Except for Kepler and Galileo, he was almost alone in forecasting the role of forces such as gravity, magnetism, and electricity, since most natural philosophers at the time were opposed to such so called “occult forces” acting at a distance. But this ironically was mainly due to his lifelong interest in and study of the pseudoscience of alchemy, having acquired an extensive library on the subject and secretly obtained many instruments for performing alchemical experiments. As quoted by Westfall:
For alchemy . . . is not of that kind wch tendeth to vanity & deceit but rather to profit & to edification inducing first ye knowledge of God & secondly ye way to find out true medicines in ye creatures . . . .so yt ye scope is to glorify God in his wonderful works, to teach man how to live well, & to be charitably affected helping or neighbors. (p. 298)
Not only does he condone alchemy as a sound method of inquiry, he also attributes the origin of the mechanistic worldview to an “Intelligent Agent.” Returning to the Opticks, he states:
Now by the help of these Principles, all material Things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid Particles above-mention’d, variously associated in the first Creation by the Counsel of an Intelligent Agent. For it became him who created them to set them in order. And if he did so, it’s unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature; though being once form’d, it may continue by the those Laws for many Ages. (p. 402)
Rejecting Anaximander’s theory that the universe arose from an original Chaos, the last statement is an affirmation of deism, the belief that though God created the universe it could then operate according to the laws he used in creating it. How Newton could combine his rigorous conception of scientific inquiry and the corpuscular-mechanistic worldview with an ardent belief in alchemy and in God as the original creator is bewildering. Though it could be argued that deducing an “Intelligent Agent” as cause of the rational laws of nature was not incoherent, a precursor of the “argument from Intelligent Design,” it does not provide much of an explanation, resembling more a “feigned hypothesis.” Moreover, since no particular law or causal explanation has ever been deduced from this conception nor could be subjected to any experimental test, it is arbitrary to declare “that it is unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World” or that the corpuscular-mechanistic state could not have been the original state as is now believed by most astrophysicists.
Though necessarily limited, I hope this was sufficient to convey an authentic portrayal of Newton’s genius as well as his idiosyncrasies. Returning to the account of his final years, after publishing the Opticks he decided to leave the scholarly life he had preferred for thirty-five years at Trinity College to move to London permanently. However, even his recently increased income was not sufficient to support living in London, so he had to seek a more profitable employment. Encountering the usual initial disappointments, with the aide of his friend Charles Montague he succeeded in obtaining the lucrative position of Warden of the Mint in March 1696. Three and a half years later, thanks to his skillful management, he was promoted to Master of the Mint, a position he held until his death. This settled his financial problems because he received the considerable sum of “a set profit on every pound weight troy that was coined,” along with his salary of 500 pounds per annum (Westfall, p. 604). Thus he resigned his fellowship and the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge the following year.
Surprisingly, however, despite his renouncement of his academic career for a more active social and political life, in 1696 when he became Warden of the Mint he showed that he had not lost all his interest in nor remarkable mathematical skills when he replied to two challenge problems sent to him by Johann Bernoulli, a prominent European mathematician, that had been published in John Wallis’s Acta eruditorum (Acts/Reports of the Scholars). Soon after receiving his copy of the problems Newton anonymously returned the solutions to Bernoulli who easily identified their author due to his method of solving them. Only two other renown mathematicians, Leibniz and the Marquis de l’Hôpital, submitted solutions indicating that Newton had not lost his acute mathematical ability despite his age and change of vocation.
As indicated previously, the year Hooke died (1703) Newton was elected president of the Royal Society and as usual served with distinction enlarging the membership and attendance, improving the quality of the lectures, and increasing the financial support. Aided by Secretary Hans Sloane, he was able to persuade the members to purchase the former house of Dr. Edward Browne on Crane Court, London, in 1710, for its permanent residence which was paid for in less than six years. Later the society was moved to the attractive row of white buildings on 6–9 Carlton House, where I was shown the original manuscript of Newton’s Principia by Keith Moore.
Following his election to the presidency of the Royal Society, Newton would live for another quarter century less one year, generally in good physical and mental health until five years before his death, though continuing as Master of the Mint and president of the Royal Society to the end. During these later years, except for his solution of Bernoulli’s challenge problems, he completely replaced his previous dedication to natural philosophy and mathematics by religious studies. But he is renown not for his alchemical or religious interests, but for his outstanding contributions to physics, astronomy, and mathematics.
Yet for all his extraordinary achievements, unlike Francis Bacon and Descartes he always retained his modesty. He is admired for his self-deprecating assertions, such as “If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants” (Westfall, p. 274); “I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undisclosed before me” (Westfall, p. 863); and, finally, as death approached, “He said when he died ‘he should have the comfort of leaving Philosophy less mischievous’ than he found it” (Westfall, p. 805).
