Newton: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) [Paperback]

In many ways, Isaac Newton fits the mould of the oddball genius. At one moment, he seems like a founding father of the modern world: entirely rational and empirical, subjecting the received wisdom of Aristotle et al. to the rigours of scientific enquiry. But the very next minute, he seems, in the words of JM Keynes, like 'the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and the Sumerians', speculating about Armageddon and the nature of 'aether'. It is fitting that the Principia, his magnum opus, was published in Latin, while at the same time its abstruse mathematics was way too advanced for virtually all of his contemporaries.

Part of the success of this VSI is its presentation of a mind caught between two worlds - ancient and modern. Iliffe resists the temptation to focus exclusively on Newton's more mainstream scientific achievements - achievements which have formed the bedrock of modern physics. Indeed, the central section of the book is given to an examination of Newton's rantings and musings on alchemy and religion, twin pursuits which occupied him for a longer period than science did. Even when directing his formidable intellect to scientific matters, it is salutary to learn that Newton could occasionally express fallacious ideas in the clumsiest, most opaque language: gravitational rays fall to earth, he speculates, forming a 'tender matter which may be as it were the succus [sic.] nutritious of the earth or primary substance out of which things generable grow'. No Q.E.D. at the end of this one!

Newton comes across as more of a mortal than a magus, and not a particularly kindly one at that: cantankerous, combative, never one to admit he's made a mistake. We all know the type. But amidst all the wild speculation and bizarre obsession - he thought a careful reading of the poems of Virgil and Ovid would show their understanding of Universal Gravitation - lies a work of immense stature, the Principia Mathematica.

Illife's lively narrative reveals a warts-and-all genius. It takes an essentially chronological, narrative approach and can therefore seem a little pedestrian. It also suffers from some poor proof-reading - chemistry lecturer Vagani becomes Vagari in the next line, etc. But this portrait is well-rounded, succinct and engaging nonetheless.

I am a college Physics professor and every once in a while a student would ask me who I thought was the best Physicist ever. Without hesitation I answer "Isaac Newton." Not only the best Physicist, but the best and the most important scientist of all time. In the age which values scientific achievement as a pinnacle of human accomplishment, this is quite a remarkable designation. It is particularly remarkable in the light of the great and unprecedented scientific discoveries that have take place over the last hundred years. Even with all that we have accomplished, the discoveries and insights of Newton still impose themselves after all these centuries have passed. And yet, most people today know very little about Newton himself, or the circumstances under which he worked and what made him such an outstanding individual. It turns out that biographies of Newton have been available all the way since his death early in the eighteenth century, but they were largely incomplete due to the fact that a large collection of Newton's private papers have been inaccessible to scholars until 1970s. The access to these important papers has furnished us with new insights, and our understanding of this great man has considerably increased in the last few decades.

This very short introduction too has greatly benefitted from that scholarship, and we too can get a much better idea of the full personality of Newton from reading it. The material is presented more or less chronologically, and we trace all the main stages of Newton's career. Brought up in what would now be considered an upper middle class family, from the very early on he showed a remarkable thirst for knowledge and a set of technical intuitions and skills. We get a picture of a very introverted man, who nonetheless relishes interaction and discussion with those who can fully appreciate his work. He was also very astute in promoting himself, and sometimes very ruthless to those who opposed and challenged his work. He was particularly confrontational with those who competed with him for the primacy of discovery of particular ideas - Hook and Leibnitz in particular.

It has been known for long time that Newton dedicated a considerable amount of his intellectual effort to theological and religious considerations. Those have been rather less well known than his scientific pursuit, in large part due to the fact that most of his religious views were quite heretical and Newton was reluctant to share them with anyone but a very small group of his contemporaries. Even were they more accepted in theological circles of the time, it is doubtful that Newton's ideas would have had much, if any, impact on theology as a discipline. His views were undoubtedly original and imaginative, but they were methodologically rather ad-hoc and would not have made a good foundation for systematic inquiry.

Newton's reputation was already firmly secured during his lifetime. The subsequent centuries have only served to reinforce it, and this short introduction is an excellent basic resource for fully understanding why.

This book gives a balanced account of the amount of time that Newton devoted to various activities in his life: the result is that chapters on his theology and alchemy are given equal weight with his development of the calculus, mechanics and universal gravitation. There is little critical evaluation of the evolution of mechanical concepts into what we consider classical mechanics today. merely an exposition of the contemporaneous state of Newton's thought on mechanics

A short alternative with a greater proportion of science is:

Isaac Newton (Very Interesting People)