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- [00:06]
Dr. Nathan Herring
From the historic campus of Hillsdale College.
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Scott Bertram
In Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored.
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Dr. Nathan Herring
This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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Scott Bertram
Bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.
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Dr. Larry Arne
Because this thing that has grown up, that has consumed half our economy and driven us to near bankruptcy and threatens to reduce us to despotism, we've got to the place now where it can't go on much more. It's a house divided, and it must become one thing or the other. And if it becomes the new thing that it's trying to become, it will be a contemptible and miserable thing.
- [00:44]
Scott Bertram
This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast network. That was Dr. Larry Arne, president of Hillsdale College. We'll hear excerpts from a recent lecture he gave in February of this year. Also on today's show, Ryan P. Williams talks about his book, about Angelo Codavilla. And Nathan Herring from Hillsdale's physics department tells us all about Sir Isaac Newton. First, we hear excerpts from a recent speech by Dr. Larry Arne, President of Hillsdale College. This lecture was delivered back in February of this year in Phoenix, Arizona, as part of a Hillsdale College national leadership seminar. The title, defending the American way of life. Dr. Arne begins by answering the question, what kind of people are we?
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Dr. Larry Arne
Are we a chosen people? What kind of people are we? What is our way of life? Our way of life is produced by principle and a story. And the story has produced institutions and a human type, and both are unique and wonderful. The principle is contained in the Declaration of Independence. It's very controversial as it is a very beautiful document. It's revolutionary, literally and figuratively. It raised a reaction from the king of England. The king of England lived in the old world. In the old world, people were born to rule. That was right, he argued, in response to the Declaration of Independence. That was right because those who are so born take on responsibilities to rule well. And during the siege of Boston, he caused a proclamation to be distributed to the American army on the hills above Boston, waiting for Henry Knox to bring the cannon from Fort Ticonderoga. Big fat Henry Knox dragging cannon through the ice in the winter. And in the proclamation, he says, I was born to be your king, and I will be a good king. I owed you that. And you're born to be my people, and you must be a good people. And he thought that would settle the matter. And at a moment when George Washington's army was melting away. That was distributed, and the army stayed and grew. They thought something different. They thought, all men are created equal.
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Scott Bertram
More from Dr. Larry Arne, President of Hillsdale College, a lecture from February of this year defending the American way of life.
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Dr. Larry Arne
The story proceeds from that. It had been going on for 150 years by the time the Declaration of Independence came. And in that they had been learning. A certain kind of people came in Jamestown. They almost all starved to death, 1607. And they came, by the way, to set up communities of religious conformity. Everybody go to the same church. We don't like the way they treat our church over there. We're going to come over here and make a town where everybody goes to this church. And one of the things they learned in that 150 years is that that won't work. They couldn't do it because they fell to fighting, of course, because people get their own views about religion. And I should say something about that. America is a very Christian country. Christianity is one of the three universal religions. Judaism and Islam are the other two. Judaism is a universal religion and God gives a law. He gives the law only to the chosen people. To the rest of us, the chosen people are appointed to be a blessing to us. The first time that happened, and that happened really early, the ancient city was very different from that. This idea that Abraham would be chosen and this will be a blessing to all the peoples on the earth. That concern for all the peoples on the earth, that's first and unique, and that's 2,000 years before Socrates. It turns out hard duty for the chosen people. We are a chosen people of a different kind. I'm going to explain. Hard duty for us, too. A privilege. You got to pay for it.
- [05:07]
Scott Bertram
More from Dr. Arn as he tells us about the uniqueness of the American story.
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Dr. Larry Arne
The story unfolds not just because of the principle, but because of elements of the story. And the story is unique and like the story of the Jews, cannot be repeated because never before had civilization got a chance to move to a new world, not knowing what it was. Can't happen again to the world's map now. Well, Elon's going to Mars, and I'm going to say something about him because it is a repeat of the story. But they pick up and they go. And they're very religious people, but they're the kind of people who can pick up and go with their families. And that's what settled America. They didn't go for any benefit, see, except the benefit of getting to live of their own. That's what's wrong with immigration today, by the way. It's so organized and there's so many political programs to organize them. I'm for a lot of immigration. I agree with Josh about the pause, but I also think, you know, Ben Franklin said, famous, you better get ready to work if you come over here because you'll starve if you don't. The streets are not paved with gold unless you find the gold and pave them. This carries right through the American Revolution. Do you know George Washington named the army the Continental Army? He did that in 1776. We were taken with the continent, but we got our first direct intermission about the continent in 1806 when Lewis and Clark came back. That's seven years after Washington died. And that means in 1776, he didn't know how big the continent was. He just wanted it, you see.
