Oh FUCK ME this is amazing beyond amazing.

[Golden Applesauce]

I assumed the Whitehead/Russel book as well. And then I was thinking "How would one go about illuminating that text, anyway?"

Really curly curly braces.

[Golden Applesauce]

Newton? No I was thinking about the one by Russel & Whitehead.

Ah I see it now, Newton's is called Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Yeah. Why would you think I meant Russel & Whitehead?

Because the Principia is about as foundational a text as it gets?  It's a little pre-Formalist, which I guess dates it a bit, but other than that I'm pretty sure theorem I studied up through undergrad was either in that book, derivable from the theorems in that book, or based on playing with the axioms used in the Principia and seeing what happens when you tweak them.

Also, unlike that messy, goopy discipline you call "science," the theories in it happen to be provably correct, in every possible universe.

[Kai]

Newton? No I was thinking about the one by Russel & Whitehead.

Ah I see it now, Newton's is called Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Yeah. Why would you think I meant Russel & Whitehead?

Because the Principia is about as foundational a text as it gets?  It's a little pre-Formalist, which I guess dates it a bit, but other than that I'm pretty sure theorem I studied up through undergrad was either in that book, derivable from the theorems in that book, or based on playing with the axioms used in the Principia and seeing what happens when you tweak them.

Also, unlike that messy, goopy discipline you call "science," the theories in it happen to be provably correct, in every possible universe.

Either that was a soft jab or I'll just ignore you from now on.

[Golden Applesauce]

Newton? No I was thinking about the one by Russel & Whitehead.

Ah I see it now, Newton's is called Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Yeah. Why would you think I meant Russel & Whitehead?

Because the Principia is about as foundational a text as it gets?  It's a little pre-Formalist, which I guess dates it a bit, but other than that I'm pretty sure theorem I studied up through undergrad was either in that book, derivable from the theorems in that book, or based on playing with the axioms used in the Principia and seeing what happens when you tweak them.

Also, unlike that messy, goopy discipline you call "science," the theories in it happen to be provably correct, in every possible universe.

Either that was a soft jab or I'll just ignore you from now on.

You're just jealous that your pet theories don't hold up in arbitrary universes.  I mean, you could walk through a wardrobe into a universe in which a billion years ago some crazy omnipotent guy decided to make a ton of birds with like a bazillion different beak designs, and where all those same kinds of birds are still around today.  People write stories all the time about worlds where things you thought had been mostly settled by experimentation just aren't true.  No amount of convergent evolution will explain how in Star Trek, every alien looks like some Earth organism, and a little under half of those alien individuals them have functional mammary glands.

[Luna]

No amount of convergent evolution will explain how in Star Trek, every alien looks like some Earth organism, and a little under half of those alien individuals them have functional mammary glands.

You're looking at the wrong field, there, nitwit.  That's simple mathematics.  The jackasses over at the studio refused to shell out for REAL aliens.

[Triple Zero]

Newton? No I was thinking about the one by Russel & Whitehead.

Ah I see it now, Newton's is called Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Yeah. Why would you think I meant Russel & Whitehead?

I dunno, I actually wasn't aware that Newton used the words Principia Mathematica in his book title. And the Russell & Whitehead book is actually about the foundations of Mathematics I guess Newton's book is also pretty groundbreaking and such, but Russel & Whitehead's Principia Mathematica would have more personal significance to myself.

Seems you didn't actually read much of my post, if you thought I was talking about Newton, though

Now I guess I'll have to check both. First I thought "why would I want a book with really old basic physics on my shelves, apart from name-dropping Newton?", but as I read on the other Wikipedia page, he also describes the methodology of how he used criteria to decide under observation what hypothetical laws were operating in which phenomena, and that is of course pretty fundamental science. I wonder how readable it is.

Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica is one of the most important science books of all time, wherein he described the laws of motion, the laws of gravitation, and the motion of the planets, and HOW he went about figuring it out. The original is in Latin, which is what I expect the illuminated book would be in, but there are plenty of translations in English. It's no less readable than say, Euclid or Archimedes.

By your above mentality, why would I care about On the Origin of Species? I mean, it's not like I can't get newer books on evolution that are more up to date on the biology. The reason to care about PNPM is the same as OTOOS: it's the seminal work of a world class mind, which both explains some fundamental aspect of reality and also how it was figured out, by the person who figured it out.

Origin of Species -- Biology
Newton's Principia -- Physics
Principia Mathematica -- Mathematics

I just said the PM holds more personal significance to me, because I studied fundamental Computer Science and not Physics, not that I don't care about Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis.

And about its significance, it might not be as old but it ranks right up there with the other two. Wikipedia quotes:
"PM is widely considered by specialists in the subject to be one of the most important and seminal works in mathematical logic and philosophy since Aristotle's Organon."
(cited from here)

And yeah, as GA said, it holds in arbitrary universes, in fact it doesn't even quite need an actual existing universe to operate on. Whether that's an advantage or whether it risks mathematics from wandering into ideas completely detached from reality is of course another question.

And with that, I refer you to the wonderful philosophy of ultra-finitism

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=103

Seriously, that's pretty awesome. I'm not so sure about ultra finitism, but I'm not at all convinced myself, of "infinity" as an actual real concept, as opposed to a merely theoretical one. The uncountable type of infinity even less so, in the sense that we might save ourselves a bunch of paradoxes and do without that crazy infinito-stretchy thing and get rid of the Axiom of Choice too while we're at it. [/rant]

[Kai]

Is there a seminal text for chemistry?

List expanded:

Mathematics: Principia Mathematica
Physics: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, and Relativity
Chemistry: ?
Biology: On the Origin of Species

As to the topic of infinity (and yes, I did like the link), I think mathematics may allow infinities, but the reality of this universe does not. And personally I think mathematics (a language) is useful only in as it describes, predicts and explains the actual universe. There doesn't seem to be infinite matter in the universe, nor infinite time, nor infinite space. Therefore infinities are a practical impossibility, and are often just shorthand for immense, inexact quantities.

[LMNO]

The best I can think of for Chemistry would be the first Periodic Table.  But the accompanying paper doesn't seem to be very interesting.

http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/EA/MENDELEEVann.HTML

A draft:


As first presented:

[Triple Zero]

Another problem might be that the history of Chemistry, it basically sprang forth as a more scientific version of Alchemy, but the transition is quite gradual because in addition to trying to transmute elements and such the Alchemists also got quite a few things right. So I fear that if you go further back, you'll get a book that is half revolutionary chemistry science discovery and half pseudoscientific occult magickal bullshit ...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The book that was stolen out of my car a few weeks ago, that I can't seem to replace no matter how hard I try, talks about exactly that.

Sigh.

[trix]

Someone stole a BOOK?  Huh.  When my van was broken into they crawled right over a ton of books of various kinds to get to the Nintendo DS looking handheld computer, and other similar gear.  And half of my microbiology lab equipment.  But not one single book.

You must of had a more intelligent class of criminal.