The Errors and Animadversions of Honest Isaac Newton*

CONTRIBUTIONS to SCIENCE, 4 (1): 105-110 (2008) Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona DOI: 10.2436/20.7010.01.42 ISSN: 1575-6343 distinguished lectures www.cat-science.cat The errors and animadversions of Honest Isaac Newton* Sheldon Lee Glashow** Harvard University Sheldon Lee Glashow is theoretical physicist, born in New York City, and educated at Cornell University (BA) and Harvard University (MA and PhD). He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Copenha- gen, CERN and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He taught at Stanford and Berkeley before joining the Harvard Faculty from 1966 to 2000, and thereafter became University Professor at Boston University. He is a Member of the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy, the American Academy of Arts & Science, and the Science Academies of Russia, Korea, Costa Rica, etc. He has six honorary degrees, and he is also Honorary Professor at Nanjing University and at the Chi- nese Academy of Science. His honors include the Erice Science for Peace Prize, the Oppenheimer Medal and the Nobel Prize in Physics. His research interests focus on elementary particle physics. Most of you know that Newton created a unified theory of ce- he regarded the quest for nuclear energy as mere moonshine. lestial and terrestrial mechanics; that he explained the ocean The great Niels Bohr was twice prepared to abandon the law of tides, that he showed sunlight to be a mixture of all the colors energy conservation and Einstein refused to see Nature as a of the rainbow; that he invented (or co-invented) calculus; that quantum game of chance. More recently, Richard Feynman he designed and built the first reflecting telescopes; that he couldn’t bring himself to call a quark a quark, while T.D. Lee was showered with honors during his lifetime, even serving his and C.N. Yang, who once shared a Nobel Prize, barely speak government as Master of the Mint; and that he is buried be- to one another today. Isaac Newton was no exception. Not by neath one of the most obscenely flamboyant tombs in West- a long shot! Here I shall offer a sampling of Newton’s many minster Abbey. All this and more is true, which explains Alexan- transgressions, social, scientific and religious. der Pope’s often quoted couplet: “Nature and Nature’s laws long lie hid in Night Newton the tyrant God said ‘Let Newton be,’ and all was light.” “If I have seen further,” Newton famously wrote to his contem- Pope honored the man many regard as the greatest scien- porary, Robert Hooke, “it is by standing upon the shoulders of tist who ever lived, of whom, more recently and with mischie- giants.” No expression of humility was this! These men were vous admiration, Robert Frost asked: “How many apples fell on scientific rivals and bitter enemies. Hooke’s frequent demands Newton’s head before he took the hint?” Yet, I suspect that few for acknowledgement of his own significant contributions to of you are familiar with the darker side to Isaac Newton, the optics and mechanics infuriated Newton, who insisted that less savory aspects of his life that led Aldous Huxley to express Hooke’s claims were without merit. Physicist and author Jere- the view that “as a man [Newton] was a failure, as a monster he my Bernstein wrote: “On the face of it, Newton appears to be was superb.” calling Hooke a giant, but the hyperbole is, after all, addressed Every scientist makes mistakes, takes missteps and com- to a [quote] ‘crooked little man’.” [The mits misdeeds. Galileo could not abide Kepler’s elliptical plan- Encyclopedia Britannica describes Hooke’s appearance as etary orbits, while Kepler himself cast horoscopes for a living. “but a sorry show. His figure was crooked [and] his limbs John Dalton, the British father of chemistry, missed the 2 in shrunken”, but the amatory exploits Hooke describes in his di- H2O, just as Antoine Lavoisier, ‘le père français de la chimie’, aries suggest that he was quite attractive to women as a young erred by listing heat and light as chemical elements. Ernest Ru- man.] Bernstein concludes: “It was not so much that Newton therford may have discovered the tiny nuclei within atoms, but wanted to stand on Hooke’s shoulders, but rather to step on his head.” Most physics students know little of Hooke aside from his *Based on the Lecture given by the author at the Institute for Catalan law about springs, although, as the physicist-historian of sci- Studies, Barcelona, on 1 June 2006 ence Michael Nauenberg notes, “Hooke was one of the most **Author for Correspondence: Sheldon Lee Glashow, Department of Physics, Harvard University. 