Isaac Newton

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Sir Isaac Newton was an English scientist who lived from 1634 to 1727. Newton was a physicist, astronomer, mathematician, alchemist, and government official. He is best known for his Theory of Universal Gravitation and his Laws of Motion. He also developed calculus for the purpose of his work in physics. In addition, Newton invented the reflecting telescope, and made numerous other contributions to his fields of study.

Newton was the first to demonstrate that the same laws that govern the motion of celestial objects also govern the motion of things on Earth. Newton contributed greatly to the advancement of science. His work also advanced the concept of heliocentrism (the view that the Sun is at the center of the solar system).

Newton's view of science was that far more remained undiscovered. "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

In 1705, in recognition of Isaac Newton's role as master of the Mint, Queen Anne knighted him. It was the first knighthood to be given for scientific achievement rather than prowess on the battlefield or work in government.

Newton is often seen as one of the most influential men in all of history and perhaps the greatest scientist ever. His work was influential even in philosophy, as he inspired Kant to create the philosophical concepts of the categorical imperative and the synthetic a priori.

After his death and burial, Newton was exhumed so he could be buried in a more prominent location in Westminster Abbey. During this exhumation process, it was discovered that Newton had large amounts of mercury in his body, probably as a direct result of his alchemical experiments. Exposure to large amounts of mercury may explain Newton’s eccentricity in his latter years, as well as his cause of death.

Life

Newton was born on Christmas day December 25, 1642--the year Galileo died--in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire; his father died before his birth. The Newtons were a well-to-do, upwardly mobile family of farmers, but never had a prominent member. When he was a little more than two years old, his mother Hannah (1610–1679), remarried, and his upbringing was taken over by his maternal grandmother. He began his schooling in neighboring villages, and, at ten, was sent to the grammar school at Grantham, the nearest town of any size. He boarded during terms at the house of an apothecary from whom he may have derived his lifelong interest in chemistry. The young Newton seems to have been a quiet, not particularly bookish, lad, but very ready with his hands; he made sun dials, model windmills, a water clock, a mechanical carriage, and flew kites with lanterns attached to their tails.

In 1656, Newton's mother, on the death of her second husband, returned to Woolsthorpe and took her son out of school with the idea of making him a farmer. He hated farming. His mother, after considerable persuasion by his teacher at Grantham, who had recognized his intellectual gifts, allowed him to prepare for entrance to Cambridge University. In June 1661, he was admitted to prestigious Trinity College as a lowly "sub-sizar" (a student required to do work-study). The main curriculum was the study of Aristotle, but early in 1664, as Newton's notebooks indicate, he began an intensive self-study of geometry, Copernican astronomy and optics. On his own he read Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, Galileo, Robert Boyle, Thomas Hobbes, Kenelm Digby, Joseph Glanville, and Henry More. He was a loner with only one friend, but he was stimulated by the distinguished mathematician and theologian Isaac Barrow, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, who recognized Newton's genius and did all he could to foster it.

Newton took his bachelor's degree in January 1665 and was selected for a scholarship in 1664 and a fellowship in 1667. Upon taking his MA he became one of Trinity college's sixty fellows, with an income of £60, part of which came in the form of room and board. He had no duties at Trinity over the next 28 years; he did no teaching apart from a few lectures (to nearly empty halls) and tutoring an occasional student. At the urging of Isaac Barrow in 1669 he wrote out some of his findings, which circulated in manuscript. He invented the reflecting telescope, which caused a sensation in London in 1671 and his election to the Royal Society. Newton became Lucasian professor of mathematics in 1669 at £100 per annum. Added to his fellowship and family estate, Newton was well off. He spent most of his time with experiments in alchemy and speculations in Arian theology, which had no influence whatever at the time or later. Newton made enemies easily, with an almost paranoid style of disputation. Many scientists in the era were repeatedly charging each other with plagiarism, and sometimes hid their discoveries in code so that in future years they could decode the message and claim priority. In 1704 he published his great book on Opticks, which had been mostly written three decades before.

