Newton's Scientific Personality

Author(s): Richard S. Westfall

Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Oct. - Dec., 1987, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec.,
1987), pp. 551-570
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2709687

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 NEWTON'S SCIENTIFIC PERSONALITY

BY RICHARD S. WESTFALL

The scientific personality of Newton-can one readily think of

phrase more guaranteed to arouse a host of contradictory expectat
in the varied members of an audience? Let me begin then by attempti
to avoid misunderstanding by declaring what I intend and do not inten
to include under my title. My discussion, will not enter the doma
psychology, where Professor Manuel is master. By Newton's scien
personality I refer to the overt characteristics his career in science
played. I shall argue that we receive him as one of mankind's outstand
geniuses because the activities he performed most easily coincided
the central feature of the scientific revolution. By raising that featur
a new level of intensity, he effectively defined what the word "scienc
would henceforth mean, and he insured our perception of him as
embodiment of modern science. Other aspects of Newton's scient
personality do not look so familiar to us, however, and we have ch
largely to forget them. In his own age they were as prominent, an
necessary, as the characteristics we remember. They help us to per
the difference that separates a life of science in the seventeenth centu
from one in the twentieth.
When we look back at the scientific revolution from our vantage point
of three centuries and attempt to understand that momentous transfor-
mation of Western thought by isolating its central characteristic, the ever
greater role of mathematics and of quantitative modes of thought insis-
tently catches our eye-what Alexandre Koyre dubbed the geometri-
zation of nature. Initiated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the
geometrization of nature has proceeded with gathering momentum ever
since. To be a scientist today is to understand and to do mathematics;
such is perhaps our most distinctive legacy from the scientific revolution.
For science was not always so. Through the preceding span of more
than two thousand years, Western mankind's understanding of nature
had been shaped by the natural philosophy of Aristotle, in which quantity
was only one category and quality played the dominant role. Take as an
example a manuscript commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo composed by
Galileo from lecture notes of professors at the Jesuits' Collegio Romano
and from the treatise on astronomy of Christopher Clavius, another
professor at the Collegio.1 As a result of recent scholarship, we know

Le opere di Galileo Galilei, ed. Antonio Favaro (20 vols. in 21; Florence, 1890-
1901), I, 1-177. An English translation together with a penetrating commentary can be
found in two books by William Wallace, Galileo's Early Notebooks: The Physical Questions
(Notre Dame, 1977), and Galileo and his Sources. The Heritage of the Collegio Romano

551

Copyright 1987 by JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS, INC.

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552 RICHARD S. WESTFALL

that the commentary dates from abou

professor of mathematics at the Univ
century before the publication of the
about the manuscript, especially as a com
verbal character. One looks in vain fo
passage on the intensity of qualities the m
degree of intensity is eight. One must
him; even it was purely verbal, not a m
way of talking about intensity. I am not
the treatise, for among other things, th
tively distinguished quantity of heat f
fication that no one should disparage. I
tradition in natural philosophy radically
science, and different primarily in its n
Two separate aspects of the developm
have particular relevance to Newton. Th
matics itself. Pure mathematics is not
the seventeenth century was the most cr
the efflorescence of geometry among the
to my topic. And second, of course, th
in applying its command of mathematics
natural phenomena, which was of cou
meant by the geometrization of nature.
Historians of science tend to see New
of the scientific revolution, which they t
through a century and a half. With such
forget how recent major innovations w
undergraduate in Cambridge in 1661. In
fundamental exposition of the new an
less than twenty-five years old, and Fran
of the Latin translation, which include
ancillary treatises, the textbook from wh
the new analysis, appeared in two volum
the very year when Newton arrived a
which mathematicians applied to thei
conviction that they were recovering the
geometers had used (an analytic metho
presentation of results), and we preserve
ematicians' perception of their work by
with the second generation did the sense
tradition begin to fade and the role of

in Galileo's Science (Princeton, 1984). See also A

"The Jesuits and Galileo's Ideas of Science and
della Scienze di Firenze, 8.2 (1983), 3-68.

