28 March: Boreham on Isaac Newton

A Peer of Every Realm
On March 28, the day on which he was laid in his honoured tomb at Westminster Abbey, the mind turns instinctively to Sir Isaac Newton. It is 250 years since, at the height his great renown, Isaac Newton was called to the presidency of the Royal Society and honoured with his knighthood. Any tribute to such a man must of necessity be couched in superlatives. Is there any department of human life that has not been incalculably enriched by his restless mind, tireless researches, and ceaseless industry? Is there any man to whom our civilisation owes more?

It is not merely that he discovered much, invented much, and suggested much: but, in addition to all his direct personal triumphs and achievements, he created an atmosphere, and set forces in motion, that made possible the reaffirmations and revolutions that stand associated with hundreds of other illustrious names. He was the architect, they were the builders.

The birth of Newton is synonymous with the birth of British science. Before Newton's time, Green points out in his "Short History of the English People," only two discoveries of real value had been produced by British thinkers; Gilbert's discovery of terrestrial magnetism at the close of Elizabeth's reign, and Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood in the reign of James. Until Newton's time the people of England had been much more deeply immersed in the excitements of politics and of war than in the pursuit of science. But, during Newton's lifetime, science made up for lost time and a hurricane of enlightenment set in. Nor was the eminence of Newton the eminence of a hillock that rises from a flat and barren desert. Living in an age of intellectual giants, he dwarfed them all. It was a period of furious and fruitful thought.

The Sunrise Glistens On Many Peaks
An age of triumphs dawned. The Greenwich observatory was established; Halley made his famous discoveries in relation to the fluctuations of the tides; Hooke revealed to men the boundless possibilities of the microscope; Boyle inaugurated a new era in experimental chemistry; Wilkins revolutionised the study of philology; Sydenham changed the entire spirit of medical scholarship; Willis startled men by his investigations concerning the structure of the brain; Woodward founded the art of mineralogy; John Ray raised zoology to the rank of a science; and modern botany sprang into existence. Here was a dazzling galaxy of glittering splendour!

Yet, as Green says, great as these names undoubtedly are, they are lost in the lustre of one other name—the peerless name of Isaac Newton. In the resplendent firmament upon which the men of that time gazed in wondering admiration, his star, indisputably the brightest, made all the others seem strangely pale.

Outstanding among his claims upon our veneration stands the almost incredible versatility of his brilliance. A courtier and a knight, princes and princesses delighted in his society, and no visitor to the palace was ever more welcome than was he. A philosopher and a theologian, he wrote books on such abstruse subjects as "The Mysteries in the Prophecies of Daniel," and "The Apocalyptic Visions of the Book of Revelation." In discussing such nebulous themes he could hold his own with the most scholarly divines of his time. A member of Parliament, he interested himself in all the social and national questions of the day. As Warden of the Mint, he juggled skilfully with the complicated problems of high finance. As Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, he invested his Chair with a distinction and an authority it had never previously known.

And all these exacting activities he regarded in the nature of casual sidelines or fortuitous occupations, bearing but a remote relationship to those complex and sublime scientific investigations towhich the most transcendent powers of his mighty intellect were bent.

Tardy Recognition Of An Innate Genius
Newton's amazing achievement cannot be credited to the advantages of youthful opportunities or vocational training. His father dying before he himself was born, his mother took to herself a second husband; and amidst the vicissitudes of this domestic dislocation, Isaac’s upbringing became a somewhat haphazard affair. Living in the country, it was taken for granted that the life of the boy would be spent on the land. That being so, a very limited and very ordinary education would, his relatives argued, meet all the needs of the case. To make matters worse, the awkward-looking lad was himself afflicted by a pronounced inferiority complex, the thraldom of which was broken in the strangest possible way. Circumstances beyond his control forced him to fight one of the bigger boys at the school. To Isaac’s own astonishment, he soundly thrashed his burly opponent.

From that moment he began to suspect that there must, after all, be something in him and he resolved to develop and exploit his powers. Impressed by the boy’s new attitude to life, his family, who had arranged to send him to work at the age of 14 suddenly decided to give his intellectual powers ampler scope. They extended his schooldays and even whispered to one another concerning the possibilities of a university.

Sensing the more inspiring atmosphere, the boy's mind responded astonishingly. He surprised his tutors by his aptitude for mechanical and mathematical problems. The most trivial incident awoke his curiosity and set him thinking. Everybody knows Voltaire’s story of the way in which the falling of an apple in an orchard set Newton hot-foot on the scent of the law of gravitation. In the year that witnessed the Great Fire of London, he, a youth of 24, amused himself by taking a ray of light to pieces.

His hungry mind probed all the mysteries of form, weight, and colour. He plunged into the intricacies of hydrostatics and hydrodynamics and laid down the principles by which the infinitudes of the seas could be more safely navigated. Turning his attention to comets, planets, and the irregular orbs, he wrested from the skies the secrets that they had held for ages in their clutch. Indeed, it is doubtful if there remained one single branch of scientific inquiry to which he did not apply his penetrating genius. Yet, with beautiful modesty, he used to say that he felt like a little child gathering shells on the shore while the immensities of the ocean stretched out before him.

F W Boreham

Image: Isaac Newton