- [07:11]
Scott Bertram
We're listening to excerpts from a lecture by Dr. Larry Arne, President of Hillsdale College, called Defending the American way of life. Dr. Arne continues.
- [07:20]
Dr. Larry Arne
Think of the people who built the railroads across America. They started at both ends and, you know, they didn't know what was out there very well. Lewis and Clark had come back and given their reports and some people had gone out there and, you know, it took months to get out there and months for any news to come back. Half of them were killed or more. One of the things that provoked the American Revolution, one of the steps, because, you know, big, big changes come.
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Dr. Nathan Herring
In.
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Dr. Larry Arne
American history, in world history. Every time there's some huge things that happens, there's always some principle at stake. But then there are some events that mean that now it has to happen. That too is what's going on right now. Because this thing that has grown up, that is consumed half our economy and driven us to near bankruptcy and threatens to reduce us to despotism, we've got to the place now where it can't go on much more. It's a house divided and it must become one thing or the other. And if it becomes the new thing that it's trying to become, it will be a contemptible and miserable thing. And people are waking up and seeing that. And the kind of people who are coming to the fore right now are a resurrection of the best people from the past. The guys who made the railroads. First of all, how would you get a railroad across the Rocky Mountains? They knew they were there. Nobody had ever done that. They started building and spending money and risking everything they had getting to the mountains. And then they'd Figure it out. How are we going to live on Mars? I don't know. Get there first. See, it's the same thing, right?
- [09:11]
Scott Bertram
Finally, Dr. Arne tells us a little of what he's learned while serving as president of Hillsdale College.
- [09:17]
Dr. Larry Arne
And the magic, by the way, it's exactly like the magic that happens in a college. When a college is right. Each student must be individually sworn to do the work and suffer and learn and automatically and necessarily they help each other, you see? And when one fails to do hurts more than one. And it would be easy, under the principles of the day, to then adopt the principle that we can make them do it. But you can't. They have to volunteer in our place. They volunteer when they're 18 years old, and that means they don't even know what they're volunteering for. And we tell them, sign this paper and you're stuck. Only way not to live by it is to leave. And you don't know what it means. You'll have to find out. We will help you. It'll be painful, you see. And I will tell you, I have personal experience of this. It's one of the marvels of my life, one of my favorite things that I've ever seen in my life. They just love that. Whereas if you don't extract the promise from them at the beginning, and you have to extract the promise from them before they arrive, before they get there and meet it, they have to know from the moment they start considering it, you probably don't want to do this because this is hell and they're too young and ignorant to even explain what kind of hell it is. Right? You're going to have to learn a whole bunch of really hard stuff and you've got no idea what it is right now. Right? And you'll get dark circles under your eyes, and if you whine, we'll kick you. You see, if you tell them that, right, they that's enough. Because now they've chosen it. You're not treating the way you would train a horse or a dog. You're inviting them to join. The Declaration of Independence is an invitation to join, open to all who will believe and practice the right things.
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Scott Bertram
That's Dr. Larry Arne, President of Hillsdale College. His lecture Defending the American Way of Life. You can watch the full lecture on the Hillsdale College Freedom Library page. FreedomLibrary hillsdale.edu the lecture from February of 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona, part of a Hillsdale national leadership seminar. Up next, we talk with Ryan P. Williams, his new book is a look at the life and legacy of Angelo Codovilla. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hill Hillsdale Hour.
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Hillsdale College Announcer
Hillsdale College is a small, Christian classical liberal arts college that operates independently of government funding and we want you or your son or daughter to apply. At Hillsdale, students grow in heart and mind. They by studying timeless truths in a supportive community dedicated to the highest things. Hillsdale College costs significantly less than other nationally ranked private liberal arts colleges and receives regular recognition as a best value. And nearly all students receive financial aid. Our robust core curriculum, vibrant student life, and 8 to 1 student to faculty ratio make for an education like no other. For more information or to fill out an application, visit hillsdale. Edu Info. That's Hillsdale. Edu Info.
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Hillsdale Dialogues Announcer
Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being and we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance and and from time to time they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale.edu. that's podcast hillsdale edu or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find find your audio.
- [13:58]
Scott Bertram
Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. Be sure to follow us on X for updated show information at Hillsdale Radio, the podcast network. At HCpodcasts, we're joined by Ryan P. Williams. He's president at the Claremont Institute and publisher of the Claremont Review of Books. He's also the editor of a new book, Fighting Enemies Foreign and Domestic the Legacy of Angelo M. Codavilla. Ryan, thanks so much for joining us.
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Ryan P. Williams
My pleasure. Good to be here, Scott.
