Today I read the seventh chapter in “The Ascent of Man,” by J. Bronowski — The Majestic Clockwork. I enjoyed reading it and learning about the many contributions that man has made to improve their knowledge of time, math, astronomy and light. It focused on Newton and Einstein, explaining their achievements and the impact they made on science, as well as everyday life. I was surprised that for a thousand years, everyone simply accepted the explanation that when light passed through a glass prism, it was darkened, more so at some parts than others, and as a result white light was refracted into different colors, but only Newton thought to put a second prism to the light produced by the first, making the discovery that the color of light was not changed, only separated, by prisms. Other notable achievements of his were the invention of the calculus and the calculation of the shape of planets’ orbits around the sun — an ellipses. The largest difference between the two people this chapter concentrated on, however, was that while Newton thought of light, space, and time as different things, Einstein thought that they were all connected and went on to prove it. He showed that light and time are relative because light takes time to travel, and that time and space are relative because time passes more slowly in space. This chapter really shows that people who think out of the box can come up with ingenious ideas and solutions to modern problems. I would recommend this chapter to anyone interested in Einstein, Newton, or evolution and rate it 9.4/10.
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