of a flip-book.

To Zeilberger, believing in infinity is like believing in God. It’s an alluring idea that flatters our intuitions and helps us make sense of all sorts of phenomena. But the problem is that we cannot truly observe infinity, and so we cannot truly say what it is. Equations define lines that carry on off the chalkboard, but to where? Proofs are littered with suggestive ellipses. These equations and proofs are, according to Zeilberger — a longtime professor at Rutgers University and a famed figure in combinatorics — both “very ugly” and false. It is “completely nonsense,” he said, huffing out each syllable in a husky voice that seemed worn out from making his point.

As a matter of practicality, infinity can be scrubbed out, he contends. “You don’t really need it.” Mathematicians can construct a form of calculus without infinity, for instance, cutting infinitesimal limits out of the picture entirely. Curves might look smooth, but they hide a fine-grit roughness; computers handle math just fine with a finite allowance of digits. (Zeilberger lists his own computer, which he named “Shalosh B. Ekhad,” as a collaborator on his papers.) With infinity eliminated, the only thing lost is mathematics that was “not worth doing at all,” Zeilberger said.

Most mathematicians would say just the opposite — that it’s Zeilberger who spews complete nonsense. Not just because infinity is so useful and so natural to our descriptions of the universe, but because treating sets of numbers (like the integers) as actual, infinite objects is at the very core of mathematics, embedded in its most fundamental rules and assumptions.

At the very least, even if mathematicians don’t want to think about infinity as an actual entity, they acknowledge that sequences, shapes, and other mathematical objects have the potential to grow indefinitely. Two parallel lines can in theory go on forever; another number can always be added to the end of the number line.

Zeilberger disagrees. To him, what matters is not whether something is possible in principle, but whether it is actually feasible. What this means, in practice, is that not only is infinity suspect, but extremely large numbers are as well. Consider “Skewes’ number,” eee79. This is an exceptionally large number, and no one has ever been able to write it out in decimal form. So what can we really say about it? Is it an integer? Is it prime? Can we find such a number anywhere in nature? Could we ever write it down? Perhaps, then, it is not a number at all.

This raises obvious questions, such as where, exactly, we will find the end point. Zeilberger can’t say. Nobody can. Which is the first reason that many dismiss his philosophy, known as ultrafinitism. “When you first pitch the idea of ultrafinitism to somebody, it sounds like quackery — like ‘I think there’s a largest number’ or something,” said Justin Clarke-Doane, a philosopher at Columbia University.

“A lot of mathematicians just find the whole proposal preposterous,” said Joel David Hamkins, a set theorist at the University of Notre Dame. Ultrafinitism is not polite talk at a mathematical society dinner. Few (one might say an ultrafinite number) work on it. Fewer still are card-carrying members, like Zeilberger, willing to shout their views out into the void. That’s not just because ultrafinitism is contrarian, but because it advocates for a mathematics that is fundamentally smaller, one where certain important questions can no longer be asked.

And yet it gives Hamkins and others a good deal to think about. From one angle, ultrafinitism can be seen as a more realistic mathematics. It is math that better reflects the limits of what people can create and verify; it may even better reflect the physical universe. While we might be inclined to think of space and time as eternally expansive and divisible, the ultrafinitist would argue that these are assumptions that science has increasingly brought into question — much as, Zeilberger might say, science brought doubt to God’s doorstep.

“The world that we’re describing needs to be honest through and through,” said Clarke-Doane, who in April 2025 convened a rare gathering of experts to explore ultrafinitist ideas. “If there might only be finitely many things, then we’d better also be using a math that doesn’t just assume that there are infinitely many things at the get-go.” To him, “it sure seems like that should be part of the menu in the philosophy of math.”

For mathematicians to take it seriously, though, ultrafinitists first need to agree on what they’re talking about — to turn arguments that sound like “bluster,” as Hamkins puts it, into an official theory. Mathematics is steeped in formal systems and common frameworks. Ultrafinitism, meanwhile, lacks such structure.

It is one thing to tackle problems piecemeal. It is quite another to rewrite the logical foundations of mathematics itself. “I don’t think the reason ultrafinitism has been dismissed is that people have good arguments against it,” Clarke-Doane said. “The feeling is that, oh, well, it’s hopeless.”

That’s a problem that some ultrafinitists are still trying to address.

Zeilberger, meanwhile, is prepared to abandon mathematical ideals in favor of a mathematics that’s inherently messy — just like the world is. He is less a man of foundational theories than a man of opinions, of which he lists 195 on his website. “I cannot be a tenured professor without doing this crackpot stuff,” he said. But one day, he added, mathematicians will look back and see that this crackpot, like those of yore who questioned gods and superstitions, was right. “Luckily, heretics are no longer burned at the stake.”…

Read on for the history of ultrafinitism, the critical dialogue surrounding it, and its implications: “What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?” from @gregbarber.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social.

* Ian Stewart (whose point was somewhat different from Zeilberger’s :-), Infinity: A Very Short Introduction

###

As we engage the endless, we might spare a thought for a man whose work touched on the infinitesimal, Isaac Barrow; he died on this date in 1677. A theologian and mathematician, he played a key role in the development of infinitesimal calculus (in particular, for a proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus). Barrow was the inaugural holder of the prestigious Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a post later held by his student, Isaac Newton (who, of course, shares primary credit for the development of calculus with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz).

source

“Something that doesn’t actually exist can still be useful”*…

Gregory Barber on ultrafinitism, a philosophy that rejects the infinite. Ultrafinitism has long been dismissed as mathematical heresy, but it is also producing new insights in math and beyond…

Doron Zeilberger is a mathematician who believes that all things come to an end. That just as we are limited beings, so too does nature have boundaries — and therefore so do numbers. Look out the window, and where others see reality as a continuous expanse, flowing inexorably forward from moment to moment, Zeilberger sees a universe that ticks. It is a discrete machine. In the smooth motion of the world around him, he catches the subtle blur of a flip-book.

To Zeilberger, believing in infinity is like believing in God. It’s an alluring idea that flatters our intuitions and helps us make sense of all sorts of phenomena. But the problem is that we cannot truly observe infinity, and so we cannot truly say what it is. Equations define lines that carry on off the chalkboard, but to where? Proofs are littered with suggestive ellipses. These equations and proofs are, according to Zeilberger — a longtime professor at Rutgers University and a famed figure in combinatorics — both “very ugly” and false. It is “completely nonsense,” he said, huffing out each syllable in a husky voice that seemed worn out from making his point.

As a matter of practicality, infinity can be scrubbed out, he contends. “You don’t really need it.” Mathematicians can construct a form of calculus without infinity, for instance, cutting infinitesimal limits out of the picture entirely. Curves might look smooth, but they hide a fine-grit roughness; computers handle math just fine with a finite allowance of digits. (Zeilberger lists his own computer, which he named “Shalosh B. Ekhad,” as a collaborator on his papers.) With infinity eliminated, the only thing lost is mathematics that was “not worth doing at all,” Zeilberger said.

Most mathematicians would say just the opposite — that it’s Zeilberger who spews complete nonsense. Not just because infinity is so useful and so natural to our descriptions of the universe, but because treating sets of numbers (like the integers) as actual, infinite objects is at the very core of mathematics, embedded in its most fundamental rules and assumptions.

At the very least, even if mathematicians don’t want to think about infinity as an actual entity, they acknowledge that sequences, shapes, and other mathematical objects have the potential to grow indefinitely. Two parallel lines can in theory go on forever; another number can always be added to the end of the number line.

Zeilberger disagrees. To him, what matters is not whether something is possible in principle, but whether it is actually feasible. What this means, in practice, is that not only is infinity suspect, but extremely large numbers are as well. Consider “Skewes’ number,” eee79. This is an exceptionally large number, and no one has ever been able to write it out in decimal form. So what can we really say about it? Is it an integer? Is it prime? Can we find such a number anywhere in nature? Could we ever write it down? Perhaps, then, it is not a number at all.

This raises obvious questions, such as where, exactly, we will find the end point. Zeilberger can’t say. Nobody can. Which is the first reason that many dismiss his philosophy, known as ultrafinitism. “When you first pitch the idea of ultrafinitism to somebody, it sounds like quackery — like ‘I think there’s a largest number’ or something,” said Justin Clarke-Doane, a philosopher at Columbia University.

“A lot of mathematicians just find the whole proposal preposterous,” said Joel David Hamkins, a set theorist at the University of Notre Dame. Ultrafinitism is not polite talk at a mathematical society dinner. Few (one might say an ultrafinite number) work on it. Fewer still are card-carrying members, like Zeilberger, willing to shout their views out into the void. That’s not just because ultrafinitism is contrarian, but because it advocates for a mathematics that is fundamentally smaller, one where certain important questions can no longer be asked.

And yet it gives Hamkins and others a good deal to think about. From one angle, ultrafinitism can be seen as a more realistic mathematics. It is math that better reflects the limits of what people can create and verify; it may even better reflect the physical universe. While we might be inclined to think of space and time as eternally expansive and divisible, the ultrafinitist would argue that these are assumptions that science has increasingly brought into question — much as, Zeilberger might say, science brought doubt to God’s doorstep.

“The world that we’re describing needs to be honest through and through,” said Clarke-Doane, who in April 2025 convened a rare gathering of experts to explore ultrafinitist ideas. “If there might only be finitely many things, then we’d better also be using a math that doesn’t just assume that there are infinitely many things at the get-go.” To him, “it sure seems like that should be part of the menu in the philosophy of math.”

For mathematicians to take it seriously, though, ultrafinitists first need to agree on what they’re talking about — to turn arguments that sound like “bluster,” as Hamkins puts it, into an official theory. Mathematics is steeped in formal systems and common frameworks. Ultrafinitism, meanwhile, lacks such structure.

It is one thing to tackle problems piecemeal. It is quite another to rewrite the logical foundations of mathematics itself. “I don’t think the reason ultrafinitism has been dismissed is that people have good arguments against it,” Clarke-Doane said. “The feeling is that, oh, well, it’s hopeless.”

That’s a problem that some ultrafinitists are still trying to address.

Zeilberger, meanwhile, is prepared to abandon mathematical ideals in favor of a mathematics that’s inherently messy — just like the world is. He is less a man of foundational theories than a man of opinions, of which he lists 195 on his website. “I cannot be a tenured professor without doing this crackpot stuff,” he said. But one day, he added, mathematicians will look back and see that this crackpot, like those of yore who questioned gods and superstitions, was right. “Luckily, heretics are no longer burned at the stake.”…

Read on for the history of ultrafinitism, the critical dialogue surrounding it, and its implications: “What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?” from @gregbarber.bsky.social in @quantamagazine.bsky.social.

* Ian Stewart (whose point was somewhat different from Zeilberger’s :-), Infinity: A Very Short Introduction

###

As we engage the endless, we might spare a thought for a man whose work touched on the infinitesimal, Isaac Barrow; he died on this date in 1677. A theologian and mathematician, he played a key role in the development of infinitesimal calculus (in particular, for a proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus). Barrow was the inaugural holder of the prestigious Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a post later held by his student, Isaac Newton (who, of course, shares primary credit for the development of calculus with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz).

source

Sunday service 2026 May 3 Experiences of religion

Spring seemed to have arrived properly this last week.

It’s really lovely to have you all with us. Very lovely to have Jonathan and Rachel Edwards from Winton meeting, and Rachel will be talking to us, giving words of encouragement a bit later.

It’s so good, isn’t it, to be together as a family, a family in Christ, so that we can praise God and thank Him for His creation and for everything that He’s done for us. And of course, most importantly, to remember what Jesus has done and what he is still doing for us day by day. Because it’s because of him that we’re here now. And it’s because of his sacrifice that we have hope in the future.
And we know that he is here with us in this hall, because he said that whenever 2 or 3 people gather in his name, he’s there in the midst of us.

So he may have lived 2000 years ago, but he is alive today in this year 2026.

May our singing, may our meeting of the Bible and remembering Jesus in bread and wine give Jesus and his God the honour they deserve.

So, dear God, now we simply put this meeting into Your Hands. May we feel Your presence here with us today and throughout the week and always.
In the name of our loving lord Jesus, we offer this our service to You now, Amen.

Julian has had a stroke, which has affected his right arm. He is now at home with support from the family, coming to terms with his new situation. They are managing their change circumstance with fortitude, and they’re not doing too badly. Regular physiotherapy sessions at home, the care review is scheduled for next week. They send their love and best wishes to everyone.

Belanwa Methode from our Anderlecht ecclesia is feeling much better and recovering after a recent heart attack and spell in hospital. We do hope to have a service again on Saturday, 16 May at the house church in Anderlecht.

Jane reports that the family of her brother-in-law in Australia are facing a very difficult time; he is facing a major operation in May, which will be life-changing. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family.

John Launchbury from Portland, USA, had a major heart surgery last Monday. By Wednesday, he was sitting up in bed and had actually been out of bed moving around, having had most of the tubes removed. This weekend, they hope that he’ll be able to return home. – We pray for him and his family at this difficult time.

With our song “Give thanks” we gave thanks to our Most High God, from whom we all receive those blessings from Mother Earth.

Next, we listened to the reading talking of the time when Jacob, the 3rd patriarch, son of Isaac and Rebekah, went out from Beer-sheba to go to Haran.

Coming to a certain place, he made it his resting-place for the night, for the sun had gone down; and he took one of the stones which were there, and putting it under his head, he went to sleep in that place.

And he had a dream, and in his dream he saw steps stretching from earth to heaven, and the angels of God were going up and down on them. And he saw Jehovah by his side, saying that He is the Lord, the God of Abraham his Father, and the God of Isaac. This God said to Jacob:

“13 … I am Jehovah, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; 14 and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15 And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” (Genesis 28:13-15 ASV)

And Jacob, awaking from his sleep, said,

“16 …Surely Jehovah is in this place; and I knew it not. 17 And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (Genesis 28:16-17 ASV)

And early in the morning, Jacob took the stone which had been under his head, and put it up as a pillar and put oil on it. And he gave that place the name of Beth-el (house of God), but before that time the town was named Luz.  Then Jacob took an oath and said,

“20… If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, 21 so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, and Jehovah will be my God, 22 then this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” (Genesis 28:20-22 ASV)

Our speaker today wants to think about the experiences of religion,

 as I’m sure you know, means to tie fast. It’s a binding between God and man, and I want to try to explore how long or short that finding is.

