22 “the surest Signes”: This quote and the description of plague symptoms in the next several sentences come from Richelle Munkhoff, “Searchers of the Dead: Authority, Marginality, and the Interpretation of Plague in England, 1574–1665,” Gender and History 11, no. 1 (April 1999).
23 despised old women called “searchers”: Ibid.
24 “Death was the sure midwife”: Nathaniel Hodge, Loimolgia, or An Historical Account of the Plague in London in 1665. See http://rbsche.people.wm.edu/H111_doc_loimolgia.html.
24 “Poor Will that used to sell”: Pepys’s diary, August 8, 1665.
Chapter 5. Melancholy Streets
25 “Multitude of Rogues”: Roger Lund, “Infectious Wit: Metaphor, Atheism, and the Plague in Eighteenth-Century London,” Literature and Medicine 22, no. 1 (Spring 2003), p. 51.
25 kill “all their dogs”: Moote and Moote, The Great Plague, p. 177.
26 “when we have purged”: Tinniswood, His Invention So Fertile, p. 115, quoting Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society.
26 “Little noise heard day or night”: Letter written September 4, 1664, by Pepys to Lady Carteret, in Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, vol. 5, p. 286. See http://tinyurl.com/y2aqoze.
27 “A just God now visits”: John Kelly, The Great Mortality, p. xv.
27 “But Lord, how empty”: Pepys’s diary, October 16, 1665.
28 Builders would one day: Raymond Williamson, “The Plague in Cambridge,” Medical History 1, no. 1 (January 1957), p. 51.
Chapter 6. Fire
29 Iron bars in prison cells: Hanson, The Great Fire of London, p. 165, quoting John Evelyn.
30 what Robert Boyle called: Moote and Moote, The Great Plague, p. 69.
30 “Pish!” he said: Christopher Hibbert, London (London: Penguin, 1977), p. 67, and Hanson, The Great Fire of London, p. 49.
31 Even on the opposite sides: G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History (New York: Penguin, 1967), p. 305.
32 Slung over his shoulder: Antonia Fraser, Royal Charles, p. 245.
32 “A horrid noise the flames made”: Pepys’s diary, September 2, 1666.
32 Stones from church walls exploded: Hollis, London Rising, p. 121.
32 “God grant mine eyes”: John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, vol. 2, p. 12. This is from Evelyn’s diary entry for September 3, 1666, available at http./www.pepysdiary.com/indepth/archive/2009/09/02/evelyns–fire.php.
33 People wandered in search: Hollis, London Rising, p. 122.
33 “The ground was so hot”: Hanson, The Great Fire of London, p. 163.
33 “Now nettles are growing”: Ibid., p. xv, quoting from a pamphlet by Thomas Vincent, God’s Terrible Voice in the City.
Chapter 7. God at his Drawing Table
35 God had fashioned the best: Philosophers still debate precisely how Leibniz reconciled his belief that God had created the best possible world with his (apparent) belief in a day of judgment. One notion is that divine punishment was a feature of even the best possible world, because harmony required both that virtue be rewarded and sin punished.
36 Newton and many of his peers: J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, “Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan,’ ” p. 135. See also Piyo Rattansi, “Newton and the Wisdom of the Ancients,” in John Fauvel et al., eds., Let Newton Be!, p. 187; Force and Popkin, Newton and Religion, p. xvi; Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, p. 74.
37 By far the most important: The only challenges to the mainstream view came from the much-feared, much-reviled Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza.
37 “All disorder,” wrote Alexander Pope: Pope, “An Essay on Man.”
37fn “this continued sterility”: Jane Dunn, Elizabeth and Mary (New York: Vintage, 2005), p. 17.
38 “too paganish a word”: Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 79.
38 The very plants in the garden: Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750, p. 296, quoting Walter Charleton, The Darkness of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature.
38 “People rarely thought of themselves”: Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, p. 24.
38 Atheism was literally unthinkable: People called their enemies “atheists,” but the charge had to do with behaving badly—acting in ways that offended God—rather than with denying God’s existence. Atheist was a catch-all slur directed at the immoral and self-indulgent.