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 NEWTON TERCENTENARY 553

that historians of mathematics refer to two books almost coincident with

Newton's matriculation in Cambridge as the first treatises in analytic
geometry-John Wallis's De sectionibus conicis of 1655 and Jan De Witt's
Elementa curvarum, one of the pieces published in Schooten's second
edition in 1661. New techniques for calculating the areas under curves
by the use of infinitesimals developed primarily out of Cavalieri's Geo-
metria indivisibilibus, published two years before Descartes's work, in
1635. Another new device that Newton would seize with dramatic effect,
infinite series, became a prominent part of mathematics only during the
decade of the 1650s. My point is that the world of mathematics Newton
encountered as a student was new, not only to a raw undergraduate
scarcely removed from a tiny village in Lincolnshire, but to human
thought itself. Modern analysis was synonymous with mathematical in-
novation at the very time when Newton arrived in Cambridge.
But the university was not the agent that introduced Newton to the
new analysis. In 1661 mathematics did not loom large on the Cambridge
scene. Only one man there was equipped to guide a student through the
latest mathematics, Isaac Barrow. Indirectly he may have had a hand in
opening that world to Newton, for his inaugural lectures as the first
Lucasian Professor in 1664 more or less coincided with Newton's im-
mersion in the study, in so far as we can date it from his manuscr
However, although Barrow was a fellow of Trinity College, he was
(despite frequent assertions to the contrary) Newton's tutor, and the f
close contact between the two men that is documented came five y
later. By every indication Newton functioned as his own instructo
1664. Twenty years later, in writing a letter of recommendation f
young fellow of Trinity, Edward Paget, later to be mathematical mast
at Christ's Hospital in London, Newton must have had his own pers
history in mind. He assured the Governors of the Hospital that Pa
was well versed in the various branches of mathematics, "& wh i
surest character of a true Mathematicall Genius, learned these of h
owne inclination, & by his owne industry without a Teacher."2 F
years after that, Newton recalled his baptism in mathematics as he rem
inisced with John Conduitt, the husband of his niece. He had purch
a book on astrology and, being unable to cast a figure, had consu
Euclid, which at that time he found to be obvious and trifling. He w
on to other sources, according to Conduitt:

He bought Descartes' Geometry & read it by himself when he was got ov

or 3 pages he could understand no farther than he began again & got 3 o
pages farther till he came to another difficult place, than he began agai

2 Newton to the Governors of Christ's Hospital, 3 April 1682; The Correspond

of Isaac Newton, ed. H. W. Turnbull et al (7 vols.; Cambridge, 1959-77), II, 375.

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 554 RICHARD S. WESTFALL

advanced farther & continued so doing till he

without having the least light or instruction

One gropes for the proper simile. What w

mathematics was to Newton, the element
out effort. He was always a man of passio
himself utterly to whatever subject ha
was mathematics; during the following
found much time free for anything else.
The history of mathematics is a dif
merely describe the results of Newton's s
they are necessary to my theme.4 Som
into the second Latin edition of Descart
addenda, and into Schooten's Miscellani
lis's Arithmetica infinitorum. The manusc
so that we can follow him step by step
did not so much learn as absorb the entire achievement of seventeenth-
century mathematics, and his reading notes began to transform themselves
into original investigations. Early analysts had established procedures to
draw tangents to curves at given points and to calculate the area under
curves, analogous to what we today call differentiation and integration.
Newton's first independent achievement was to expand the equations of
certain curves that were not amenable to existing procedures of "inte-
gration" into infinite series that could be "integrated" term by term.
Toward the end of 1665, in a context that treated curves as the paths of
moving points, Newton began to recognize that the two operations, "dif-
ferentiation" and "integration," were the inverse of each other, an insight
known today as the fundamental theorem of the calculus. In October
1666, after an interlude, he composed a definitive essay titled only by an
introductory sentence: "To resolve Problems by Motion these following
Propositions are sufficient. "5 What Newton, drawing upon his concept
of a moving point, would call his method of fluxions and what we today
call the calculus had been born. He had graduated a Bachelor of Arts
less than six months earlier.
As far as we can tell from the manuscript record, already a year
before the tract of October 1666 Newton had interrupted his single-
minded attention to mathematics when he believed that he had effectively
solved the problems that had set him in motion in 1664. Apparently, he
had attended to mathematics only for one brief week during the inter-

3 Conduitt's memorandum of a conversation on 31 Aug. 1726; King's College, Cam-

bridge, Keynes MS 130.10, f. 2v.
4 For Newton's mathematics, the most authoritative account is found in the intro-
ductory essays and the notes of D. T. Whiteside in his edition of The Mathematical
Papers of Isaac Newton (8 vols.; Cambridge, 1967-80).
5 Ibid., I, 400-448.

