It was expected that Newton would maintain the family farm. It was considered that he did not need an education and he was consequently removed from school at Grantham. Nevertheless, according to Toohey (2004) it soon became patently clear that Isaac was not cut out for this type of occupation and due to his uncles persistence he was sent back to Grantham in preparation for his attendance at trinity college, Cambridge. It was here that Newton lodged with the local Apothecary. According to Meadows (1987) it was at this time that Newton was inspired by two books that would permanently affect his whole life. The first was a book by John Bates, the Mysteries of Nature and Art. The approach it fostered toward practical experiment, craftsmanship. Chemistry, analysis, and organizing into categories would stay with him for the rest of his life. The second was an empty note book. Newton entered notes from Bates at one end, and at the other made alphabetical lists of words under various headings. Such careful organizing and categorizing of information would become the mature Newton’s hallmark.
Newton began his long and association with Cambridge in May 1661. He entered Trinity as a subsizar. A subsizar was a poor student who earned his keep from performing menial tasks for other students. It appeared according to white (1997) that Newton’s mother was not prepared to finance his education any further. At Cambridge he was exposed to many philosophical text and ideas, especially those of the French philosopher Rene Descartes, who according to Scott (1976) was very highly regarded at the time and it was his work that would eventually prepare the way for Newton’s optical discoveries attracting him towards mechanical philosophy. Newton then began to question the environment around him, including the nature of matter, cosmic order, light colour and sensation. To do this Newton knew that he would have to use very advanced mathematics. To solve the mysteries of the universe, he would have to learn everything he could about the subject, and according to Ferris (1989) although Newton did not realize it at the time would have to invent his own mathematics – the calculus.
So that Newton could pursue his passion for mathematics Newton needed to secure a permanent position at Cambridge. In 1664 Newton’s was awarded a scholarshiph of the house which guaranteed him a position for the next four years. According to BBC – History (pg 1) it was at this point that Newton would surrender himself to his mathematics, forgetting to eat, and sometimes forgetting to sleep.
During this time Newton described to the fellows what is often called his cruicial experiment, in which he used two prisms to demonstrate that sunlight is composed of coloured rays of light. He aimed to reject the view of Descartes, which was essentially Descartes’s reworking of the Aristotelian ideas, that the colours we see around us occur because white light is modified when it interacts with the objects surface. Newton argued that different colours are inherently present in sunlight. Conceiving light as streams of particles that are slowed down when they pass through the glass, he explained that a prism separates light out into its constitutional coloured rays. In this early work on optics, Newton laid tge basis fir his experimental approach. Which profoundly affected the ideology if scientific research. He insisted that the way forward was not to devise abstract hypothesis, but to build theories on the twin pillars of mathematics and experiment. Newtons innovations have become fundamental principles of modern science. Before then geometry, experimentation and natural philosophy had been three distinct domains. Newton preached that theories would be theconsequence of observation, not the inspiration.
The Plague hits Cambridge and Newton returns to Woolsthorpe
In the summer of 1665, a plague epidemic descended on many parts of England. The new King Charles the 2nd having survived his fathers beheading and having outlasted the Lord Protector Cromwell fled London with his court. The sickness hit Cambridge, and the university closed down on 10 October. The plague was to stay in Cambridge for two years and the university was not to open for until the spring of 1667. It was at this time that Newton is said to have have had the inspiration for all his great ideas. According to Newton it was during this period that he worked on his ideas about gravity, invented the calculus and experimented on light.
MECHANICS AND GRAVITATION
According to some biographers, it was on seeing an apple fall in his orchard, Newton conceived that the same force governed the motion of the moon and the apple. He calculated the force needed to hold the moon in its orbit, as compared with the force pulling an object to the gound. It was correspondence with Robert Hooke that redirected Newton to the problem of the path of a body subjected to a centrally directed force that varies as the inverse sqare of the distance. He determenined it to be an ellipse, so informing Edmond Halley in August 1684, Halleys interest led Newton to demonstrate the relationship afresh, to compose a brief tract on mechanics, and finally to write the Principia mahtematica. However, According to Java (2002) this story is over simplified an the interlude of frenetic and almost overnight creativity, ignore the long periods Newton dedicated to experimental and theoretical confirmation of his theories.