38 Even Blaise Pascal: Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p.153.
40 Plato proposed that a free man: Morris Kline, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty, p. 22. See Plato’s Laws, book 11. “He who in any way shares in the illiberality of retail trades may be indicted for dishonouring his race by any one who likes . . . and if he appear to throw dirt upon his father’s house by an unworthy occupation, let him be imprisoned for a year and abstain from that sort of thing; and if he repeat the offence, for two years; and every time that he is convicted let the length of his imprisonment be doubled.” See http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laws.11.xi.html.
41 “It is ye perfection”: Richard Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 327.
Chapter 8. The Idea that Unlocked the World
42 “decipher the page and chapter”: John Carey, John Donne, p. 128.
42 the mysteries of multiplication: Pepys’s diary, July 4, 1662.
43 a mathematics of change: Ernst Cassirer, “Newton and Leibniz,” p.381. See also Karen Armstrong, A History of God, p. 35.
44 “the most truly revolutionary”: I. Bernard Cohen, Revolution in Science, p. 90.
44 a widow, not yet thirty: Hannah Newton’s birth date is unknown. The Newton biographer Frank Manuel suggests that she was probably around thirty when she married for the second time, three years after Isaac’s birth. See Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton, p. 24.
45 “When one . . . compares”: Matthew Stewart, The Courtier and the Heretic, p. 12.
45 Frederick the Great declared: Daniel Boorstin, The Discoverers, p. 414.
46 “I invariably took”: Stewart, The Courtier and the Heretic, p. 43.
46 His favorite wedding gift: Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945), p. 582.
46 slept in his clothes: Gale Christianson, Isaac Newton, p. 65.
46 seventeen portraits: Peter Ackroyd, Newton, p. 98.
46 so much time working with mercury: Milo Keynes, “The Personality of Isaac Newton,” p. 27.
46 “It’s so rare,” the Duchess: Stewart, The Courtier and the Heretic, p. 12.
47 “a Machine for walking on water”: The drawing comes from a 1637 text by Daniel Schwenter, a German mathematician and inventor, titled Deliciae physico-mathematicae. Leibniz witnessed (and was much impressed by) a similar demonstration several decades later.
47 “To remain fixed in one place”: Ibid., p. 53.
47 walk on water: Philip Wiener, “Leibniz’s Project,” p. 234.
48 “his cat grew very fat”: Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 103.
48 “His peculiar gift”: John Maynard Keynes, “Newton, the Man,” p. 278.
49 “I took a bodkin”: Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 94.
Chapter 9. Euclid and Unicorns
50 “weapon salve”: Liza Picard, Restoration London, p. 78.
50 “a living chameleon”: Charles Richard Weld, History of the Royal Society (London: John W. Parker, 1848), v. 1, p. 114.
51 The spider, unfazed: Ibid., p. 113.
51 Newton’s paper followed: Robert Crease, The Prism and the Pendulum, p. 72.
51 Visitors ogled such marvels: Christopher Hibbert, London, p. 100.
51 the best cure for cataracts: Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage, p. 65.
52 a “flying chariot”: Marjorie Nicolson and Nora Mohler, “Swift’s ‘Flying Island' in the Voyage to Laputa, ” p. 422.
52 Since reliable men vouched: John Henry, “Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy,” p. 359. The highly regarded member of the Royal Society was Joseph Glanvill.
&nbs
p; 52 the seas contained mermaids: John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book 3, ch. 6, “Of the Names of Substances” (London: Thomas Tegg, 1841), p. 315.
52 an ancient National Enquirer: Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, p. 231.
53 The “Tyburn tree”: The gallows stood near what is now Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park.
53 “All the Way, from Newgate to Tyburn”: Simon Devereaux, “Recasting the Theater of Execution,” Past & Present 202, no. 1 (February 2009).
53 a hand’s “death sweat”: Hanson, The Great Fire of London, p. 216, and Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 204.
54 the corpse “identified”: Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, p. 241.
54 painstakingly dissected one witch’s: Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 644.
55 the “philosopher’s stone”: Christianson, Isaac Newton, p. 55.
55 some half million words: Rattansi, “Newton and the Wisdom of the Ancients,” p. 193.
