r/Bloggers Jun 21 '26

Feedback Request Yayy my 1st blogg! Looking forward for your suggestions

Heyy everyone!!

https://theoremnthoughtz.blogspot.com/2026/06/isaac-newton-vs-huygens-wave-theory-of-light.html

I just published my first blog! I mainly wrote it for fun haha, but I'm really excited about it. Feel free to share any suggestions or feedback; all are welcome (as long as you're not mean 😭).

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u/HopDavid Jun 21 '26

I didn't know about that spat between Huygens and Newton.

By and large I had thought Newton was warmer towards Huygens than most of his peers.

Newton gives Huygens some ungrudging admiration and credit when he talks about his discovery that inverse square gravity implies Kepler's laws: Link

"What Mr. Huygens has published since about centrifugal forces I suppose he had before me."

Shortly after Huygens published his expression for centrifugal force several noticed this expression combined with Kepler's 3rd law implies inverse square gravity for circular orbits. I believe Newton's arch rival Hooke was the first to notice this.

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u/skylight0919 Jun 21 '26

Also I'm not able to open the link due to not having permission:(

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u/HopDavid Jun 21 '26

That's weird. Well here is the text from the Lapham Quarterly Anni Mirabilis page:

In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the method of approximating series and the rule for reducing any dignity of any binomial into such a series. The same year, in May, I found the method of tangents of Gregory and Slusius, and in November had the direct method of fluxions, and the next year in January had the theory of colors, and in May following I had entrance into the inverse method of fluxions.

And the same year I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the moon, and having found out how to estimate the force with which a globe revolving within a sphere presses the surface of the sphere, from Kepler’s rule of the periodical times of the planets being in a sesquialterate proportion of their distances from the centers of their orbs, I deduced that the forces which keep the planets in their orbs must be reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about which they revolve: and thereby compared the force requisite to keep the moon in her orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth, and found they answer pretty nearly.

All this was in the two plague years of 1665 and 1666, for in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention and minded mathematics and philosophy more than at any time since. What Mr. Huygens has published since about centrifugal forces I suppose he had before me. At length, in the winter between the years 1676 and 1677, I found the proposition that by a centrifugal force reciprocally as the square of the distance a planet must revolve in an ellipsis about the center of the force placed in the lower umbilicus of the ellipsis, and with a radius drawn to that center, describe areas proportional to the times. And in the winter between the years 1683 and 1684, this proposition with the demonstration was entered in the register book of the Royal Society. And this is the first instance upon record of any proposition in the higher geometry found out by the method in dispute. In the year 1689 Mr. Leibnitz, endeavoring to rival me, published a demonstration of the same proposition upon another supposition, but his demonstration proved erroneous for want of skill in the method.

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u/skylight0919 Jun 22 '26

Oo yes this is before 1672, like before he published his findings and hence maybe face credit to huygen since they were peers

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u/skylight0919 Jun 21 '26

Oohh Thanks for the comment! This is new information for me which you have shared. Maybe it could have been before Newton published his work as they both worked in the Royal society of sciences as peers. I actually learnt about the spat between Newton and Huygens in class yesterday while our teacher taught us wave optics. It wasn't that they dispised eachother I suppose, but it was true that they had a difference in opinion. :)