National affairs

Publication in 1687 of the Principia made Newton one of the best known intellectual figures in Europe. At the same time Newton became a leader of the University against King James II, who was promoting Catholicism there. When James was overthrown, Newton's political reputation soared. In 1694 he suffered an emotional breakdown and his intellectual productivity ended. In 1696 he left Cambridge for London, where he became Warden of the Royal Mint. The appointment was intended as an honorary sinecure for England's most famous intellectual, but Newton characteristically threw himself into a successful effort to reform the nation's coinage and crack down on counterfeiters. He became Master of the Mint in 1699; in 27 years as Master he averaged an income of about £1650 a year, one of the highest salaries in London. We was president of the Royal Society from 1703 to his death, turning that honorific position into an operational one that upgraded the Society's usefulness. In 1705 he became the first scientist in European history to be knighted.

Newton never married, but he brought his niece to London as his hostess and lived in upper class style.

Gravity

Newton developed the Theory of Universal Gravitation, more commonly known as gravity, when, according to legend, a falling apple struck him on the head. He realized that the same force that pulled the apple to the ground could be what keeps Jupiter's moons in orbit. His theory stated that all matter is attracted to matter by a force, whose strength increases proportionally to the mass of the objects involved, and inversely proportional to the squared distance between them. Newton's theory is based on action-at-a-distance which has always been opposed by some scientists, and now most physicists endorse the very different theory of relativity. Both theories predict identical results at small scales, similar results at the scale of the solar system and very different results at cosmological scales beyond the solar system.

Religious Beliefs

Newton was an Arian who rejected the Trinity and was ambiguous about the divinity of Christ. As his leading biographer concludes, "Well before 1675, Newton had become an Arian in the original sense of the term." That is, he emphasized the powers of God the father and deemphasized Jesus. He considered himself a Christian who accepted the Bible as the Word of God, after the age of 25 he devoted much--perhaps most--of his thinking to religion. His unorthodox views violated the rules at Cambridge University, but his colleagues protected him.

Newton was a sincere religious believer, who said his discoveries were inspired by God. He devoted more time to the study of Scripture than to science. Newton wrote, "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being... All variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God."

Newton believed that God's creation of the universe was self evident given its grandeur. He also warned against using his laws to replace the creator. He said, "Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."

Newton wrote over a million words on religion--nealy all in unpublished hand-written manuscripts and unavailable for research until the 20th century. Although older scholars did not have access to his writings, "Among contemporary scholars, the consensus is that Newton was an Arian," concludes Pfizenmaier (1997).

Some older biographers without access to the manuscroipts have speculated, without justification, that Newton's views would today be considered those of a Unitarian, or an Arian. Those who reject Christ's divinity claim without justification that Newton likewise rejected it. The quotations of Newton that they cite say no such thing.

However, the evidence for Newton holding to Arianism is scant. It is true that Newton held a lot to himself, but to say that because of his association with William Whiston, that he is therefore an Arianist is hardly conclusive. It is more probable that Newton held to an Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity.

John Conduitt, the husband of Newton's niece had this to say about Newton's theology.

"I had no hesitation when writing the Like of Sir Isaac Newton in 1830, in coming to the conclusions that he was a believer in the Trinity; and in giving this opinion on the creed of so great a man, and so indefatigable a student of scripture, I was well aware that there are various forms of Trinitarian truth, and various modes of expressing it, which have been received as orthodox in the purest societies of the Christian Church."

In an effort to debunk widespread claims of his time that the world would be ending soon, Newton wrote a private manuscript estimating that the world would not end prior to the year A.D. 2060.