We’re told God is in heaven. Isaiah chapter 66 begins:

Thus says the Lord, heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where is the house that ye build unto Me? And where is the place of My rest? (Isaiah 66:1)

The first mention is in Genesis chapter one, quoting the authorised version.

“1  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. …

“6  And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” (Genesis 1:1, 6-8 AV)

I understand that the firmament was a word made up in the 17th century. The NIV uses the words “expanse ” and “sky,” and the NLT says it’s a space called “sky.”

In 2 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 2, Paul talks about some caught up to the third heaven, and this is often explained as the first heaven being the atmosphere and the clouds at 1 to 3 miles above the surface of the earth.

Planes fly about 6 to 7 miles high. So, these days, it’s within touching distance.

The second head is the planets, stars and galaxies.

Abraham was promised that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. He could probably see about 3.000 stars, so he was promised a huge family. In the universe in total, there are about 8.000 stars bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.
But there are actually thought to be 200 million trillion steps, 200.000 million, million, million stars in the universe. So he was promised an amazingly large family.

The third heaven is the final sphere, God’s dwelling place.

The Hebrew word means to be lofty. And looking at the Greek word for heaven, strong offers by explanation happiness, power, and eternity.

The physical space was finite, and beyond the material world was the spiritual space of God. The physical world was subject to death and decay, but the heavens were eternal, spiritual, and better than the earth. And the planets and stars were pointers to the religious heaven of God.

Up to the Middle Ages, the cosmos was believed to have had the Earth at the centre of everything, surrounded by concentric spheres of the moon, the sun, planets and stars.

Art aimed to represent the spiritual order beyond the material world and portrayed heaven in pictures comprising a light blue background with flat, out-of-proportion figures, often in gold, referencing the sky and the sun.

But art in the 13th century developed a new way of seeing heaven. And even a pope encouraged a change of style to incorporate linear perspective, which made a sort of medieval virtual reality. Which was thought to have the power to convert unbelievers to the Christian faith by making heaven more believable.

Science took up the reins of the shift a couple of hundred years later, with Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, who were all on the side of God. To them, the new astronomy reflected the glory of God the Father, Whose power and order in the universe supported their faith in Christianity’s eternal salvation, whose domain is the Kingdom of heaven.

Firstly, Copernicus suggested that the Earth went round the sun so that the Earth, including us, was no longer at the centre of everything. Newton’s big idea was that gravity, the gravity that makes an apple fall to the ground, also keeps the moon orbiting the Earth and planets orbiting the sun. So space everywhere is ruled by the same physical laws. This continuity between terrestrial and celestial realms, by this continuity, Newton famously united the heavens and the earth. The physical space could go on forever. So there was no room left over for heaven as a superior alternative domain.

Newton tore a hole in the social fabric that we’ve been … we’re struggling to comprehend, and reverberate still in the war between science and religion.

Einstein replaced Newton’s cosmology with space-time, and this has been developed into hyperspace, which I don’t understand, but is described as nothing but space curled up into patterns.

At the start of our universe, space had no structure, formless and empty darkness, to quote Genesis chapter. It was simple and uniform, like a blank piece of paper. Then, as time proceeded, the paper crinkled up into ever more elaborate structures, eventually giving rise to the complexities of today. So, perhaps this is God as the origami artist.

The new understanding of space impacts on who we think we are in space today is an arena to be mapped and measured. If heaven isn’t special, are we special?

Are we in conglomeration with molecules?

Christadelphians and other fundamental Christians and even New Age proponents do not accept this poor, demoralising, reductionist world.

But, I don’t think there is a war between science and religion. Science has furthered our understanding of the physical world. And as we’ve mentioned, it greatly enhanced the promise of Abraham.

But God doesn’t need to live in heaven. He is everywhere. Acts chapter 17 verses 27 and 28 say He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being.

Jesus often spoke about the Kingdom of heaven, or the Kingdom of God.

In the road spray, he taught us to ask

They Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Asking for the divide between God and man to be dissolved.

The Kingdom of heaven is still the domain of human salvation, the righteousness of God replacing the sin of the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Today, the expression “a thin place” is used to describe a place in time where space, the space between heaven and earth, grows thin and the sacred and the secular seem to meet.

This is what I mean by the experience of religion.

The Bible is full op people being touched by God, often in a vision or a dream. I picked a few examples showing how people felt about God drawing near to them. We’ve read about Jacob and his ladder experience in Genesis chapter 28. And his conclusion was

How awasome is this place?
This is none other than the House of God. This is the gate of heaven.

Then in the New Testament, I think of Mary.

My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour.

After Jesus’ resurrection, the couple on the road to Emmaus expressed their vivid feelings.

When are our hearts burning within us? While he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us.

In our 21st-century lives, a thin place offers a sense of peace or a feeling of awe, where we feel our connection with God more strongly.

Some people feel it in wonderful landscapes. Others in a quiet place, or listening to music, or appreciating a work of art, or a moment in daily life, like opening the door onto a sunny morning.

I expect lots of people find the giving of thanks and taking the bread and wine a thin place.

As we’re about to remember Jesus’ sacrifice, may you know Jesus, your saviour.

May I know Jesus, my saviour. Thank you.

Thank you, Rachel, for those lovely words. It’s almost impossible, isn’t it, to imagine the extent of the universe, the cosmos, and to think that God is both filling that. But also, as you said, so close to every one of us now. And you have brought us beautifully to the centre point of our meeting, to think about Jesus, who said about himself, and I’m doing this remembering Jesus would one day see the angels ascending on himself, the Son of man. So just as Jacob saw the connection between heaven and earth, wo we see heaven and earth coming together in Jesus, our lord.

Before we share the bread and wine, we’re going to sing another hymn. And this time it’s going to be ” Praise the Lord” 174, which reminds us of the depths of the love that has been poured out on us in the sacrifice of Jesus.

Who his love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing his praise?

He can never be forgotten, thoughout heav’n’s eternal days.

We thank You Father,
we come before You at this time to give our thanks and praise for all the blessings You bestow on us.

We thank You for the love that You show towards us because You loved us so much.
You gave your only son.
We come now to remember the love that Your son, our lord, showed not only to You, but to us and the whole world also, in that he fullfilled Your word to the very end.

As we pass these emblems of our lor’s love and great sacrifice to one another, we again give our thanks for the Plan that You have for all people that believe in You.

We ask that we may soon see the return of our lord and that we can therefore be brought closer to You, our eternal Father.

We ask that You be with us all and that You will hear this prayer through our lord and saviour’s name. Amen.

Together we sing a Christian hymn based on Joachim Neander’s German-language hymn “Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren”, published in 1680.: When we look down from a lofty mountain grandeur,

O Lord my God! when I in awesome wonder
consider all the works thy hand hath made,
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
thy power throughout the universe displayed:

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee,
how great thou art! How great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee,
how great thou art! How great thou art!

*

*

We finish our Sunday service with prayer:

Let us pray, Lord God Heavenly Father,

we put oour minds to places where we just can’t comprehend Your dwelling place, the sky above the stars above the sun and moon, places You hold in the Palm of Your Hand.
Yeah, beyond our wildest imagination,

Yeah,

we come to You in prayer, whether we are gathered in this room, whether we are sat in our various homes across different countries worshipping and praising You now and we know You’re in our presence. You are hearing these very words now. That’s amazing and we are in such actual majesty and splendour and Your power and glory in our presence now.

It is humbling and we pray tha what we have done this morning just a litle bit goes towards chewing as a sweet smell. As pleasing and acceptable we are mindful of the clouds above. And in our lives, we feel the rains pouring down at us sometimes and the stresses and strains and struggles of life.
Oh, too much.
And there’s no sunshine, and there’sno brightness. There’s nothing to look forward to. Then the clouds break. And the blue sky above is always there. The sun is always there. And the same with You, that well, whatever our situation, whatever our circumstances, whatever our troubles and problems and strains and anxiety, You are therejust above it all. And we can come to You in our prayers, or we can seek strength and guidance. As we face another week we know that You are ina principle of hearts and minds. And You control everything, and You planeverything for us. So guide our ways. Help us take our hand and lead us as Yougo towards another week.
So we thank You for so much, we thank You for Your blessings, for Your kindness, for Your love.

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Sunday service 2026 May 3 Experiences of religion

Spring seemed to have arrived properly this last week.

It’s really lovely to have you all with us. Very lovely to have Jonathan and Rachel Edwards from Winton meeting, and Rachel will be talking to us, giving words of encouragement a bit later.

It’s so good, isn’t it, to be together as a family, a family in Christ, so that we can praise God and thank Him for His creation and for everything that He’s done for us. And of course, most importantly, to remember what Jesus has done and what he is still doing for us day by day. Because it’s because of him that we’re here now. And it’s because of his sacrifice that we have hope in the future.
And we know that he is here with us in this hall, because he said that whenever 2 or 3 people gather in his name, he’s there in the midst of us.

So he may have lived 2000 years ago, but he is alive today in this year 2026.

May our singing, may our meeting of the Bible and remembering Jesus in bread and wine give Jesus and his God the honour they deserve.

So, dear God, now we simply put this meeting into Your Hands. May we feel Your presence here with us today and throughout the week and always.
In the name of our loving lord Jesus, we offer this our service to You now, Amen.

Julian has had a stroke, which has affected his right arm. He is now at home with support from the family, coming to terms with his new situation. They are managing their change circumstance with fortitude, and they’re not doing too badly. Regular physiotherapy sessions at home, the care review is scheduled for next week. They send their love and best wishes to everyone.

Belanwa Methode from our Anderlecht ecclesia is feeling much better and recovering after a recent heart attack and spell in hospital. We do hope to have a service again on Saturday, 16 May at the house church in Anderlecht.

Jane reports that the family of her brother-in-law in Australia are facing a very difficult time; he is facing a major operation in May, which will be life-changing. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family.

John Launchbury from Portland, USA, had a major heart surgery last Monday. By Wednesday, he was sitting up in bed and had actually been out of bed moving around, having had most of the tubes removed. This weekend, they hope that he’ll be able to return home. – We pray for him and his family at this difficult time.

With our song “Give thanks” we gave thanks to our Most High God, from whom we all receive those blessings from Mother Earth.

Next, we listened to the reading talking of the time when Jacob, the 3rd patriarch, son of Isaac and Rebekah, went out from Beer-sheba to go to Haran.

Coming to a certain place, he made it his resting-place for the night, for the sun had gone down; and he took one of the stones which were there, and putting it under his head, he went to sleep in that place.

And he had a dream, and in his dream he saw steps stretching from earth to heaven, and the angels of God were going up and down on them. And he saw Jehovah by his side, saying that He is the Lord, the God of Abraham his Father, and the God of Isaac. This God said to Jacob:

“13 … I am Jehovah, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; 14 and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15 And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” (Genesis 28:13-15 ASV)

And Jacob, awaking from his sleep, said,

“16 …Surely Jehovah is in this place; and I knew it not. 17 And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (Genesis 28:16-17 ASV)

And early in the morning, Jacob took the stone which had been under his head, and put it up as a pillar and put oil on it. And he gave that place the name of Beth-el (house of God), but before that time the town was named Luz.  Then Jacob took an oath and said,

“20… If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, 21 so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, and Jehovah will be my God, 22 then this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” (Genesis 28:20-22 ASV)

Our speaker today wants to think about the experiences of religion,

 as I’m sure you know, means to tie fast. It’s a binding between God and man, and I want to try to explore how long or short that finding is.

We’re told God is in heaven. Isaiah chapter 66 begins:

Thus says the Lord, heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where is the house that ye build unto Me? And where is the place of My rest? (Isaiah 66:1)

The first mention is in Genesis chapter one, quoting the authorised version.

“1  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. …

“6  And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” (Genesis 1:1, 6-8 AV)

I understand that the firmament was a word made up in the 17th century. The NIV uses the words “expanse ” and “sky,” and the NLT says it’s a space called “sky.”

In 2 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 2, Paul talks about some caught up to the third heaven, and this is often explained as the first heaven being the atmosphere and the clouds at 1 to 3 miles above the surface of the earth.

Planes fly about 6 to 7 miles high. So, these days, it’s within touching distance.

The second head is the planets, stars and galaxies.

Abraham was promised that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. He could probably see about 3.000 stars, so he was promised a huge family. In the universe in total, there are about 8.000 stars bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.
But there are actually thought to be 200 million trillion steps, 200.000 million, million, million stars in the universe. So he was promised an amazingly large family.

The third heaven is the final sphere, God’s dwelling place.

The Hebrew word means to be lofty. And looking at the Greek word for heaven, strong offers by explanation happiness, power, and eternity.

The physical space was finite, and beyond the material world was the spiritual space of God. The physical world was subject to death and decay, but the heavens were eternal, spiritual, and better than the earth. And the planets and stars were pointers to the religious heaven of God.

Up to the Middle Ages, the cosmos was believed to have had the Earth at the centre of everything, surrounded by concentric spheres of the moon, the sun, planets and stars.

Art aimed to represent the spiritual order beyond the material world and portrayed heaven in pictures comprising a light blue background with flat, out-of-proportion figures, often in gold, referencing the sky and the sun.

But art in the 13th century developed a new way of seeing heaven. And even a pope encouraged a change of style to incorporate linear perspective, which made a sort of medieval virtual reality. Which was thought to have the power to convert unbelievers to the Christian faith by making heaven more believable.

Science took up the reins of the shift a couple of hundred years later, with Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, who were all on the side of God. To them, the new astronomy reflected the glory of God the Father, Whose power and order in the universe supported their faith in Christianity’s eternal salvation, whose domain is the Kingdom of heaven.

Firstly, Copernicus suggested that the Earth went round the sun so that the Earth, including us, was no longer at the centre of everything. Newton’s big idea was that gravity, the gravity that makes an apple fall to the ground, also keeps the moon orbiting the Earth and planets orbiting the sun. So space everywhere is ruled by the same physical laws. This continuity between terrestrial and celestial realms, by this continuity, Newton famously united the heavens and the earth. The physical space could go on forever. So there was no room left over for heaven as a superior alternative domain.

Newton tore a hole in the social fabric that we’ve been … we’re struggling to comprehend, and reverberate still in the war between science and religion.

Einstein replaced Newton’s cosmology with space-time, and this has been developed into hyperspace, which I don’t understand, but is described as nothing but space curled up into patterns.

