Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 49. Sunrise is 7:15 and sunset is 6:02 for 10 hours 47 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with 0.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1805, a British fleet led by Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet under Admiral Villeneuve in the Battle of Trafalgar.
Newton’s many works have been rightly lauded for centuries, both particularly as science and generally as an example of comprehension of the world. Of that broader view, consider Alexander Pope’s observation about Newton:
“Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.”
See Alexander Pope, Epitaph: Intended for Sir Isaac Newton (1727), in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt (Yale Univ. Press 1963), https://verse.press/poem/epitaph-xii-intended-for-sir-isaac-newton-in-7321.
Well, that’s quite an epitaph.
So what was that Third Law of Motion, in particular, from Sir Isaac? It was this, translated into English:
Law III.
To every Action there is always opposed an equal Reaction: or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.
Whatever draws or presses another is as much drawn or pressed by that other. If you press a stone with your finger, the finger is also pressed by the stone. If a horse draws a stone tied to a rope, the horse (if I may so say) will be equally drawn back towards the stone: for the distended rope, by the same endeavour to relax or unbend it self, will draw the horse as much towards the stone as it does the stone towards the horse and will obstruct the progress of the one as much as it advances that of the other…
See, Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy 17–18 (Andrew Motte trans., London 1729), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mathematical_Principles_of_Natural_Philosophy_%281729%29/Axioms%2C_or_Laws_of_Motion.
Of physics, this blogger has nothing to add — obviously — to the application of Newton’s observations of ordinary mechanics to Whitewater, Wisconsin.
There is, however, a metaphorical way to think about Sir Isaac’s observation that To every Action there is always opposed an equal Reaction — the application of an understanding of the physical world to social reactions of ordinary people (e.g., political, cultural).
Most of the time, and in a free society very often, a human action produces a human reaction. Not always, and not always of equal proportion, but a reaction of similar magnitude. And so, and so, a reaction not so definite and certain as with the ordinary physical world, but yet still probable and meaningful.
On its own, that doesn’t seem to be much of an observation. And yet, and yet, there are times when this isn’t plain, when it’s not obvious to a few. Which times and which people would those be?
People with a status-based outlook, people who are entitled, people who are self-absorbed, and people who are in the grip of motivated reasoning typically lack the sense to see that their actions will produce a reaction. They take action, but can’t grasp a reaction (for human events of equal or even greater magnitude than their own actions) coming in response.
Special interests are often like this. They can make a claim (however specious), but can’t imagine a counterclaim (however trustworthy). This ilk overestimates itself, and underestimates everyone else.
The Better Approach of the Dark-Horse Underdog is to see “issues without entitlement, without over-confidence. There is, each time, nothing other than the work of observing, assessing, and writing thereafter.”
Can’t imagine any other way.
See also The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town, Two Techniques of the Special Interest Men, and The Shock of the Normal.
Kevin the Canadian Chihuahua understandably loves fall weather, even if, like many Canadian canines, he expresses his affection in salty terms. Click on Kevin’s picture to play the video: