REVIEW
The apple and the original spin
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The book shows how Newton was held up as an exemplar of scientific genius, fuelled by political currents, nationalistic projects and individual aspirations, says RAHUL ROY.
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IN her book Newton: The Making of a Genius, Patricia Fara writes, "Newton left a complex intellectual legacy. For one thing, he was involved in a huge range of activities, these included alchemy, biblical analysis, ancient chronology and coin production, as well as the topics we normally associate with science, such as optics, mechanics and astronomy". However, this book is not about Sir Isaac Newton's intellectual pursuits. Instead, it presents how Newton has been constructed as an exemplar of scientific genius. Political currents, nationalistic projects and individual aspirations necessarily fuel such a construction.
Fara writes that various portraits and sculptures of Newton, some commissioned by Newton himself and some by his followers and other noble men and women, had the effect of presenting Newton as a "secular saint" at a time when various Christian beliefs were being questioned. His "disciples", notably, George Cheyne, John Desaguliers and William Whiston, were "determined to convert Newton's ideas into general knowledge". They lectured on the tenets of the Newtonian system and valiantly defended contentious issues of Newtonian natural philosophy against attacks from critics. They also extended it further. Cheyne modelled the human body as a hydraulic system, which followed Newtonian mechanics. Desagulier invented apparatus to experimentally demonstrate Newtonian principles. Whiston's book (mis)used mathematical calculations to show the validity of Biblical scriptures and the creation myth. Newton actively indulged these disciples and also invited Whiston to take over his lectures at Cambridge when Newton left for London to become the Master of the Mint.
The myth of the fall of the apple and the subsequent discovery of gravitation is used not only to support this portrayal, but also to draw parallels with Old Testament. The apple myth was related by Newton, a year before his death, to his follower William Stukeley and popularised by Voltaire, although it was disputed by Newton's early 18th Century Scottish biographer David Brewster.
But Voltaire, Newton's most ardent follower, was also in part responsible for Newtonian philosophy displacing Cartesian philosophy in France.
Voltaire and his companion, Emilie du Chatelet, wrote and lectured extensively on the Newtonian system. However, Anglomania prevalent at the time also made Newton's acceptance in France easier. Among his contemporaries, Newton's main "enemies" were Robert Hooke and Gottfried Leibnitz. Both of them had charged him with plagiarism. While Hooke claimed priority regarding celestial mechanics and gravitation, Leibnitz claimed priority regarding calculus.
major shortcoming of Fara's otherwise scholarly book is that the true inheritance from Newton in the science of the last 300 years is not discussed and we learn nothing of how the scientific community perceives Newton today. Fara mentions Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking as "inheritors" of the mantle of scientific genius. However this characterisation is rather misleading, because it does not take into account the exalted position of science in the imagination of the populace and the large number of its practitioners, which make it much easier to accept scientists and their work today. Newton was one of the earliest scientists to have introduced mathematical theory to observed data, thereby making theory and experiment/observation work in tandem to explain the world around us. This philosophy of science has permeated into all branches of academics, so that observations, both of nature and of society, have to be explained as consequences of an underlying rule. Unfortunately, as with Newton's disciples Cheyne and Whiston, it is often the case that a law is formulated whether observations justify it or not.
An earlier book by the mathematician and Field's medallist, Vladimir Arnol'd, Huygens and Barrow, Hooke and Newton (Birkhauser Verlag, 1990) discusses Newton's work as well as that of his contemporaries. He reads Newton's Principia in the language of modern mathematics and obtains that Newton's mathematics is sophisticated even in modern reckoning. From the correspondence between Hooke and Newton he also partially establishes the validity of the plagiarism charges and gives instances of Newton's arrogant response to Hooke. Mathematicians, nowadays, credit both Leibnitz and Newton with the invention of calculus. Arnol'd shows how they built on the works of Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Barrow, thereby justifying Newton's statement to Hooke "if I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants."
Newton: The Making of Genius,
Patricia Fara, p.347, Picador, 2003, £8.99.
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