SIR ISAAC NEWTON
By PROFESSOR E. N. da C. ANDRADE, F.R.S.
Let us glance at his performance. The flowering time of his genius was the period of 1665 and 1666, which he spent at Wools- thorpe, his birthplace. The Plague had driven him from Cam- bridge, he was twenty-two years old and the fine frenzy of inspiration was upon him. Looking back upon this time towards the end of his life he wrote, after summarising some of his early discoveries, "All this was in the two plague years of 1665 and 1666, for in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention, and minded mathematics and philosophy more than at any time since."
The fruits of these two years were the beginnings of the differential and integral calculus, or fluxions, as he called the method; the early thoughts on universal gravitation, with the conception of terrestial gravity extending to the moon ; and the early work on the prismatic decomposition of light. It is significant that Newton made no attempt to publish any of these discoveries: nothing on the calculus or on gravity appeared for some twenty years. Newton's presentation, by request, of his reflecting telescope to the Royal Society in 1672 was the occasion of his writing " Had not the communication of it been desired, [I] might have let it still remain in private as it hath already done some years." This matter of the telescope led to the communication and printing of- the dis- coveries made with the prism, but certain, on the whole unintelligent, criticisms of the work, which was of prime importance, irritated Newton so much that he declared he would publish no more—" I sec that I have made myself a slave to philosophy, but if I get free of Mr. Linus's business I will resolutely bid adieu to it eternally, excepting what I will do for my private satisfaction, or leave to come out after me ; for I see that a man must either resolve to put out nothing new, or to become a slave to defend it." This was in 1676: a long period of silence followed. A few years later be writes to Hooke, "But yet my affection to philosophy being worn out . . . I must acknowledge myself averse from spending time writing about it which I think I can spend otherwise more to my own content and the good of others." The rest shows him to be in full possession of his scientific powers—if he cared.
The next great outburst of activity began in 1684, when Halley went to Cambridge and found out that Newton knew how to deduce the planetary orbits from his theory of gravitation. Struck by what be learnt, he persuaded and cajoled Newton into writing the Principia: if he had not used the greatest tact the crowning part of the book would have been suppressed by Newton, for fear of controversy. This work—" Your divine Treatise," as Halley called it ; " the best book that was ever written," in the words of Laplace— was completed in about eighteen months, and during the writing Newton was also busy about other matters. The writing of the Principia is, perhaps, the supreme feat of the human intellect. It appeared in 1687 and bears the Imprimatur of Samuel Pepys, then President of the Royal Society. Newton was forty-four.
The Principia contains not only the explanation of the planetary orbits, worked out in terms of universal gravitation and Newton's laws of motion, and of the behaviour of comets, but a host of other achievements of the first importance. The explanation of the precession of the equinoxes, of the figure of the earth, and of the tides in terms of the lunar attraction may be chosen at random. It also furnishes the basis of mathematical physics, in particular of the science of fluid movements. It bears the stamp of genius on every page. By showing that the universe as then known was subject to simple laws of mechanics, valid on the earth and in the heavenly fabric alike, it created an immense impression, although understanding of the work grew but slowly.
After the publication of the Principia Newton did little more in science. He seems to have desired an administrative post. In 1692 he fell into that period of profound melancholy and suspicion, not , foreign to his nature but a grave exaggeration of his usual temperament, which is often called his madness. In 1696 he became Warden, and in 1699 Master of the Mint. Held in increasing reverence and honour, he continued to retain, as is abundantly clear from, for instance, his ready solution of difficult challenge problems in mathematics and from his correspondence about the new editions of the Principia, his full intellectual powers, but he never took any sustained interest in scientific matters. He died in 1727.
Science, then, was Newton's supreme interest, if ever, only for short and separate periods. To what else did he apply his mind, a mind that shrank from contact with the world and bitterly resented any intrusion on its privacy? Largely, I think, to mystical matters. We know for certain that he spent, for many years of his life, much of his time on experiments of an alchemical nature, to which he devoted intense thought. His library contained the works of rosicrucians and of most of the alchemical mystics, such as Maier, Ripley and Lully, in most, if not all, cases heavily annotated. Among his unpublished manuscripts passages copied from the alchemists bulked large. The creed of these men was that there was a profound analogy between the spiritual side of man's nature and the chemical operations which they pursued. The transmutation of metals bore some relationship to the regeneration of man. The esoteric language expressed something besides directions for laboratory operations. With Newton, even when he was writing the Principia, chemical operations were an absorbing interest, although what he published on chemistry is very slender and not of occult nature.
Newton was also profoundly interested in theological matters, but he would never take holy orders, although this would have been to his advantage. After his death his Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. john and his Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms Amended were published, but nothing explicit concerning his views on the Trinity, which were believed to be Aryan and unorthodox, ever appeared.
His work at . the Mint was a first-class piece of organisation at a critical time. We are• presented, then, with a man with four main interests—physical science, alchemy, theology and public service. When he chose to turn his immense powers of concentra- tion, probably never equalled, on to scientific queitions he could advance faster and further than any other man, but he did not often choose. In many ways he was a hermit, and the hermetic mysteries may have been his main interest. It is an intriguing question, which can only be raised, not answered, here.
Previous page
