Isaac Newton (32 page)

23
.
Principia
807.

24
.
Principia
806.

25
.
Principia
814.

26
.
Principia
829.

27
. Add MS 3965, “De motu corporum,” in Hall and Hall,
Unpublished Scientific Papers
, p. 281.

28
.
Principia
875–78 and 839. There was nothing conclusive in this data, but Newton did not pass it by. He did not restrict himself to idealized tides but tried to consider the geography of estuaries and rivers. He studied the map of Batsha Harbor, with multiple inlets and open channels, reaching the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, and worked out a theory of wave interference that could account for the data. I. Bernard Cohen, “Prop. 24: Theory of the Tides; The First Enunciation of the Principle of Interference,” in
Principia
240; Ronan,
Edmond Halley
, pp. 69f.

29
. Galileo,
Dialogue
, pp. 445 and 462.

30
. These explicitly became rules in the second edition; in the first, they were called “hypotheses.”
Principia
794–96. There were four rules in all; the others were:

Those qualities of bodies that cannot be increased or diminished and that belong to all bodies on which experiments can be made should be taken as qualities of all bodies universally
.

In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions
.

31
. Quoted in Westfall,
Never at Rest
, p. 464.

32
. “I do not feign hypotheses” is the most popular solution to one of history’s most debated translation problems: “
Hypotheses non fingo
.” A reasonable alternative is “frame.” Either way, Newton always gets credit for this phrase, but he did not invent it. Henry Oldenburg (for example) had described the Royal Society’s virtuosi as those “who, neither feigning nor formulating hypotheses of nature’s actions, seek out the thing itself.” Oldenburg to Francisco Travagino, May 15, 1667.

33
.
Principia
943.

34
.
Principia
382.

13: IS HE LIKE OTHER MEN?

1
. “Aphorisms Concerning the Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man,” Bacon,
Novum Organum
, p. 43.

2
. “This incomparable Author having at length been prevailed upon to appear in publick, has in this Treatise given a most notable instance of the extent of the powers of the Mind.…”
Phil. Trans
. 186: 291.

3
. Halley to King James II, July 1687,
Corres
II: 310. Whatever James did with his copy, it did not survive.

4
. Halley, “The true Theory of the Tides, extracted from that admired Treatise of Mr. Isaac Newton, Intituled, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica,”
Phil. Trans
. 226: 445, 447.

5
. Untitled draft,
Corres
II: 301.

6
. Newton to John Covel, February 21, 1689,
Corres
III: 328.

7
. Godfrey Kneller, 1689. See frontispiece.

8
. Newton to a Friend, November 14, 1690,
Corres
III: 358. “Yes truly those Arians were crafty Knaves that could conspire so cunningly & slyly all over the world at once.”

9
. Pepys to Newton, November 22, 1693,
Corres
III: 431. Pepys was more interested than most in arithmetical matters; he had learned multiplication at the age of twenty-nine with the help of a ship’s mate. Thomas, “Numeracy in Early Modern England,” pp. 111-12.

10
. Newton to Locke (draft), December 1691,
Corres
III: 377.

11
. Defoe,
A Journal of the Plague Year
, p. 1.

12
. Johns,
The Nature of the Book
, pp. 536–37.

13
.
Bibliothèque Universelle et Historique
(March 1688, probably by Locke himself),
Acta Eruditorum
(June 1688), and
Journal des Sçavans
(August 1688).

14
. Keynes MS 130.5, quoted in Westfall,
Never at Rest
, p. 473.

15
. Newton to Bentley, February 25, 1693,
Corres
III: 406.

16
. Draft of the General Scholium (section IV, no. 8, MS C), in Hall and Hall,
Unpublished Scientific Papers
, p. 90.

17
. Newton to Bentley, December 10, 1692,
Corres
III: 398.

18
.
Corres
III: 395.

19
. “The Rise of the Apostasy in Point of Religion,” Yehuda MS 18, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem.

20
. The particulars of Newton’s breakdown will forever inspire debate and speculation. As for the fire, most believe Newton lost some papers to fire in the late seventies; Westfall goes further and suggests, “There may … have been a fire—another fire, as it appears to me—which could well have distracted him when he was already in a state of acute tension. Charred papers survive from the 1690s, though it is difficult to fit them.…”
Never at Rest
, p. 538. A popular legend involving a dog called Diamond and a candle (cf.
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
)
is surely
apocryphal. As for the involuntary restraint: no. As for mercury poisoning: he did suffer symptoms such as insomnia and apparent paranoia, but he lacked others, and these were temporary; modern tests of his hair did reveal toxic mercury levels, but the hair cannot be dated. Some of the debate plays out in Spargo and Pounds, “Newton’s ‘Derangement of the Intellect’ ”; Johnson and Wolbarsht, “Mercury Poisoning: A Probable Cause of Isaac Newton’s Physical and Mental Ills”; Ditchburn, “Newton’s Illness of 1692–3”; and Klawans,
Newton’s Madness
.
   Whiteside has summarized the scholarly state of affairs: “Where scholars have, from the pedestals of their own stand-points, bickered ceaselessly this past century and a half over the possible causes and long-term after-effects of Newton’s undeniable breakdown … we would be foolish to attempt any definitive assessments when the extant record offers but a blurred glimpse.…”
Math
VII: xviii.

21
. Newton to Pepys, September 13, 1693, and Newton to Locke, September 16, 1693;
Corres
III: 420 and 421.

