Macalester Admissions

Sarah Sutter
Hanover, Indiana
Mathematics, Music
Writing Assistant for the Newton’s Principia course
After Mac: Teaching at Open Arms Preschool and applying to graduate school.

In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton wrote his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Commonly referred to as the Principia, this text is primarily a collection of mathematical proofs of Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation. It is easily one of the most important scientific texts ever written, and was the subject of last year’s math department first-year course.

The underlying theme was the thoughtprovoking question “What is science?” Students read and analyzed writings on this question by such philosophers as Karl Popper, Paul Feyerabend, and Thomas Kuhn, but the backbone was the Principia. Pairs of students were assigned a single section of the Principia to study and present to the class. In a final research paper, students explained their own conclusions about the nature of science.

Because this was a residential first-year course, classmates lived together on a single dorm floor and many appreciated the community aspect. Nadia Stennes-Spidahl commented, “It is useful to live together in order to help each other with readings or papers, or just to commiserate about the difficulty of assignments.” Others, like Jalal Shirazi, appreciate the social advantage: “Your first-year course classmates become your best friends. We all had dinner together—like a family.” Abe Levine remarked, “I worried about being confined to a specific group, but that didn’t happen. People still had their own external groups and social interests.”

Mac Professor New MAA President
The Mathematical Association of America (MAA ) is the largest professional organization for mathematics at the undergraduate level. Professor David Bressoud has been elected to serve as the next president. He is an international authority on analytic number theory, the recipient of several teaching awards, and the author or co-author of six books, most recently A Radical Approach to Lebesgue’s Theory of Integration.

Another interesting feature of the class was its geographic diversity, with students from across the U.S., Jamaica, Pakistan, and China, which may account for the long, friendly arguments and discussions about cultural practices that took place late at night in the Principia hallway of Turck Hall. Kristine Stresman remarked, “We’re always having debates—sometimes about important things, and other times about little things like whether soccer is called ‘soccer’ or ‘football.’”

The students in Newton’s Principia learned not only about the philosophy of science and Newton’s laws, but also about each other. They worked together, lived together, and developed a firm foundation for their social and academic lives at Macalester.