A Thought on Newton's Source for his Differentiation Notation

Consider Sir Isaac Newton's notation for derivatives[1]:

It occurred to me that Newton might have chosen this notation for the following reason:

Newton was an avid student of biblical studies and mysticism. He was fluent in Hebrew and Aramaic, and seems to have had at least passable knowledge of Arabic, based on that there are manuscripts with portions of the Rambam’s works, translated into Latin, by his own hand[2].

He produced a large body of works, containing his thoughts on a large number of matters, citing many familiar sources, such as Rashi and the ibn Ezra. From the selections discussed in footnote 2, he seems to have been familiar with Moreh Nevuchim, and professed a philosophy for himself very much along those lines.

Newton was therefore almost certainly familiar with the dot notation of the Tanach – that some letters are at some points written with dots over them, indicating that there is a secondary meaning, that word being also parsable with that letter deleted. I suspect that Newton might have found it pleasing to use that ancient notation for his own work.

I think that Newton might have found it particularly pleasing to do so, as in Moreh Nevuchim, the Rambam seems to be… uncomfortable with the mystical concepts that are associated with the planetary spheres in Aristotelian cosmology[3]. The painful need for the Rambam’s intellectual acrobatics around that is eliminated by Newton’s gravity and the consequences thereof[4].

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notation_for_differentiation#Newton.27s_notation

[2] http://moreshetsepharad.org/media/Newton_Mathematics_and_Esoteric_Knowledge.pdf

[3] Maimonides and the book that changed Judaism: secrets of The guide for the perplexed. [Micah Goodman].

[4] Although his largest difficulty would not be eliminated until Hubble and Einstein.

The Covenant of Wonders

A question that has drawn my attention for some time:

שמות לד:י

וַיֹּאמֶר, הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי כֹּרֵת בְּרִית, נֶגֶד כָּל-עַמְּךָ אֶעֱשֶׂה נִפְלָאֹת, אֲשֶׁר לֹא-נִבְרְאוּ בְכָל-הָאָרֶץ וּבְכָל-הַגּוֹיִם; וְרָאָה כָל-הָעָם אֲשֶׁר-אַתָּה בְקִרְבּוֹ אֶת-מַעֲשֵׂה יְהוָה, כִּי-נוֹרָא הוּא, אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי, עֹשֶׂה עִמָּךְ

Sh’mot (Exodus) 34:10

[Translation, initial understanding]:

He [God] said: “Behold, I, enact a covenant: in the presence of your entire nation: I will make wonders that were never created[1] in all the lands, nor in any of the peoples – It will see, the entire nation -  that you [Moshe] are amongst, the makings of God - for He is Incredible – that I do for you.

What bothered me was this: Covenants, both in the world at large as well as those between God and Israel, always have some obligations on each party, or at least a symbolic gesture to ratify the agreement. It is exceedingly odd for there to be a covenant unilateral in both ratification and clause.

I came across some statements of the Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim[2] wherein he comments on the two requests Moshe makes of God earlier on in their discussion[3]:

"Make know to me Your Ways"                                                        אֶת-דְּרָכֶךָ הוֹדִעֵנִי נָא              

"Show me Your Glory"                                                                        הַרְאֵנִי נָא אֶת-כְּבֹדֶךָ

The Rambam states that the former statement is a request to understand Nature, the physical universe (i.e. laws of physics), and the latter is a request to ascend to understand God’s perception and reasoning for the Universe in its entirety, which the Rambam understands to be equivalent to being God (or at least not being a possibility without being Him in the first place).

In response to the latter request, God tells Moshe that he cannot do so – which makes perfect sense to we who understand the vastness of the cosmos – to see in the greatest detail the state of the entire universe, Moshe would need a brain with at least the number of particles in the universe – he literally cannot do this thing and exist in the universe as he is! Given this, an argument could be advanced that the issue with the request of Moshe is not that there is a theological issue, but a practical physical impossibility.

To the former – the Rambam states that God granted his request. But, according to the Rambam: Where does God give over this knowledge? Why does Moshe not teach it? Why did the Industrial Revolution, the age of Science, not start from that moment?

 This can be answered by understanding the Pasuk in a different way:

He [God] said: “Behold, I, enact a covenant: in the presence of your entire nation: I will do wonders that were never created in all the lands, nor in any of the peoples –  all the people[s] will see- that you [The Nation of Israel, singular denoting unity] are amongst, the doings of God - for He is Incredible – that I do with you [The Nation of Israel].

עִמָּךְ is not ‘for you’, it is ‘with you’! That single word changes the entire covenant! This covenant is a promise that God will do these things with us – that we, the Nation of Israel, will have the privilege of being amongst the forefront of humanity as we build the glorious future by the light of our minds, by the skill of our hands – and we will feel the touch of the hand of God on our works. This is a covenant we have merited to see fulfilled for the first time - that we continue to fulfill - in the last centuries!

Thus, this is a promise from God to his beloved Nation of Israel, that whenever they accept upon themselves the Great Mission to delve into the workings of universe, to perceive its beauty, to give names to its components – God will be with them, delighting in the discoveries of His Children[4] – and that by these discoveries, humanity will attain the capacity to create new wonders[5], in full realization of our Tzelem Elokim.

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[1] It is very interesting to note that the root ברא, here translated as ‘create’ always denotes a truly new or unique creation (ex nihilo). A promise of such in the future is a very big deal, especially in light of the first-order understandings of ‘nothing new under the sun’.

[2]Moreh Nevuchim, 1:54, as explained in Maimonides and the Book that Changed Judaism, by Micah Goodman.

[3] Fragments of Sh’mot: 33:13 and 33:18, respectively.

[4] See “The Tree, The Naming, and Eyzer k’negdo”

[5] Including a way around the Big Whimper, I hope.