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 NEWTON TERCENTENARY 555

vening year, and after the composition of t

make even a gesture toward the discipline
Indeed, though he would undertake origin
in several branches of mathematics (such
terpolation theory, and projective geome
subject never again ignited his spirit in t
external stimuli were required to turn him
those occasions became less and less frequ
"No old Men," he remarked, "(exceptin
ticks. "6
To understand Newton's scientific personality, however, it is necessary
to realize that he retained his unparalleled capacity in mathematics until
he was a very old man himself. One example is well known but bears
repetition. Early in 1697, Johann Bernoulli issued a pair of challenge
problems. A challenge problem was a common device at the time. A
mathematician solved a difficult problem; convinced that others could
not solve it, he published the problem as a challenge to other mathe-
maticians, with the intention of revealing his solution after everyone else
had failed, and thus of demonstrating his prowess. Bernoulli had pub-
lished one of the problems six months earlier and had received no sat-
isfactory solution, although Leibniz, who was Bernoulli's close ally in
mathematics, claimed that he had one. Now Leibniz asked Bernoulli to
renew the public challenge; and in accepting the request, Bernoulli added
a second problem to the first. It is clear that both men had Newton
primarily in mind. By 1697 the first hints of the priority dispute were
in the air. Newton was feeling aggrieved that Leibniz had said nothing
about their correspondence when he began to publish his calculus in
1684. Newton had begun to mutter his grievance to his young epigoni,
who relayed it on to mathematicians on the continent, and in 1693 he
had let John Wallis publish a short exposition of the fluxional method
that made explicit references to the early correspondence with Leibniz.
Bernoulli and Leibniz understood that they were being challenged, and
they wanted to demonstrate the superiority of the method they shared
to the largely unrevealed one Newton claimed to have developed. Thus
Bernoulli's wording of the challenge spoke disparagingly of some math-
ematician's putative method, and to insure that the challenge not be
overlooked he sent a personal copy of it to Newton. In 1697 Newton
was fifty-four years old. He had abandoned academic life for a bureau-
cratic position in London. He had committed himself wholly to the hectic
demands of the great recoinage then in full swing. On 29 January he
returned home from a demanding day at the Mint to find the challenge.
On the morning of 30 January he addressed a letter containing the

6 William Whiston, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston (London,
1749), 315-16.

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556 RICHARD S. WESTFALL

solutions to both problems to Charles Mo

Society. Not long thereafter Bernoulli re
London with the solutions. Disabused on
edged that he recognized the author-in
lion is recognized from his print."7
The second example, from 1712, fifte
Bernoulli and the priority dispute, which h
Newton was completing the second edition
informed that Bernoulli had an objection
in Book II. One would like to know mor
Newton was not ordinarily receptive to sug
but on this occasion he accepted the obje
but an obvious blunder; it had escaped th
ticians as Huygens and Leibniz. Indeed th
who solved the problem by a different a
that Newton's result was mistaken. Berno
objection had been communicated to New
priority dispute, he wanted to see the er
he could argue from it that Newton did no
Newton's last minute correction did not
course, for the time in dispute was the 1
to the error in edition one to mount the
notice has nothing to do with the battle ov
fact that a man only two months shy of se
locate and correct an error in mathemat
mathematicians in the world had not caug
Although a thriving discipline of mat
necessary condition for the geometrization
to seventeenth-century mathematics but
tative natural science that employed mat
arrived at mathematical laws. Astronomy o
a science, and among the terrestrial scien
in that direction. It remained for the sci
transport geometry from the heavens to
matical physics.
When Newton enrolled in Cambridge, t
science of nature was no more an establi
analysis was in mathematics. The comme
composed only seventy years earlier was
natural philosophy as it existed before th
early decades of the new century, the sa

7 See the full exposition with all of the relevant m

VIII, 3-10, 72-91.
Ibid., VIII, 48-58, 312-419.