55 Leibniz’s only fear: Stewart, The Courtier and the Heretic, p. 48.
55 “Whatever his aim”: Christianson, Isaac Newton, p. 55.
55 He never spoke of: Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 298.
55 “the Green Lion”: William Newman, Indiana University historian of science, speaking on PBS in a Nova program, Newton’s Dark Secrets, broadcast November 15, 2005.
56 “Just as the world was created”: Jan Golinski, “The Secret Life of an Alchemist,” in Let Newton Be!, p. 160.
56 Keynes purchased a trove: For an excellent, detailed history of Newton’s papers, see http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=23.
56 “the last of the Babylonians”: John Maynard Keynes, “Newton, the Man,” p. 277.
Chapter 10. The Boys’ Club
58 New arrivals found places: Tinniswood, His Invention So Fertile, p. 79.
59 “the expansive forces”: Marjorie Nicolson and Nora Mohler, “The Scientific Background of Swift’s Voyage to Laputa,” in Nicolson, Science and Imagination, p. 328.
59 “We put in a snake”: Lisa Jardine, Ingenious Pursuits, p. 114.
60 “A man thrusting in his arm”: Lisa Jardine, The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, p. 105. Jardine writes that the unnamed showman with his arm in the pump was “almost certainly Hooke.”
60 one Arthur Coga: Weld, History of the Royal Society, vol. 1, p. 220.
60 a perfect subject: I owe this insight to Steven Shapin, “The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England,” p. 376.
61 “to be the Author of new things”: Boorstin, The Discoverers, p. 409, quoting Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, (London: 1734), p. 322.
62 “old wood to burn”: Cohen, Revolution in Science, p. 87.
62 “not to discover the new”: Boorstin, The Discoverers, p. 409.
62 In the fourteenth century Oxford: John Barrow, Pi in the Sky (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 205.
63 “the hallmark of the narrow-minded”: Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, p. 61.
63 “For God is certainly called”: Ibid., p. 39.
63 The “lust to find out”: William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, p. 60.
63 “what the Lord keeps secret”: Ecclesiastes 3:22–23, quoted in Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, p. 60.
64 “If the wisest men”: Westfall, Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England, p. 22.
64 How could anyone draw: Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, p. 82.
64 “absorbing, classifying, and preserving”: Allan Chapman, England’s Leonardo: Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth-Century Scientific Revolution, p. 40.
65fn Bacon’s zeal for experimentation: John Aubrey, Brief Lives (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1982), entry for “Francis Bacon.”
65 Nature must be “put to the torture”: Ibid., p. 40.
65 dizzy and temporarily deaf: Jardine, Ingenious Pursuits, p. 56.
Chapter 11. To the Barricades!
66 “I swear to you by God’s”: David Berlinski, Infinite Ascent, p. 66.
67 “like torches, that in the lighting”: Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, p. 330.
68 “I’ve known since yesterday”: Simon Singh, Big Bang (New York: Harper, 2004), p. 302. Richard Feynman tells the story in its classic, romantic form in his Feynman Lectures on Physics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1963), pp. 3–7, almost as soon as he begins.
68 For decades Hooke argued: Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, p. 347.
68 “Nothing considerable in that kind”: Ibid., p. 347.
68 “Do not throw your pearls”: Paolo Rossi, The Birth of Modern Science, p. 18.
69fn The historian Paolo Rossi: Rossi, The Birth of Modern Science, p. 15.
70 “to improve the knowledge”: Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, p. 348.
70 “not by a glorious pomp”: Ibid., p. 25, quoting Sprat, History of the Royal Society, pp. 62–63.
70 “a close, naked, natural way”: Sprat, History of the Royal Society, p. 113.
71 “All that I mean”: Carey, John Donne, p. 58.
Chapter 12. Dogs and Rascals
72 “If you would like”: Rossi, The Birth of Modern Science, p. 24.
73 “glacial remoteness”: The modern physicist is Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar; the remark comes from a talk he gave in April 1975 at the University of Chicago, titled “Shakespeare, Newton, and Beethoven, or Patterns of Creativity,” available at http://www.sawf.org/newedit/edit02192001/musicarts.asp.