17 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 prolific and inventive scientists of all time, [making] fundamental (USA). Tel. (001) 617 2775446. Fax (001) 617 4968396. Email: [email protected] contributions to virtually all branches of science.” It is true that 001-132 Contrib 4-1.indd 105 14/04/09 08:56:54 106 Contrib. Sci. 4 (1), 2008 Glashow Hooke lacked Newton’s mathematical sophistication. When he contributions... of some of the ablest minds.” Once again, asked Newton for mathematical help, “Newton solved his prob- Newton could have been more gracious, and he could have lem, but never acknowledged Hooke’s seminal contributions.” had a more salutory effect on British mathematics. Instead, Newton wrote that “[Hooke] has done nothing, and yet We have seen how Newton’s relations with Hooke and Leib- written... as if he knew all, [leaving] what remained to be deter- niz were less than cordial. These were not isolated instances of mined to the drudgery of calculations, excusing himself from Newton’s strained interactions with his peers. William Whiston, that labor by reason of his other business, whereas he should like Newton, followed the then-heretical faith of Arianism, to- rather have excused himself by reason of his inability.” In fact, day’s Unitarianism, which rejects the doctrine of the trinity and Hooke had explained to Newton how Kepler’s area law (con- denies the divinity of Jesus. Whiston was Newton’s assistant, servation of angular momentum) follows for any central force. later becoming his chosen successor as the Lucasian Profes- Without this proof, Newton’s Principia could not have been sor at Cambridge (a post now occupied by Stephen Hawking). written. “The theory of planetary motions,” Nauenberg con- About a decade afterward, Whiston was expelled from Cam- cludes, “should be recognized as a remarkable joint scientific bridge for professing the heretical beliefs that Newton never achievement of Newton and Hooke.” abandoned, but had learned to conceal. Later on, when Whis- Was it a coincidence that Newton was elected President of ton was put forward for membership in the Royal Society, New- the Royal Society in the very year that Hooke died? Is it true ton (as its President) squelched the appointment. Long after- that Newton destroyed the only known portrait of Robert ward, Whiston would explain: “If the reader desires to know the Hooke? The mere existence of such a vile rumor informs us of reason of Sir Isaac Newton’s unwillingness to have me a mem- Newton’s undying animus toward his rival. ber, he must take notice that [Newton] made me his successor; Hooke needed mathematical advice from the master for so did I enjoy a large portion of his favor for twenty years to- good reason. Newton’s analysis depended on a mathematical gether. But he then perceiving that I could not do as his other tool he had developed for that very purpose: the theory of flux- darling friends did, that is, learn of him, without contradicting ions, or what we now know as calculus. Once again, Newton’s him, he could not, in his old age, bear such contradiction; and demand for every shred of credit led to a nasty priority fight, so he was afraid of me the last thirteen years of his life.... He one between Newton and the German mathematician and phi- was of the most fearful, cautious, and suspicious temper, that I losopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. Newton may have tak- ever knew.” en the first giant steps toward calculus, but much of what we The title of this section alludes to the book “Newton’s Tyr- know about his later contributions is indirect. Newton was ob- anny: The Suppressed Scientific Discoveries of Stephen Gray sessively secretive, reluctant to publish, averse to public speak- and John Flamsteed” by David and Stephen Clark. Flamsteed, ing, and sometimes hid his ideas as coded Latin anagrams. an accomplished cartographer and England’s first Astronomer (Some contemporary psychohistorians argue that he suffered Royal, was charged to produce a catalog of the stars. He col- from an affect disorder known as Asberger’s syndrome [or As- lected vast amounts of data for many years, largely at his own perger’s syndrome?].) His greatest accomplishment, the math- expense because Newton failed to secure the promised fund- ematical analysis of planetary motion in the Principia, uses in- ing. Well before the project was completed, and despite Flam- genious and elaborate geometrical arguments rather than steed’s strong objections, Newton had the unfinished manu- simpler ones based on calculus. Newton once said to a friend script published so that he could make use of the data. that he purposely made it difficult “to avoid being bated by little Flamsteed managed to acquire and burn hundreds of copies of smatterers in mathematics.” the unauthorized document and even brought Newton to court. Today it is generally recognized that both men made essen- In retaliation, Newton had Flamsteed expelled from the Royal tial contributions to mathematics.

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