Richard S. Westfall

Newton’s Theological Manuscripts

The past two decades have witnessed a concentrated exploration of Newton’s manuscripts. More than anything else, this factor has set the tone of recent Newtonian scholarship. However, one major section of his papers remains almost totally unknown. The great bulk of Newton’s theological papers have become available only recently. Lost from public view after the auction in 1936, they have come to rest at last as the Yahuda Papers in the Jewish National and University library in Jerusalem. Professor Manuel used them in the preparation of his recent Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford, 1974), but with his attention focused on Newton rather than the manuscripts, Professor Manuel did not attempt to offer a guide to their content. Such a guide, not confined to the Yahuda Papers but inevitably concentrating heavily upon them since they are the major collection, is what I hope to present in this paper. I have examined all of the theological papers the location of which is known except the one in the Bodmer Library (Geneva), which apparently regards it as a perishable resource which reading would exhaust. Judging by the papers that accompanied it at the sale, I think the Bodmer manuscript contains only miscellaneous fragments without anything not found elsewhere, but only a chance to see it, a privilege which the Bodmer Library does not grant to mere scholars concerned to study Newton, can determine its content. While reading will not exhaust the manuscript, one reading is likely to exhaust any interest in it if my guess at its contents is correct.

Newton's Marvelous Years of Discovery and Their Aftermath: Myth versus Manuscript

In the beginning of the year 1665 1 found the Method of approximating series & the Rule for reducing any dignity of any Binomial into such a series. The same year in May I found the method of Tangents . . . , & in November had the direct method of fluxions & the next year in January had the Theory of Colours & in May following I had entrance into ye inverse method of fluxions. And the same year I began to think of gravity extending to ye orb of the Moon & (having found out how to estimate the force with wcl globe revolving within a sphere presses the surface of the sphere) from Keplers rule . . . I deduced that the forces wCl keep the Planets in their Orbs must [be] reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about wll they revolve: & thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her Orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth, & found them answer pretty nearly. All this was in the two plague years of 1665 & 1666. For in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention & minded Mathematicks & Philosophy more then at any time since.

Newton's Reply to Hooke and the Theory of Colors

I have sent you my Answers to Mr Hook 8c P. Pardies, wch I hope will bring with ym yt satisfaction wch I promised. And as there is nothing in Mr Hooks Considerations wth wch I am not well contented, so I presume there is as little in mine wch he can excep against, since you will easily see that I have industriously avoyded ye intermixing of oblique & glancing expressions in my discourse.... Your Servant

Newton Defends His First Publication: The Newton-Lucas Correspondence

W ITH A STACCATO FLOURISH of his most trenchant style Isaac Newton brought to a close his correspondence of four years with the English Jesuits of Liege. More than a correspondence was concluded. The period of discussion and exchange initiated in 1672 by the publication of Newtons first paper on colors now ended conclusively. For the second time within a space of six years plans for a fuller publication of his work in optics were dropped. After a fiery climax of wild fury the curtain fell on one act of Newtons life, marking the beginning of a long intermission of solitude and recuperation. The correspondence of Newton and Lucas holds interest then for a number of reasons. It

The fudge factor.

Wilcox et al. (1 3 Apr., p. 185), show a convincing relation between the solar magnetic sector structure and the earths meteorological activity as indicated by vorticity at the 300-millibar level. Is it possible that this interesting correlation may in some way be related to Marksons observation (1) that there is a maximum in thunderstorm activity when the earth is at the leading edge of a negative solar structure? B. VONNEGUT Atinospheric Sciences Research Center, State University of New York, Albany 12222

Kepler's laws

The three laws of planetary motion discovered by Johannes Kepler during the early years of the seven…

President of the Royal Society

THE ROYAL SOCIETY, to which Newton had dedicated his Principia in 1687 only to ignore it steadfastly when he moved to London, stood at a low ebb during the early years of his residence in the capital city. Membership, which had reached more than two hundred in the early years of the 1670s, now scarcely numbered more than half that figure, and meetings, given over mostly to miscellaneous chitchat devoid of serious scientific interest, suggested little of the interests that had brought the society together forty years earlier. The presence of Robert Hooke, not Newtons favorite natural philosopher, may well have determined his absence from the weekly meetings. Hooke was usually there. When Newton put in one of his rare appearances to show a “new instrument contrived by him,” a sextant, which would be useful in navigation, Hooke reminded him of past antipathies by claiming that he had invented it more than thirty years before. Hookes death in March 1703 removed an obstacle and prepared the way for Newtons election as president at the next annual meeting on St. Andrews Day, 30 November. Obscurity covers the background to Newtons election. Spontaneous expressions of popular will did not govern the selection of officers of the Royal Society. In all probability, Dr. Hans Sloane, the secretary, made the prior arrangements. At the meeting on 30 November something nearly went awry. Newton was not a political leader who had only to be proposed to be elected. Only twenty-two of the thirty members present voted to place him on the council, a necessary preliminary to election as president. Once elected to the council, he still received only twenty-four votes for president.

Did Hooke Concede to Newton

(which are indeed required for the use of men or of animals), or are quite sterile, cannot be cultivated; and that which can be put under cultivation is already (in my opinion) for the most part so used; and thus for the world (unless it must change its natural course) this evil, however deplorable, is inevitable, where hunger may be still more painful: it is therefore necessary that so great a number of people will from time to time be diminished: and thus where neither pestilence nor war supervene, it is impossible in the end to escape

The achievement of Isaac Newton

Although Isaac Newtons interests were not confined to mathematical topics, neither did he embrace all learning. What seized his at tention seized it completely, to the exclusion of everything else, and his intellectual life presents itself to the historian as a succession of episodes in which Newton devoted himself utterly to the subject at hand and made himself fully its master. In no sense can we see him in the image of the universal man of the Renaissance. He remained a stranger to many arenas of experience--for example, the arts in most of their manifestations. Even what we today consider as science did not define the limits of Newtons intellectual life. We know f rom his manusc r ip t s tha t he devo ted immense amounts of time and attention to alchemy, during a period of nearly thirty years in the middle of his life when he was at the height of his powers. Newton devoted even more attention to theology also during the prime years of his life. Although passages in the General Scholium to the Principia and in the Queries attached to the Opticks argue that the structure of nature implies the existence of God, such questions were by no means the focus of his concern in theology, which centered instead on the interrelated doctrines of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. To this catalog of interests we should also add Newtons duties at the Mint, for he plunged into them with the same singleminded concentration he had given to other matters. History has not weighed these interests on the same scales that Newton used. Alchemy was already beginning to slip beyond the pale of intellectual respectability at the time Newton took it up. Newton later abandoned alchemy; it was the one pursuit of his Cambridge years that did not travel with him to London. Theology has experienced a different history from alchemy, but it has ended up as far removed from the

Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton.

Preface Acknowledgments A note about dates Abbreviations used in footnotes 1. The discovery of a new world 2. A sober, silent, thinking lad 3. The solitary scholar 4. Resolving problems by motion 5. Anni mirabiles 6. Lucasian professor 7. Publication and crisis 8. Rebellion 9. Years of silence 10. Principia 11. Revolution 12. The Mint 13. President of the Royal Society 14. The priority dispute 15. Years of decline Bibliographical essay List of illustrations Index.