At the start of our universe, space had no structure, formless and empty darkness, to quote Genesis chapter. It was simple and uniform, like a blank piece of paper. Then, as time proceeded, the paper crinkled up into ever more elaborate structures, eventually giving rise to the complexities of today. So, perhaps this is God as the origami artist.

The new understanding of space impacts on who we think we are in space today is an arena to be mapped and measured. If heaven isn’t special, are we special?

Are we in conglomeration with molecules?

Christadelphians and other fundamental Christians and even New Age proponents do not accept this poor, demoralising, reductionist world.

But, I don’t think there is a war between science and religion. Science has furthered our understanding of the physical world. And as we’ve mentioned, it greatly enhanced the promise of Abraham.

But God doesn’t need to live in heaven. He is everywhere. Acts chapter 17 verses 27 and 28 say He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being.

Jesus often spoke about the Kingdom of heaven, or the Kingdom of God.

In the road spray, he taught us to ask

They Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Asking for the divide between God and man to be dissolved.

The Kingdom of heaven is still the domain of human salvation, the righteousness of God replacing the sin of the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Today, the expression “a thin place” is used to describe a place in time where space, the space between heaven and earth, grows thin and the sacred and the secular seem to meet.

This is what I mean by the experience of religion.

The Bible is full op people being touched by God, often in a vision or a dream. I picked a few examples showing how people felt about God drawing near to them. We’ve read about Jacob and his ladder experience in Genesis chapter 28. And his conclusion was

How awasome is this place?
This is none other than the House of God. This is the gate of heaven.

Then in the New Testament, I think of Mary.

My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour.

After Jesus’ resurrection, the couple on the road to Emmaus expressed their vivid feelings.

When are our hearts burning within us? While he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us.

In our 21st-century lives, a thin place offers a sense of peace or a feeling of awe, where we feel our connection with God more strongly.

Some people feel it in wonderful landscapes. Others in a quiet place, or listening to music, or appreciating a work of art, or a moment in daily life, like opening the door onto a sunny morning.

I expect lots of people find the giving of thanks and taking the bread and wine a thin place.

As we’re about to remember Jesus’ sacrifice, may you know Jesus, your saviour.

May I know Jesus, my saviour. Thank you.

Thank you, Rachel, for those lovely words. It’s almost impossible, isn’t it, to imagine the extent of the universe, the cosmos, and to think that God is both filling that. But also, as you said, so close to every one of us now. And you have brought us beautifully to the centre point of our meeting, to think about Jesus, who said about himself, and I’m doing this remembering Jesus would one day see the angels ascending on himself, the Son of man. So just as Jacob saw the connection between heaven and earth, wo we see heaven and earth coming together in Jesus, our lord.

Before we share the bread and wine, we’re going to sing another hymn. And this time it’s going to be ” Praise the Lord” 174, which reminds us of the depths of the love that has been poured out on us in the sacrifice of Jesus.

Who his love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing his praise?

He can never be forgotten, thoughout heav’n’s eternal days.

We thank You Father,
we come before You at this time to give our thanks and praise for all the blessings You bestow on us.

We thank You for the love that You show towards us because You loved us so much.
You gave your only son.
We come now to remember the love that Your son, our lord, showed not only to You, but to us and the whole world also, in that he fullfilled Your word to the very end.

As we pass these emblems of our lor’s love and great sacrifice to one another, we again give our thanks for the Plan that You have for all people that believe in You.

We ask that we may soon see the return of our lord and that we can therefore be brought closer to You, our eternal Father.

We ask that You be with us all and that You will hear this prayer through our lord and saviour’s name. Amen.

Together we sing a Christian hymn based on Joachim Neander’s German-language hymn “Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren”, published in 1680.: When we look down from a lofty mountain grandeur,

O Lord my God! when I in awesome wonder
consider all the works thy hand hath made,
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
thy power throughout the universe displayed:

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee,
how great thou art! How great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee,
how great thou art! How great thou art!

*

*

We finish our Sunday service with prayer:

Let us pray, Lord God Heavenly Father,

we put oour minds to places where we just can’t comprehend Your dwelling place, the sky above the stars above the sun and moon, places You hold in the Palm of Your Hand.
Yeah, beyond our wildest imagination,

Yeah,

we come to You in prayer, whether we are gathered in this room, whether we are sat in our various homes across different countries worshipping and praising You now and we know You’re in our presence. You are hearing these very words now. That’s amazing and we are in such actual majesty and splendour and Your power and glory in our presence now.

It is humbling and we pray tha what we have done this morning just a litle bit goes towards chewing as a sweet smell. As pleasing and acceptable we are mindful of the clouds above. And in our lives, we feel the rains pouring down at us sometimes and the stresses and strains and struggles of life.
Oh, too much.
And there’s no sunshine, and there’sno brightness. There’s nothing to look forward to. Then the clouds break. And the blue sky above is always there. The sun is always there. And the same with You, that well, whatever our situation, whatever our circumstances, whatever our troubles and problems and strains and anxiety, You are therejust above it all. And we can come to You in our prayers, or we can seek strength and guidance. As we face another week we know that You are ina principle of hearts and minds. And You control everything, and You planeverything for us. So guide our ways. Help us take our hand and lead us as Yougo towards another week.
So we thank You for so much, we thank You for Your blessings, for Your kindness, for Your love.

Rate this:

Sunday service 2026 May 3 Experiences of religion

Spring seemed to have arrived properly this last week.

It’s really lovely to have you all with us. Very lovely to have Jonathan and Rachel Edwards from Winton meeting, and Rachel will be talking to us, giving words of encouragement a bit later.

It’s so good, isn’t it, to be together as a family, a family in Christ, so that we can praise God and thank Him for His creation and for everything that He’s done for us. And of course, most importantly, to remember what Jesus has done and what he is still doing for us day by day. Because it’s because of him that we’re here now. And it’s because of his sacrifice that we have hope in the future.
And we know that he is here with us in this hall, because he said that whenever 2 or 3 people gather in his name, he’s there in the midst of us.

So he may have lived 2000 years ago, but he is alive today in this year 2026.

May our singing, may our meeting of the Bible and remembering Jesus in bread and wine give Jesus and his God the honour they deserve.

So, dear God, now we simply put this meeting into Your Hands. May we feel Your presence here with us today and throughout the week and always.
In the name of our loving lord Jesus, we offer this our service to You now, Amen.

Julian has had a stroke, which has affected his right arm. He is now at home with support from the family, coming to terms with his new situation. They are managing their change circumstance with fortitude, and they’re not doing too badly. Regular physiotherapy sessions at home, the care review is scheduled for next week. They send their love and best wishes to everyone.

Belanwa Methode from our Anderlecht ecclesia is feeling much better and recovering after a recent heart attack and spell in hospital. We do hope to have a service again on Saturday, 16 May at the house church in Anderlecht.

Jane reports that the family of her brother-in-law in Australia are facing a very difficult time; he is facing a major operation in May, which will be life-changing. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family.

John Launchbury from Portland, USA, had a major heart surgery last Monday. By Wednesday, he was sitting up in bed and had actually been out of bed moving around, having had most of the tubes removed. This weekend, they hope that he’ll be able to return home. – We pray for him and his family at this difficult time.

With our song “Give thanks” we gave thanks to our Most High God, from whom we all receive those blessings from Mother Earth.

Next, we listened to the reading talking of the time when Jacob, the 3rd patriarch, son of Isaac and Rebekah, went out from Beer-sheba to go to Haran.

Coming to a certain place, he made it his resting-place for the night, for the sun had gone down; and he took one of the stones which were there, and putting it under his head, he went to sleep in that place.

And he had a dream, and in his dream he saw steps stretching from earth to heaven, and the angels of God were going up and down on them. And he saw Jehovah by his side, saying that He is the Lord, the God of Abraham his Father, and the God of Isaac. This God said to Jacob:

“13 … I am Jehovah, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; 14 and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15 And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” (Genesis 28:13-15 ASV)

And Jacob, awaking from his sleep, said,

“16 …Surely Jehovah is in this place; and I knew it not. 17 And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (Genesis 28:16-17 ASV)

And early in the morning, Jacob took the stone which had been under his head, and put it up as a pillar and put oil on it. And he gave that place the name of Beth-el (house of God), but before that time the town was named Luz.  Then Jacob took an oath and said,

“20… If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, 21 so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, and Jehovah will be my God, 22 then this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” (Genesis 28:20-22 ASV)

Our speaker today wants to think about the experiences of religion,

 as I’m sure you know, means to tie fast. It’s a binding between God and man, and I want to try to explore how long or short that finding is.

We’re told God is in heaven. Isaiah chapter 66 begins:

Thus says the Lord, heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where is the house that ye build unto Me? And where is the place of My rest? (Isaiah 66:1)

The first mention is in Genesis chapter one, quoting the authorised version.

“1  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. …

“6  And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” (Genesis 1:1, 6-8 AV)

I understand that the firmament was a word made up in the 17th century. The NIV uses the words “expanse ” and “sky,” and the NLT says it’s a space called “sky.”

In 2 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 2, Paul talks about some caught up to the third heaven, and this is often explained as the first heaven being the atmosphere and the clouds at 1 to 3 miles above the surface of the earth.

Planes fly about 6 to 7 miles high. So, these days, it’s within touching distance.

The second head is the planets, stars and galaxies.

Abraham was promised that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. He could probably see about 3.000 stars, so he was promised a huge family. In the universe in total, there are about 8.000 stars bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.
But there are actually thought to be 200 million trillion steps, 200.000 million, million, million stars in the universe. So he was promised an amazingly large family.

The third heaven is the final sphere, God’s dwelling place.

The Hebrew word means to be lofty. And looking at the Greek word for heaven, strong offers by explanation happiness, power, and eternity.

The physical space was finite, and beyond the material world was the spiritual space of God. The physical world was subject to death and decay, but the heavens were eternal, spiritual, and better than the earth. And the planets and stars were pointers to the religious heaven of God.

Up to the Middle Ages, the cosmos was believed to have had the Earth at the centre of everything, surrounded by concentric spheres of the moon, the sun, planets and stars.

Art aimed to represent the spiritual order beyond the material world and portrayed heaven in pictures comprising a light blue background with flat, out-of-proportion figures, often in gold, referencing the sky and the sun.

But art in the 13th century developed a new way of seeing heaven. And even a pope encouraged a change of style to incorporate linear perspective, which made a sort of medieval virtual reality. Which was thought to have the power to convert unbelievers to the Christian faith by making heaven more believable.

Science took up the reins of the shift a couple of hundred years later, with Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, who were all on the side of God. To them, the new astronomy reflected the glory of God the Father, Whose power and order in the universe supported their faith in Christianity’s eternal salvation, whose domain is the Kingdom of heaven.

Firstly, Copernicus suggested that the Earth went round the sun so that the Earth, including us, was no longer at the centre of everything. Newton’s big idea was that gravity, the gravity that makes an apple fall to the ground, also keeps the moon orbiting the Earth and planets orbiting the sun. So space everywhere is ruled by the same physical laws. This continuity between terrestrial and celestial realms, by this continuity, Newton famously united the heavens and the earth. The physical space could go on forever. So there was no room left over for heaven as a superior alternative domain.

Newton tore a hole in the social fabric that we’ve been … we’re struggling to comprehend, and reverberate still in the war between science and religion.

Einstein replaced Newton’s cosmology with space-time, and this has been developed into hyperspace, which I don’t understand, but is described as nothing but space curled up into patterns.

At the start of our universe, space had no structure, formless and empty darkness, to quote Genesis chapter. It was simple and uniform, like a blank piece of paper. Then, as time proceeded, the paper crinkled up into ever more elaborate structures, eventually giving rise to the complexities of today. So, perhaps this is God as the origami artist.

The new understanding of space impacts on who we think we are in space today is an arena to be mapped and measured. If heaven isn’t special, are we special?

Are we in conglomeration with molecules?

Christadelphians and other fundamental Christians and even New Age proponents do not accept this poor, demoralising, reductionist world.

But, I don’t think there is a war between science and religion. Science has furthered our understanding of the physical world. And as we’ve mentioned, it greatly enhanced the promise of Abraham.

But God doesn’t need to live in heaven. He is everywhere. Acts chapter 17 verses 27 and 28 say He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being.

Jesus often spoke about the Kingdom of heaven, or the Kingdom of God.

In the road spray, he taught us to ask

They Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Asking for the divide between God and man to be dissolved.

The Kingdom of heaven is still the domain of human salvation, the righteousness of God replacing the sin of the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Today, the expression “a thin place” is used to describe a place in time where space, the space between heaven and earth, grows thin and the sacred and the secular seem to meet.

This is what I mean by the experience of religion.

The Bible is full op people being touched by God, often in a vision or a dream. I picked a few examples showing how people felt about God drawing near to them. We’ve read about Jacob and his ladder experience in Genesis chapter 28. And his conclusion was

How awasome is this place?
This is none other than the House of God. This is the gate of heaven.

Then in the New Testament, I think of Mary.

My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour.

After Jesus’ resurrection, the couple on the road to Emmaus expressed their vivid feelings.

When are our hearts burning within us? While he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us.

In our 21st-century lives, a thin place offers a sense of peace or a feeling of awe, where we feel our connection with God more strongly.

Some people feel it in wonderful landscapes. Others in a quiet place, or listening to music, or appreciating a work of art, or a moment in daily life, like opening the door onto a sunny morning.

I expect lots of people find the giving of thanks and taking the bread and wine a thin place.

As we’re about to remember Jesus’ sacrifice, may you know Jesus, your saviour.

May I know Jesus, my saviour. Thank you.

Thank you, Rachel, for those lovely words. It’s almost impossible, isn’t it, to imagine the extent of the universe, the cosmos, and to think that God is both filling that. But also, as you said, so close to every one of us now. And you have brought us beautifully to the centre point of our meeting, to think about Jesus, who said about himself, and I’m doing this remembering Jesus would one day see the angels ascending on himself, the Son of man. So just as Jacob saw the connection between heaven and earth, wo we see heaven and earth coming together in Jesus, our lord.

Before we share the bread and wine, we’re going to sing another hymn. And this time it’s going to be ” Praise the Lord” 174, which reminds us of the depths of the love that has been poured out on us in the sacrifice of Jesus.

Who his love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing his praise?

He can never be forgotten, thoughout heav’n’s eternal days.

