Isaac Newton by James Gleick (PDF)

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Isaac Newton was born in a stone farmhouse in 1642, fatherless and unwanted by his mother. When he died in London in 1727 he was so renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for a subject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect. During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College, Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave them names—mass, gravity, velocity—things our science now takes for granted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveries and the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible and dared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in his generation.James Gleick, the author of Chaos and Genius, and one of the most acclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader into Newton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanations of the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies, rest, and motion—ideas so basic to the twenty-first century, it can truly be said: We are all Newtonians.

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⭐Several versions of Isaac Newton’s life have evolved in the three centuries since his death in 1727. They are the products of admirers, detractors, philosophers, scientist, and poets. Some have the virtue of being partially true. Indeed, Isaac Newton was brilliant, restless, creative, vindictive, and proud. That his image today is so disjointed comes as no surprise. James Gleick attempts to sort the wheat from the chaff, but his work goes far beyond that, to a splendid essay of Newton in his time.The 17th century was a curious time to be alive in England. Diarmaid MacCulloch, in his brilliant study of the Reformation, identifies Newton as the pivotal character in the swing from theology to science as the defining key of existence. But the old cosmologies were dying slow, painful deaths, while the new ones were generally infantile, utopian, or speculative. Even Galileo hesitated at first to turn his telescope to the skies, for fear of offending the divine, and when he finally caught glimpse of Saturn, the imperfections of his optics led him to announce “a planet with handles.” [Newton himself had to disguise his mathematics of infinity under the cloak of annuity interest projections to maintain proper theological etiquette at Cambridge.] The new science, such as it was, required as much faith as the old religion. A few souls like Kepler understood that there might be logic at the root, but his mathematics were daunting.What makes Newton’s life so interesting is the intellectual and philosophical journey that took him from the age of Galileo into the age of Einstein. He attended Cambridge in the aftermath of Oliver Cromwell but his Protestantism was not entirely appropriate as he harbored closet doubts about the Holy Trinity, finding no scriptural basis for it. His theology evolved from Aristotle as much as from anyone. He respected Aristotle’s concept of First Cause, and he had enough innate oppositional defiance to approach his studies with a rigorous scientific method in the manner of The Philosopher, chips fall where they will.Newton excelled in mathematics, physics, and mechanics, and his interests were broad enough that he brought a philosopher’s eye to these various disciplines. In a sense he began his life’s work while still a college student, looking for a unifying factor or factors to all the known sciences and disciplines of his day. This was a gargantuan task, and its audacity took Newton to the virtual doorstep of the best of medieval theology. His quest became an obsession, and for several solitary years it led him down the dark alley of alchemy. Alchemy was highly suspect; its practitioners were considered either heretics for seeking divine secrets, or outright charlatans looking to create gold. Newton, however, was attempting to find a bridge between the stasis of matter and the observable flux of actual life.What seemed to bring Newton out of his cave was the appearance of a spectacular comet in 1681. A young astronomer named Halley, an early admirer of Newton’s work, postulated that comets might be cyclic objects with elliptic trajectories. Halley’s thesis on the trajectory of comets–rather easily substantiated even in his day by visual observation and Kepler’s foundational math–was a physical puzzlement in an age when behavior of heavenly bodies was something of a psychological/religious given. Not even the telescope had shaken that. Why, then, would a comet make what amounts to a 270 degree change in trajectory as it passed the sun?Gleick traces with broad sweeps Newton’s intense pursuit of an answer, which led to the basic laws of physics we call Newtonian. Gleick’s economy is appreciated: Newton’s paper trail is extensive and exhaustive; one key to his success was exactitude. [The economist John Maynard Keynes led an extensive recent effort to recover and catalogue Newton’s body of work.] Although his publications in his day had modest circulation due to the highly technical nature–Halley, in fact, funded some of the publishing–there were two polarities permeating his theories that captured public attention and attracted considerable criticism in his time: his dependence upon the invisible, and the extensiveness of his claims.There is irony in the fact that Newton’s passion for scientific verifiable method allowed room for what his enemies would deride as invisible forces. Gravity is the most obvious example, though here the difficulty was mathematical semantics: just as most of us labor with the material reality of e=mc(2), so too in Newton’s day the mathematics and physics underlying gravitational force escaped even many professionals of his time. But in other areas of his work Newton claimed a certainty that was at best hypothetical and at times almost magical. So confident was he in the power of computation and observation that he promoted his ideas about atoms and light transmission, for example, as Gospel. The debate over the nature and transmission of light was an intense one during Newton’s working years. Newton himself made major contributions in his work with prisms and improvements on reflecting telescopes. But his hubris and scientific acclaim led him into an alchemy of speculation which later scientists corrected.On the other hand, Newton was attacked by poets and artists for redefining the world in the cold jargon of scientific certitude. He was accused of stripping the human experience of mystery. Even some scientists worried that Newton had left nothing for them to do. In some cases these criticisms are the fruit of Newton’s own exhaustive claims, and like many famous men, he did suffer in translation and adulation. Newton’s personality–including his lifelong love of declarative sentences–did not facilitate clarification or negotiation. Having solved to his own satisfaction the mysteries of the universe, Newton turned to an even greater challenge: the English economy. In 1696 he was appointed Warden and eventually Master of the Mint where he essentially restored credibility to the coin of the realm. Little wonder Keynes would protect his memory.

