Isaac Newton (29 page)

6
. Newton to Locke, June 30, 1691,
Corres
III: 365.

7
. Hooke,
Micrographia
, preface.

8
. Letter of John Wallis, quoted in Charles Richard Weld,
History of the Royal Society
, I: 30; Ornstein,
Role of Scientific Societies
, pp. 93 and 95;
Phil. Trans
. 1 (March 1665). Several such societies, on a regional scale, had been formed in Naples and Florence; the next national scientific society, the
Académie des Sciences
, was founded in Paris four years later.

9
. Wallis letter, in Weld,
History of the Royal Society
, I: 30; Ornstein,
Role of Scientific Societies
, p. 95.

10
. Horace,
Epistles
I: 1, 14: “Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri.…”

11
. Bacon,
Novum Organum
, p. 169.

12
. “An Account of a Dog dissected by Mr. Hook,” in Sprat,
History of the Royal Society
, p. 232; ’Espinasse,
Robert Hooke
, p. 52.

13
. Pepys,
Diary
, May 30, 1667. “fine experiments … of colours, loadstones, microscopes, and of liquors … among others, of one that did while she was there turn a piece of roasted mutton into pure blood, which was very rare.… After they had shown her many experiments, and she cried out still she was full of admiration, she departed.…”

14
. Hooke tracked his internal weather with equal diligence. A typical journal entry: “Slept a second sleep, sweat and
[ejaculation]. Rose at 11. Eat broth drank port. Belly loosned. Much refresht. 2 stools. DH. With Aubery. Haak chesse. To Garaways. With Tompion and Sir J. Mores. at 7 till 9. Belly loose. Smell well amended. Smokd 4 pipes. Chocolat H. 1. Port. Slept. Sweat.”

15
. Hooke,
Micrographia
, preface.

16
. Ibid., p. 3.

17
. “This Experiment therefore will prove such a one as our thrice excellent Verulam calls
Experimentum Crucis
, serving as Guide or Land-mark, by which to direct our course in the search after the true cause of Colours. Affording us this particular negative Information, that for the production of Colours there is not necessary either a great refraction, as in the Prisme; nor Secondly, a determination of Light and shadow, such as is both in the Prisme and Glass-ball.” Ibid., p. 54.

18
. A “pellucid body,” as Hooke put it, “where there is properly no such refraction as Des Cartes supposes his Globules to acquire a vorticity by.” Ibid.

19
. Ibid., p. 64.

20
. Ibid., p. 55. He did not care to admit what he did not know. “It is not my business in this place to set down the reasons why this or that body should impede the Rays more, others less: as why Water should transmit the Rays more easily, though more weakly than air.”

21
. Ibid., p. 67.

22
. Newton’s notes: “Out of Mr Hooks Micrographia,” Add MS 3958(3).1.

23
. Bacon,
Novum Organum
, p. 30.

6: THE ODDEST IF NOT THE MOST CONSIDERABLE DETECTION

1
. Westfall,
Never at Rest
, p. 179.

2
. 1669 purchases in the Fitzwilliam notebook.

3
.
Math
II: 99–150; W. W. Rouse Ball, “On Newton’s Classification of Cubic Curves,”
Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society
, 22 (1890–91): 104–43.

4
. Barrow catered to Newton’s skittishness by telling Collins: “I pray having perused them so much as you thinke good, remand them to me; according to his desire, when I asked him the liberty to impart them to you. And I pray give me notice of your receiving them with your soonest convenience; that I may be satisfyed of their reception; because I am afraid of them; venturing them by the post.” (July 31, 1669,
Corres
I: 6.) Newton did eventually permit the publication of
De Analysi per
Æ
quationes Infinitas
—in 1711, when he was sixty-nine.

5
. Barrow to Collins, August 20, 1669,
Corres
I: 7.

6
. Newton to Collins, January 1670,
Corres
I: 9.

7
. Newton to Collins, February 1670,
Corres
I: 12.

8
. Gregory to Collins, September 1670, 5,
Corres
I: 18.

9
.
Lectiones opticæ & geometricæ: in quibus phænomenon opticorum genuinæ rationes investigantur, ac exponuntur: et generalia curvarum linearum symptomata declarantu
(London, 1674). Scholars have debated Newton’s reticence with Barrow. I. Bernard Cohen found it inconceivable that Newton could have withheld his knowledge from Barrow at this crucial point; he speculated that Barrow just lacked the time or inclination to start his optical work anew (
Franklin and Newton
, p. 52). But, plausibly, Christianson saw “a
prima facie
case of deceit on Newton’s part, a hypocritical laughing up his sleeve at the work of a man who was about to advance his career” (
In the Presence of the Creator
, p. 125).

10
.
Lectiones
, p. 108, quoted in Shapiro,
Optical Papers
, I: 15 n.

11
. Barrow was appointed Royal Chaplain and then, three years later, Master of Trinity College.

12
.
Math
III: xx.

13
. “So few went to hear Him, & fewer that understood him, that oftimes he did in a manner, for want of Hearers, read to the walls.… usually staid about half an hour, when he had no Auditors he commonly return’d in a 4
^th
part of that time or less.” Humphrey Newton, quoted by Conduitt, Keynes MS 135; in
Math
VI:xii n. The historical record contains not a single recollection from anyone who heard Newton lecture.

