Isaac Newton (34 page)

28
. Cohen,
Revolution in Science
, pp. 174–75.

29
. Steven Weinberg, “The Non-Revolution of Thomas Kuhn,” in
Facing Up
, p. 197: “Kuhn knew very well that physicists today go on using the Newtonian theory of gravitation and motion.… We certainly don’t regard Newtonian and Maxwellian theories as simply false, in the way that Aristotle’s theory of motion or the theory that fire is an element are false.”

30
. Quoted in Fara,
Newton
, p. 256.

31
. Kuhn,
Structure of Scientific Revolutions
, p. 108.

32
. Einstein’s space-time was not, therefore, that of Leibniz and other contemporary anti-Newtonians. As H. G. Alexander notes, Leibniz’s critique of absolute space and time in no way anticipated Einstein’s: “Leibniz’s fundamental postulate is that space and time are unreal. No one therefore would have rejected more strongly than he a theory which ascribes properties to space-time.”
The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence
, Introduction, p. lv. Or, as Howard Stein puts it: “In spite of the fact that absolute space and absolute time have been abandoned, and the geometric structure of space-time has proved to be
interdependent with
the distribution of matter … it remains necessary to regard space-time and its geometry as having a status as ‘real’ as that of matter.… On this
general
score—although certainly not in
detail
—Newton was, in the eyes of our own science, ‘right’ to take space and time as fundamental entities.” “Newton’s Metaphysics,” in Cohen and Smith,
Cambridge Companion to Newton
, p. 292.

33
. Einstein, “What Is the Theory of Relativity?”
Times
of London, November 28, 1919, reprinted in
Out of My Later Years
, p. 58a. And as he put it a few years later (1927): “We have to realize that before Newton there existed no self-contained system of physical causality which was somehow capable of representing any of the deeper features of the empirical world.” Einstein, “The Mechanics of Newton and Their Influence on the Development of Theoretical Physics,” in
Ideas and Opinions
, p. 277.

34
.
Principia
(Motte), p. 8.

35
.
Opticks
374.

36
.
Principia
407.

37
.
Opticks
388–89.

38
. Even here, in establishing this fundamental dictum of science, he allowed for the alternative possibility. His heirs and followers forgot, but he wrote: “it may also be allow’d that God is able to create Particles of Matter of several Sizes and Figures, and in several Proportions to Space, and perhaps of different Densities and Forces, and thereby to vary the Laws of Nature, and make Worlds of several sorts in several Parts of the Universe. At least, I see nothing of Contradiction in all this.”
Opticks
403–4.

39
. “Newton and the Twentieth Century—A Personal View,” in Fauvel et al.,
Let Newton Be!
, p. 244.

40
. Scott Mandelbrote says: “The causes of this are hard to fathom but may relate to the international situation, the sense that Cambridge already possessed all that mattered of Newton’s papers, fatigue in a market that was already awash with books from Newton’s library, or even disquiet at Lord Lymington’s right-wing political views.”
Footprints of the Lion
, p. 137.
   The total sale amounted to barely £9,000, including two portraits and the death mask. Most of the interest and the pre-sale publicity came from the United States. P. E. Spargo, “Sotheby’s, Keynes, and Yahuda: The 1936 Sale of Newton’s Manuscripts,” in Harman and Shapiro,
Investigation of Difficult Things
, pp. 115–34.

41
. John Maynard Keynes, “Newton the Man,” in Royal Society,
Newton Tercentenary Celebrations
, p. 27. Freeman Dyson, who was there, describes Keynes’s talk in
Disturbing the Universe
(New York: Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 8–9.

42
. Edited by Conduitt, this became (after the
Principia
and
Opticks
) one of his first works published, the year after his death. To modern eyes it is, as Westfall declared plaintively, “a work of colossal tedium … read today only by the tiniest remnant who for their sins must pass through its purgatory.” Westfall,
Never at Rest
, p.815.

43
. Keynes MS 130.11; Brewster,
Life of Sir Isaac Newton
, p. 324.

44
. “Principles of Philosophy,” manuscript fragment (c. 1703), Add MS 3970.3

45
. Stukeley,
Memoirs
, pp. 25–26.

46
. Inventory, “Dom Isaaci Newton, Mil.,” dated May 5, 1727, in de Villamil,
Newton the Man
, pp. 49–61.

Acknowledgments and Sources

I have meant to ground this book as wholly as possible in its time; in the texts. The diaspora of Newton’s manuscripts began at his death, continued for more than three centuries, and has only lately been reversed. They are still widely scattered, but the Cambridge University Libraries have gathered much of the essential core holding, including much of Newton’s own library, annotated by him. I am indebted to Adam J. Perkins and others for great courtesy. Documents are cited according to the Cambridge numbering scheme as Add MS (Additional Manuscripts) or Keynes MS (Keynes Collection at Kings College). I am grateful to Joanna Corden, Rafael Weiser, Silvie Merian, and their colleagues in the archives of the Royal Society of London, the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem (Yehuda MS), and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, and to the National Trust custodians at Woolsthorpe Manor, for access and knowledge.

