Isaac Newton

“ Others were taken up with what Newton accomplished, Newton was taken up with what remained to be done. So it is ever with the highest genius; the broader the range of view, the wider the horizon of mystery. He who understands more than others is conscious beyond others of what still remains to be understood.
Isaac Newton was born at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, on December 25, 1642, one year after the death of Galileo, and just as England was being plunged into the confusion and miseries of civil war. ”

“ Isaac Newton, by connecting up a single phenomenon of a body falling a distance of a few feet on the earth with all similar phenomena, through the law of gravitation discovered the unity of the universe. Though Newton carried on important investigations in astronomy, studied the refraction of light through optic glasses, was president of the Royal Society, his chief contribution to the sciences was the tying together of the sun, the planets, and the moons of the solar system by the attraction of gravitation. ”

“ Isaac Newton, Knight,
Who, by a Vigour of Mind almost supernatural,
First demonstrated
290The Motions and Figures of the Planets,
The Paths of the Comets, and the Tides of the Ocean.
He diligently investigated
The different Refrangibilities of the Rays of Light,
And the Properties of the Colours to which they give rise.
An assiduous, sagacious, and faithful Interpreter
Of Nature, Antiquity, and the Holy Scriptures,
He asserted in his Philosophy the Majesty of God,
And exhibited in his conduct the Simplicity of the Gospel.
Let Mortals rejoice
That there has existed such and so great ”

“ The natures of some men are divided up into water-tight compartments. Sir Isaac Newton kept his religion in one compartment, and his science in another—they never got together.
Voltaire has said, "When Sir Isaac Newton discovered the Law of Gravitation he excited the envy of the learned men of the world; but they more than got even with him when he wrote a book on the prophecies of the Bible." [Pg 40]
hen Newton was only twenty-seven years old he was elected the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Trinity, an office that carried with it a goodly salary and also very much honor. ”

“ At last, in 1727, when he was fourscore and five years old, Sir Isaac Newton died,—or rather he ceased to live on earth. We may be permitted to believe that he is still searching out the infinite wisdom and goodness of the Creator, as earnestly, and with even more success, than while his spirit animated a mortal body. He has left a fame behind him, which will be as endurable as if his name were written in letters of light, formed by the stars upon the midnight sky.
"I love to hear about mechanical contrivances—such as the water-clock and the little windmill," remarked George. ”

“ We never act upon matter, but we have occasion to observe it. The superior genius and sagacity of Sir Isaac Newton, therefore, made the most happy, and, we may now say, the greatest and most admirable improvement that was ever made in philosophy, when he discovered, that he could join together the movements of the Planets by so familiar a principle of connection, which completely removed all the difficulties the imagination had hitherto felt in attending to them. ”

“ Such were the last days of Sir Isaac Newton, and such the last laurels which were shed over his grave. A century of discoveries has since his day been added to science; but brilliant as these discoveries are, they have not obliterated the minutest of his labours, and have served only to brighten the halo which encircles his name. The achievements of genius, like the source from which they spring, are indestructible. Acts of legislation and deeds of war may confer a high celebrity, but the reputation which they bring is only local and transient ”

“ In November, of the same year, Newton received a presentation copy of this publication, which bore the title of Abrege de Chronologie de M. le Chevalier Newton, fait par lui-meme, et traduit sur le manuscript Anglais. Soon afterward a paper entitled, Remarks on the Obervations made on a Chronological Index of Sir Isaac Newton, translated into French by the Observator, and published at Paris, was drawn up by our author, and printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1725. ”

“ Sir Isaac Newton is allow'd every Advantage, whilst Des Cartes is not indulg'd a single one. According to some, 'tis to the former that we owe the Discovery of a Vacuum, that the Air is a heavy Body, and the Invention of Telescopes. In a Word, Sir Isaac Newton is here as the Hercules of fabulous Story, to whom the Ignorant ascrib'd all the Feats of ancient Heroes. ”