We thank You Father,
we come before You at this time to give our thanks and praise for all the blessings You bestow on us.

We thank You for the love that You show towards us because You loved us so much.
You gave your only son.
We come now to remember the love that Your son, our lord, showed not only to You, but to us and the whole world also, in that he fullfilled Your word to the very end.

As we pass these emblems of our lor’s love and great sacrifice to one another, we again give our thanks for the Plan that You have for all people that believe in You.

We ask that we may soon see the return of our lord and that we can therefore be brought closer to You, our eternal Father.

We ask that You be with us all and that You will hear this prayer through our lord and saviour’s name. Amen.

Together we sing a Christian hymn based on Joachim Neander’s German-language hymn “Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren”, published in 1680.: When we look down from a lofty mountain grandeur,

O Lord my God! when I in awesome wonder
consider all the works thy hand hath made,
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
thy power throughout the universe displayed:

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee,
how great thou art! How great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee,
how great thou art! How great thou art!

*

*

We finish our Sunday service with prayer:

Let us pray, Lord God Heavenly Father,

we put oour minds to places where we just can’t comprehend Your dwelling place, the sky above the stars above the sun and moon, places You hold in the Palm of Your Hand.
Yeah, beyond our wildest imagination,

Yeah,

we come to You in prayer, whether we are gathered in this room, whether we are sat in our various homes across different countries worshipping and praising You now and we know You’re in our presence. You are hearing these very words now. That’s amazing and we are in such actual majesty and splendour and Your power and glory in our presence now.

It is humbling and we pray tha what we have done this morning just a litle bit goes towards chewing as a sweet smell. As pleasing and acceptable we are mindful of the clouds above. And in our lives, we feel the rains pouring down at us sometimes and the stresses and strains and struggles of life.
Oh, too much.
And there’s no sunshine, and there’sno brightness. There’s nothing to look forward to. Then the clouds break. And the blue sky above is always there. The sun is always there. And the same with You, that well, whatever our situation, whatever our circumstances, whatever our troubles and problems and strains and anxiety, You are therejust above it all. And we can come to You in our prayers, or we can seek strength and guidance. As we face another week we know that You are ina principle of hearts and minds. And You control everything, and You planeverything for us. So guide our ways. Help us take our hand and lead us as Yougo towards another week.
So we thank You for so much, we thank You for Your blessings, for Your kindness, for Your love.

Rate this:

Sunday service 2026 May 3 Experiences of religion

Spring seemed to have arrived properly this last week.

It’s really lovely to have you all with us. Very lovely to have Jonathan and Rachel Edwards from Winton meeting, and Rachel will be talking to us, giving words of encouragement a bit later.

It’s so good, isn’t it, to be together as a family, a family in Christ, so that we can praise God and thank Him for His creation and for everything that He’s done for us. And of course, most importantly, to remember what Jesus has done and what he is still doing for us day by day. Because it’s because of him that we’re here now. And it’s because of his sacrifice that we have hope in the future.
And we know that he is here with us in this hall, because he said that whenever 2 or 3 people gather in his name, he’s there in the midst of us.

So he may have lived 2000 years ago, but he is alive today in this year 2026.

May our singing, may our meeting of the Bible and remembering Jesus in bread and wine give Jesus and his God the honour they deserve.

So, dear God, now we simply put this meeting into Your Hands. May we feel Your presence here with us today and throughout the week and always.
In the name of our loving lord Jesus, we offer this our service to You now, Amen.

Julian has had a stroke, which has affected his right arm. He is now at home with support from the family, coming to terms with his new situation. They are managing their change circumstance with fortitude, and they’re not doing too badly. Regular physiotherapy sessions at home, the care review is scheduled for next week. They send their love and best wishes to everyone.

Belanwa Methode from our Anderlecht ecclesia is feeling much better and recovering after a recent heart attack and spell in hospital. We do hope to have a service again on Saturday, 16 May at the house church in Anderlecht.

Jane reports that the family of her brother-in-law in Australia are facing a very difficult time; he is facing a major operation in May, which will be life-changing. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family.

John Launchbury from Portland, USA, had a major heart surgery last Monday. By Wednesday, he was sitting up in bed and had actually been out of bed moving around, having had most of the tubes removed. This weekend, they hope that he’ll be able to return home. – We pray for him and his family at this difficult time.

With our song “Give thanks” we gave thanks to our Most High God, from whom we all receive those blessings from Mother Earth.

Next, we listened to the reading talking of the time when Jacob, the 3rd patriarch, son of Isaac and Rebekah, went out from Beer-sheba to go to Haran.

Coming to a certain place, he made it his resting-place for the night, for the sun had gone down; and he took one of the stones which were there, and putting it under his head, he went to sleep in that place.

And he had a dream, and in his dream he saw steps stretching from earth to heaven, and the angels of God were going up and down on them. And he saw Jehovah by his side, saying that He is the Lord, the God of Abraham his Father, and the God of Isaac. This God said to Jacob:

“13 … I am Jehovah, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; 14 and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15 And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” (Genesis 28:13-15 ASV)

And Jacob, awaking from his sleep, said,

“16 …Surely Jehovah is in this place; and I knew it not. 17 And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (Genesis 28:16-17 ASV)

And early in the morning, Jacob took the stone which had been under his head, and put it up as a pillar and put oil on it. And he gave that place the name of Beth-el (house of God), but before that time the town was named Luz.  Then Jacob took an oath and said,

“20… If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, 21 so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, and Jehovah will be my God, 22 then this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” (Genesis 28:20-22 ASV)

Our speaker today wants to think about the experiences of religion,

 as I’m sure you know, means to tie fast. It’s a binding between God and man, and I want to try to explore how long or short that finding is.

We’re told God is in heaven. Isaiah chapter 66 begins:

Thus says the Lord, heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where is the house that ye build unto Me? And where is the place of My rest? (Isaiah 66:1)

The first mention is in Genesis chapter one, quoting the authorised version.

“1  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. …

“6  And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” (Genesis 1:1, 6-8 AV)

I understand that the firmament was a word made up in the 17th century. The NIV uses the words “expanse ” and “sky,” and the NLT says it’s a space called “sky.”

In 2 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 2, Paul talks about some caught up to the third heaven, and this is often explained as the first heaven being the atmosphere and the clouds at 1 to 3 miles above the surface of the earth.

Planes fly about 6 to 7 miles high. So, these days, it’s within touching distance.

The second head is the planets, stars and galaxies.

Abraham was promised that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. He could probably see about 3.000 stars, so he was promised a huge family. In the universe in total, there are about 8.000 stars bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.
But there are actually thought to be 200 million trillion steps, 200.000 million, million, million stars in the universe. So he was promised an amazingly large family.

The third heaven is the final sphere, God’s dwelling place.

The Hebrew word means to be lofty. And looking at the Greek word for heaven, strong offers by explanation happiness, power, and eternity.

The physical space was finite, and beyond the material world was the spiritual space of God. The physical world was subject to death and decay, but the heavens were eternal, spiritual, and better than the earth. And the planets and stars were pointers to the religious heaven of God.

Up to the Middle Ages, the cosmos was believed to have had the Earth at the centre of everything, surrounded by concentric spheres of the moon, the sun, planets and stars.

Art aimed to represent the spiritual order beyond the material world and portrayed heaven in pictures comprising a light blue background with flat, out-of-proportion figures, often in gold, referencing the sky and the sun.

But art in the 13th century developed a new way of seeing heaven. And even a pope encouraged a change of style to incorporate linear perspective, which made a sort of medieval virtual reality. Which was thought to have the power to convert unbelievers to the Christian faith by making heaven more believable.

Science took up the reins of the shift a couple of hundred years later, with Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, who were all on the side of God. To them, the new astronomy reflected the glory of God the Father, Whose power and order in the universe supported their faith in Christianity’s eternal salvation, whose domain is the Kingdom of heaven.

Firstly, Copernicus suggested that the Earth went round the sun so that the Earth, including us, was no longer at the centre of everything. Newton’s big idea was that gravity, the gravity that makes an apple fall to the ground, also keeps the moon orbiting the Earth and planets orbiting the sun. So space everywhere is ruled by the same physical laws. This continuity between terrestrial and celestial realms, by this continuity, Newton famously united the heavens and the earth. The physical space could go on forever. So there was no room left over for heaven as a superior alternative domain.

Newton tore a hole in the social fabric that we’ve been … we’re struggling to comprehend, and reverberate still in the war between science and religion.

Einstein replaced Newton’s cosmology with space-time, and this has been developed into hyperspace, which I don’t understand, but is described as nothing but space curled up into patterns.

At the start of our universe, space had no structure, formless and empty darkness, to quote Genesis chapter. It was simple and uniform, like a blank piece of paper. Then, as time proceeded, the paper crinkled up into ever more elaborate structures, eventually giving rise to the complexities of today. So, perhaps this is God as the origami artist.

The new understanding of space impacts on who we think we are in space today is an arena to be mapped and measured. If heaven isn’t special, are we special?

Are we in conglomeration with molecules?

Christadelphians and other fundamental Christians and even New Age proponents do not accept this poor, demoralising, reductionist world.

But, I don’t think there is a war between science and religion. Science has furthered our understanding of the physical world. And as we’ve mentioned, it greatly enhanced the promise of Abraham.

But God doesn’t need to live in heaven. He is everywhere. Acts chapter 17 verses 27 and 28 say He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being.

Jesus often spoke about the Kingdom of heaven, or the Kingdom of God.

In the road spray, he taught us to ask

They Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Asking for the divide between God and man to be dissolved.

The Kingdom of heaven is still the domain of human salvation, the righteousness of God replacing the sin of the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Today, the expression “a thin place” is used to describe a place in time where space, the space between heaven and earth, grows thin and the sacred and the secular seem to meet.

This is what I mean by the experience of religion.

The Bible is full op people being touched by God, often in a vision or a dream. I picked a few examples showing how people felt about God drawing near to them. We’ve read about Jacob and his ladder experience in Genesis chapter 28. And his conclusion was

How awasome is this place?
This is none other than the House of God. This is the gate of heaven.

Then in the New Testament, I think of Mary.

My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour.

After Jesus’ resurrection, the couple on the road to Emmaus expressed their vivid feelings.

When are our hearts burning within us? While he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us.

In our 21st-century lives, a thin place offers a sense of peace or a feeling of awe, where we feel our connection with God more strongly.

Some people feel it in wonderful landscapes. Others in a quiet place, or listening to music, or appreciating a work of art, or a moment in daily life, like opening the door onto a sunny morning.

I expect lots of people find the giving of thanks and taking the bread and wine a thin place.

As we’re about to remember Jesus’ sacrifice, may you know Jesus, your saviour.

May I know Jesus, my saviour. Thank you.

Thank you, Rachel, for those lovely words. It’s almost impossible, isn’t it, to imagine the extent of the universe, the cosmos, and to think that God is both filling that. But also, as you said, so close to every one of us now. And you have brought us beautifully to the centre point of our meeting, to think about Jesus, who said about himself, and I’m doing this remembering Jesus would one day see the angels ascending on himself, the Son of man. So just as Jacob saw the connection between heaven and earth, wo we see heaven and earth coming together in Jesus, our lord.

Before we share the bread and wine, we’re going to sing another hymn. And this time it’s going to be ” Praise the Lord” 174, which reminds us of the depths of the love that has been poured out on us in the sacrifice of Jesus.

Who his love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing his praise?

He can never be forgotten, thoughout heav’n’s eternal days.

We thank You Father,
we come before You at this time to give our thanks and praise for all the blessings You bestow on us.

We thank You for the love that You show towards us because You loved us so much.
You gave your only son.
We come now to remember the love that Your son, our lord, showed not only to You, but to us and the whole world also, in that he fullfilled Your word to the very end.

As we pass these emblems of our lor’s love and great sacrifice to one another, we again give our thanks for the Plan that You have for all people that believe in You.

We ask that we may soon see the return of our lord and that we can therefore be brought closer to You, our eternal Father.

We ask that You be with us all and that You will hear this prayer through our lord and saviour’s name. Amen.

Together we sing a Christian hymn based on Joachim Neander’s German-language hymn “Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren”, published in 1680.: When we look down from a lofty mountain grandeur,

O Lord my God! when I in awesome wonder
consider all the works thy hand hath made,
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
thy power throughout the universe displayed:

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee,
how great thou art! How great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee,
how great thou art! How great thou art!

*

*

We finish our Sunday service with prayer:

Let us pray, Lord God Heavenly Father,

we put oour minds to places where we just can’t comprehend Your dwelling place, the sky above the stars above the sun and moon, places You hold in the Palm of Your Hand.
Yeah, beyond our wildest imagination,

Yeah,

we come to You in prayer, whether we are gathered in this room, whether we are sat in our various homes across different countries worshipping and praising You now and we know You’re in our presence. You are hearing these very words now. That’s amazing and we are in such actual majesty and splendour and Your power and glory in our presence now.

It is humbling and we pray tha what we have done this morning just a litle bit goes towards chewing as a sweet smell. As pleasing and acceptable we are mindful of the clouds above. And in our lives, we feel the rains pouring down at us sometimes and the stresses and strains and struggles of life.
Oh, too much.
And there’s no sunshine, and there’sno brightness. There’s nothing to look forward to. Then the clouds break. And the blue sky above is always there. The sun is always there. And the same with You, that well, whatever our situation, whatever our circumstances, whatever our troubles and problems and strains and anxiety, You are therejust above it all. And we can come to You in our prayers, or we can seek strength and guidance. As we face another week we know that You are ina principle of hearts and minds. And You control everything, and You planeverything for us. So guide our ways. Help us take our hand and lead us as Yougo towards another week.
So we thank You for so much, we thank You for Your blessings, for Your kindness, for Your love.

Rate this:

Sunday service 2026 May 3 Experiences of religion

Spring seemed to have arrived properly this last week.

It’s really lovely to have you all with us. Very lovely to have Jonathan and Rachel Edwards from Winton meeting, and Rachel will be talking to us, giving words of encouragement a bit later.

It’s so good, isn’t it, to be together as a family, a family in Christ, so that we can praise God and thank Him for His creation and for everything that He’s done for us. And of course, most importantly, to remember what Jesus has done and what he is still doing for us day by day. Because it’s because of him that we’re here now. And it’s because of his sacrifice that we have hope in the future.
And we know that he is here with us in this hall, because he said that whenever 2 or 3 people gather in his name, he’s there in the midst of us.