He died on March 20, 1727, after a brief illness at age eightyfive. He is prominently interred in the nave of London’s prestigious Westminster Abbey. A monument to him bears the fitting inscription: “Let Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an Ornament to the Human Race.” Thus ends the chronicle of one who had the intelligence, courage, creativity, and perseverance to consolidate a methodology and worldview that, though initiated by Kepler, Galileo, and others, led to what was one of the greatest transformations in our conception of reality and way of life that established scientific inquiry as the only known sound method of our investigation of the world.
Yet there was and still is considerable opposition to these scientific arguments supporting a more naturalistic worldview. As Carl Sagan has pointed out in his extraordinarily informative book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, the question whether the world could be best explained by an empirical-rational approach utilizing the language of mathematics has been contested by the fact that human beings historically have been more influenced by nightmares, fantasies, hallucinations, and visitations by demons, monsters, devils, spirits, angels, and gods that helped form primitive myths, sacred documents, and religions, along with witch hunts and alleged heretical immolations that influenced by technology, have been transmuted into more familiar extraterrestrial aliens, flying saucers, and UFOs.
As an example, Sagan quotes on his page 129 W. Gary Crampton’s later statement in the May 23, 1994, issue of Christian News that, despite the enormous advances in science in the twentieth century, the Bible still remains the source of ultimate truth.
The Bible, either explicitly or implicitly, speaks to every area of life; it never leaves us without an answer. The Bible nowhere explicitly affirms or negates intelligent extraterrestrial life. Implicitly, however, Scripture does deny the existence of such beings, thus also negating the possibility of flying saucers. . . . Scripture views the earth as
the center of the universe . . . According to Peter, a “planet hopping” Savior is out of the question. Here is an answer to intelligent life on other planets. If there were such, who would redeem them? Certainly not Christ. . . . Experiences which are out of line with the teachings of Scripture must always be renounced as fallacious. The Bible has a monopoly on the truth. (italics added)
It is difficult to see how any intelligent person, given the advances in science and what we know about the world today, could still believe that the Bible “has a monopoly on truth.”
Chapter IV
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES’ ADVANCES, INCLUDING INQUIRIES IN MAGNETISM AND ELECTRICITY
While I. Bernard Cohen’s claim that the eighteenth century was the “age of Newton” has considerable justification, it overlooks other social and cultural changes that were also essential in shaping the important scientific transformations that led up to the enlightenment of the eighteenth century. We have already witnessed the crucial role that previous technological innovations, such as the invention of the telescope, microscope, astrolabe, etc., along with such mechanical models as Kepler’s clockwork universe and Galileo’s microscopic particles culminating in Newton’s corpuscular-mechanistic worldview played in creating modern classical science. In addition, the earlier Renaissance transition in Europe that rejected the medieval outlook and religious authority as bastions of truth also contributed to these scientific developments that evoked a more empirical, rationalistic outlook, yet these changes still were confined largely to contribution of scholars trained at the major universities.
We shall find that other institutions of change in the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment, which were broader in scope and diversified in nature and not confined to the traditional educational regimes of the seventeenth century, also played a major role. So along with the significant influence of Newton there were other cultural changes, such as the impact of the industrial revolution that introduced new technologies like spinning and weaving machines and steam engines that replaced home guilds by factories and transformed agrarian societies into crowded cities with their slums and unsanitary conditions, along with amenities.
The Industrial Revolution also changed the economic system by introducing mass production and an entrepreneurial and capitalistic economy in the industrial cities, along with a new middle class to replace the traditional aristocratic-peasant division of society. Furthermore, there was a marked change in the religious backgrounds of those engaged in the new investigations from those who were Anglicans and had graduated from the usual prestigious preparatory schools such as Eton and universities like Oxford and Cambridge, to those who were often self-taught and learned from their particular trade, along with being educated in what were called “Nonconformist” educational institutions. As I wrote previously:
Underlying this change in background of the new generation of natural philosophers was the shift of the centers of experimental research from Oxbridge to provincial manufacturing towns like Birmingham and Manchester, the latter with its burgeoning textile industry becoming the leading manufacturing and trade center of the world. The advent of the industrial revolution with its large cotton and woolen mills, as well as expanding industries such as coal mining, ironworks, and steel foundries, not only attracted huge numbers of workers and created a new middle class of wealthy families, it rewarded manual skills, engineering inventiveness, and entrepreneurial shrewdness—the type of practical intelligence characteristic of the new breed of natural philosophers.39
As examples, two of the outstanding English chemists of the period were the Unitarian Minister Joseph Priestley who was the son of a cloth shearer and John Dalton a Quaker whose family income came from cottage weaving, along with the American Benjamin Franklin who, despite leaving school at age ten to help his father who was a tallow chandler and soap maker, became a world famous writer, printer, and statesman, as well as attaining international renown for his electrical experiments.