“ The first thoughts, which gave rise to his Principia, he had, when he retired from Cambridge in 1666 on account of the plague. As he sat alone in a garden, he fell into a speculation on the power of gravity: that as this power is not found sensibly diminished at the remotest distance from the center of the earth, to which we can rise, neither at the tops of the loftiest buildings, nor even on the summits of the highest mountains; it appeared to him reasonable to conclude, that this power must extend much farther than was usually thought; why not as high as the moon, said he to himself? ”

“ Thus Isaac Newton discovered gravity, and in a moment every other astronomer became a pupil and a disciple. There never can be but one James Watt, for, though a thousand inventors improve his engine, their names are little tapers, shining over against the sun. ”

“ Were we to judge of the qualities of his mind from the early age at which he made his principal discoveries, and from the rapidity of their succession, we should be led to ascribe to him that quickness of penetration, and that exuberance of invention, which is more characteristic of poetical than of philosophical genius. But we must recollect that Newton was placed in the most favourable circumstances for the development of his powers. The flower of his youth and the vigour of his manhood were entirely devoted to science. ”

“ The method of investigating truth by observation and experiment, so successfully pursued in the Principia, has been ascribed by some modern writers of great celebrity to Lord Bacon; and Sir Isaac Newton is represented as having owed all his discoveries to the application of the principles of that distinguished writer. One of the greatest admirers of Lord Bacon has gone so far as to characterize him as a man who has had no rival in the times which are past, and as likely to have none in those which are to come. ”

“ As Isaac Newton sat watching the apple fall in his garden, he was but resting from the labor of gathering into his mind the labors of men who had in this or that anticipated his discovery of the law of gravitation. In all scientific advance many gather facts. One comes at length and in a far-reaching synthesis arranges the facts of many predecessors around some central truth and rises to some great principle. ”

“ He is content to do and let others talk. Sir Isaac Newton was one of the most modest men. He kept secret for a long time some of his greatest discoveries for fear of the notoriety they would bring him. He did not publish his marvellous discoveries of the Binomial Theorem and the Law of Gravitation for years, and when he published his solution of the theory of the moon's rotation round the earth he forbade the publisher to insert his name. The true gentleman is modest about his opinions. Comparatively few have deeds to boast about ”

“ Sir Isaac Newton is the greatest of modern philosophers and mechanics. When he was born, December 25, 1642, three months after his father's death, he was so small and feeble that no one supposed he would live a day; but the weak infant grew to be a healthy, robust man, who lived until he was eighty-four years old. He began to invent or contrive machines and to show his taste for mechanics in early childhood. ”

“ A fair, candid, and impartial state of the case between Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Hutchinson. [339] In which is shown how far a system of physics is capable of mathematical demonstration; how far Sir Isaac's, as such a system, has that demonstration; and consequently, what regard Mr. Hutchinson's claim may deserve to have paid to it. By George Horne, M.A. Oxford, 1753, 8vo.
It must be remembered that the successors of Newton were very apt to declare that Newton had demonstrated attraction as a physical cause: he had taken reasonable pains to show that he did not pretend to this. ”

“ Sir Isaac Newton has found reason to conclude, that gravity is a property universally belonging to all the perceptible bodies in the universe, and to every particle of matter, whereof they are composed. ”

“ For it is proved by Sir Isaac Newton, that the action of the sun, by which it diminishes the earth’s power over the moon, in the conjunction or opposition, is about twice as [202] great, as the addition to the earth’s action by the sun in the quarters [188] ; so that upon the whole, the power of the earth upon the moon is diminished by the sun, and therefore is most diminished, when the action of the sun is strongest: but as the earth by its approach to the sun has its influence lessened, the moon being less attracted will gradually recede from the earth ”

“ When read in a fair and unprejudiced spirit, Sir Isaac Newton's works are an ever ready witness to show how he must have hesitated between gravitation and attraction, impulse, and some other unknown cause, to explain the regular course of the planetary motion. ”

