Review of Sarah Dry's 'The Newton Papers. The Strange and True Odyssey of Isaac Newton’s Manuscripts', Historia mathematica, vol. 43 (2016), pp. 342-5. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 2020
More than any other scientist in history, Isaac Newton has been both deified and defied. In this article, I wish to summarize several aspects of the revised historiography on Newton. I will note in particular Newton's debt to the prisca sapientia and prisca theologia for his natural philosophy. I argue that Newton's natural philosophy cannot be separated from his theology. In the process, however, Newton had radically altered traditional Christian beliefs. And, in so doing, Newton ironically perpetuated the conflict he wished to avoid.
Newtonianism in the eighteenth century
2021
[This is a preliminary draft for a section to appear in the Bloomsbury Cultural History of Mathematics, Volume 4, please do not cite without approval] Isaac Newton’s Principia rocked the intellectual world right from its first appearance in 1687 and attained an iconic status in the eighteenth century. Newton’s mathematico-experimental approach to the natural world was saluted as an examplary method for scientific investigation by most and was the primary target for those who wished to restrict the domain of mathematics. Through Newton, ‘mathematics’ turned into one of the buzzwords of eighteenth-century intellectual culture. As an icon, however, Newton stood for much more than just a particular scientific methodology. A mention of Newton or the ‘Newtonian philosophy’ could, depending on the context, also indicate certain cosmological, theological, and even political positions. Furthermore, a diverse range of mathematicians, philosophers, and entrepreneurs in the eighteenth century adopted ‘Newton’ as brand name without necessarily having much in common with the man himself.
Reassessing the Wider Aspects of Newton’s Thought – A Symposium
Early Science and Medicine
After a brief introduction, this “symposium” presents four essay reviews of three recent major studies of Newton’s life and works beyond the mathematics, physics and natural philosophy for which he is principally known: Jed Buchwald’s and Mordechai Feingold’s Newton and the Origin of Civilization (2013), Rob Iliffe’s Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton (2017), and William R. Newman’s Newton the Alchemist (2019); and they address Newton’s work on history, chronology, theology and alchemy. The four reviewers are leading Newton scholars in their own right, and assess how these three studies advance our understanding of Newton the “scientist”, as well as Newton the man in his times. Niccolò Guicciardini considers their relevance to our understanding of Newton’s mathematics; Scott Mandelbrote assesses how they advance our understanding of Newton’s local and historical context; Steffen Ducheyne focuses on what we can learn about Newton’s methodological concerns and work...
Godly Scholar: The Making of Isaac Newton
2017
For more than half a century, the field of Newton studies was characterized by a long and “exciting chase,” as Richard H. Popkin aptly described the painstaking process of reading, transcribing, attempting to date, understand and interpret the multitude of Newton’s manuscripts.1 Sometimes, the chase brought remarkable discoveries; but quite often it ended in puzzles, paradoxes and unanswered questions. Take, for example, one decade of Newton’s life, from 1670 to 1680. In these years Newton undertook extensive research in optics and published his first paper on light and colors; he engaged in extensive controversies over refraction, the nature of light and colors and the role of experiment in natural philosophical demonstrations; he wrote (and published) an extensive paper on light sometimes characterized as “alchemical cosmology”2; he worked on advanced mathematics, corresponded with Boyle on the nature of chemical bonding, corrected and rethought his initial theory of the aether; c...