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Scott Bertram
That name might be familiar for some of our listeners, but maybe not for others. Tell us briefly, as we begin here, a little biographical sketch of Angelo Codevilla and why we want to talk about him today.
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Ryan P. Williams
Because, yeah, Angelo was a very grateful immigrant as a young man. With the collapse of Fascist Italy, he came to the United States, came to New York when He was about 6 and loved his adopted country. Learned to read and speak English by looking at the New York Times and listening to Winston Salem cigarette ads. But Angela was a in addition to being a grateful immigrant patriot, was also a scholar and practitioner of American politics and policy, especially, though not exclusively, national security and strategy. He worked for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for Senator Wallop, Malcolm Wallop, and was a Naval intelligence officer and then had a long career teaching at Boston University and doing visiting stints at Stanford and elsewhere and was close to the Claremont Institute for many, many years. He taught in our summer fellowship programs, wrote for the Claremont Review books and later the American Mind, and taught us all a lot about how to think seriously about American grand strategy and how to bring ourselves back to more classical understandings of human nature and politics and how they should inform how we think about the defense of our country.
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Scott Bertram
You write a brief introduction in Fighting Enemies Foreign and Domestic and then allow your writers to paint the picture of Angelo. Code of but in that intro you say you asked him once how you could get a good education in American foreign policy according to the principle of the Founders, and he said, read John Quincy Adams. So I need to know did you do that and what did you learn?
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Ryan P. Williams
Well, I think as I put in the introduction, he said, read John Quincy Adams's diaries for a 15 year stretch. I poked into it a little bit and of course Angelo had the full set of John Quincy Adams's writings at his house. And you. Yeah, I would point everyone who want to learn more about this topic, of course, buy the book to get a sense of the man and his influence. But also Angelo's last published book was a book that started out as a memo that the first Trump administration's office of Net Assessment at the Defense Department asked Angelo for. And they wanted him to say, you know, what is an America first foreign policy? And those who know Angelo would not be surprised to learn that he handed in about 70,000 words three months later, half of which was a tour de force on how John Quincy Adams thought about American foreign policy and why it was the right thing to return to. So it was a great theme of Angelo's. You know, he, he thought that our ability to think seriously about our own defense and America's interests and their connection to American founding principles had been corrupted for over a century, starting with the rise of progressivism and a not the old notion of protecting America's interests and keeping American people free, but rather this much more millenarian project of the progressive left which was to make the world safe for democracy and to meddle in other countries affairs under the guise of advancing America's security interests. So he wanted to return us to what you might call a more realistic foreign policy based in the principles of the American founding.
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Scott Bertram
The first essay in Fighting Foreign and Domestic is by J. Michael Waller, who's been a previous guest on this program talking about his book being Big intel, and helps to sort of answer the question, how did Angelo Codevilla, how did his intellectual pursuits help to inform his approach to advising, which he did in the intelligence domain?
- [18:12]
Ryan P. Williams
Yeah, you know, Angelo, as Dr. Waller puts it in the book, in the edited volume, you know, Angelo, he understood that he had a lot of. He had a big role overseeing the CIA and was close with Bill Casey while Angelo was working in the Senate. So they sort of worked together, together to try to get a handle on that agency, which right around the Church committee hearings, when it was embroiled in a lot of controversy, rightly so. What Angelo didn't like about the CIA was he understood that secrecy was needed in intelligence services, but especially vis a vis its interactions with Congress and even the executive. What he didn't like about the CIA was its untruthfulness. As Angelo liked to joke, you'd be questioning these CIA bureaucrats in front of Congress or even directors sometimes. And their fallback option, which they always had recourse to, was, well, trust us, we're doing the right thing. We have all the information. And then you would want to poke them a little bit and say, well, why do you think that? And why did you do this other than that, and what information are you basing that on? And often their response would be, well, we can't tell you. That's classified. So this was endlessly frustrating to Angelo. And so, as Michael Waller points out in the edited volume, he kept the CIA up at night. His great intelligence and probing questions and relentlessness in pursuit of untruthful intelligence apparatus and apparat chicks made them, many of them, come to dislike him quite a bit.
- [19:38]
Scott Bertram
Ryan P. Williams with us. He's the editor of the new book Fighting Foreign and Domestic the Legacy of Angelo M. Codavilla. In Stephen Hayward's essay, he says, in a world in which foreign conflicts and military strategy did not exist, Angelo Codo Villa would instead have emerged as one of the premier social thinkers of our era. How would you describe his influence in that sector?
