Let Newton be

I have just finished reading the short biography of Isaac Newton. This book was surprising, kind, funny, hidden, and illuminating at the same time. The author James Gleick does a masterful job unraveling the complex layers of this amazing man. In my eyes, Newton is the greatest scientist. I know many people prefer Einstein, but this is mainly a recency bias. Einstein may have made us think we know physics by showing us that energy is equal to mass multiplied by twice the speed of light the famous E= mc2. , giving us a false sense of understanding but what Newton did was simply outstanding.

We must remember that Newton lived in a time when magic was rampant, and people believe in it, the church was dogmatic, and fought back when scientists tried to reveal the hidden laws of the universe. But the essentially orphaned, poor, and self-taught Newton locked himself up in Cambridge, where he was a glorified servant, and through the prodigious power of the mind, and work, and as Alexander Pope eulogized him, “Natures and nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!.”

Education during Newton’s time was Aristotelian, the false belief that the ancients had discovered everything that needed discovery, all that was needed was a reading of their tracts. All available knowledge had already been discovered by the Greeks (who stole most of its from Egypt). Newton demurred and trusted his eyes, ears, and fertile mind. He was a man of senses. So he measured, looked, thought and wrote, and puzzled. He taught himself mathematics to better arrange the numbers that swam in his head, in the process inventing calculus.

Newton was a genius, and it will be easy to simply accept this as a fact and move on. Is His genius lay not in the easy conception we have of it, as the effortless ability to perform intellectual feats, but the almost superhuman ability to focus intently on just one problem, and do so, for years on end, testing and retesting, measuring, reading, adding, subtracting, failing, and succeeding inch by inch. Traveling the one thousand miles along the way in this horribly hard way is his real genius. Newton is you and I with one thousand times the work ethic, patience, and perseverance. He fought fatigue, fellow scientists, priests, government, fear, and even sexual temptation. He dedicated himself completely to scholarship to the exclusion of everything else.

To this application of sheer human will, the universe had to oblige. Lacking terms to express himself he invented Physics. Words like gravity, force, mass and other terms we take for granted were first given scientific credence by Newton. His laws were universal laws.

The one contradiction pointed out in the book was Newton’s practice of alchemy. The attempt to turn lead into gold. To our modern lazy mind, this seems a horrible use of time. What, we need to remember is Newton approached alchemy as a chemist, not as a magician. He honestly believed his measurement, of quantities, and using exact science, mercury and experimentation would allow metals to transmute into gold. Who can say he was wrong?

The last and most astounding fact was that above all this, Newton spent almost as much if not more time studying the bible, scientifically in minute detail. His theological writing, surpass his scientific writing not in impact but in volume. What a man.