Newton:Science Beyond Philosophy
Isaac, son of Isaac and Hanna Newton, was born prematurely about one hour after midnight on Christmas Day 1642 in the family manor house at Woolsthorpe. He grew up displaying an unusual interest and ability in mechanical invention 1 :
New College Notes, 2023
In 1872 a set of Isaac Newton’s manuscripts was bequeathed to New College, Oxford by the Reverend Jeffrey Ekins. Although Newton scholars were well aware of this collection, its provenance is shrouded in mystery. In this article, I first investigate the contents of Newton's vast archive of manuscripts and how they were handed down after his death in 1727. Then I examine the provenance of the specific set of manuscripts (MS 361) that was bequeathed to New College, Oxford in 1872. Although this topic has been scrutinized extensively in the literature, I believe the main narrative is flawed. By collecting all the available evidence and drawing some new connections, I present an alternative narrative that avoids those flaws. Lastly, I delve into the manuscript collection and focus on the manuscript folio on which Newton's famous optical diagram appears. I discuss the provenance of that specific sketch and link it to a similar but neater sketch that appears in the library of Geneva. This allows me to get a clearer picture of the various stages at which the 'vignette' for the 1722 French translation of Newton's Opticks was conceived from sketch (New College, Oxford) to publication (1722 Opticks). I conclude by drawing the connection between the various contingent circumstances under which Newton's manuscripts have come down to us and the current state of the scholarship based on the availability of these resources.
The enigma of Isaac Newton: scientist, theologian, alchemist and prophet
International Journal of the Humanities Vol. 5, Issue 7, 2007
In 1687 one the most important scientific book every written, The Principia, by Isaac Newton, was published. It was a dramatic development in science and moved scientific thought from the medieval era into the modern era. Newton was haled as a genius and the greatest scientist in history and his reputation was jealously guarded. However, at an auction in 1936, the famous British economist, John Maynard Keynes, bought a large proportion of a collection of Newton’s unpublished manuscripts, which had remained in a private collection in the 200 years since Newton death. Keynes later bequeathed these papers to Kings Collage Library, Cambridge. Babson College, Massachusetts and the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem also purchased a significant part of the collection. Other items were scatted all over the world, into private and public collections. There were over a million words on alchemy and the largest bulk of Newton’s unpublished papers; several million words are on theology, many written in Latin. Many of these papers remain un-translated. In these manuscripts it was discovered that there were many sides to Newton, his alchemy and his deeply held (and in the 17th century heretical) religious beliefs would have seen a very different fate for Newton if they were made public as he would have been disgraced and his works shunned. Keynes called him the last sorcerer. This paper examines one aspect of Newton’s sorcerer persona - that of the prophet.
The Principia for the Common-Reader: A New Trend in Newton Scholarship?
2014
In the past 350 years, Isaac Newton’s Principia has defeated many readers. Partly, this was due to its style and structure. The reader finds herself confronted with a baroque superstructure of propositions followed by abridged demonstrations conveyed in an unfamiliar language. Passages recognizable today as ‘mathematical’ or ‘physical’ are interspersed with metaphysical considerations and with theological and historical references. Often, demonstrations are entirely missing and the structure of propositions is difficult to grasp. In addition, one has the feeling of a book especially written to forbid the easy access. For reasons having to do with priority disputes and personal idiosyncrasies, Newton deliberately made Principia difficult to read by appealing to what he insisted to call his ‘mathematical way’,1 or mathematical manner of treating problems.2 The abstruse mathematical style of the Principia has been vividly described by William Wheewell, more than a century ago, thus:
NEWTON – HIS SECRET LIFE (Hist.9)
Newton had a dark side that has been suppressed by history. Only a few scholars know the true historical truth about this but most people do not search out such sources. I myself have also gone through several disappointments as more and more of my earlier heroes have fallen off their prior pantheon as I have researched their real biographies. I now wish to share this research with others to show that most popular images are deliberate acts of iconography reflecting implicit agendas. Young people should know that they themselves do not have to be perfect to make significant contributions to the growing knowledge base of humanity. This essay shows that even Top Scientists, like Isaac Newton, have a dark shadow to their personality and that the Founder of Modern Science had deep roots in older modes of thinking, such as Alchemy and esoteric Religion, which many modern rationalists refuse to acknowledge. These old commitments were critical to his revolutionary innovations, which were more philosophical than utilitarian. His major ideas in optics and gravity demonstrate that he was an empirical scientist, not just an abstract mathematician. Newton's scientific failures still resonate today but I remain impressed with his physical and philosophical intuitions.