So he may have lived 2000 years ago, but he is alive today in this year 2026.

May our singing, may our meeting of the Bible and remembering Jesus in bread and wine give Jesus and his God the honour they deserve.

So, dear God, now we simply put this meeting into Your Hands. May we feel Your presence here with us today and throughout the week and always.
In the name of our loving lord Jesus, we offer this our service to You now, Amen.

Julian has had a stroke, which has affected his right arm. He is now at home with support from the family, coming to terms with his new situation. They are managing their change circumstance with fortitude, and they’re not doing too badly. Regular physiotherapy sessions at home, the care review is scheduled for next week. They send their love and best wishes to everyone.

Belanwa Methode from our Anderlecht ecclesia is feeling much better and recovering after a recent heart attack and spell in hospital. We do hope to have a service again on Saturday, 16 May at the house church in Anderlecht.

Jane reports that the family of her brother-in-law in Australia are facing a very difficult time; he is facing a major operation in May, which will be life-changing. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family.

John Launchbury from Portland, USA, had a major heart surgery last Monday. By Wednesday, he was sitting up in bed and had actually been out of bed moving around, having had most of the tubes removed. This weekend, they hope that he’ll be able to return home. – We pray for him and his family at this difficult time.

With our song “Give thanks” we gave thanks to our Most High God, from whom we all receive those blessings from Mother Earth.

Next, we listened to the reading talking of the time when Jacob, the 3rd patriarch, son of Isaac and Rebekah, went out from Beer-sheba to go to Haran.

Coming to a certain place, he made it his resting-place for the night, for the sun had gone down; and he took one of the stones which were there, and putting it under his head, he went to sleep in that place.

And he had a dream, and in his dream he saw steps stretching from earth to heaven, and the angels of God were going up and down on them. And he saw Jehovah by his side, saying that He is the Lord, the God of Abraham his Father, and the God of Isaac. This God said to Jacob:

“13 … I am Jehovah, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; 14 and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15 And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” (Genesis 28:13-15 ASV)

And Jacob, awaking from his sleep, said,

“16 …Surely Jehovah is in this place; and I knew it not. 17 And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (Genesis 28:16-17 ASV)

And early in the morning, Jacob took the stone which had been under his head, and put it up as a pillar and put oil on it. And he gave that place the name of Beth-el (house of God), but before that time the town was named Luz.  Then Jacob took an oath and said,

“20… If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, 21 so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, and Jehovah will be my God, 22 then this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” (Genesis 28:20-22 ASV)

Our speaker today wants to think about the experiences of religion,

 as I’m sure you know, means to tie fast. It’s a binding between God and man, and I want to try to explore how long or short that finding is.

We’re told God is in heaven. Isaiah chapter 66 begins:

Thus says the Lord, heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where is the house that ye build unto Me? And where is the place of My rest? (Isaiah 66:1)

The first mention is in Genesis chapter one, quoting the authorised version.

“1  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. …

“6  And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” (Genesis 1:1, 6-8 AV)

I understand that the firmament was a word made up in the 17th century. The NIV uses the words “expanse ” and “sky,” and the NLT says it’s a space called “sky.”

In 2 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 2, Paul talks about some caught up to the third heaven, and this is often explained as the first heaven being the atmosphere and the clouds at 1 to 3 miles above the surface of the earth.

Planes fly about 6 to 7 miles high. So, these days, it’s within touching distance.

The second head is the planets, stars and galaxies.

Abraham was promised that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. He could probably see about 3.000 stars, so he was promised a huge family. In the universe in total, there are about 8.000 stars bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.
But there are actually thought to be 200 million trillion steps, 200.000 million, million, million stars in the universe. So he was promised an amazingly large family.

The third heaven is the final sphere, God’s dwelling place.

The Hebrew word means to be lofty. And looking at the Greek word for heaven, strong offers by explanation happiness, power, and eternity.

The physical space was finite, and beyond the material world was the spiritual space of God. The physical world was subject to death and decay, but the heavens were eternal, spiritual, and better than the earth. And the planets and stars were pointers to the religious heaven of God.

Up to the Middle Ages, the cosmos was believed to have had the Earth at the centre of everything, surrounded by concentric spheres of the moon, the sun, planets and stars.

Art aimed to represent the spiritual order beyond the material world and portrayed heaven in pictures comprising a light blue background with flat, out-of-proportion figures, often in gold, referencing the sky and the sun.

But art in the 13th century developed a new way of seeing heaven. And even a pope encouraged a change of style to incorporate linear perspective, which made a sort of medieval virtual reality. Which was thought to have the power to convert unbelievers to the Christian faith by making heaven more believable.

Science took up the reins of the shift a couple of hundred years later, with Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, who were all on the side of God. To them, the new astronomy reflected the glory of God the Father, Whose power and order in the universe supported their faith in Christianity’s eternal salvation, whose domain is the Kingdom of heaven.

Firstly, Copernicus suggested that the Earth went round the sun so that the Earth, including us, was no longer at the centre of everything. Newton’s big idea was that gravity, the gravity that makes an apple fall to the ground, also keeps the moon orbiting the Earth and planets orbiting the sun. So space everywhere is ruled by the same physical laws. This continuity between terrestrial and celestial realms, by this continuity, Newton famously united the heavens and the earth. The physical space could go on forever. So there was no room left over for heaven as a superior alternative domain.

Newton tore a hole in the social fabric that we’ve been … we’re struggling to comprehend, and reverberate still in the war between science and religion.

Einstein replaced Newton’s cosmology with space-time, and this has been developed into hyperspace, which I don’t understand, but is described as nothing but space curled up into patterns.

At the start of our universe, space had no structure, formless and empty darkness, to quote Genesis chapter. It was simple and uniform, like a blank piece of paper. Then, as time proceeded, the paper crinkled up into ever more elaborate structures, eventually giving rise to the complexities of today. So, perhaps this is God as the origami artist.

The new understanding of space impacts on who we think we are in space today is an arena to be mapped and measured. If heaven isn’t special, are we special?

Are we in conglomeration with molecules?

Christadelphians and other fundamental Christians and even New Age proponents do not accept this poor, demoralising, reductionist world.

But, I don’t think there is a war between science and religion. Science has furthered our understanding of the physical world. And as we’ve mentioned, it greatly enhanced the promise of Abraham.

But God doesn’t need to live in heaven. He is everywhere. Acts chapter 17 verses 27 and 28 say He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being.

Jesus often spoke about the Kingdom of heaven, or the Kingdom of God.

In the road spray, he taught us to ask

They Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Asking for the divide between God and man to be dissolved.

The Kingdom of heaven is still the domain of human salvation, the righteousness of God replacing the sin of the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Today, the expression “a thin place” is used to describe a place in time where space, the space between heaven and earth, grows thin and the sacred and the secular seem to meet.

This is what I mean by the experience of religion.

The Bible is full op people being touched by God, often in a vision or a dream. I picked a few examples showing how people felt about God drawing near to them. We’ve read about Jacob and his ladder experience in Genesis chapter 28. And his conclusion was

How awasome is this place?
This is none other than the House of God. This is the gate of heaven.

Then in the New Testament, I think of Mary.

My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour.

After Jesus’ resurrection, the couple on the road to Emmaus expressed their vivid feelings.

When are our hearts burning within us? While he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us.

In our 21st-century lives, a thin place offers a sense of peace or a feeling of awe, where we feel our connection with God more strongly.

Some people feel it in wonderful landscapes. Others in a quiet place, or listening to music, or appreciating a work of art, or a moment in daily life, like opening the door onto a sunny morning.

I expect lots of people find the giving of thanks and taking the bread and wine a thin place.

As we’re about to remember Jesus’ sacrifice, may you know Jesus, your saviour.

May I know Jesus, my saviour. Thank you.

Thank you, Rachel, for those lovely words. It’s almost impossible, isn’t it, to imagine the extent of the universe, the cosmos, and to think that God is both filling that. But also, as you said, so close to every one of us now. And you have brought us beautifully to the centre point of our meeting, to think about Jesus, who said about himself, and I’m doing this remembering Jesus would one day see the angels ascending on himself, the Son of man. So just as Jacob saw the connection between heaven and earth, wo we see heaven and earth coming together in Jesus, our lord.

Before we share the bread and wine, we’re going to sing another hymn. And this time it’s going to be ” Praise the Lord” 174, which reminds us of the depths of the love that has been poured out on us in the sacrifice of Jesus.

Who his love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing his praise?

He can never be forgotten, thoughout heav’n’s eternal days.

We thank You Father,
we come before You at this time to give our thanks and praise for all the blessings You bestow on us.

We thank You for the love that You show towards us because You loved us so much.
You gave your only son.
We come now to remember the love that Your son, our lord, showed not only to You, but to us and the whole world also, in that he fullfilled Your word to the very end.

As we pass these emblems of our lor’s love and great sacrifice to one another, we again give our thanks for the Plan that You have for all people that believe in You.

We ask that we may soon see the return of our lord and that we can therefore be brought closer to You, our eternal Father.

We ask that You be with us all and that You will hear this prayer through our lord and saviour’s name. Amen.

Together we sing a Christian hymn based on Joachim Neander’s German-language hymn “Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren”, published in 1680.: When we look down from a lofty mountain grandeur,

O Lord my God! when I in awesome wonder
consider all the works thy hand hath made,
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
thy power throughout the universe displayed:

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee,
how great thou art! How great thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to thee,
how great thou art! How great thou art!

*

*

We finish our Sunday service with prayer:

Let us pray, Lord God Heavenly Father,

we put oour minds to places where we just can’t comprehend Your dwelling place, the sky above the stars above the sun and moon, places You hold in the Palm of Your Hand.
Yeah, beyond our wildest imagination,

Yeah,

we come to You in prayer, whether we are gathered in this room, whether we are sat in our various homes across different countries worshipping and praising You now and we know You’re in our presence. You are hearing these very words now. That’s amazing and we are in such actual majesty and splendour and Your power and glory in our presence now.

It is humbling and we pray tha what we have done this morning just a litle bit goes towards chewing as a sweet smell. As pleasing and acceptable we are mindful of the clouds above. And in our lives, we feel the rains pouring down at us sometimes and the stresses and strains and struggles of life.
Oh, too much.
And there’s no sunshine, and there’sno brightness. There’s nothing to look forward to. Then the clouds break. And the blue sky above is always there. The sun is always there. And the same with You, that well, whatever our situation, whatever our circumstances, whatever our troubles and problems and strains and anxiety, You are therejust above it all. And we can come to You in our prayers, or we can seek strength and guidance. As we face another week we know that You are ina principle of hearts and minds. And You control everything, and You planeverything for us. So guide our ways. Help us take our hand and lead us as Yougo towards another week.
So we thank You for so much, we thank You for Your blessings, for Your kindness, for Your love.

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“The bigger, the better”*…

Thea Applebaum Licht with a reminder that, when it comes to size, Texas has got nothing on California…

Between about 1905 and 1915, the United States entered a golden age of postcards. Cheaper and faster mail service, the advent of “divided back” cards (freeing the entire front for images), and improved commercial printing all drove a new mass market for collectible communication. It was at this same moment that a craze for “tall-tale” or “exaggeration” postcards reached its peak. By cutting, collaging, and re-photographing images, artists created out-of-proportion illusions. One of the most popular genres was agricultural goods of fantastic dimensions.

Nowhere were such postcards more popular than in the western states. There, in the heart of the tough business of agriculture, illustrations of folkloric American abundance were understandable favorites. Pride and place were tied up with the prodigious crops. Supersized fruits and vegetables were often accompanied by brief captions: “How We Do Things at Attica, Wis.”, “The Kind We Raise in Our State”, or “The Kind We Grow in Texas”. Photographers like William “Dad” H. Martin and Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr. captured farmers harvesting furniture-sized onions and stacking corn cobs like timber, fisherman reeling in leviathans, and children sharing canoe-like slices of watermelon.

In the series of exaggeration postcards [produced in the run-up to the postcard boom, then published during it] collected [here], it is California that takes center stage. Produced by the prolific San Francisco–based publisher Edward H. Mitchell, each card features a single rail car rolling through lush farmland. Aboard are gargantuan, luminous fruits and vegetables: dimpled navel oranges, a dusky bunch of grapes, and mottled walnuts. Placed end-to-end, the cards would make a colorful train crossing California’s fertile valleys. Unlike other, more action-packed “tall-tale” cards — filled with farmers, fisherman, and children for scale — Mitchell’s series is restrained. Sharply illuminated, the colossal cargo lean toward artwork rather than gag. “A Carload of Mammoth Apples”[here], green-yellow and gleaming, could have been plucked from Rene Magritte’s The Son of Man [here].

Fabulous fruit and vegetables: “Calicornication: Postcards of Giant Produce (1909),” from @publicdomainrev.bsky.social.

In other art-related news: (very) long-term readers might recall that, back in 2008, (R)D reported that London’s Daily Mail believed that it had tracked him down, and that he is Robin Gunningham. Now as Boing Boing reports:

Anyone reading Banksy’s Wikipedia article at any point since a famous Mail on Sunday exposé in 2008 would likely get the impression the secretive stenciler is probably Robin Gunningham or Robert Del Naja, artists who came from the Bristol Underground. Reuters, having conducted extensive research into their movements, finds both men present at critical moments, but only one at all of them: an arrest report from New York City puts Gunningham firmly in the frame, and recent public records from Ukraine put it beyond doubt.

We later unearthed previously undisclosed U.S. court records and police reports. These included a hand-written confession by the artist to a long-ago misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct – a document that revealed, beyond dispute, Banksy’s true identity. … Reuters presented that man with its findings about his identity and detailed questions about his work and career. He didn’t reply. Banksy’s company, Pest Control, said the artist “has decided to say nothing.”

His long-time lawyer, Mark Stephens, wrote to Reuters that Banksy “does not accept that many of the details contained within your enquiry are correct.” He didn’t elaborate. Without confirming or denying Banksy’s identity, Stephens urged us not to publish this report, saying doing so would violate the artist’s privacy, interfere with his art and put him in danger.