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 NEWTON TERCENTENARY 557

mathematical science of terrestrial motion, a

(in his optics), Beeckman, Harriot, and De
questions in physics in analogous terms. I
obvious that the future of physics lay in
mathematical approach had so far yielded
law of uniformly accelerated motion (if his
relating time, distance, velocity, and accel
"law") and the sine law of refraction. The
1642, the other in 1637. Boyle's Law did n
Christiaan Huygens had extended Galileo's
tion into the analysis of impact and of cir
print could have informed Newton of Huy
here, in other words, is not an established p
was initiated but a new program which a
enterprise harmonious with his own spirit an
program was not synonymous with mathe
to scientists at ease with mathematics, but
expertise required was elementary. We are dea
approach to nature and to natural phenom
by "Newton's scientific personality."
About 1665, as he was reading the recent
lation of Galileo's Dialogue, Newton encou
objections against the Copernican assertion
its axis. As we know by mud flung from
securely attached are thrown off of rota
observe any such thing on the earth, it can
the new program in physics recognized that
to quantitative terms and answered definit
so in the passage Newton read, but his arg
had converted the problem into a question in
independent of empirical measurements. I
objection immediately as a problem in a trul
he would need to analyse the centrifugal
motion in terms of velocity and radius and
measured size and rotation of the earth.9
measure the tendency that all terrestrial b
the center of the earth. If the second quantit
bodies would not be thrown off a rotating e
be demolished.
We have the manuscript, known as the Vellum Manuscript because

9Huygens coined the phrase "centrifugal force," which Newton did not know in
1666. However, he used other expressions that were strictly synonymous with centrifugal
force; for simplicity I will use Huygens's phrase, which is more familiar to modern
readers.

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558 RICHARD S. WESTFALL

it was written on the back of a lease for

owned, in which Newton attacked the p
conception of centrifugal force, but re
and elsewhere carried out an analysis that
measure Huygens had found.'1 That ana
discussion of Newton's scientific personal
ment of circular motion preceded Newt
Newton's perception that the force associ
be reduced to calculation and his success i
of the scientific personality I am seek
Manuscript Newton then employed his
to calculate the centrifugal acceleration
earth, and he concluded that the measure
150 times as great.
This is only half of the Vellum Manu
a more remarkable demonstration of the
physics. The measure Newton was using
came from Galileo's book. Newton now
of circular motion which enabled him
supplied him with a tool to measure the a
It led to the conclusion that conical pen
revolve with the same period, and it al
trifugal force of the bob with its gravity
uniformly in its circle is an ideal fiction,
a conical pendulum has the same perio
length equals the vertical height of th
measure the period of a simple pendulum
conical pendulum, calculate the bob's cent
at the equal acceleration of gravity.
It is important to recall that Newton
year beyond his Bachelor's degree and
program to reduce physical problems to q
that was by no means the established p
perfectly with the young man's natura
notice, too, the terms of the problem. Wi
that measures time. Before it could measu
to calibrate it with the accepted units of

10 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS, 395

a photographic reproduction and an analysis of it
46-54, and in John Herivel, Background to New
" In the notebook that he labelled the Waste B
Add. MS 4004, f. 1; published in ibid., 129-32. T
to the one we employ in mechanics to calculate
conceptual context, which spoke of centrifugal rath
12 See his analysis in the Waste Book; ibid., 131