22
. Pepys to Millington, September 26, 1693,
Corres
III: 422.

23
. Quoted by Whiteside,
Math
VII: 198.

24
. David Gregory was the new professor of astronomy and an original proselytizer for the
Principia
. “David Gregory’s Inaugural Lecture at Oxford,”
Notes and Records of the Royal Society
25 (1970): 143–78.

25
. Whiston,
Memoirs
, p. 32.

26
.
Oeuvres de Huygens
XXI: 437, quoted in Westfall,
Force in Newton’s Physics
, p. 184, and cf. Guerlac,
Newton on the Continent
, p. 49.

27
. Guerlac,
Newton on the Continent
, p. 52.

28
. Unpublished draft, quoted in Hall,
Philosophers at War
, p. 153.

29
. Leibniz to Newton, March 7, 1693,
Corres
III: 407. It was their first contact since the brief correspondence sixteen years before.

30
. Memoranda by David Gregory,
Corres
IV: 468, and Flamsteed’s recollection,
Corres
IV: 8 n.; Newton to Flamsteed, January 7, 1694,
Corres
IV: 473.

31
. Newton to Flamsteed, July 20, 1695,
Corres
IV: 524.

32
. Newton to Flamsteed, January 6, 1699,
Corres
IV: 601.

33
. To Newton Flamsteed wrote: “I have somtimes told some ingenious men that more time and observations are required to perfect the Theory but I found it was represented as a little peice of detraction
which I hate.…
I wonder that
hints
shoud drop from your pen, as if you Lookt on my business as
trifling
.” January 10, 1699,
Corres
IV: 604.

34
. Nicholas Kollerstrom’s computer-assisted analysis,
Newton’s Forgotten Lunar Theory
, is definitive. Kollerstrom judges the method, as employed by Halley, as accurate enough to have won a £10,000 prize established by Parliament in 1714.

35
. Westfall,
Never at Rest
, p. 550. He did retain his professorship and salary, but he seldom visited Cambridge again, and “as far as we know, he wrote not a single letter back to any acquaintance made during his stay.”

14: NO MAN IS A WITNESS IN HIS OWN CAUSE

1
. Westfall,
Never at Rest
, p. 699.

2
. The problem was to find the curve (the
brachistochrone
) along which a body descending to a given point under its own gravity will take the shortest time. (Roughly: the shape of the fastest track for a roller coaster.) Galileo had thought the curve of fastest descent would be a simple arc of a circle, which is certainly faster than a straight-line ramp. In fact it is the curve known as the cycloid.
   Bernoulli had posed the problem with Newton in mind, as a challenge, in the context of the simmering calculus priority dispute. He addressed it to “the very mathematicians who pride themselves that … they have not only penetrated most intimately the hiding-places of a more secret Geometry, but have even extended its limits in a remarkable way by their golden theorems” (quoted by Mandelbrote,
Footprints of the Lion
, p. 76). Newton solved it the night it arrived, and to Whiteside (“Newton the Mathematician,” in Bechler,
Contemporary Newtonian Research
, p. 122) this feat was evidence of the deterioration of his mathematical powers in old age: “A couple of years earlier his method of ‘maxima & minima in infinitesimals’ would have detected that this is the cycloid in a few minutes, not the twelve hours he in his rustiness then took.”

3
. Westfall,
Never at Rest
, p. 721.

4
. Valentin Boss,
Newton and Russia
.

5
. Hoppit,
A Land of Liberty?
, p. 186.

6
. “… thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight.” Wisdom of Solomon 11: 20.

7
. Petty,
Political Arithmetick
.

8
. Newton upon becoming Warden was obliged to swear an oath: “You will not reveal or discover to any person or persons whatsoever the new Invention of Rounding the money & making the edges of them with letters or grainings or either of them directly or indirectly. So help you God.”
Corres
IV: 548.

9
. “… only 400
lib
per annum with a house of 40
lib
per annum & his perquisites are only 3
lib
12
s
per annum … so small … not to support the authority of the office.”
Corres
IV: 551.

10
. On the matter of Newton and crimson, no one has been more eloquent than Richard de Villamil in 1931 (
Newton the Man
, pp. 14–15), after analyzing his household inventory:

 … crimson mohairs nearly everywhere. Newton’s own bed was a “crimson mohair bed,” with “crimson Harrateen’ bed-curtains” … “crimson mohair hangings” … a “crimson sattee.” In fact, there is no other colour referred to in the “Inventary” but crimson. This living in what I may call an “atmosphere of crimson” is probably one of the reasons why Newton became rather irritable toward the end of his life.

11
. Newtonians struggled with euphemisms for this relationship even into the twentieth century (“about the exact nature of [their] friendship there has been unseemly speculation,” wrote Andrade in 1947). When Halifax died, in 1715, he left Barton a bequest of more than £20,000—“for her excellent conversation,” Flamsteed wrote maliciously. There was gossip (though this mangled the sequence of events) that the connection had facilitated Newton’s appointment to the Mint; Voltaire spread it most famously: “The infinitesimal calculus and gravitation would have been of no use without a pretty niece” (
Lettres Philosophiques
, letter 21).
   Then again, Newton’s Freudian biographer Frank Manuel avoided euphemism altogether, choosing to view Catherine as an incarnation of Hannah: “In the act of fornication between his friend Halifax and his niece was Newton vicariously having carnal intercourse with his mother?” Manuel,
Portrait
, p. 262.