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Ryan P. Williams
Yeah, his biggest legacy, in a way, was this 2010 article he wrote for the American Spectator and then some follow ups about the ruling class. Subtitle was something like How They've Corrupted American Politics and what We Can Do About It. And Angelo was a keen student of the decline of American education and how it had infused America's elites. And he identified this phenomenon that again grew out of progressivism, this deference to expert bureaucratic management over popular and public and electoral and democratic control of US Policy. This had been a rising problem he identified throughout the 20th century, and it had reached a kind of apogee with Barack Obama's presidency. And it was this new notion of American governance where the people, you know, intervened occasionally in elections, but the real work of government would be conducted by a, well, credentialed expert class, which Angelo pointed out, had increasingly been educated at fewer and fewer institutions and had a worldview that was. Whereas in previous eras, you might have your Harvard guys and your Ivy Leaguers generally involved in government, but they came from all over the country and all walks of life. This notion that this ruling class became more insular and more incurious about the world and about worldviews that might challenge its presumptions had really become an acute problem in American politics. And this class, somewhat imperialistically, thought it had the right and the duty to rule the rest of the country. Messy democratic elections intervening to the contrary be damned. And he thought this was a very unhealthy thing to happen in a republic. And so that essay was read by Rush Limbaugh, most of it on the air. It became a little book afterwards. And then we just had an event for this book. And one detail that came out, which I think your listeners would be very interested in, is Jameson Campaign, one of our contributors to the book event, but not in the book. A longtime publisher, Evangelo, said that Pat Caddell, great pollster, worked for Jimmy Carter and then ended up consulting with the 2016 Trump campaign, took Angelo's Ruling Ruling Class book and used it as an inspiration for a series of public opinion polls that Pat Caddell did starting in 2013, where he tried to figure out what were the 7,525 issues in the American electorate that weren't being addressed by either party. And if someone picked up those basket of issues, probably an outsider to national politics, they could be very successful. And that's exactly what happened with Trump.
- [22:32]
Scott Bertram
But there are foreign conflicts and there is military strategy. And he had much to say about that, too. I think it's in Brian Kennedy's essay later in the book that he says Code of Illa would say that Americans no longer took seriously the meaning of war. They were a serious people, but didn't take seriously the meaning of war. So what happened? How would he explain that?
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Ryan P. Williams
I think it was sort of a negative feedback loop between elected representatives and how they approach foreign policy, which we've already discussed. And then the American electorates long standing, drawing the wrong conclusions from Those things Angela always liked to emphasize. You know, the point of war is easy. It's to defeat your enemies and secure victory and peace, your peace. And to prevent, to the extent that it's possible, from foreign conflicts, impeding America's Americans freedoms and changing our way of life at home. The way to win wars was to change your enemy's way of life and make them come to your terms. He thought we had lost view of that older notion of war and peace, and instead we've had a kind of bureaucratic solution to modern conflicts. We don't win wars anymore. We manage conflicts. And this led to the proliferation of unending and strategically confused conflicts, most famously in recent decades, Vietnam, but also, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan. Angela was not opposed to interventions either in Iraq or Afghanistan, but he thought the notion that our goal would be to somehow bring a centralized state, liberal democracy, to Afghanistan, a place that had been tribal for a thousand years, or even to Iraq, a much more advanced state than Afghanistan, but still a place with very different culture and religious mores in the United States. He thought that sort of social engineering project writ large on the international stage was folly and that we ought to get back to defending America, securing our interests, and defeating enemies quickly. And most of all, one of the titles of one of his books, Connecting the Ends to the Means. What is the end of foreign policy? What is the end of this war? That is, what is the purpose of it? It should be victory and peace. And so if we orient ourselves with those purposes, then we decide, should we do this, should we do that, should we not do this, not do that? And he thought the strategic drift of American foreign policy in all of our conflicts in recent decades could ultimately be traced back to an unseriousness about what the purposes of American government were and what purposes followed from those when we conducted ourselves in foreign policy.
- [25:04]
Scott Bertram
Kotivela was an early advocate of a national missile defense system, and it appears to the book appalled that we have not developed one. We don't have a defensive system. Now President Trump has once again, as of early this year in January, put out the call for an iron dome for America, a national missile defense system. Do you think we're any closer to making that happen? And would an installation of such be an appropriate tribute to the man?