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 NEWTON TERCENTENARY 559

motions of the heavens; that is, the proble

of a pendulum that oscillated in some given
also done this a few years earlier, but in 1
the fact. The only "equipment" available to
ment of the sun and his own expertise in
to do was to measure the quantity of one o
of nature, a sine qua non of a mathematic
The Vellum Manuscript does not supply
ton's procedure. From the necessities of the
the sun as his time piece. The manuscr
7/54 = 56/x (with the calculation that x
= 432/y (with the calculation that y th
manuscript informs us, was the number o
is, seven units of some sort corresponded
those seven units, taken together, contained
completed 21 swings in 6 of the smaller
completed 1512 swings in an hour. Beyond
on how Newton could accurately have measur
(corresponding to six of the smaller units)
small variations of his basic device, Newto
periods of two pendulums: a pendulum 56
2.393 seconds; one 60.5 inches long has a
pirical accuracy is the indispensable condition
science, and it is remarkable that Newton's o
one percent of the values we calculate tod
gravity. Working in the opposite directio
body falls 16.25 feet from rest in one sec
almost exactly one percent higher than the o
with a body of solidly established data. W
measurement, he was not in the position o
who knows what answer he should get in
takes care to do so. The closest thing to an
measurement from which Newton began,
young man confidently wrote down radic
creasing it by one hundred percent. (Incid
the objection to the Copernican system; th
concluded, is about 300 times greater than
arising from the earth's rotation.) The me
ercise in quantitative physics.
Within a few months of the time when
Newton with one problem in physics, Robe
fronted him with another. Hooke had observ
sheets of mica, and the scoria of metals, t
would call thin transparent films. He had of
in terms of a clumsy, quasi-interference m

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 560 RICHARD S. WESTFALL

cussed them as a periodic phenomenon

did not know how to measure the thicknesses of the films that corre-
sponded to given colors.13 Newton saw at once how he could do so.
Using a lens whose radius of curvature was 25 inches, he pressed it down
on a flat sheet of glass, confining a film of air between the lens and the
sheet. With a source of light above him, he looked down on his apparatus
and saw the pattern of concentric circles still known as Newton's rings.
With a compass, he found the diameter of the fifth ring to be 1/16 of
an inch. The increasing narrowness of each successive ring away from
the center in a film whose thickness increased as the square of the radius
implied that Hooke's suggestion of periodicity was correct. Accepting it
and applying a well-known proposition in Euclid, Newton computed the
thickness of the film where the innermost ring appeared. It was 1/64,000
or .000015625 of an inch.14 In view of the parallel between Newton's and
Huygens's work on circular motion, it is fascinating to note that the same
passage in Hooke led Huygens at about the same time to think of the
same experiment, though his execution of it was less effective than New-
ton's. 5
It appears that Newton made his first measurement of the rings early
in 1666. About three or four years later he returned to them with a more
sophisticated procedure. The basic arrangement was the same-a lens of
known curvature, some sort of frame he never described that pressed the
lens against the sheet of glass and held it in position, some means to
project light down from above on the device as it lay on a horizontal
surface, a compass to measure the diameters. Realizing that the size of
the rings would be magnified by a lens with a greater radius of curvature,
he now provided himself with one that had a radius of 50 feet (or, as
he usually cited this lens, a diameter of 100 feet) and thus increased the
diameter of each ring by a factor of about five. Above all, he recognized
that the periodicity of the phenomenon was so far only an assumption.
Although he did use the new measurement to correct his original cal-
culation of the thickness of the film (it should have been, not 1/64,000,
but 1/83,000 of an inch, he now decided), his primary concern was to
establish periodicity as a fact.'6 He measured each successive dark ring

13 Robert Hooke, Micrographia (London, 1665), 47-67.

14 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 3975, 9-10.
15 Huygens dated the record of his experiment November 1665; Oeuvres completes,
Societe Hollandaise des Sciences (22 vols.; La Haye, 1888-1950), XVII, 341-48. I have
discussed the two similar experiments in "Huygens's Rings and Newton's Rings: Peri-
odicity and Seventeenth Century Optics," Ratio, 10 (1968), 64-77.
16 The manuscript from which I am quoting (Cambridge University Library, Add.
MS 3970.3, ff. 350-53v) had also a second major objective-ironically enough, to use
the phenomenon of Newton's rings to support the corpuscular conception to light. Since
that aspect of his record is not relevant here, I am omitting it. See my article, "Isaac
Newton's Coloured Circles twixt two Contiguous Glasses," Archive for the History of
the Exact Sciences, 2 (1965), 181-96, which publishes the original manuscript.