Bibliography

• Bardi, Jason Socrates. The Calculus Wars: Newton, Leibniz, and the Greatest Mathematical Clash of All Time. (2006). 277 pp. excerpt and text search
• Bechler, Zev. Newton's Physics and the Conceptual Structure of the Scientific Revolution. (1991). 588 pp.
• Berlinski, David. Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World. (2000). 256 pp. excerpt and text search
• Buchwald, Jed Z. and Cohen, I. Bernard, eds. Isaac Newton's Natural Philosophy. MIT Press, 2001. 354 pp. excerpt and text search
• Casini, P. "Newton's Principia and the Philosophers of the Enlightenment." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 1988 42(1): 35-52. Issn: 0035-9149 Fulltext: Jstor
• Christianson, Gale E. Isaac Newton and the Scientific Revolution. Oxford U. Press, 1996. 160 pp. excerpt and text search
• Christianson, Gale E. In the Presence of the Creator: Isaac Newton and His Times. (1984). 608 pp.
• Cohen, I. Bernard and Smith, George E., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Newton. (2002). 500 pp. focuses on philosophical issues only; excerpt and text search; complete edition online
• Cohen, I. Bernard. The Newtonian Revolution with Illustrations of the Transformation of Scientific Ideas. Cambridge U. Press, 1981. 404 pp. excerpt and text search
• DeGandt, François. Force and Geometry in Newton's Principia. Princeton U. Press, 1995. 296 pp.
• Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter. The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought. Cambridge U. Press, 1991. 359 pp.
• Fara, Patricia. Newton: The Making of a Genius. Columbia U. Press, 2003. 347 pp excerpt and text search
• Fauvel, John et al., ed. Let Newton Be! Oxford U. Press, (1989). 272 pp.
• Feingold, Mordechai. The Newtonian Moment: Isaac Newton and the Making of Modern Culture. (2004) 218 pp. catalog of exhibit at New York Public Library, 2004-5
• Force, James E. and Hutton, Sarah, ed. Newton and Newtonianism: New Studies. (2004). 246 pp. excerpt and text search
• Gjertsen, Derek. The Newton Handbook. (1987). 665 pp.
• Gleick, James. Isaac Newton.(2003). 272 pp.
• Hall, A. Rupert. All Was Light: An Introduction to Newton's Opticks. Oxford U. Press, 1993. 252 pp.
• Hall, A. Rupert. Isaac Newton: Adventurer in Thought. (1992). 468 pp. excerpt and text search
• Hofmann, Joseph Ehrenfried. Classical Mathematics: A Concise History of the Classical Era in Mathematics. (1959) online edition
• Hoskin, Michael. "Newton and Newtonianism" pp 130-67 in Hoskin, ed. The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy (1999) excerpt and text search
• Kline, Morris. Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. Volume: 1. (1972).
• Mandelbrote, Scott. Footprints of the Lion: Isaac Newton at Work. Cambridge U. Press, (2001). 142 pp
• Olby, R.c. et al. Companion to the History of Modern Science. (1990) online edition, on the history of Newtonianism
• Park, Katharine, and Lorraine Daston, eds. The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 3: Early Modern Science (2006) excerpt and text search
• Rankin, William. Introducing Newton (3rd ed. 2007) excerpt and text search
• Sepper, Dennis L. Newton's Optical Writings: A Guided Study. Rutgers U. Press, 1994. 224 pp. excerpt and text search
• Shapiro, Alan E. Fits, Passions, and Paroxysms: Physics, Method, and Chemistry and Newton's Theories of Colored Bodies and Fits of Easy Reflection. Cambridge U. Press, (1993). 400 pp.
• Thrower, Norman J. W., ed. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: A Longer View of Newton and Halley: Essays Commemorating the Tercentenary of Newton's Principia and the 1985-1986 Return of Comet Halley. U. of California Press, 1990. 429 pp.
• Westfall, Richard S. Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton. 2 vol. Cambridge U. Press, 1981. 895 pp. the major scholarly biography excerpt and text search
  • Westfall, Richard S. The Life of Isaac Newton. Cambridge U. Press, (1993). 328 pp., short version excerpt and text search
• Westfall, Richard S. "Newton, Sir Isaac (1642–1727)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004); online edition
• White, Michael. Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer. (1998). 416 pp. Newton as alchemist online edition

Primary sources

• Newton, Isaac. The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. U. of California Press, (1999). 974 pp.
• Newton, Isaac. The Optical Papers of Isaac Newton. Vol. 1: The Optical Lectures, 1670-1672. Cambridge U. Press, 1984. 627 pp.
• Newton, Isaac. Opticks (4th ed. 1730) online edition
• Newton, Isaac. The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton, 8 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 1967–81).
• Newton, Isaac. The correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. H. W. Turnbull and others, 7 vols. (1959–77) ·

• Brackenridge, J. Bruce. The Key to Newton's Dynamics: The Kepler Problem and the Principia: Containing an English Translation of Sections 1, 2, and 3 of Book One from the First (1687) Edition of Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. U. of California Press, 1996. 299 pp.
• Newton's Philosophy of Nature: Selections from His Writings edited by H. S. Thayer, (1953), online edition