“ His devotion to the philosophy of sir Isaac Newton was so uncommonly strong, that every oppugner of this great man was treated by Emerson as dull, blind, bigotted, prejudiced, or mad, and the fire and impetuosity of his temper would on these occasions betray him into language far distant from the strictness of mathematical demonstration. ”

“ Dr. Smith likewise bequeathed the sum of 500l.291 for executing a painting on glass for the window at the south end of Trinity College, Cambridge. The subject represents the presentation of Sir Isaac Newton to his majesty George III., who is seated under a canopy with a laurel chaplet in his hand, and attended by the British Minerva, apparently advising him to reward merit in the person of the great philosopher. Below the throne, the Lord Chancellor Bacon is proposing to register the reward about to be conferred upon Sir Isaac. ”

“ In Isaac Newton two kinds of intellectual power, which have little in common, and which are not often found together in a very high degree of vigour, but which nevertheless are equally necessary in the most sublime departments of physics, were united as they have never been united before or since. There may have been minds as happily constituted as his for the cultivation of pure mathematical science: there may have been minds as happily constituted for the cultivation of science purely experimental ”

“ John Keill was the first person who publicly taught natural philosophy by experiments. Desaguliers informs us that this author “laid down very simple propositions, which he proved by experiments, and from these he deduced others more compound, which he still confirmed by experiments, till he had instructed his auditors in the laws of motion, the principles of hydrostatics and optics, and some of the chief propositions of Sir Isaac Newton concerning light and colours. He began these courses in Oxford about the year 1704 or 1705, and in that way introduced the love of the Newtonian philosophy.” ”

“ If the body L, by a radius drawn to the other body T, describes areas, which, compared with the times, are very unequal; and that other body T be either at rest, or moves uniformly forward in a right line: the action of the centripetal force tending to that other body T is either none at all, or it is mixed and compounded with very powerful actions of other forces: and the whole force compounded of them all, if they are many, is directed to another (immovable or moveable) centre. The same thing obtains, when the other body is moved by any motion whatsoever ”

“ Newton elected Associate of the Academy of Sciences in 1699—Member for Cambridge in 1701—and President of the Royal Society in 1703—Queen Anne confers upon him the Honour of Knighthood in 1705—Second Edition of the Principia, edited by Cotes—His Conduct respecting Mr. Ditton’s Method of finding the Longitude.
Hitherto we have viewed Newton chiefly as a philosopher leading a life of seclusion within the walls of a college, and either engaged in the duties of his professorship, or ardently occupied in mathematical and scientific inquiries. ”

“ Anxious as we should have been to have awarded to Scotland the honour of having first adopted the Newtonian philosophy, yet a regard for historical truth compels us to take a different view of the subject. It is well known that Sir Isaac Newton delivered lectures on his own philosophy from the Lucasian chair before the publication of the Principia; and in the very page of Whiston’s life quoted by Professor Playfair, he informs us that he had heard him read such lectures in the public schools,164 though at that time he did not at all understand them. ”

“ The introduction of this slight sketch of the occupation and condition of some of the European ancestors of our Philosopher, into his Life, may be the more readily excused, since the great Newton himself was not inattentive to such objects. There is, indeed, implanted by nature in the human mind, a strong desire to become acquainted with the family-history of our forefathers. Hence, Sir Isaac Newton left, in his own hand-writing, a genealogical account or pedigree of his family ”

“ The history of these problems affords, by direct comparison, a striking illustration of Newton's vast superiority of mind. That amazing concentration and grasp of intellect, of which we have spoken, enabled him to master speedily, and, as it were, by a single effort, those things, for the achievement of which, the many would essay utterly in vain, and the very, very few attain only after long and renewed striving. And yet, with a modesty as unparalleled as his power, he attributed his successes, not to any extraordinary sagacity, but solely to industry and patient thought. ”