Isaac Newton (1642-1727)



Isaac Newton (1642-1727):

The Gravity of Genius

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Isaac Newton

“Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night:

God said, Let Newton be! and All was Light.”

Alexander Pope

Note-taking & study questions:

1) How would you characterize Newton’s personality? What was he like as a person?

2) How does Newton connect to the broader story of the Scientific Revolution? What were his major contributions: mathematics, physics, astronomy, science?

3) Did Newton separate “science” from “religion” in his work? How did he “stand on the shoulders of giants”?

1640s –1650s English Civil War: Cavaliers versus Roundheads

December 25, 1642 Newton’s birth at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England

1661 begins attending Trinity College, Cambridge University

1664 studies the works of new mathematics & new natural philosophy

( mechanical philosophy (Descartes, Gassendi, Boyle)

( astronomy & physics (Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes)

( mathematics (Descartes)

Spring 1665 earns Bachelor of Arts

Summer 1665 Cambridge closes due to plague, Newton returns to Woolsthorpe

Annus mirabilis (“Miracle year”: Fall 1665-Spring 1667)

1) invention of the calculus ( “fluxions”

2) begins developing inverse-square law ( motion & gravitation

3) experiments on the nature of light ( corpuscular theory

1667 returns to Cambridge

1669-1672 invents reflecting telescope ( sends telescope to Royal Society (1671)

( Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Cambridge (Oct. 1669)

( Fellow of Royal Society (Jan. 1672)

( paper on colors sent to Royal Society (Feb. 1672)

( begins controversy w/ archenemy, Robert Hooke (1635-1702)

1670s-1684 intensive reading & research in Alchemy, Theology, & Biblical Prophecy

( learn secrets by which God had created the world

( investigate the “spirit in matter”

( recover ancient sources of lost wisdom

June 1679 death of Newton’s mother

August 1684 visit of Edmund Halley (c. 1656-1742) regarding problem of planetary orbits

( composition & publication of Principia

(Fall 1684 –Summer 1687)

Glorious Revolution

Summer 1693 Newton’s emotional breakdown

1696. appointed Warden of the Mint ( Master of the Mint (1699)

1703. becomes president of the Royal Society

1704. publication of Opticks

1705. knighted by Queen Anne ( Sir Isaac Newton

1715. dispute with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) over the calculus

( publication by Royal Society condemning Leibniz for plagiarism (1713)

1711. second edition of Principia

1726. third edition of Principia

March 20, 1727 Sir Isaac Newton’s death

The more I have studied him, the more Newton has receded from me . . . The end result of my study of Newton has served to convince me that with him there is no measure. He has become for me wholly other, one of the tiny handful of supreme geniuses who have shaped the categories of the human intellect, a man not finally reducible to the criteria by which we comprehend our fellow beings . . .

Richard Westfall, Never at Rest (1980)

Newton’s propensity for protracted argument and revenge against scientific adversaries was well known. He had hounded Robert Hooke until his death because Hooke had dared to criticize publicly his early work on the nature of light. Hooke had claimed that it drew heavily on his own . . . Genius, it seems, can come with a cruel temper . . .

David H. Clark & Stephen P. H. Clark, Newton’s Tyranny (2001)

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