For guidance, criticism, and correction, I owe special thanks to James Atlas, Cynthia Crossen, Peter Galison, Scott Mandelbrote, Esther Schor, Craig Townsend, and Jonathan Weiner, as well as my agent, Michael Carlisle. Above all to my editor, Dan Frank.

PUBLISHED WORKS OF NEWTON

There is no such thing as
The Collected Works of Isaac Newton
. The Newton Project, at Imperial College, London, has long-term plans for the theological, alchemical, and Mint writings.
Meanwhile two monuments of scholarship are the collected correspondence and the collected mathematical papers:

Turnbull, Herbert W.; Scott, John F.; Hall, A. Rupert; and Tilling, Laura, eds.
The Correspondence of Isaac Newton
(cited as
Corres
). Seven volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959–77.

Whiteside, D. T., ed.
The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton
(cited as
Math
). Eight volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967–80.

Optical papers are in progress:

Shapiro, Alan E., ed.
The Optical Papers of Isaac Newton: The Optical Lectures 1670–1672
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

I have depended on other essential texts collected or reproduced in these volumes:

Principia:

The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
(cited as
Principia
). Translated by I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman with the assistance of Julia Budenz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World
. Translated by Andrew Motte (1729), revised by Florian Cajori. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947.

Newton’s Principia: The Central Argument: Translation, Notes, and Expanded Proofs
. Dana Densmore and William H. Donahue. Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 1995.

Opticks
. Foreword by Albert Einstein. New York: Dover, 1952.

The Background to Newton’s Principia: A Study of Newton’s Dynamical Researches in the Years 1664–1684. John
Herivel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Certain Philosophical Questions: Newton’s Trinity Notebook
. J. E. McGuire and Martin Tamny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Isaac Newton’s Papers & Letters on Natural Philosophy
. Edited by I. Bernard Cohen. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958.

The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought
. Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Newton: Texts, Backgrounds, Commentaries
. Edited by I. Bernard Cohen and Richard S. Westfall. New York: Norton, 1995.

The Preliminary Manuscripts for Isaac Newton’s 1687 Principia, 1684–85
. Introduction by D. T. Whiteside. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

The Unpublished First Version of Isaac Newton’s Cambridge Lectures on Optics, 1670–1672
. Introduction by D. T. Whiteside. Cambridge: University Library, 1973.

Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton
. Edited by A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.

OTHER PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES

The authoritative scientific biography is Richard S. Westfall’s
Never at Rest
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). He offered a salutary warning to all who follow: “The more I have studied him, the more Newton has receded from me.… Only another Newton could hope fully to enter into his being, and the economy of the human enterprise is such that a second Newton would not devote himself to the biography of the first.”

Adair, John.
By the Sword Divided: Eyewitness Accounts of the English Civil War
. Bridgend, U.K.: Sutton, 1998.

Alexander, Henry Gavin, ed.
The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence
. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956.

Algarotti, Francesco.
Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d For
the Use of the Ladies. In Six Dialogues on Light and Colours
. London: E. Cave, 1739.

Andrade, Edward Neville da Costa. “Newton’s Early Notebook.”
Nature
135 (1935): 360.

———.
Sir Isaac Newton: His Life and Work
. New York: Macmillan, 1954.

Arbuthnot, John.
An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning in a Letter from a Gentleman in the City to His Friend in Oxford
. Oxford: The Theater, 1701.

Aubrey, John.
Brief Lives
. Edited by Oliver Lawson Dick. London: Secker and Warburg, 1949.

Ault, Donald D.
Visionary Physics: Blake’s Response to Newton
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

Bacon, Francis.
The Essays, or Councils, Civil and Moral
. London: H. Clark, 1706.

———.
Novum Organum
. Translated and edited by Peter Urbach and John Gibson. Chicago: Open Court, 1994.

———.
The Works of Francis Bacon: Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England
. Edited by James Spedding, Robert L. Ellis, and Douglas D. Heath. New York: Garrett Press, 1968.

Baily, Francis.
An Account of the Revd John Flamsteed, the First Astronomer-Royal, Compiled from His Own Manuscripts and Other Authentic Documents
. Reprint of the 1835 edition. London: Dawsons, 1966.

Banville, John.
The Newton Letter: A Novel
. Boston: David R. Godine, 1972.

Bate, John.
The Mysteryes of Nature and Art
. Third edition. London: Andrew Crooke, 1654.

Bechler, Zev, ed.
Contemporary Newtonian Research
. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1982.

Ben-Chaim, Michael. “Newton’s Gift of Preaching,”
History of

Science
36: 269-98 (September 1998).

Birch, Thomas.
The History of the Royal Society of London
. Four volumes. Facsimile of the London edition of 1756–57. Introduction by A. Rupert Hall. New York: Johnson, 1968.