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Isaac Newton was the dominant figure in the Scientific Revolution, a creative period of experiment, observation, and theory that began in the mid-sixteenth century. Newton remains an icon of the scientific method, even for nonscientists who only vaguely know what he accomplished— for instance, the formulation of the theory of universal gravitation and the invention of calculus.
According to many historians, a revolution in scientific thought began when astronomers learned about the theory of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543)—that the Earth revolved around the sun—which he proposed in a book published shortly after his death. Isaac Newton was the dominant figure in that Scientific Revolution (c. 1550–1700), and by the time of Newton’s own death, Copernicus’s theory and had transformed western Europe’s understanding of the universe. Other than Charles Darwin (1809– 1882) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955), Newton remains the world’s most widely known scientist, an icon of the scientific method. Newton himself was dissatisfied with his achievements, as they explained only certain aspects of the universe. Much more ambitious, he searched vainly for a single system that could explain everything, a unified system of the universe. Nor was he satisfied with learning merely how things happened; he wanted to know why.
Clearly unfit for the life of a farmer, Newton was sent by his family from its Lincolnshire farm to Cambridge University. He did not immediately impress his teachers there. He spent the most creative period in his life back in Lincolnshire when he temporarily left the university to escape an outbreak of plague. Nearly all his ideas originated during these eighteen months in 1665 and 1666. Newton fits the stereotype of the hermit scholar who lived in isolation for no purpose other than work. When Cambridge appointed him a professor of mathematics, he proved to be a poor teacher. He won respect (and election to the prestigious scientific Royal Society) when he built an impressive reflecting telescope.
In an age before specialization, Newton contributed to diverse fields of the physical sciences and mathematics. Often “publication” in private correspondence preceded print publication by many years. As a young man, Newton began his study of color and light, which reached a climax with the publication of the Opticks in 1704. While still very young he developed the mathematical theory that he called the method of fluxions (later known as calculus). Concurrently, the German scholar G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716) developed differential and integral calculus. A bitter controversy followed: did Newton or Leibniz deserve the credit? They had worked independently, so the answer is both of them. Newton is best known for his theory of universal gravitation. According to a familiar but probably untrue story, it was when he saw an apple fall from a tree in the family orchard that he was inspired to recognize that the same forces, expressed in the same laws, controlled both earthly and celestial bodies. Written in Latin and published in 1687, Newton’s major work on mechanics was the Principia (or Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).
Although he engaged in unattractive quarrels with scientists who dared dispute the correctness or the originality of his ideas, he acquired more admirers than critics, both inside and outside the English scientific community. He briefly served in the House of Commons, and in 1696 he moved from Cambridge to London when patrons put him in the Royal Mint at a salary that made him rich. In 1703 Newton was elected president of the Royal Society, and in 1705 he was knighted. One of his very few close friendships appears to have been that with the young Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier (1664–1753), in the early 1690s. Never married and suffering recurrent bouts of depression, Newton in his later years lived quietly with a niece. His religious views were unorthodox— he rejected the divinity of Jesus Christ—but, because these views were not fully known, he did not experience the persecution that his great predecessor Galileo (1564–1642) had suffered.
Although the reclusive Newton never traveled outside his native England, his work became accepted in much of Europe, but not all of it and not immediately or unanimously. For instance, Jesuit scholars remained loyal to the older Cartesian system, devised by Rene Descartes (1596–1650). His vortex theory credited impulsion in particles themselves (and not attraction) with moving things around in the universe. Newton eventually won acceptance because his theories produced better practical results. For instance, his theory correctly predicted the return of Halley’s comet. During the middle decades of the eighteenth century the French philosophes Voltaire (1694–1778) and Gabrielle Emilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Chatelet (1706–1749) popularized Newton’s ideas outside England among educated readers. Du Chatelet translated Newton’s Principia into French and wrote a commentary describing new proofs of Newton’s theories. Aided by Newton’s prestige, the natural sciences became the model for the social sciences in the Enlightenment, with the latter borrowing the self-confidence that the former had earned. Still later, Eurocentric interpreters of world history adopted Newton and the concept of a scientific revolution as evidence for the superiority of the West.
Eventually, scientists throughout the world acknowledged Newton as their teacher and inspiration. For instance, by 1730 Jesuit missionaries brought some of Newton’s astronomical ideas to China, and by the middle of the nineteenth century Newton’s calculus and part of his Principia were available in Chinese.
In the 1930s a reaction against the old emphasis on individual genius as the explanation for scientific progress challenged Newton’s importance. Marxists and others argued that science was a collaborative enterprise, influenced by contemporary ideology, and that the acceptance of new scientific ideas by nonscientists required an educated public. More recently, scholars pointed out that Newton had “unscientific” interests, including alchemy—turning base metals into gold—and biblical chronologies and prophecies. In fact, all of Newton’s work was interrelated. It is inadequate to describe him as a scientist, a modern term. A man of his own times, he was a cosmologist who sought to understand everything as a single system. He remains a powerful symbol of the new science that eventually changed the world.
Bibliography:
- Berlinski, D. (2000). Newton’s gift: How Sir Isaac Newton unlocked the system of the world. New York: Free Press.
- Fara, P. (2002). Newton: The making of a genius. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Fara, P. (2004). Pandora’s breeches: Women, science and power in the Enlightenment. London: Pimlico.
- Gleick, J. (2003). Isaac Newton. New York: Pantheon Books.
- Guerlac, H. (1981). Newton on the continent. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
- Hall, A. R. (1992). Isaac Newton: Adventurer in thought. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell.
- Manuel, F. E. (1968). Portrait of Isaac Newton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Westfall, R. S. (1980). Never at rest: A biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
- White, M. (1997). Isaac Newton: The last sorcerer. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
- Zinsser, J. P. (2003). The ultimate commentary: A consideration of I. Bernard Cohen’s Guide to Newton’s Principia. Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 57(2), 231–238.
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