14
. Shapiro,
Optical Papers
I: 47. This first lecture was delivered in January 1670 and a version deposited in the library, belatedly, in 1674.

15
. “I left off my aforesaid Glass-works; for I saw, that the perfection of Telescopes was hitherto limited, not so much for want of glasses truly figured according to the prescriptions of Optick Authors, (which all men have hitherto imagined), as because that Light it self is a
Heterogenous mixture of differently refrangible rays
.” Newton to Oldenburg, February 6, 1672,
Corres
I: 40.

16
. The original idea of a reflecting telescope seems to have been James Gregory’s, though Gregory never succeeded in building one.
Corres
I: 159.

17
.
Corres
I: 3.

18
. Sprat,
History of the Royal Society
, p. 20.

19
. Indeed, in 1664 they appointed a committee for improving the English language. It never produced anything definite. (Lyons,
Royal Society
, p. 55.)

20
. Hobbes,
Leviathan
, V.

21
. Galileo to Mark Welser, May 4, 1612, trans. Stillman Drake, in
Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo
, p. 92.

22
. E.g.,
Corres
I: 35.

23
. Samuel Sorbière,
A Voyage to England
(1709), quoted in Hall,
Henry Oldenburg
, p. 52.

24
.
Transactions
was a plausible word for this new creature, the serial publication, though the word did not stick. The terms
journal
and
periodical
did not yet exist in this context. Words like
gazette, pamphlet
, and
tract
had unpleasant connotations, as Adrian Johns notes (“Miscellaneous Methods,” p. 162).
   The
Philosophical Transactions
stands as the first scientific journal, almost. Derek Gjertsen notes that the Academia del Cimento began printing its proceedings in 1657 and continued for about ten years, and that the
Journal des Sçavans
began appearing in Paris two months before the
Philosophical Transactions
but encompassed history and law as well as natural philosophy.
Newton Handbook
, p. 431. About three hundred copies of the first issue were sold. The journal never came close to bringing Oldenburg the profit he hoped for.

25
.
Phil. Trans
. 3: 632; 3: 693.

26
. John Evelyn,
Diary
, III: 288–89, 295, and 325.

27
. Samuel Butler, “The Elephant in the Moon” (1759).

28
.
Phil. Trans
. 1: 10; 3: 792; 3: 704; 3: 43; 3: 115.

29
. Notes “Out of the Hystory of the Royall Society,” Add MS 3958c.

30
. Oldenburg to Newton, January 2, 1672,
Corres
I: 29, and I: 3.

31
. The telescope, or “perspectives,” did not make a deep impression on all assembled. John Evelyn, later famous for his diaries, recorded the event this way: “To the R. Society; where were produced new invented Perspectives, a letter from Grene-land, of recovering men that had ben drown’d, we had also presented from Iseland some of the Lapis Obsidialis.”
Diary of John Evelyn
, III: 601.

32
. Newton to Oldenburg, January 6, 1672,
Corres
I: 33.

33
. Newton to Oldenburg, January 18, 1672,
Corres
I: 35.

7: RELUCTANCY AND REACTION

1
. G. N. Watson, “Trinity College in the Time of Newton,” in Greenstreet,
Isaac Newton
, p. 146.

2
. Newton to Oldenburg, February 6, 1672,
Corres
I: 40. This is a correct account of the Magnus effect, named after Heinrich Gustav Magnus, who “discovered” it in 1852, 180 years after Newton.

3
.
Phil. Trans
. 80 (February 1672): 3075.

4
. Newton to Oldenburg, February 6, 1672,
Corres
I: 40.

5
. Thomas Kuhn lists Seneca (first century), Witelo (thirteenth century), Descartes, Marcus, Boyle, and Grimaldi, as well as Hooke, among those who had seen “the celebrated phenomena of colors.” “Newton’s Optical Papers,” in Cohen,
Papers and Letters
, p. 29. Much scholarship considers the question of when and where Newton obtained his prisms and, for that matter, when and where he first conducted this experiment. Various pieces of evidence, including this letter, the Fitzwilliam Notebook and the recollections of Conduitt fifty years later, contradict one another.

6
.
Instantia Crucis
, crucial instance.

7
.
Questiones
, p. 69.

8
.
Phil. Trans
. 80 (February 1672): 3083.

9
. For that matter, the letter was the first major scientific work published in a journal.

10
. Newton to Oldenburg, February 6, 1672,
Corres
I: 40, pp. 96–97 and n. 19.

11
. And: “How doth the formost weake pulse keepe pace with the following stronger?” Add MS 3958(3).1, notes “Out of Mr Hooks Micrographia.”

12
.
Phil. Trans
. 80 (February 1672): 3085.

13
. As Kuhn notes: “To destroy the modification theory it was necessary to notice a
quantitative
discrepancy between the elongation predicted by that theory and the elongation actually observed, and this required an experimenter with a knowledge of the mathematical law governing refraction (not announced until 1637) and with considerable experience in applying the law to optical problems. In 1666 these qualifications were uniquely Newton’s.” “Newton’s Optical Papers,” in Cohen, ed.,
Papers and Letters
, p. 32.