“I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses.”
– Sir Issac Newton.
From the General Scholium that appeared in the 1729 edition of Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis. (Note: the Latin word ‘scholium’ refers to text offered to provide additional information, clarify a point, suggest alternative interpretations, criticize the main text, and place the conclusions in a philosophical or theological context as Newton did.)
This Fourth of July, the social fabric of America is showing distressing signs of wear and tear. In these times, I find a special kind of hope, encouragement, and inspiration for an approach to restore the ties that bind us together in the stories of two lives and the insights they bequeathed to humanity.
Both these individuals—one an immigrant from Nazi Germany—sought freedom from tyranny. Seekers of truth, searchers for the universal, they were explainers of laws and phenomena that apply equally to us all. The immigrant, who became a naturalized American citizen in 1940, was also a deep thinker about the fundamental physical constants undergirding the cosmos and their roles in making life on Earth possible while affording us freedom to pursue our dreams.
Of whom do I speak and of what am I talking about? Sir Issac Newton, Albert Einstein, and their grand theories, as I will now explain in the following brief history.
Sir Isaac Newton and the Law of Universal Gravitation
Sir Isaac Newton, born on Christmas day in 1642 in the hamlet of Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, England, was a natural philosopher, extraordinarily gifted in math, physics, optics, and theology.
Shortly after Newton received his degree from Cambridge in August of 1665, the university closed its doors as a precaution against the Great Plague, the dreadful epidemic of bubonic plague terrorizing England. Fascinatingly, three and a half centuries later, DNA analysis of samples taken in 2016 from a centuries-old mass burial pit confirmed that Yersinia pestis—a bacterial parasite of the rat flea which itself is a parasite of rats—was indeed the origin and culprit behind the deaths of nearly one-quarter of London’s residents.
In his early twenties, Newton continued his studies in the relative safety of his family home in rural Woolsthorpe. The bucolic years of 1665-1666 were extraordinarily productive, providing Newton with a cloistered period of focused study and experimentation. It was then that Newton first developed his seminal theories on calculus, optics, motion, and most relevant to this article, the law of universal gravitation.
After working for two decades refining his ideas, in 1687, Newton published his theories on gravity and his three laws governing objects in motion in Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis, one of the most important works in the annals of science. But as significant as it was and as germane as it remains today, the Principia lacked any awareness of the existence and importance of fundamental physical constants.
The Crucial Role of Fundamental Physical Constants in Undergirding Theory
Fundamental physical constants are unsung heroines of science, permeating the fabric of the cosmos as essential ingredients in the grand recipe of the universe. Invariant, infallible, inviolate, incessant, unvarying, relentless, absolute, they are underivable from scientific principles. Instead, they are givens. They are gifts of certainty, fixed points in a milieu of ever-changing variables. Collectively, these constants perform multiple functions. They set the value of attributes (the electrical charge of a proton). They establish upper limits (the speed of light). They determine the strength of an effect (the force of gravity from the mass of an object). Acting together, they provide the exquisite framework guiding and directing the intricate workings of atoms to galaxies, and everything in between.
I will now explore the essential role physical constants play in the topics the Principia grappled with.
In the Principia, Newton’s second law of motion states that it takes force to accelerate an object. The strength of this force accelerating the object can be characterized using three units of measurement: mass, distance, and time.
Also in the Principia, Newton described gravity as a force generated by mass that diminishes with increasing distance. Time was not included in his Law of Universal Gravitation. Where was the missing temporal dimension going to come from to describe gravity as a force? Newton didn’t have a clue.
As is so often the case, science progressed. Discovery of fundamental physical constants, which unfolded after Newton’s death, upended centuries-old beliefs, inspired extraordinary insights and creativity, and revolutionized our understanding of the world. Specifically, they offered a new way forward to address Newton’s unfulfilled hope “to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena.”
We now know the Gravitational constant (G) adds the missing dimension of time, transforming mass and distance into the force of gravity and setting how strong the force of gravity is.
But there is more to this story, and this is where Einstein takes the lead.
Albert Einstein and Relativity
Albert Einstein, like Newton before him, would not feign (i.e., invent, fabricate, concoct, forge) hypotheses that he could not ground upon universal principles, fundamental constants, and observable phenomena. Relying upon universal truths buttressed by astronomical evidence, Einstein intuited that gravity itself must have a speed: specifically, the fixed, finite speed of light. From this insight, he deduced that Newton’s Universal Gravity formulation could not be completely correct because it posited that gravity was a force working instantaneously, even over vast distances.
These and other insights prompted Albert Einstein to develop, in 1905, his Special Theory of Relativity. Revolutionizing physics, Special Relativity proposed both the invariant speed of light (c) and the laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion (constant velocity). Special Relativity unified space and time into a single entity called the spacetime continuum. But it could not explain gravity.
As a remedy, Einstein incorporated the Gravitational constant into his General Theory of Relativity (1915). The potent combination of G and c allowed Einstein to demonstrate that the fabric of spacetime warps in the presence of mass and energy. This revelation recast the depiction of gravity from a force into an acceleration directed along the curvature of the spacetime geodesic (the shortest path between two given points in a curved space). Furthermore, in General Relativity, the speed of light and the speed of gravity remain the same for all observers, regardless of their individual circumstances and perspectives.
Concluding Thoughts
Subjectivism is the philosophical theory that there is no objective truth. Reality is and always will be no more than individual interpretation, filtered through the lens of our senses, emotions, experiences, and personal history.
Relativism extends this concept to the truths and values held by groups, cultures, or historical periods.
I do not wish to debate here the merits of these two theories. But I do contend that a contributing factor to the ever-increasing splintering of our social lives I mentioned at the beginning of this essay is the paucity of cross-cultural, unifying concepts to inform the imagination of our individual and collective worldviews.
Would the world today, splintered as it is by subjectivism and relativism, be more coherent and cohesive if people knew more about the objective existence and the vital role fundamental physical constants play every day in our lives?
Finally, consider this thought experiment. A century ago, Einstein titled his paper “Die Grundlagen der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie” (The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity). What would things be like today if instead he had called his work “A Universal Foundation for Describing Reality based upon Fundamental Constants and Objective Truths”?