- [25:35]
Ryan P. Williams
Certainly would be an appropriate tribute. Angela was involved very early. I mean, he had a technical degree from Rutgers amongst his other studies, so he knew the math and the physics quite well and had been involved since the Reagan administration in this project. And most Americans think we have missile defense, but we don't really we have some ground based interceptors in Alaska and elsewhere. We have mobile sort of medium and short range defense, the THAAD system on seaborne platforms. But we really don't have a comprehensive missile defense. And the reasons we don't are are complicated and traced back to this Cold War and swirling theories about international relations. But Angelo and like President Reagan and others since, thought that mutually assured destruction was morally, a morally crazy way to conduct nuclear policy. And they thought better than two great superpowers promising to destroy one another and thus being very wary of ever actually doing it. The better approach would be to actually have a defense system that would prevent our enemies, whether they be China or Russia or our adversaries, from even contemplating a first strike or the possibility of a response. Angela thought that was the much better moral option. He thought the technology was there. And he was right. We are not that much closer. I mean, Trump, President Trump has set the golden dome, as he's calling it, goal, which is great, but now we would need to devote real resources to that end. And that project is still in its in its cradle.
- [27:02]
Scott Bertram
Ryan P. Williams is president at the Claremont Institute and also publisher of the Claremont Review of Books, editor of the new book Fighting Enemies Foreign and Domestic the Legacy of Angelo M. Codavilla. Ryan, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [27:20]
Ryan P. Williams
My pleasure. Thanks, Scott.
- [27:21]
Scott Bertram
Up next, we begin a series with Hillsdale physics professor Nathan Herring. He'll take us inside the life and work of Sir Isaac Newton. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. This show is a part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to your favorite. You'll get brand new episodes of all your favorite shows sent right to your device, and you'll help us know that you're out there listening. Never miss another episode by going to podcast hillsdale.edu subscribe. That's podcast hillsdale.edu subscribe or click the Follow or Subscribe button on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.
- [28:20]
Hillsdale Dialogues Announcer
Great books, great people, great, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College president Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time, they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu. That's Podcast Hillsdale. Edu. Or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your audio.
- [29:10]
Scott Bertram
Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. Be sure to check out the Hillsdale College Podcast Podcast Network. With almost a dozen shows to choose from Podcast Hillsdale. Edu. We're joined by Dr. Nathan Herring, assistant professor of physics at Hillsdale College. Dr. Herring, thanks for joining us.
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Dr. Nathan Herring
Yeah, thanks for having me.
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Scott Bertram
Excited to have you here to start a brief series profiling great physicists. And we start this first time with perhaps the physicist that people know best, which is Sir Isaac Newton. What are Newton's most lasting contributions to physics? Why do they still matter today?
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Dr. Nathan Herring
Yeah, Newton is inarguably the most famous physicist in our history, and if anything, his reputation might be a little bit underrated in the eyes of the public. It's really hard to overstate how impressive of a leap physics makes in the hands of Newton just to run through some of his major accomplishments. He is one of the co inventors of calculus. If you were to ask him, he would say he did it first. The other being the German mathematician Leibniz. Calculus, of course, is the mathematics of continuous change. It's the language of physics, and it has had lasting importance on many other areas as well. He gives us the first quantitative system of mechanics, that is the theory of motion. Why things change in their position in this way. He's building on the work of some of his predecessors like Kepler and Galileo, but he gives us a universal quantitative system from which we can deduce the motions of any, any object. He also gives us the first successful mathematical theory of the phenomenon of gravitation. Right. And doing so can explain the motions of the planets and of course, the famous falling apple.
- [30:58]
Scott Bertram
Yep.
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Dr. Nathan Herring
In addition to this, he made a number of discoveries in the field of optics. So the science of light. He was the first scientist to demonstrate that white light is composed of different colors. Prior to that, many other thinkers had experimented with prisms, and they had noticed that when you send white light through a prism, you get many different colors. Some earlier thinkers, like Aristotle, thought the prism was somehow altering the white light. But Newton took many different colors and put them into a prism, showing that they produce white light. In fact, he did one experiment where he launched white light through a prism and then took the outgoing light and sent it back through a second prism and reconstructed the original beam. And so was able to demonstrate that invariably white light has many colors in it simultaneously. He also built the first reflecting telescope. And those principles of the reflecting telescope, those are the same principles that are used by our state of the art space telescopes that we use today, most of which are reflecting telescopes. He also gave us the first particle theory of light. He postulated that that light was composed of these small indivisible elements that he called corpuscles. And this is very important because it launches a centuries long debate between different European scientists as to whether light is a wave or a particle. And they kind of go back and forth and the issue isn't fully resolved until the 20th century with quantum theory. And as for why are these ideas still relevant today? Well, his mechanics and his theory of gravitation still give an accurate understanding of what happens when you apply those ideas within their so called regime of validity. So when objects are moving slow compared to the speed of light, when their mass is not too large or you're not too close to them, then they really do follow Newton's principles. And so I am confident that engineers and physicists 200 years from now will still be using Newton's laws to build all kinds of devices.