Del Naja (better known for other work) evidently participates in painting the murals and is perhaps the stencil draftsman (Banksy: “he can actually draw”). Banksy’s former manager, Steve Lazarides, organized a legal name change for Gunningham after the Mail on Sunday item, which successfully ended records for Banksy’s movements under his birth name and stymied researchers—until Reuters figured out the new one by poring through Ukrainian public records on days Del Naja was there. Gunningham used the name David Jones, among the most common in the U.K. If it rings a bell, you might be thinking of another famous British artist was who obliged by his record company to find something more unique.

* common idiom

###

As we live large, we might spare a thought for Isaac Newton; he died on this date (O.S.) in 1727. A polymath who was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed, Newton was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, author, and inventor. He contributed to and refined the scientific method, and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, achieved the first great unification in physics and established classical mechanics.  He also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus. (Newton developed calculus a couple of years before Leibniz, but published a couple of years after.) Newton spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696–1699) and Master (1699–1727) of the Royal Mint, a role in which he increased the trustworthiness/accuracy and security of British coinage in a way crucial to the rise of Great Britain as a commercial and colonial power.

Newton, of course, had a famous relationship with fruit:

Newton often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree. The story is believed to have passed into popular knowledge after being related by Catherine Barton, Newton’s niece, to Voltaire. Voltaire then wrote in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1727), “Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree.” – source

Newton’s apple is thought to have been the green skinned ‘Flower of Kent’ variety.

“The bigger, the better”*…

Thea Applebaum Licht with a reminder that, when it comes to size, Texas has got nothing on California…

Between about 1905 and 1915, the United States entered a golden age of postcards. Cheaper and faster mail service, the advent of “divided back” cards (freeing the entire front for images), and improved commercial printing all drove a new mass market for collectible communication. It was at this same moment that a craze for “tall-tale” or “exaggeration” postcards reached its peak. By cutting, collaging, and re-photographing images, artists created out-of-proportion illusions. One of the most popular genres was agricultural goods of fantastic dimensions.

Nowhere were such postcards more popular than in the western states. There, in the heart of the tough business of agriculture, illustrations of folkloric American abundance were understandable favorites. Pride and place were tied up with the prodigious crops. Supersized fruits and vegetables were often accompanied by brief captions: “How We Do Things at Attica, Wis.”, “The Kind We Raise in Our State”, or “The Kind We Grow in Texas”. Photographers like William “Dad” H. Martin and Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr. captured farmers harvesting furniture-sized onions and stacking corn cobs like timber, fisherman reeling in leviathans, and children sharing canoe-like slices of watermelon.

In the series of exaggeration postcards [produced in the run-up to the postcard boom, then published during it] collected [here], it is California that takes center stage. Produced by the prolific San Francisco–based publisher Edward H. Mitchell, each card features a single rail car rolling through lush farmland. Aboard are gargantuan, luminous fruits and vegetables: dimpled navel oranges, a dusky bunch of grapes, and mottled walnuts. Placed end-to-end, the cards would make a colorful train crossing California’s fertile valleys. Unlike other, more action-packed “tall-tale” cards — filled with farmers, fisherman, and children for scale — Mitchell’s series is restrained. Sharply illuminated, the colossal cargo lean toward artwork rather than gag. “A Carload of Mammoth Apples”[here], green-yellow and gleaming, could have been plucked from Rene Magritte’s The Son of Man [here].

Fabulous fruit and vegetables: “Calicornication: Postcards of Giant Produce (1909),” from @publicdomainrev.bsky.social.

In other art-related news: (very) long-term readers might recall that, back in 2008, (R)D reported that London’s Daily Mail believed that it had tracked him down, and that he is Robin Gunningham. Now as Boing Boing reports:

Anyone reading Banksy’s Wikipedia article at any point since a famous Mail on Sunday exposé in 2008 would likely get the impression the secretive stenciler is probably Robin Gunningham or Robert Del Naja, artists who came from the Bristol Underground. Reuters, having conducted extensive research into their movements, finds both men present at critical moments, but only one at all of them: an arrest report from New York City puts Gunningham firmly in the frame, and recent public records from Ukraine put it beyond doubt.

We later unearthed previously undisclosed U.S. court records and police reports. These included a hand-written confession by the artist to a long-ago misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct – a document that revealed, beyond dispute, Banksy’s true identity. … Reuters presented that man with its findings about his identity and detailed questions about his work and career. He didn’t reply. Banksy’s company, Pest Control, said the artist “has decided to say nothing.”

His long-time lawyer, Mark Stephens, wrote to Reuters that Banksy “does not accept that many of the details contained within your enquiry are correct.” He didn’t elaborate. Without confirming or denying Banksy’s identity, Stephens urged us not to publish this report, saying doing so would violate the artist’s privacy, interfere with his art and put him in danger.

Del Naja (better known for other work) evidently participates in painting the murals and is perhaps the stencil draftsman (Banksy: “he can actually draw”). Banksy’s former manager, Steve Lazarides, organized a legal name change for Gunningham after the Mail on Sunday item, which successfully ended records for Banksy’s movements under his birth name and stymied researchers—until Reuters figured out the new one by poring through Ukrainian public records on days Del Naja was there. Gunningham used the name David Jones, among the most common in the U.K. If it rings a bell, you might be thinking of another famous British artist was who obliged by his record company to find something more unique.

* common idiom

###

As we live large, we might spare a thought for Isaac Newton; he died on this date (O.S.) in 1727. A polymath who was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed, Newton was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, author, and inventor. He contributed to and refined the scientific method, and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, achieved the first great unification in physics and established classical mechanics.  He also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus. (Newton developed calculus a couple of years before Leibniz, but published a couple of years after.) Newton spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696–1699) and Master (1699–1727) of the Royal Mint, a role in which he increased the trustworthiness/accuracy and security of British coinage in a way crucial to the rise of Great Britain as a commercial and colonial power.

Newton, of course, had a famous relationship with fruit:

Newton often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree. The story is believed to have passed into popular knowledge after being related by Catherine Barton, Newton’s niece, to Voltaire. Voltaire then wrote in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1727), “Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree.” – source

Newton’s apple is thought to have been the green skinned ‘Flower of Kent’ variety.

Finally framed and hung my new illustrations. Pretty happy with the result

Ordered in the timeline of their lifespan

#Science #scientists #isaacnewton #AdaLovelace #AlanTuring #decoration

‘Romance’ between scientists and AI leads to progress on age-old maths problem https://www.byteseu.com/1812084/ #AI #arXiv #ChinaScienceDaily #Chinese #DavidGregory #DavidHilbert #FudanUniversity #IsaacNewton #KissingNumber #OlegMusin #PackingStar #PekingUniversity #QiYuan #Science #ShanghaiAcademyOfAIForScience #SpherePacking

Scientists discover “time crystals” that defy Newton’s third law

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; so, as you probably learnt in school, dictates…
#NewsBeep #News #Physics #CA #Canada #IsaacNewton #Newton'sThirdLaw #Science #Sound #timecrystals
https://www.newsbeep.com/ca/480329/

Scientists discover “time crystals” that defy Newton’s third law

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; so, as you probably learnt in school, dictates…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Physics #IsaacNewton #Newton'sThirdLaw #Science #sound #timecrystals
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/472640/

Scientists discover “time crystals” that defy Newton’s third law

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; so, as you probably learnt in school, dictates…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Physics #IsaacNewton #Newton'sThirdLaw #Science #sound #timecrystals
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/472640/

I'm in the process of #renovating and restyling my place, rugs, paint, #decoration etc.

I purchased a set of posters from #Etsy to frame them and hang them in my man's cave where I already have others from topics of my interest or special occasions like concerts signed posters and such.

But this time I wanted to do something different; have portraits or drawings of people I consider revolutionized the world, especially around my area so I've got these:

#IsaacNewton #AdaLovelace #AlanTuring

https://www.europesays.com/uk/697149/ A Study Appears to Stunningly Contradict Newton and Einstein’s Theory of Gravity #acceleration #AlbertEinstein #BinaryStars #CelestialObjects #DarkMatter #IsaacNewton #ModifiedNewtonianDynamics #NewtonEinstein #Physics #Science #TheoryOfGeneralRelativity #UK #UnitedKingdom

A Study Appears to Stunningly Contradict Newton and Einstein’s Theory of Gravity

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, an immensely important update…
#NewsBeep #News #Physics #acceleration #AlbertEinstein #AU #Australia #Binarystars #celestialobjects #darkmatter #IsaacNewton #ModifiedNewtonianDynamics #Newton-Einstein #Science #TheoryofGeneralRelativity
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/412944/

A Study Appears to Stunningly Contradict Newton and Einstein’s Theory of Gravity

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, an immensely important update…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Physics #acceleration #AlbertEinstein #BinaryStars #celestialobjects #Darkmatter #IsaacNewton #ModifiedNewtonianDynamics #Newton-Einstein #Science #TheoryofGeneralRelativity
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/407202/

A Study Appears to Stunningly Contradict Newton and Einstein’s Theory of Gravity

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, an immensely important update…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Physics #acceleration #AlbertEinstein #BinaryStars #celestialobjects #Darkmatter #IsaacNewton #ModifiedNewtonianDynamics #Newton-Einstein #Science #TheoryofGeneralRelativity
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/407202/

https://www.europesays.com/ie/284395/ A Study Appears to Stunningly Contradict Newton and Einstein’s Theory of Gravity #acceleration #AlbertEinstein #BinaryStars #CelestialObjects #DarkMatter #Éire #IE #Ireland #IsaacNewton #ModifiedNewtonianDynamics #NewtonEinstein #Physics #Science #TheoryOfGeneralRelativity

This week's E-Sylum notes the birthday (anniversary) of Sir Isaac Newton. Famed physicist and victim of falling apples, he was also Warden of the Royal Mint where he took quite an interest and made quite an impact. Read more: https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n01.html#article20

Pictured is a 1793 ½ Penny from Middlesex: https://en.numista.com/53433

#Numismatics #Coins #Physics #IsaacNewton #OnThisDay @numismatics

'Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things'

-Isaac Newton

#Newton #IsaacNewton #quote

Principia for Sale

With Christmas approaching, you may be looking for gift ideas so I thought I would pass on this advertisement:

The book concerned is a First Edition of the Continental Issue of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, dated 1687.

For more details see here. The estimate is “only” €100,000, which seems to me a bit on the low side. A similar volume was listed by Christie’s in 2016 as $1,000,000 to $1,500,000 but in the end sold for $3.7 million. This one has had some repairs and is slightly browned with age, but has an interesting provenance. I’d be surprised if it didn’t fetch at least a million. We’ll find out in a week!

#IsaacNewton #KettererRareBooks #PhilosophiæNaturalisPrincipiaMathematica #Principia

“Alchemy. The link between the immemorial magic arts and modern science. Humankind’s first systematic effort to unlock the secrets of matter by reproducible experiment.”*…

As (AI/tech pro and writer) Dale Markowitz explains, for scientists of yore anything—from mermaids to alchemy—was on the table…

In 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes purchased a trove of Isaac Newton’s unpublished notes. These included more than 100,000 words on the great physicist’s secret alchemical experiments. Keynes, shocked and awed, dubbed them “wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value.” This unexpected discovery, paired with things like Newton’s obsession with searching for encrypted messages in the Bible’s Book of David, showed that Newton “was not the first of the age of reason,” Keynes concluded. “He was the last of the magicians.”

When it came to fascination with the occult, Newton was hardly alone. Many contemporary scientists may cast aspersions on spells, mythical tales, and powers of divination. Not so for many of the early modern thinkers who laid the foundations of modern science. To them, the world teemed with the uncanny: witches, unicorns, mermaids, stars that foretold the future, base metals that could be coaxed into gold or distilled into elixirs of eternal life. 

These fantastical beliefs were shared by the illiterate and educated elite alike—including many of the forebears of contemporary science, including chemist Robert Boyle, who gave us modern chemistry and Boyle’s law, and biologist Carl Linnaeus, who developed the taxonomic system by which scientists classify species today. Rather than stifling discovery, their now-arcane beliefs may have helped drive them and other scientists to endure hot smoky days in the bowels of alchemical laboratories or long frigid nights on the balconies of astronomical towers.

To understand the role of magic in spurring scientific progress, it helps to understand the state of learning in Europe in those times. Throughout the Middle Ages, many scholars were fixated on the idea that knowledge could only be gleaned from ancient texts. Universities taught from incomplete, often poorly translated copies of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen. To stray from the giants was a crime: In 14th-century Oxford, scholars could be charged 5 shillings for contradicting Aristotle. Curiosity was considered a sin on par with lust. A powerful motivator was needed to shuck off ancient thinking.

One of the first influential thinkers to break with the old ways was the 16th-century Swiss-German physician Paracelsus. The father of toxicology, known for his pioneering use of chemicals in medicine, Paracelsus was among the first of his time to champion the importance of experimentation and observation—a philosophy which would set the foundations for the scientific method. Paracelsus showed the scholars what he thought of their old books by publicly burning his copies of Galen and Avicenna. 

But what led him to this experiment-first approach? Perhaps it was because, to Paracelsus, experimentation was a kind of magic. His writing fuses scientific observation with the occult. To him, medicine, astrology, and alchemy were inextricably linked—different ways of unveiling sacred truths hidden in nature by God. Paracelsus considered himself a kind of magus, as he believed Moses and Solomon had been, as Newton would view himself 150 years later. Paracelsus believed, though, that divine knowledge could be gained not just by studying scripture, but also by studying nature. The alchemical workbench, the night sky—these were even surer routes to God than any dusty old textbook…

[Markowitz recounts the stories of Tycho Brahe [almanac entry here], his patron Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Robert Boyle, William Harvey, and Linnaeus [here], who, in 1749, urged the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to launch a hunt for mermaids…]

… To our contemporary ears, most all of this may sound fairly ridiculous. But as Edward Donlick puts it in The Clockwork Universe, “The world was so full of marvels, in other words, that the truly scientific approach was to reserve judgment about what was possible and what wasn’t, and to observe and experiment instead.” To the 17th-century scientist, anything was on the table, so long as it could be experimentally studied.

Today, we know how the story ends: Belief in astrology, alchemy, and witchcraft declined in places where empiricism and skepticism became cornerstones of science. But perhaps early scientists’ fascination with the occult should remind us of other tenants of discovery: open-mindedness and curiosity. Witches, mermaids, and the philosopher’s stone may not have survived modern scrutiny, but it was curiosity about them that drove real progress and allowed early thinkers to stray from established norms. In this sense, curiosity is a kind of magic…

“How the Occult Gave Birth to Science,” from @dalequark.bsky.social in @nautil.us.

