On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 04:39:29PM +0000, Bruce  Johnson wrote:
> I don’t think he’d have a very hard time making the leap to
> relativity at all.

As far as Newton's technical skills went, I agree.  However, I think
what we know of his personality would get in the way.

The whole idea could be a bit of a hard sell, since he wouldn't have
seen any of the evidence that backs it up.  What's more, many of the
underlying principles of the evidence and the theory itself conflict
with ideas that he held very tenaciously through his life.  In some
cases he conducting vitriolic attacks on the reputations of people who
opposed those ideas.  He was a genius, but almost all accounts hold
that he was also extremely arrogant and not much enamoured of any
ideas that were not in harmony with his own.

So I'm not at all sure that he was the sort of person who would even
seriously entertain the theory of relativity.

- Tim