- [32:57]
Scott Bertram
We're going to talk a little bit more about a few of those things you mentioned. But he has this work called the Principia Mathematica. So what made that so revolutionary?
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Dr. Nathan Herring
Yeah, this is his landmark text that he almost doesn't publish. He has to be urged to release this by a friend of his, Edmond Halley. Newton famously was very reluctant to share his work because he had some bad experiences as a youth, as a young scientist, where his ideas were not always well received by some of his peers. And so he became very defensive. But in this text he gives an account using geometry. So he's already developed calculus, but he refuses to use it in the book because he wants his ideas to be accepted in as convincingly a way as possible. So he wants to use the mathematics that his peers are familiar with, which at that time is geometry. It's kind of interesting because these geometric arguments are actually very hard. Calculus is such a natural language for expressing his work. And it's interesting to note that he actually did figure it all out using calculus and then sort of reverse engineered what would be the geometrical arguments. But in the text what he does is he shows how you can give a unified account of so called terrestrial motion, the motion of things on Earth and celestial motion. So he rederives Kepler's laws, which were known at that time to accurately describe the motions of planets. And he's doing this in the Same work where he's deducing Galileo's equations of motion for objects moving under constant acceleration. So it is a. The first time where we unify the physics of the heavens, as the ancients would have called it, and the physics of ordinary stuff happening here on Earth. And it really highlighted the power and scope of a mathematical approach to physics and sort of sets the stage for how physics is going to be pursued in the following centuries.
- [34:51]
Scott Bertram
Now, let's talk a bit about motion. Can you walk us through Newton's three laws of motion and plain language and then, and then, why were they such a breakthrough?
- [35:01]
Dr. Nathan Herring
Yeah, so, yeah, these are the famous three laws, which are supposed to apply with equal force to all systems in the universe. And they can be phrased in different ways. So in plain language, the first law, which is the law of inertia, is the idea that an object will move in a straight line at a constant speed or will stay completely at rest unless it is subjected to some sort of force. And why this is really important is it tells us that the natural state of motion of an object is not. Is being at rest or being at constant velocity. Velocity in physics is both the speed of an object and its direction of travel. What Newton is showing us here is that constant velocity is a perfectly natural state of motion. If you stumble upon something in the world and it's moving in a straight line at a constant speed, there's actually nothing to explain there. This is super revolutionary because in Aristotle's physics, the natural state of motion of things is being at rest. Galileo later shows that velocity is relative. He has this famous thought experiment where he says, you know, if you were to be captured in the night and wake up at the bottom of a ship, and the ship was sailing on completely calm seas and you hadn't yet looked out the window, could you tell that you were in motion or not? And he argues you wouldn't be able to. Everything would be moving with you. And thus how can we say that something is truly moving as opposed to truly at rest? Isn't that relative? So Newton is taking that idea and making that sort of one of his first laws. Good. So then in the first law, he tells us how this state of motion could change. Right? You need a force. And so that's what the second law does. It tells you exactly how that happens. So the second law says that the total force felt by a system, the system is just the term for some mass or collection of masses that a physicist is studying. So the total force felt by a system is equal to its mass times its acceleration. This is the famous equation F equals ma that many the listeners will remember from high school. And the idea here is acceleration is the rate at which an object's velocity is changing, so it's speeding up, slowing down, or changing direction. And that acceleration is determined by the force felt by that object. And then there's this other quantity that appears there, mass, m. And mass is a measure of the object's resistance to having its motion changed. So the greater the mass, the more force required to achieve the same acceleration. And then finally, his third law tells us that every force always represents an interaction between two systems. And each of those two systems will feel the same amount of force due to that interaction, but directed in opposite directions. So if I push my hand on the table, I exert a force on the table, the table exerts a force back on my hand. Those forces are always equal, but pointing in opposite directions. So I push down on the table, so the table feels a downward force, my hand feels an upward force, and they're of equivalent strength. And this law is actually super important in that. From it, one can deduce an important principle called the conservation of momentum. Today in physics, we believe the conservation of momentum is actually a more fundamental idea than Newton's third law. But when you teach an introductory physics course, this is actually the law of physics, this Newton's third law. What is used to derive this first appearance of conservation of momentum? And I should just say, why are these three laws so important? They provide a framework for how to understand all motion. They give you a recipe. So the idea is, step one, identify whatever mass whose motion you want to study. Step two, identify all the forces acting on that mass. And now you may need a separate theory for each of those forces. Okay, maybe there's electrical forces, magnetic forces, gravitational forces, whatever. Each of those could have their own theory. But once you've identified what those forces are and how to describe them mathematically, you sum them together and plug them into Newton's second law. Then divide by the mass, and that will give you an expression for the so called equation of motion for that object. It'll tell you how to how that object will accelerate, and from that you can use calculus to predict where that object will be at later times.