See also: “The importance of experimental proof, on the other hand, does not mean that without new experimental data we cannot make advances” and “Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher’s stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find.”

* John Ciardi

###

As we think about transmutation, we might spare a thought for a rough contemporary (and fellow-traveler) of Newton’s, Rasmus Bartholin; he died on this date in 1698. A physician, mathematician, and physicist, he is best known for his discovery of the optical phenomenon of double refraction. In 1669, Bartholin observed that images seen through Icelandic feldspar (calcite) were doubled and that, when the crystal was rotated, one image remained stationary while the other rotated with the crystal. Such behaviour of light could not be explained using Newton’s optical theories of the time. Subsequently, this was explained as the effect of the polarisation of the light.

Bartholin also wrote a several mathematical works and made astronomical observations (including the comets of 1665). And he is famed for his medical work, in particular his introduction of quinine in the fight against malaria.

(Bartholin’s family was packed with pioneering scientists, 12 of whom became professors at the University of Copenhagen; perhaps most notable, his elder brother Thomas, who discovered the lymphatic system in humans and advanced the theory of “refrigeration anesthesia”(being the first to describe it scientifically).

#alchemy #astology #culture #Discovery #doubleRefraction #history #IsaacNewton #Linnaeus #lymphaticSystem #malaria #occult #optics #Paracelsus #philosophy #quinine #RasmusBartholin #Science #Technology #ThomasBartholin #TychoBrahe #witchcraft

“Alchemy. The link between the immemorial magic arts and modern science. Humankind’s first systematic effort to unlock the secrets of matter by reproducible experiment.”*…

As (AI/tech pro and writer) Dale Markowitz explains, for scientists of yore anything—from mermaids to alchemy—was on the table…

In 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes purchased a trove of Isaac Newton’s unpublished notes. These included more than 100,000 words on the great physicist’s secret alchemical experiments. Keynes, shocked and awed, dubbed them “wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value.” This unexpected discovery, paired with things like Newton’s obsession with searching for encrypted messages in the Bible’s Book of David, showed that Newton “was not the first of the age of reason,” Keynes concluded. “He was the last of the magicians.”

When it came to fascination with the occult, Newton was hardly alone. Many contemporary scientists may cast aspersions on spells, mythical tales, and powers of divination. Not so for many of the early modern thinkers who laid the foundations of modern science. To them, the world teemed with the uncanny: witches, unicorns, mermaids, stars that foretold the future, base metals that could be coaxed into gold or distilled into elixirs of eternal life. 

These fantastical beliefs were shared by the illiterate and educated elite alike—including many of the forebears of contemporary science, including chemist Robert Boyle, who gave us modern chemistry and Boyle’s law, and biologist Carl Linnaeus, who developed the taxonomic system by which scientists classify species today. Rather than stifling discovery, their now-arcane beliefs may have helped drive them and other scientists to endure hot smoky days in the bowels of alchemical laboratories or long frigid nights on the balconies of astronomical towers.

To understand the role of magic in spurring scientific progress, it helps to understand the state of learning in Europe in those times. Throughout the Middle Ages, many scholars were fixated on the idea that knowledge could only be gleaned from ancient texts. Universities taught from incomplete, often poorly translated copies of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen. To stray from the giants was a crime: In 14th-century Oxford, scholars could be charged 5 shillings for contradicting Aristotle. Curiosity was considered a sin on par with lust. A powerful motivator was needed to shuck off ancient thinking.

One of the first influential thinkers to break with the old ways was the 16th-century Swiss-German physician Paracelsus. The father of toxicology, known for his pioneering use of chemicals in medicine, Paracelsus was among the first of his time to champion the importance of experimentation and observation—a philosophy which would set the foundations for the scientific method. Paracelsus showed the scholars what he thought of their old books by publicly burning his copies of Galen and Avicenna. 

But what led him to this experiment-first approach? Perhaps it was because, to Paracelsus, experimentation was a kind of magic. His writing fuses scientific observation with the occult. To him, medicine, astrology, and alchemy were inextricably linked—different ways of unveiling sacred truths hidden in nature by God. Paracelsus considered himself a kind of magus, as he believed Moses and Solomon had been, as Newton would view himself 150 years later. Paracelsus believed, though, that divine knowledge could be gained not just by studying scripture, but also by studying nature. The alchemical workbench, the night sky—these were even surer routes to God than any dusty old textbook…

[Markowitz recounts the stories of Tycho Brahe [almanac entry here], his patron Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Robert Boyle, William Harvey, and Linnaeus [here], who, in 1749, urged the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to launch a hunt for mermaids…]

… To our contemporary ears, most all of this may sound fairly ridiculous. But as Edward Donlick puts it in The Clockwork Universe, “The world was so full of marvels, in other words, that the truly scientific approach was to reserve judgment about what was possible and what wasn’t, and to observe and experiment instead.” To the 17th-century scientist, anything was on the table, so long as it could be experimentally studied.

Today, we know how the story ends: Belief in astrology, alchemy, and witchcraft declined in places where empiricism and skepticism became cornerstones of science. But perhaps early scientists’ fascination with the occult should remind us of other tenants of discovery: open-mindedness and curiosity. Witches, mermaids, and the philosopher’s stone may not have survived modern scrutiny, but it was curiosity about them that drove real progress and allowed early thinkers to stray from established norms. In this sense, curiosity is a kind of magic…

“How the Occult Gave Birth to Science,” from @dalequark.bsky.social in @nautil.us.

See also: “The importance of experimental proof, on the other hand, does not mean that without new experimental data we cannot make advances” and “Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher’s stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find.”

* John Ciardi

###

As we think about transmutation, we might spare a thought for a rough contemporary (and fellow-traveler) of Newton’s, Rasmus Bartholin; he died on this date in 1698. A physician, mathematician, and physicist, he is best known for his discovery of the optical phenomenon of double refraction. In 1669, Bartholin observed that images seen through Icelandic feldspar (calcite) were doubled and that, when the crystal was rotated, one image remained stationary while the other rotated with the crystal. Such behaviour of light could not be explained using Newton’s optical theories of the time. Subsequently, this was explained as the effect of the polarisation of the light.

Bartholin also wrote a several mathematical works and made astronomical observations (including the comets of 1665). And he is famed for his medical work, in particular his introduction of quinine in the fight against malaria.

(Bartholin’s family was packed with pioneering scientists, 12 of whom became professors at the University of Copenhagen; perhaps most notable, his elder brother Thomas, who discovered the lymphatic system in humans and advanced the theory of “refrigeration anesthesia”(being the first to describe it scientifically).

#alchemy #astology #culture #Discovery #doubleRefraction #history #IsaacNewton #Linnaeus #lymphaticSystem #malaria #occult #optics #Paracelsus #philosophy #quinine #RasmusBartholin #Science #Technology #ThomasBartholin #TychoBrahe #witchcraft

“Alchemy. The link between the immemorial magic arts and modern science. Humankind’s first systematic effort to unlock the secrets of matter by reproducible experiment.”*…

As (AI/tech pro and writer) Dale Markowitz explains, for scientists of yore anything—from mermaids to alchemy—was on the table…

In 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes purchased a trove of Isaac Newton’s unpublished notes. These included more than 100,000 words on the great physicist’s secret alchemical experiments. Keynes, shocked and awed, dubbed them “wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value.” This unexpected discovery, paired with things like Newton’s obsession with searching for encrypted messages in the Bible’s Book of David, showed that Newton “was not the first of the age of reason,” Keynes concluded. “He was the last of the magicians.”

When it came to fascination with the occult, Newton was hardly alone. Many contemporary scientists may cast aspersions on spells, mythical tales, and powers of divination. Not so for many of the early modern thinkers who laid the foundations of modern science. To them, the world teemed with the uncanny: witches, unicorns, mermaids, stars that foretold the future, base metals that could be coaxed into gold or distilled into elixirs of eternal life. 

These fantastical beliefs were shared by the illiterate and educated elite alike—including many of the forebears of contemporary science, including chemist Robert Boyle, who gave us modern chemistry and Boyle’s law, and biologist Carl Linnaeus, who developed the taxonomic system by which scientists classify species today. Rather than stifling discovery, their now-arcane beliefs may have helped drive them and other scientists to endure hot smoky days in the bowels of alchemical laboratories or long frigid nights on the balconies of astronomical towers.

To understand the role of magic in spurring scientific progress, it helps to understand the state of learning in Europe in those times. Throughout the Middle Ages, many scholars were fixated on the idea that knowledge could only be gleaned from ancient texts. Universities taught from incomplete, often poorly translated copies of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen. To stray from the giants was a crime: In 14th-century Oxford, scholars could be charged 5 shillings for contradicting Aristotle. Curiosity was considered a sin on par with lust. A powerful motivator was needed to shuck off ancient thinking.

One of the first influential thinkers to break with the old ways was the 16th-century Swiss-German physician Paracelsus. The father of toxicology, known for his pioneering use of chemicals in medicine, Paracelsus was among the first of his time to champion the importance of experimentation and observation—a philosophy which would set the foundations for the scientific method. Paracelsus showed the scholars what he thought of their old books by publicly burning his copies of Galen and Avicenna. 

But what led him to this experiment-first approach? Perhaps it was because, to Paracelsus, experimentation was a kind of magic. His writing fuses scientific observation with the occult. To him, medicine, astrology, and alchemy were inextricably linked—different ways of unveiling sacred truths hidden in nature by God. Paracelsus considered himself a kind of magus, as he believed Moses and Solomon had been, as Newton would view himself 150 years later. Paracelsus believed, though, that divine knowledge could be gained not just by studying scripture, but also by studying nature. The alchemical workbench, the night sky—these were even surer routes to God than any dusty old textbook…

[Markowitz recounts the stories of Tycho Brahe [almanac entry here], his patron Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Robert Boyle, William Harvey, and Linnaeus [here], who, in 1749, urged the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to launch a hunt for mermaids…]

… To our contemporary ears, most all of this may sound fairly ridiculous. But as Edward Donlick puts it in The Clockwork Universe, “The world was so full of marvels, in other words, that the truly scientific approach was to reserve judgment about what was possible and what wasn’t, and to observe and experiment instead.” To the 17th-century scientist, anything was on the table, so long as it could be experimentally studied.

Today, we know how the story ends: Belief in astrology, alchemy, and witchcraft declined in places where empiricism and skepticism became cornerstones of science. But perhaps early scientists’ fascination with the occult should remind us of other tenants of discovery: open-mindedness and curiosity. Witches, mermaids, and the philosopher’s stone may not have survived modern scrutiny, but it was curiosity about them that drove real progress and allowed early thinkers to stray from established norms. In this sense, curiosity is a kind of magic…

“How the Occult Gave Birth to Science,” from @dalequark.bsky.social in @nautil.us.

See also: “The importance of experimental proof, on the other hand, does not mean that without new experimental data we cannot make advances” and “Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher’s stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find.”

* John Ciardi

###

As we think about transmutation, we might spare a thought for a rough contemporary (and fellow-traveler) of Newton’s, Rasmus Bartholin; he died on this date in 1698. A physician, mathematician, and physicist, he is best known for his discovery of the optical phenomenon of double refraction. In 1669, Bartholin observed that images seen through Icelandic feldspar (calcite) were doubled and that, when the crystal was rotated, one image remained stationary while the other rotated with the crystal. Such behaviour of light could not be explained using Newton’s optical theories of the time. Subsequently, this was explained as the effect of the polarisation of the light.

Bartholin also wrote a several mathematical works and made astronomical observations (including the comets of 1665). And he is famed for his medical work, in particular his introduction of quinine in the fight against malaria.

(Bartholin’s family was packed with pioneering scientists, 12 of whom became professors at the University of Copenhagen; perhaps most notable, his elder brother Thomas, who discovered the lymphatic system in humans and advanced the theory of “refrigeration anesthesia”(being the first to describe it scientifically).

#alchemy #astology #culture #Discovery #doubleRefraction #history #IsaacNewton #Linnaeus #lymphaticSystem #malaria #occult #optics #Paracelsus #philosophy #quinine #RasmusBartholin #Science #Technology #ThomasBartholin #TychoBrahe #witchcraft

“Alchemy. The link between the immemorial magic arts and modern science. Humankind’s first systematic effort to unlock the secrets of matter by reproducible experiment.”*…

As (AI/tech pro and writer) Dale Markowitz explains, for scientists of yore anything—from mermaids to alchemy—was on the table…

In 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes purchased a trove of Isaac Newton’s unpublished notes. These included more than 100,000 words on the great physicist’s secret alchemical experiments. Keynes, shocked and awed, dubbed them “wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value.” This unexpected discovery, paired with things like Newton’s obsession with searching for encrypted messages in the Bible’s Book of David, showed that Newton “was not the first of the age of reason,” Keynes concluded. “He was the last of the magicians.”

When it came to fascination with the occult, Newton was hardly alone. Many contemporary scientists may cast aspersions on spells, mythical tales, and powers of divination. Not so for many of the early modern thinkers who laid the foundations of modern science. To them, the world teemed with the uncanny: witches, unicorns, mermaids, stars that foretold the future, base metals that could be coaxed into gold or distilled into elixirs of eternal life. 

These fantastical beliefs were shared by the illiterate and educated elite alike—including many of the forebears of contemporary science, including chemist Robert Boyle, who gave us modern chemistry and Boyle’s law, and biologist Carl Linnaeus, who developed the taxonomic system by which scientists classify species today. Rather than stifling discovery, their now-arcane beliefs may have helped drive them and other scientists to endure hot smoky days in the bowels of alchemical laboratories or long frigid nights on the balconies of astronomical towers.

To understand the role of magic in spurring scientific progress, it helps to understand the state of learning in Europe in those times. Throughout the Middle Ages, many scholars were fixated on the idea that knowledge could only be gleaned from ancient texts. Universities taught from incomplete, often poorly translated copies of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen. To stray from the giants was a crime: In 14th-century Oxford, scholars could be charged 5 shillings for contradicting Aristotle. Curiosity was considered a sin on par with lust. A powerful motivator was needed to shuck off ancient thinking.

One of the first influential thinkers to break with the old ways was the 16th-century Swiss-German physician Paracelsus. The father of toxicology, known for his pioneering use of chemicals in medicine, Paracelsus was among the first of his time to champion the importance of experimentation and observation—a philosophy which would set the foundations for the scientific method. Paracelsus showed the scholars what he thought of their old books by publicly burning his copies of Galen and Avicenna. 