⭐At this time of the year, I select a few books about diverse subjects and re-read them with the hope that new insights will occur that I missed previously. That is certainly true of this book (first published in 2003 when I last read it) and Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine (1997). Dozens of other reviewers have already covered most of the strengths and pleasures of James Gleick’s book about Isaac Newton (1642-1727), one that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. I prefer to cite four of several dozen passages that caught my eye. They are representative of the thrust and flavor of Gleick’s thinking and writing.”No one understands the mental faculty we call mathematical intuition+; much less, genius. People’s brains do not differ much, from one to the next, but numerical facility seems rarer, more special, than other talents. It has a threshold quality. In no other intellectual realm does the genius find so much common ground with the idiot savant. A mind turning inward from the world can see numbers as lustrous creatures; can find other in them, and magic; can know numbers as if personally.” (Page 38)The author of Micrographia (published in 1665) was Robert Hooke, “a brilliant and ambitious man seven years Newton’s senior, who wielded the microscope just as Galileo had the telescope. These were the instruments that penetrated the barrier of scale and opened a view into the countries of the very large and the very small. Wonders were revealed there. The old world — the world of ordinary scales — shrank into its place in a continuum, one order among many.” (62)John Locke (1632-1704) “had just completed a great work of his own, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), and saw the Principia [Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a three-volume explanation of his laws of motion and universal gravitation] as an exemplar of methodical knowledge. He did not pretend to follow the mathematics. They discussed theology — Locke amazed at the depth of Newton’s biblical knowledge — and these paragons of rationality found themselves kindred spirits in the dangerous area of anti-Trinitarianism.” (145)”The Principia marked a fork in the road: thenceforth science and philosophy went separate ways. Newton had moved from the realm of metaphysics many questions about the nature of things — about what exists — and assigned them a new name, physics. ‘This preparation being made,’ he declared, ‘we argue more safely.’ And less safely, too: by mathematizing science, he made it possible for its facts and claims to be proved wrong.” 184-185)Two concluding points. First, I selected Pope’s observation (“Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said ‘Let Newton be’ and all was light”) for the title of this review because, in fact, Newton was neither the first nor the last to illuminate major realities in the natural world that had previously been ignored, misunderstood, or simply not recognized. That leads to a second point: It was a twelfth-century French Neo-Platonist philosopher, scholar, and administrator, Bernard of Chartres, and not Newton who first explained, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” However, countless others (including Albert Einstein) have since stood on Newton’s shoulders for almost three centuries.

⭐I bought this book to gain insights into Newton the man, and therefore the book disappointed me. Gleick’s story line is the development of Newton’s mathematical, scientific and alchemical thought, with dabs of information about Newton’s human side inserted just here and there. The book did not explain how and why a solitary boy and young man became a public figure, not only with his feuds carried out in public but also him holding governmental posts and becoming rich as a result. So now I have to track down other biographies.

⭐Gleick is a good writer and if you are unfamiliar with Newton and his biography, this is a good place to start. It is written well, the science is explained well, and it narrates the major events in Newton’s life in a good fashion. If you have read deeply about Newton, say biographies by Westfall or Christianson, then you will find this a good diversion, but ultimately unsatisfying, as much of his alchemy, theology, and life are glossed over, telescoped, or omitted.