- [39:18]
Scott Bertram
Dr. Nathan Haring from our physics department here at Hillsdale about Sir Isaac Newton. All right, the Newton law, Newton's law of universal gravitation. How did that change the way people viewed the universe?
- [39:30]
Dr. Nathan Herring
Yeah, this is great. So Newton's first three laws are telling. They're giving us a paradigm by which to understand motion. Doing that would have already made him a household name. That's already amazing work. But then he goes on to say, oh, I can also give you an example of how one of these forces works. And the force he gives us an example of is only one of the most important ones, gravitation. And what he says is everything with mass attracts everything else with mass. And the strength of that interaction varies as the product of the masses. But then also, as the square of the distance between the masses increases, the force gets smaller. So that's a mathematical equation for calculating the force of gravity between any two masses. And note, it's all masses. So now this immediately shatters the notion that celestial bodies, planets, moons, stars, et cetera, are following a different set of principles, are experiencing different forces than apples, arrows, you and me. It's the same gravity for all of them. And this is important because ancient thinkers, they noticed that celestial bodies seem to move in these perfect, unfailing trajectories, whereas the motion of objects on the surface of the Earth can be more turbulent. And so they even had this idea that the celestial motions were perfect. And the motions of objects on the Earth are accidental or turbulent or can be confounded by many different effects. This idea shows us that really, it's the same forces at play. Newton's idea shows us that it's the same force at play in both of these cases. Additionally, this idea of a universal force acting on all bodies in conjunction with his three laws of motion starts to introduce the notion of the clockwork universe, which becomes very popular in the following decades and centuries. And that's the idea that we can think of the cosmos as analogous to a vast, finely calibrated clockwork machine governed by simple universal and mathematical laws. And Newton loved this notion. He was aware of this, and for him, it resonated deeply with his religious views. I guess the last thing we should say about this law of universal gravitation is it becomes the gold standard for scientific explanation. Here is a mathematical theory immediately amenable to experimental investigation, and it makes predictions. So following this work, many other physicists are going to try to produce something like Newton's law of gravitation.
- [42:01]
Scott Bertram
What about Newton, the person he's often described as brilliant but reclusive? What was he actually like? What were his relationships like with other scientists of his time?
- [42:12]
Dr. Nathan Herring
Yeah, this I wish I could tell you. I mean, depending on your preferences, you may find that description of brilliant but reclusive as disappointing. Or maybe we would wish Newton was a more charismatic figure. In this case, that reputation really is accurate. What we know about Newton was he was a perfectionist when he did experiments and did mathematical calculations. His colleagues write that he was obsessed with verifying his work, triple checking, quadruple checking, always looking for sources of error. He was obsessed with the possibility of being wrong. And this drove him to have this kind of meticulous approach to the way he did science. He was notoriously private, reserved, and often defensive. He frequently delayed publishing his results, sometimes for decades. And this is because when he had been a young physicist, I alluded to this a little bit earlier, but he had a run in with one of the preeminent thinkers of his time in Britain, Robert Hooke. And Hooke, they had kind of an acrimonious relationship. Hooke actually tried to take credit for some of Newton's ideas, and this really bothered Newton, who couldn't. Felt like he couldn't defend himself. He actually looked up to Hooke as a sort of scientific hero. And this caused him to become extremely paranoid that people were going to steal his ideas. And so, kind of paradoxically, this leads to him just not sharing them. He just compiles private notebooks of important results, and it's only on the urging of some of his friends that he actually releases them to the broader public. He was also regarded, excuse me, as a very poor lecturer. He had a teaching position at Cambridge, and it was very hard for him to get people to take his classes. In fact, sometimes he would give his lectures to an empty classroom or maybe a single student out of a sense of duty, because he knew it was his teaching that paid his salary. So he's like, well, I have to teach. So even if no one's in the class, he would show up and give the lecture and then walk away. And, yeah, those who did take his classes found him to be just not a very engaging speaker, difficult to follow. You know, kind of classic example of someone who's brilliant but eccentric. We know that he never married, and many of the biographers who write about him believe that he died celibate. He was, as I said, intensely focused on his work. He had very few friends. Those that he did reported that he would often deprive himself of food or sleep when he was enraptured by a problem or some new experiment, often retreating to places of solitude to focus on his thoughts intensely and then reemerging back into the world after he had produced something. He was known, however, to be an extremely loyal friend to those that could sort of penetrate that icy exterior, as attested by his longest friends, John Wickens, who was a longtime friend and research assistant, and Edmund Halley, who was an astronomer. Who is really the person we should credit with allowing us to learn about Newton's thoughts, because without Halley's encouragement, I don't think we would have. Newton's work wouldn't have been published and broadly received. However, despite this reputation as a loyal friend, he was also known to have, as I said, moments of extreme paranoia and vindictiveness. There's a couple famous stories here about this. He was friends at one point with the philosopher John Locke and wrote these very lovely letters attesting to the brilliance of Locke's ideas. But then later in life turned very hostile to Locke because he started to suspect that Locke was conspiring against him. And there is no evidence we have to support those claims. We don't really know why he felt that way. Additionally, when Robert Hooke passed away, Newton was elected the president of the Royal Society, the most prestigious scientific institution in England at the time. And it is alleged that Newton is the reason why we have no portraits of Hooke. So every president of the Royal Society has a portrait of them, and Robert Hooks is suspiciously missing. And there are some accounts that Newton actually secretly burned all of the portraits of him to get his revenge.