But what led him to this experiment-first approach? Perhaps it was because, to Paracelsus, experimentation was a kind of magic. His writing fuses scientific observation with the occult. To him, medicine, astrology, and alchemy were inextricably linked—different ways of unveiling sacred truths hidden in nature by God. Paracelsus considered himself a kind of magus, as he believed Moses and Solomon had been, as Newton would view himself 150 years later. Paracelsus believed, though, that divine knowledge could be gained not just by studying scripture, but also by studying nature. The alchemical workbench, the night sky—these were even surer routes to God than any dusty old textbook…

[Markowitz recounts the stories of Tycho Brahe [almanac entry here], his patron Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Robert Boyle, William Harvey, and Linnaeus [here], who, in 1749, urged the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to launch a hunt for mermaids…]

… To our contemporary ears, most all of this may sound fairly ridiculous. But as Edward Donlick puts it in The Clockwork Universe, “The world was so full of marvels, in other words, that the truly scientific approach was to reserve judgment about what was possible and what wasn’t, and to observe and experiment instead.” To the 17th-century scientist, anything was on the table, so long as it could be experimentally studied.

Today, we know how the story ends: Belief in astrology, alchemy, and witchcraft declined in places where empiricism and skepticism became cornerstones of science. But perhaps early scientists’ fascination with the occult should remind us of other tenants of discovery: open-mindedness and curiosity. Witches, mermaids, and the philosopher’s stone may not have survived modern scrutiny, but it was curiosity about them that drove real progress and allowed early thinkers to stray from established norms. In this sense, curiosity is a kind of magic…

“How the Occult Gave Birth to Science,” from @dalequark.bsky.social in @nautil.us.

See also: “The importance of experimental proof, on the other hand, does not mean that without new experimental data we cannot make advances” and “Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher’s stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find.”

* John Ciardi

###

As we think about transmutation, we might spare a thought for a rough contemporary (and fellow-traveler) of Newton’s, Rasmus Bartholin; he died on this date in 1698. A physician, mathematician, and physicist, he is best known for his discovery of the optical phenomenon of double refraction. In 1669, Bartholin observed that images seen through Icelandic feldspar (calcite) were doubled and that, when the crystal was rotated, one image remained stationary while the other rotated with the crystal. Such behaviour of light could not be explained using Newton’s optical theories of the time. Subsequently, this was explained as the effect of the polarisation of the light.

Bartholin also wrote a several mathematical works and made astronomical observations (including the comets of 1665). And he is famed for his medical work, in particular his introduction of quinine in the fight against malaria.

(Bartholin’s family was packed with pioneering scientists, 12 of whom became professors at the University of Copenhagen; perhaps most notable, his elder brother Thomas, who discovered the lymphatic system in humans and advanced the theory of “refrigeration anesthesia”(being the first to describe it scientifically).

#alchemy #astology #culture #Discovery #doubleRefraction #history #IsaacNewton #Linnaeus #lymphaticSystem #malaria #occult #optics #Paracelsus #philosophy #quinine #RasmusBartholin #Science #Technology #ThomasBartholin #TychoBrahe #witchcraft

“Alchemy. The link between the immemorial magic arts and modern science. Humankind’s first systematic effort to unlock the secrets of matter by reproducible experiment.”*…

As (AI/tech pro and writer) Dale Markowitz explains, for scientists of yore anything—from mermaids to alchemy—was on the table…

In 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes purchased a trove of Isaac Newton’s unpublished notes. These included more than 100,000 words on the great physicist’s secret alchemical experiments. Keynes, shocked and awed, dubbed them “wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value.” This unexpected discovery, paired with things like Newton’s obsession with searching for encrypted messages in the Bible’s Book of David, showed that Newton “was not the first of the age of reason,” Keynes concluded. “He was the last of the magicians.”

When it came to fascination with the occult, Newton was hardly alone. Many contemporary scientists may cast aspersions on spells, mythical tales, and powers of divination. Not so for many of the early modern thinkers who laid the foundations of modern science. To them, the world teemed with the uncanny: witches, unicorns, mermaids, stars that foretold the future, base metals that could be coaxed into gold or distilled into elixirs of eternal life. 

These fantastical beliefs were shared by the illiterate and educated elite alike—including many of the forebears of contemporary science, including chemist Robert Boyle, who gave us modern chemistry and Boyle’s law, and biologist Carl Linnaeus, who developed the taxonomic system by which scientists classify species today. Rather than stifling discovery, their now-arcane beliefs may have helped drive them and other scientists to endure hot smoky days in the bowels of alchemical laboratories or long frigid nights on the balconies of astronomical towers.

To understand the role of magic in spurring scientific progress, it helps to understand the state of learning in Europe in those times. Throughout the Middle Ages, many scholars were fixated on the idea that knowledge could only be gleaned from ancient texts. Universities taught from incomplete, often poorly translated copies of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen. To stray from the giants was a crime: In 14th-century Oxford, scholars could be charged 5 shillings for contradicting Aristotle. Curiosity was considered a sin on par with lust. A powerful motivator was needed to shuck off ancient thinking.

One of the first influential thinkers to break with the old ways was the 16th-century Swiss-German physician Paracelsus. The father of toxicology, known for his pioneering use of chemicals in medicine, Paracelsus was among the first of his time to champion the importance of experimentation and observation—a philosophy which would set the foundations for the scientific method. Paracelsus showed the scholars what he thought of their old books by publicly burning his copies of Galen and Avicenna. 

But what led him to this experiment-first approach? Perhaps it was because, to Paracelsus, experimentation was a kind of magic. His writing fuses scientific observation with the occult. To him, medicine, astrology, and alchemy were inextricably linked—different ways of unveiling sacred truths hidden in nature by God. Paracelsus considered himself a kind of magus, as he believed Moses and Solomon had been, as Newton would view himself 150 years later. Paracelsus believed, though, that divine knowledge could be gained not just by studying scripture, but also by studying nature. The alchemical workbench, the night sky—these were even surer routes to God than any dusty old textbook…

[Markowitz recounts the stories of Tycho Brahe [almanac entry here], his patron Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Robert Boyle, William Harvey, and Linnaeus [here], who, in 1749, urged the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to launch a hunt for mermaids…]

… To our contemporary ears, most all of this may sound fairly ridiculous. But as Edward Donlick puts it in The Clockwork Universe, “The world was so full of marvels, in other words, that the truly scientific approach was to reserve judgment about what was possible and what wasn’t, and to observe and experiment instead.” To the 17th-century scientist, anything was on the table, so long as it could be experimentally studied.

Today, we know how the story ends: Belief in astrology, alchemy, and witchcraft declined in places where empiricism and skepticism became cornerstones of science. But perhaps early scientists’ fascination with the occult should remind us of other tenants of discovery: open-mindedness and curiosity. Witches, mermaids, and the philosopher’s stone may not have survived modern scrutiny, but it was curiosity about them that drove real progress and allowed early thinkers to stray from established norms. In this sense, curiosity is a kind of magic…

“How the Occult Gave Birth to Science,” from @dalequark.bsky.social in @nautil.us.

See also: “The importance of experimental proof, on the other hand, does not mean that without new experimental data we cannot make advances” and “Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher’s stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find.”

* John Ciardi

###

As we think about transmutation, we might spare a thought for a rough contemporary (and fellow-traveler) of Newton’s, Rasmus Bartholin; he died on this date in 1698. A physician, mathematician, and physicist, he is best known for his discovery of the optical phenomenon of double refraction. In 1669, Bartholin observed that images seen through Icelandic feldspar (calcite) were doubled and that, when the crystal was rotated, one image remained stationary while the other rotated with the crystal. Such behaviour of light could not be explained using Newton’s optical theories of the time. Subsequently, this was explained as the effect of the polarisation of the light.

Bartholin also wrote a several mathematical works and made astronomical observations (including the comets of 1665). And he is famed for his medical work, in particular his introduction of quinine in the fight against malaria.

(Bartholin’s family was packed with pioneering scientists, 12 of whom became professors at the University of Copenhagen; perhaps most notable, his elder brother Thomas, who discovered the lymphatic system in humans and advanced the theory of “refrigeration anesthesia”(being the first to describe it scientifically).

#alchemy #astology #culture #Discovery #doubleRefraction #history #IsaacNewton #Linnaeus #lymphaticSystem #malaria #occult #optics #Paracelsus #philosophy #quinine #RasmusBartholin #Science #Technology #ThomasBartholin #TychoBrahe #witchcraft

Isaac Newton's apple 🍏 was clearly not busy enough, so he decided to invent binomial power series before breakfast. Meanwhile, Quanta Magazine is busy discovering ALL the topics ever, one painfully obvious revelation at a time 🎉.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-isaac-newton-discovered-the-binomial-power-series-20220831/ #IsaacNewton #QuantaMagazine #MathInnovation #BinomialSeries #ScientificDiscovery #HackerNews #ngated

How Isaac Newton Discovered the Binomial Power Series (2022)

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-isaac-newton-discovered-the-binomial-power-series-20220831/

#HackerNews #IsaacNewton #BinomialPowerSeries #HistoryOfMathematics #ScienceDiscovery #QuantaMagazine

https://www.fromoldbooks.org/Aubrey-HistoryOfEngland-Vol3/pages/vol3-401-Sir-Isaac-Newton/

Recently i wrote that Names of Angels was the 2nd most popular image on fromoldbooks.org; this is the most popular, a 19th century engraving of Sir Isaac Newton, famous for inventing the apple.

I’m actually not certain why it’s so popular - i should check!

Today i added the shirt, prints, socks... https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/174109620

Scanned with #xsane and cleaned up with #GIMP3 (#Gimp_3).

#vintageArt #portrait #isaacNewton #Newton #fobo #engraving #vintageEngraving #scientist

Wilczek’s Multiverse | Why it is time for the world to think about the 3 faces of time

In the eighth instalment of his exclusive monthly series for the South China Morning Post, American…
#NewsBeep #News #Physics #American #atomicclocks #AU #Australia #Carbon-14 #DeadSeaScrolls #Einstein #F.ScottFitzgerald #FrankWilczek #GPS #Heisenberg'suncertaintyrelation #IsaacNewton #K-40 #Nobellaureate #ÖtzitheIceman #QuantumMechanics #Science #SouthChinaMorningPost
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/132177/

If I have seen further than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #IsaacNewton #Discovery

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #ChacoCanyon #Petroglyphs #NewMexico

📖 **Newton's Principia : The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Newton**

"_Read or download for free_"

🔗 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76404.

#Read #IsaacNewton #Newton #Science #Physics #Ebook #Book #Bookstodon @bookstodon @science

#Image attribution: John Vanderbank, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Sir_Isaac_Newton_(4670220).jpg.

If I have seen further than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #IsaacNewton #Discovery

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Sunrise #LakeSantaFe #Florida

If I have seen further than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #IsaacNewton #Discovery

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Hammock #KinderhookCreek #NewYork

Isaac Newton calculating...

#isaacnewton #newton #physics #physicsmeme #physicshumor #science #humor

#algorithms #IsaacNewton

"Although enormously powerful — centuries later, Newton’s method is still crucial for solving present-day problems in logistics, finance, computer vision and even pure math — it also has a significant shortcoming. It doesn’t work well on all functions. So mathematicians have continued to study the technique, figuring out different ways to broaden its scope without sacrificing efficiency.

Last summer, three researchers announced the latest improvement to Newton’s method. Amir Ali Ahmadi of Princeton University, along with his former students Abraar Chaudhry and Jeffrey Zhang , extended Newton’s method to work efficiently on the broadest class of functions yet."

https://www.quantamagazine.org/three-hundred-years-later-a-tool-from-isaac-newton-gets-an-update-20250324/

Three Hundred Years Later, a Tool from Isaac Newton Gets an Update

https://www.quantamagazine.org/three-hundred-years-later-a-tool-from-isaac-newton-gets-an-update-20250324/

#HackerNews #IsaacNewton #ToolUpdate #ScienceHistory #Innovation

🔴 **Three Hundred Years Later, a Tool from Isaac Newton Gets an Update**

"_A simple, widely used mathematical technique can finally be applied to boundlessly complex problems._"

🔗 https://www.quantamagazine.org/three-hundred-years-later-a-tool-from-isaac-newton-gets-an-update-20250324/.

#Algorithms #Maths #Mathematics #Math #IsaacNewton

‘It would be seen as political’: why the Royal Society is torn over Elon Musk https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/07/it-would-be-seen-as-political-why-the-royal-society-is-torn-over-elon-musk #CharlesDarwin #RoyalSociety #IsaacNewton #Technology #ElonMusk #Science #UKnews

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
-- Isaac Newton

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #IsaacNewton #Discovery

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #MississippiRiver #PikesPeak #Iowa

Last week, we were over in the eastern side of the country and so I decided to drop in to #Cambridge. It’s not a big city and most places can be reached on foot. It’s also flat as a pancake and so easily traversed by bicycle although I didn’t have mine with on this occasion. There many famous colleges there, which form the university and arguably the most famous is #TrinityCollegeCambridge, which has had had many famous mathematicians such as #IsaacNewton, #GHHardy, and #BertrandRussell. (1/2)

…❛❛ James Gleick’s meditation on Time covers how time is experienced psychologically, how artists such as #Borges, #Proust, and #Wells create with it, how #religions conjure #eternity, how #cosmology probes forking #universes, and how so much comes down to the #nature of “now.”

Science historian #Gleick is the author of #Chaos (1987), #IsaacNewton (2003), #TheInformation (2011), and "Time Travel: A History" (2016) ❜❜…

🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeBiai2G_TI 15 Jan 2020

#Time #Timelessness #TimeTravel

A Brief Crash Course on #TimeTravel
excerpt from #PopularMechanics by Matt Blitz

…"In the 1680s, Sir #IsaacNewton thought time progressed at a consistent pace throughout the #universe, regardless of outside forces or location …
In 1905, #Einstein revealed his ideas on #specialrelativity … that time is elastic and dependent on speed, slowing down or speeding up depending on how fast an object—or person—is moving"…

🔗 https://PopularMechanics.com/science/math/a20718322/building-a-time-machine/ 28 Dec 2022

#Time #Timelessness #TimeTravelTheory