Temple Theaters Presents
ARCADIA
By Tom Stoppard
February 11-21, 2015
Sir Isaac Newton
With the help of the most famous apple since Adam and Eve, Sir Isaac Newton made possibly the most significant scientific discovery since our ancestors figured out how to make fire. With his law of universal gravitation, Newton finally explained why objects fall down instead of up, and how humans keep from spiraling off into the abyss. From this observation, Newton formulated his laws of motion, further helping to explain the mysteries of how the world works.
Early Life
For such an influential person, Newton's life got off to an inauspicious start. Born in 1643 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, he was a premature baby, tiny and weak, born three months after the death of his father, a prosperous farmer. Despite early birth and frailty, Newton survived infancy. He was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother after his mother, Hannah Ayscough Newton remarried when he was three years old.
Newton's early education was conducted at King's School in Grantham, Lincolnshire. At one point, after her second husband died, Newton's mother removed him from school in hopes of making him a farmer like his father. Newton quickly proved a failure at farming, and was soon back at King's School. When his basic education concluded, he went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, with the support of his uncle. Here, Newton began is first in-depth study of science and mathematics.
The scientific curriculum at Trinity was based on the Aristotelian model of the geocentric universe, despite the fact that the heliocentric model theorized by astronomers Johannes Kepler and Nicolaus Copernicus was gaining acknowledgement among scholars. Newton studied both - Aristotle as part of his standard curriculum; Kepler, Rene Descartes and Thomas Street on his own, keeping track of his "Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae" ("Certain Philosophical Questions") as he studied. The result was that by the time he completed his B.A. in 1665, he had already begun to develop the mathematical theory that later became calculus.
Newton's education at Trinity was interrupted for two years when the school closed as a precautionary measure during the Great Plague of 1665, but Newton was far from idle. He continued to develop his mathematical theories in infinitesimal calculus, conducted experiments into the composition of light, resulting in advances in optics, and had that fateful encounter with the apple, leading to his law of gravitation. Trinity reopened in 1667, and Newton returned, now a fellow, to complete his M.A., which he received in 1669.
Discoveries and Influence
Upon his entrance into the professional world, Newton first gained the attention of the scientific community with his work in optics, which he presented in a lecture course at Trinity (he accepted a professorship at the school after his friend and mentor Isaac Barrow resigned). Newton presented his theory that white light is composed of all the colors of the spectrum, and that light is comprised of particles. He also unveiled the reflective telescope he designed and built in 1668. Soon after, the Royal Academy came calling for a demonstration of the reflective telescope. Although his work met with some pushback, mainly from Royal Academy founder Robert Hooke, it quickly became clear that Newton himself was a scientific force to be reckoned with. His study into optics was published in 1704 as Opticks: Or, A treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light.
Newton's greatest scientific contribution came in 1687 with the publication of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), usually referred to simply as Principia, and considered one of the most important works in the history of science. Within the three volumes of Principia, Newton laid out his three laws of motion:
1. A stationary body will stay stationary unless an external force is applied to it
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2. Force is equal to mass times acceleration, and a change in motion is proportional to the force applied
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3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction
These findings offered, for a first time, an explanation of how motion in the universe worked, and made it possible (theoretically, at least) to determine how nature would behave in any given situation. For the first time, people were given insight into all sorts of natural phenomena, from the shape of the earth to why the ocean's tides work the way they do.
Despite (or perhaps because of) Principia's sensational findings, Newton found himself the target of criticism from his contemporaries, including Robert Hooke, who had previously slammed his work in optics, and he published subsequent editions of Principia partially to address those criticisms. However, his greatest battle with a contemporary came over his work in calculus. In 1705, Gottfried Leibniz, a German mathematician, accused Newton of plagiarizing his work, claiming that he had in fact developed the study of calculus (This is the controversy Valentine refers to in Act 2, Scene 5 of Arcadia when he says "It's like arguing who got there first with the calculus. The English say Newton, the Germans say Leibnitz (sic).") The controversy stems primarily from publication dates; although Newton began his work in infinitesimal calculus in the 1660s while at Trinity, he only published part of his findings in Principia in 1687, not explaining his notation in print in full until 1704. Meanwhile, Leibniz was doing his work in calculus in the 1670s, publishing his findings in 1684, three years before Principia. Both mathematicians used different notations to explain essentially the same principles. The controversy dragged on until Leibniz's death in 1716; today, the prevailing attitude is that Newton and Leibniz did arrive at their conclusions independently, and are both given credit for the development of calculus.
In his later years, Newton moved away from his scientific inquiries, engaging more in politics and government (he served as Master of the Mint from 1699 until his death in 1727) and philosophical and religious studies. Newton never married, living with a niece and her husband at their country estate near Winchester. Based on his increasingly erratic behavior in his later years (he was prone to paranoia and nervous breakdowns) it is believed that he suffered from mercury poisoning, a side effect of his experiments. However, his scientific contributions remain his greatest legacy, and he was honored abundantly for them, receiving a knighthood from Queen Anne in 1705, and a burial at Westminster Abbey when he died in 1727.
Sources/Further Reading
Biography.com - Sir Isaac Newton
Wikipedia - Leibniz-Newton calculus controversy
Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Studies - Isaac Newton's Life
The General Science Journal - Sir Isaac Newton and the Three Laws of Determinism
Religious Studies Blog - Free Will and Determinism