The principia eventually revolutionised the approach to mechanics, but it was not without controversay. In may 1686, Edmond Halley, astronomer and newly appointed Clerk to the Royal Society, wrote to Isaac Newton in Cambridge. For a period of almost two years he had been coaxing and encouraging Newton to produce for publication his Principia Mathematica. For the first time Newtons work on the laws of motion and his inverse square law of gravitational attraction would be made public. Halley emphasised that the Royal Society had received the manuscript with enthusiasm and had authorised Halley to publish the work. Jardine (2003) states that it was at this time that Halley wrote again to Newton and told him that at a society meeting, Robert Hooke, former curator of experiments protested volubly that the theretical cornerstone of Newton’s book was of his discovery. Hooke claimed that he had first published the inverse square law of gravitational attraction, he who had brought the idea to Newtons attention. Hooke had insisted that due acknowledgment must be made in Newtons text, before it could be published. Newton told the Royal society that rather than acknowledge the claims that Hooke was making he would suppress the third and final part of the principia. According to Jardine 2003 the judgement on the evidence available was ungenerous and unjust, but has stood for the last three hundred years. If this evidence is correct then it could be suggested that the story of the apple was not true and was fabricated to give the impression that Newton had been inspired by the idea years before
WHO INVENTED THE CALCULUS
Leibnez was relatively unknown in germany in the eighteenth century. According to Eves (1983) he was the first to publish a general and workable differential calculus. Leibnez published a concise exposition of his differential calculus, the formulation of which dates from 1676. In spite of several obscure points and some careless errors, the paper proved to be a land mark in the future advancements of mathematics. The notation of differential calculus and many of the general rules for calculating derivatives that are in use today were given by Leibnez in his paper. Eves (2002) also states that Newton developed his fluxional calculus as early as 1665, with the initial intention that it be applied to problems in physics, and only a few close collegues new of his creation. Many years later he sent a letter to Leibnez via Henry Oldenberg, the secrtary of the Royal Society, somewhat obscurely describeing his method. Where upon Leibnez who had already developed his own method, in a reply described his method to Newton. The correspondence then ceased between them. In the following years, Leibnez’s differential calculus spread by word of mouth, among leading mathematicians of continental Europe, who had applied this method to many different problems with outstanding success. But not until 1684 did leibnez actually put his invention into print and with no mention of the correspondence beween Newton and himself. However in newtons publication of the principia he had mentioned in a scholium that there had been correspondence beween the two men. This then brought about a quarrel with accusations of plagerism between England and Germany. To the extent that England stuck to Newtonian terminology and symbolism. It is Eves (2002) view that historiacal reseach suggests that Newton and Leibnez, travelling different routes, each on his own arrived at essentially the same goal, and therefore the two men are to be regarded as independent inventors of the diffential calculus.
However Fara (2002) suggests the question of who invented the calculus is intrinsically impossible to answer, since it is not clear if they invented the same thing. Fara also suggests that not only wasthe rivalry an intellectual affair but was intimately involved with the political relationships between England and the House of Hanover. It was widely anticipated that George of Hanover would become King of England, Question marks had hovered over the succession to the thron sice the beginning of the century. Leibnez was justifiably concerned about Dutch newspaper reports that his arguments with Newton were not seen as a quarrel between Newton And himself but between Germany and England. Newton repeatedly accused Leibnez of plagerism and when eventually George became King of England Leibnez who was desperate to gain a position in the English court but was unsuccessfull. He was ordered to stay behing in Hanover where he was convinced he had been a pown in an international political contest. Leibnez died in poverty, but towards the end of the nineteenth century, long after his death, the town of hanover did eventually erect a teple dedicated to their local genius. Keeney (1971) suggests that, although it is impossible to prove who invented the caluculus first, it is generally agreed by most historical scientists that leibnez was much the more abled mathematician. Keeney (1971) also states that because at the time Newton supporters turned their backs on Leibnez’s achievements, it took a long time to recover from Newtons dominance over English science.
Alchemy
Supporters of Newton, briefly sweep over Newtons Alchemic practices. BBC (2004) describe his work in Alchemy as experiments in chemistry, and immersing himself in mathematical and mystical calculations. The common perception of alchemists is that they were psudo-scientists who attempted to turn lead into gold. They believed all matter was composed of four elements of earth, air, fire and water, and dabbled around the edges of mysticism and magic. According to (white (1997) that after newtons death a vast body of material was found in his library that made it very clear that the most repected man of science had spent more of his life intesly invoved with alchemy than he had working on pure science. It was also confimed that he had spent vast amounts of time studying the chronology of the bible, examining prophecy and trying to unravel hermetic secrets. According to White (1997) when Newtons early biographers found it impossible to believe and glossed over ay disturbing findings they unearthed, putting them down to eccentricities. To protect their hero’s reputation According to Gleik (2003) much of the work was destroyed. In 1936 the real life story of Issaac Newton, the neurotic, the obsessive, driven mystic began to emerge, when a collection of Newtons’s papers, considered to be of no scientific value, was purchased a sotherby’s by the distinguished scholar John Maynard Keynes. He delivered a lecture to the Royal Society Club in which he portrayed an altogether different and highly controversial image of history’s most renowed scientist. White (1997) states in Keynes words that
“In the eighteenth century and sice, Newton came to be thought of as the firsr and greatest of the modern age of scientists, a rationalist, one who taught us to think on the lines of cold and untictured reason. I do not see him inj this light, I do not think that anyone who has poured over the contents of that box which he packed away when he left Cambridge in 1696 and which, thought partly dispersed, have come down to us, can see him like that. Newton was not the first age of reason, He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. Isaac Newton a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas day. 1642, was the last wonder child to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.”