Dear venkat I am amazed Newton has never seen the sea..Its true he hasnt left eastern england but the shores are so close....
its a mystery then how the society of science let him decided the calculations made on longitudes was wrong leading to a royal edict considering he hasnt even see sea.
Hi Sri I wasnt as amazed because i am not so well versed in the geography of the isles. but this book i borrowed from a scientist uncle left me amazed at newtons life. james gleick is the author and "the guardian" has hailed it as a masterpiece of brevity and concentraton.it will surely stand as the definitive study for a very long time to come."
I will quote from the book
the author after mentioning newtons quote on the sea shore says an evocative similie, much quoted in the centuries that followed, but newton never played at the seashore,boy or man. born in a remote country vilage, the son of an illiterate farmer he lived in an island nation and explained how the moon and sun tug at the seas to create tides, but propably never set eyes on the ocean. he understood the sea by abstraction and computation. his life's path across the earth's surface covered barely 150 miles :from a hamlet of rural lincolnshire southward to the university town of cambridge and thence to london.