- [46:17]
Scott Bertram
Talking with Dr. Nathan Haring about Sir Isaac Newton, if that's what Newton was really like, are there any common myths or misconceptions about Newton or his work that we should clear up?
- [46:29]
Dr. Nathan Herring
I would just say that. So Newton is the closest, one of the few examples we have in the history of physics of someone who really was a reclusive genius. I think oftentimes the public perception of scientists, in particular theoretical physicists, is that they work alone and can be antisocial. In Newton's case, this actually is fairly true. But that being said, he actually didn't spend most of his life working in the area of physics. The latter part of his career, he became affiliated with the Mint. He was in fact, at one point in charge of the Mint and took that role extremely seriously and actually wrote in some places that that was he regarded as, like, the highlight of his career, which is fascinating. He also, in addition to being a great theorist, was someone very interested in experimental science. He wasn't just content to do these kinds of mathematical calculations. He engaged in a lot of experiments, as I mentioned, experiments with light. He even experimented on his own body. There's a famous account of him sticking a blunt needle into his eye, into the Space between the back of his eyeball and his eye socket. And then he applied pressure and took notes about what he was seeing and he induced in doing this. I do not recommend anyone do this experiment. It's kind of crazy that Newton did such a thing. But he noticed that by applying pressure, he would see different kinds of optical illusions, colors, rings. And this was important. He was trying to figure out, are the visual sensations of our experience, are they somehow caused by the brain, or are they reflecting features out there in the world themselves? Are the colors in the objects themselves, or are they somehow produced by our brain? And by experimenting on his eyeball like this, he saw that he could induce these sort of visual hallucinations, which led him to believe that the brain was actually generating these images in response to what is out there in the world.
- [48:27]
Scott Bertram
What is that line? Perhaps we can draw from Newton to modern physics, Newton to Einstein, or Newton to even present day.
- [48:36]
Dr. Nathan Herring
Yeah, Newton is the first physicist, as I said, to give us a mathematical paradigm of doing physics. And that is then followed by subsequent thinkers who build on his work. So we have people like the French physicist Auguste Coulomb gives us the first mathematical theory of the electric force. And it is remarkably similar to Newton's law of gravitation. In fact, he explicitly says he's emulating Newton's gravitational forces as a first guess. So it's again a force that is an inverse, so called inverse square law. And this work continues. We see in the work of later physicists like James Clerk Maxwell, trying to come up with a unified theory of electricity and magnetism, just as Newton had unified terrestrial and celestial motion, and then even into Einstein. Einstein is the first physicist to give us a different account of motion that can hold in regimes where Newton's laws are seen to. To fail. And he's very conscious, aware that he's building on the work of Newton. In fact, Einstein always had three portraits of three different physicists in his office. Newton, Maxwell, and Faraday. With Newton kind of positioned first, and he was very aware that he was building on Newton's work. In fact, he gives us the second mathematical theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity, which replaces Newton's theory. So Newton's work absolutely sets the stage for how physicists are going to approach their subject. And many of the later thinkers are very aware that they are emulating his practice.
- [50:14]
Scott Bertram
Dr. Nathan Herring, assistant professor of physics at Hillsdale College, as we have these profiles of great physicists, starting with Sir Isaac Newton. Dr. Herring, thanks so much for joining us here on the radio Free Hillsdale Hour that will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Dr. Larry Ard, his lecture Defending the American Way of Life. You can find all of it @freedomlibrary hillsdale.edu. ryan P. Williams his new book, Fighting Enemies Foreign and Domestic the Legacy of Angelo Cody and Hillsdale Physics Professor Nathan Herring. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.