73 Samuel Johnson’s remark: James Boswell, Life of Johnson (London: Henry Frowde, 1904), vol. 2, p. 566.
73fn The esteemed eighteenth-century: Laplace’s despairing admirer was Nathaniel Bowditch, quoted in Dirk Struik, A Concise History of Mathematics, p. 135.
73 “baited by little Smatterers”: Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 459.
74 “the first time that a major”: Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants, p. 11, quoting I. Bernard Cohen, Franklin and Newton.
75 Hooke denounced his enemies: Steven Shapin, “Rough Trade,” London Review of Books, March 6, 2003, reviewing The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Strange and Inventive Life of Robert Hooke, by Stephen Inwood.
75 Newton’s aim was evidently: Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton, p. 145, and Mordechai Feingold, The Newtonian Moment, pp. 23–24.
Chapter 13. A Dose of Poison
76 dissections had been performed: Terence Hawkes, London Review of Books, December 11, 1997, reviewing Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy, by Michael Neill.
76 “the culture’s preference”: Ibid.
77 the Quaker James Nayler: Beer, Milton, p. 301.
77 a section titled “Excursions”: Picard, Restoration London. Pepys certainly thought of executions in this casual way. On October 13, 1660, he found himself with some unexpected free time. “I went out to Charing Cross,” Pepys wrote in his diary, “to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy.” Within a sentence or two, Pepys went on to report that he’d eaten oysters for dinner.
77 “A man sentenced to this terrible”: Picard, Restoration London, p. 211.
77 To preserve severed heads: Beer, Milton, p. 302.
78 traitors’ heads impaled on spikes: The account of London Bridge (and the reference to Thomas More) comes from Picard, Restoration London, p. 23. See also Aubrey, Brief Lives, “Sir Thomas More,” and Paul Hentzner, Travels in England During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, available at http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hentzner/paul/travels/chapter1.html.
79 “Whatever others think”: Pepys’s diary entry for February 17, 1663.
79 Newton veered toward vegetarianism: Steven Shapin, “Vegetable Love,” New Yorker, January 22, 2007, reviewing The Bloodless Revolution: A Cul
tural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times, by Tristram Stuart.
80 “The result was a melody”: Thomas Hankins and Robert Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 73, 247.
80 “that traditional nursery rhymes portray”: Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 147.
80 With a dog tied: Tinniswood, His Invention So Fertile, p. 1.
80 Boyle subjected his pet setter: Ibid., p. 34.
80fn The word disease: Moote and Moote, The Great Plague, p. 141.
81 Boyle wrote a paper: Robert Boyle, “Trial proposed to be made for the Improvement of the Experiment of Transfusing Blood out of one Live Animal into Another,” Philosophical Transactions, February 11, 1666, available at http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/1/1-22/385.
81 “a foreign Ambassador”: The ambassador intended to test the effects of a substance called Crocus metallorum, sometimes used as a medicine to induce vomiting.
81 The servant spoiled: Tinniswood, His Invention So Fertile, p. 37.
82 “The first died upon the place”: Pepys’s diary, November 14 and 16, 1666.
Chapter 14. Of Mites and Men
83 he set up a borrowed telescope: Claire Tomalin, Samuel Pepys, p. 248.
83 he raced out to buy a microscope: Pepys’s diary, August 13, 1664.
83 he struggled through Boyle’s: Pepys’s diary, June 4, 1667.
83 “a most excellent book”: Pepys’s diary, June 10, 1667.
83fn Like James Thurber: Thurber described his attempts to master the microscope in My Life and Hard Times.
84 his “jesters”: Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England, p. 131. See also Pepys’s diary, February 1, 1664.
84 “Ingenious men and have found out”: Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England, pp. 91–92.
84 “I shall not dare to think”: Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England, pp. 91–92.
84 “Should those Heroes go on”: Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton, p. 130, quoting Joseph Glanvill. Glanvill’s remark is from his Vanity of Dogmatizing, written in 1661.
86 Gimcrack studied the moon: Claude Lloyd, “Shadwell and the Virtuosi.” The Shadwell quotes come from Lloyd’s essay.
The Clockwork Universe Page 27