Thus the new experimental inquiries and industrial ventures were largely made by nonconformists like Quakers, Presbyterians, and Unitarians, as well as the sons of craftsmen whose interests or endeavors were not restricted to the traditional classical studies, but motivated by utilitarian interests and needs. Unable to attend the traditional grammar schools and universities because of their lower family backgrounds and inferior religious affiliations, “Dissenting Academies” were created to meet their different educational requirements. In Birmingham such eminent industrialists, inventors, and natural philosophers as Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Black, Mathew Boulton, John Wilkinson, Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin), and Joseph Priestley founded the Warrington Academy in 1757, the most famous of the dissenting academies, and the prestigious Lunar Society about 1775.
In the early eighteenth century, owing to Newton’s discussion of electricity and magnetism in his Queries, these subjects attracted some scientific interest. Newton had included them among the important forces of nature that emanated in space, noting that they attracted small particles at a distance, a fact considered by the ancient Greeks, though still unable to explain how they were produced. The Greeks had discovered that rubbed amber, called “electron” in Greek (from which the term “electric” is derived), along with “Heraclean stones” (later called “lodestones” or “magnets”) had these attracting powers. Yet at the time of Newton, because Descartes and most natural philosophers disavowed “occult powers” acting at a distance, believing that the transmission of forces required some material medium or direct physical contact, it was primarily William Gilbert’s book, De Magnete (On the Magnet) published forty-two years before Newton was born, that brought attention to magnetism and electricity owing to their mysterious forces acting at a distance.
Gilbert was born in 1540 in Colchester County, Essex England. His background is somewhat uncertain, but he is said to have attended the Grammar School of Colchester and enrolled in St. John’s College, Cambridge where he apparently earned BA, MA, and MD degrees. After those studies he traveled on the continent where he may have acquired the Doctor of Physic Degree. In the biographical memoir to his translation of the De Magnete, P. Fleury Mottelay states:
In 1573, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and filled therein many important offices, becoming in turn [omitting the dates] Censor, Treasurer, and President. His skill had already attracted the attention of queen Elizabeth, by whom he was appointed her physician-in-ordinary, and who showed him many marks of her favor . . . .”40
As an indication of how he was regarded at the time, the English historian Henry Hallam wrote that he was
the first in which England produced a remarkable work in Physical Science: but this was one sufficient to raise a lasting reputation for its author. Gilbert, a physician, in his Latin treatise on the Magnet not only collected all the knowledge which others had possessed on the subject, but became at once the father of experimental philosophy in this island, and, by a singular felicity and acuteness of genius, the founder of theories which have been revived after a lapse of ages, and are almost universally received into the creed of science. . . . (p. xii)
When De Magnete was published in 1600 it was highly acclaimed because of its exhaustive summary of the previous investigations into magnetism, as well as Gilbert’s own contributions. Galileo declared Gilbert “great to a degree that is enviable”; Dr. William Whewell, a prominent philosopher of science in the nineteenth century, observed that “Gilbert’s work contains all the fundamental facts of the science, so fully examined . . . that even at this day we have little to add to them”; and Dr. Thomas Thomson said “that De Magnete is one of the finest examples of inductive philosophy that has ever been presented to the world” (pp. xii, xiii).
At the time Gilbert’s De Magnete was thought to contain all that was known about the magnet, including his own discoveries. He detected a magnetic force in numerous substances that he called “electrics” and according to hi
storian of science Sir David Brewster, applied “the term magnetic to all bodies which are acted upon by loadstones and magnets, in the same manner as they act upon each other, and he finds that such bodies contain iron in some state or other” (p. xv). In Gilbert’s study of electricity he is credited with introducing for the first time such terms as “electric force,” “electric emanation,” and “electric attraction” (p. xv). He noted its considerable resemblance to magnetism, yet distinguished between the two based on discovered differences.
He regarded the earth to be a vast magnet attributing to its extremities north and south magnetic poles, “calling south pole the extremity that pointed toward the north, and north pole the extremity pointing toward the south” (p. xv). Noticing the inclination and declination of the magnetic needle, he inferred that at the opposite poles the needle would extend vertically, at the equator horizontally, and in between in intermediate directions. This led to the European perfection of the compass and the designation of latitudes and longitudes by the dips in the needle that vastly improved navigation. He created a globe named ‘terrella’ or little earth that could be used in his experiments to represent the poles and latitudes and longitudes of the earth. He also invented what is called a versorium, known as an electroscope, a device consisting of a rotating iron needle positioned on a movable point so that it could rotate freely enabling him to measure the intensity of electrical discharges (p. 79).
Three Scientific Revolutions: How They Transformed Our Conceptions of Reality Page 9