⭐James Gleick has offered his readership a scientifically sanitised but predominantly human biography of Sir Isaac Newton. Even when a reader actually works within the world of physical sciences, mathematics or analysis (as I do myself), I believe that sometimes we all wish to understand more about the private life of great, infamous or notable doers and thinkers.Often in his field of work Newton was innovative and his theories were apt to be seminal. Calculus, light, motion, gravity, etc. all confirm his celebrated and deserved status. Additionally, although Gleick’s book shows Newton to be idiosyncratic, particular of thought and almost toxically reclusive, Newton is also shown to be sufficiently self-aware to be able to accept and expound the notion that mankind was probably on the verge of exponential cerebral expansion. How right he was.Further, the author reveals Newton as the spiritually-aware scientist, who eventually himself came to believe, that he was merely bringing to light (pun intended) The Creator’s own technical and mathematical system by which the whole stable edifice of the known universe was built; and upon the health and well-being of which the world’s very continuation would depend.As a writer, Gleick excels himself in demonstrating Sir Isaac’s paradoxically insular behaviour to peers and contemporaries whilst masking such a brilliantly extrovert mind containing such an unrivalled capacity for almost unbridled reason and accurate prognosis. The modern sub-atomic and algorithmically-charged machine-learning world today owes Newton so very much for pointing the way forward, but I believe readers have a debt also to Gleick for conjuring in homage Newton the man in an obviously admiring but readable style.If you are interested, then please see my reviews on ‘Newton’s Gift’ (Berlinski) – offering some maths and science; ‘Isaac Newton The Last Sorcerer,’ (White) – offering biography and alchemical adventures; and also ‘Newton and the Counterfeiter’ (Levenson) – offering the lesser-known Newton as ‘Royal Mint ‘production director’ and ‘counter-counterfeiting sleuth and thief-taker.’Enjoy your Newtonian reading.

⭐An interesting book that gives a good introduction to Newton’s life. There is not a massive range of biography in the book, and it mainly focuses on the theories and work. If you don’t know much about the Maths and Science behind the works, like I don’t, it is difficult to understand. However, I have come out of the other side with more knowledge than when I went in, so that must count as an achievement.

⭐James Gleick certainly never lets you get bored. This biography of Sir Isaac Newton – a man who lived an improbable eighty four years and in that time invented much of mathematics, classical physics and optics, postulated gravity, ran the Royal Mint, relentlessly persecuted forgers and secretly devoted a fair bit of his life to alchemy – is done and dusted in under 200 generously margined pages, so being of a short attention span is no barrier.This is a great book: Gleick’s prose, while undeniably efficient, is nonetheless possessed of a disarming elegance and his analysis is insightful and engaging: I found myself lowering the book and staring into space pondering its implications a good deal.We tend to think of Newton as the father of the modern enlightenment without concluding that, ergo, the times he inhabited were QED un-enlightened. This makes the amount and scope of a single man’s achievement all the more stunning: parameters we take absolutely for granted – such as the measurable and consistent passage of time – for most purposes, just didn’t exist: it was by Newton’s singular and cantankerous will that we became “enlightened” at all. Science, mathematics philosophy and religion were simply not the carefully compartmentalised and ontologically parsed disciplines they are today: they were merely different aspects of the same tangled skein.Gleick also records how indebted our now “untangled” skein is to Newton’s ministrations: were the programmes of Robert Hooke or Gottfried Leibniz – great antagonists of Newton’s in their day – to have prevailed, the uncomfortable suspicion is that our scientific landscape now might look very different. Newton’s famous deference to the shoulders of giants was in reality uttered in false modesty with reference to a competitor, Hooke, whom he despised. That fact alone ought to trouble the more revisionist historians of science. Indeed, “a slightly naughty thought” occurs to Hermann Bondi: “we may still be so much under the impression of the particular turn he took … We cannot get it out of our system”.Quite. This is a deft and elegant biography. Well recommended.Olly Buxton

⭐I thought this was a bit different from our usual treatment of Newton, enjoyable to read and not too long. It takes us a bit closer to Newton the person in a relatively short text. It’s a really worthwhile contribution for those interested in Newton. I found it gave plenty to meditate on, suggesting that further study and thinking on Newton is likely to continue to unfold. It reminded me to try to read more of Newton’s non-scientific writings.

⭐Loved this book, well written, easy to follow, and made the life of Newton very enjoyable to read about.Some books looking back on significant figures in history become a bit of a work to plough through, but this was compelling. I really enjoyed reading it, and got a lot out of it. If you want an overview of th elife of Newton in paperback then i recommend this book.

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