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 NEWTON TERCENTENARY 561

that separated the colored circles, squared

proposition dictated), and found that the sq
arithmetic proportion. That is, the thickness
sponded to successive dark rings increased i
is essential to understand that in Newton's c
was not a property of light itself, which he al
tiny corpuscles in motion, but a property of w
caused by the impact of the corpuscles upon th
Thus it cannot be said that the experiments
periodicity of light. They did, however, firs
confirmatory evidence, still valid today, for) t
phenomenon.
Accuracy is the essential prerequisite for a successful quantitative
physics, and Newton was not faint-hearted in the level of accuracy that
he demanded of himself. He measured the diameters of the rings in
hundredths of an inch and, not satisfied with mere hundredths, confi-
dently recorded diameters in fractions of hundredths. Thus he set down
one series of rings as 23 2, 34 3, 42 3, 49, 54 /, and 60. I recall repeating
these figures to a colleague, who responded immediately that he did not
believe the numbers. In one sense, neither do I. But yet-as in the case
of the pendulum-we are concerned here with measurements that had
no precedent. He had no standard to guide him in fudging. Nevertheless,
he arrived at results that continue to appear valid. It is true that it is
more difficult to gauge Newton's accuracy in this case. He measured the
diameters of rings, from which we can compute the thicknesses of films
and compare them to our own well-founded measurements of wave
lengths. Here a problem enters, however. None of his rings corresponded
to a single frequency and a single wave length, and within limits we can
make his results sound better or worse by our choice of the wave length
with which we compare them. There is no way to bring his results into
perfect agreement with the figures we now accept. His computed thick-
nesses are always too large, by a factor of roughly ten percent. One needs
to recall that the measurements were mankind's first empirical venture
into the microscopic realm where tiny distances dared the human imag-
ination to believe them possible. When we say that under these circum-
stances he reached results that fall within ten percent of what we now
accept, we are looking directly at what I am calling Newton's scientific
personality.
The probable source of most of his error was the radius of curvature
of a lens so large; he would have had to compute it from the focal length
of about fifty feet, which would have been difficult to determine with
precision. Where the issue was a matter of the consistency of one mea-
surement with another, so that the radius of curvature common to both
cancelled out, he may in fact have called upon those fractions of hun-
dreths. For example, he kept finding a discrepancy between sets of mea-

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 562 RICHARD S. WESTFALL

surements; the increments of the squar

the periodicity of the rings, in some se
than those in other sets. He refused to
discovered that one face of the lens (whic
scratches together") was less convex th
40 units in the squares of the diameter
hundredth of an inch in the diameter of the innermost circle and to about
two hundredths of an inch in the diameter of the sixth. "Yet many times
they imposed upon mee," he noted ruefully.
His results also consistently showed the first circle to be larger than
the theory of periodic repetition permitted. Again he refused to ignore
the fact or to allow it to stand unexamined. He noted that the weight of
the lens alone did not bring it into contact with the sheet of glass. He
had to press and to press hard to make them touch. In his own language,
he had to "crush the glasses together," and he spoke of the "violence
done to the glasses by pressure." That is, the force necessary to bring
the two pieces of glass into contact might distort them and make the
diameter of the circles larger than it would be for a perfect circle touching
a perfect plane. It was typical of Newton that he worked out variations
of his experimental arrangement that allowed him to check this hypothesis
and to conclude on the basis of solid evidence that such was the case.
Huygens confronted the identical phenomenon in his experiment;
calculated thickness for his first circle was more than twice as larg
the increment for successive circles. The anomaly, for which he had
explanation, may have been one factor in his decision not to pursue
colors in thin films further.
The features of Newton's scientific personality sketched so far, his
ability as a pure mathematician and his capacity to do quantitative phys-
ics, came together in the 1680s to define the character of the book which
is being celebrated this year. From our vantage point of three centuries,
the Principia appears as the perfect distillation of the central theme of
the scientific revolution, so that we are accustomed to look upon it as
the culmination of that intellectual transformation. With the Principia
modern science had reached maturity. As one contemplates both the
man and the book, one cannot avoid wondering whether there has ever
been more perfect harmony between the natural gifts of a man and the
temper of a program. Small wonder that the Principia became the ex-
emplar that seemed to catch the very essence of what modern science is
about.
From the perspective of mathematical science, Newton's scientific
personality looks thoroughly familiar. With our constant desire to see
the past primarily as a preparation for the present, we have singled out
those features of Newton that are most like us, and thus we hear a great
deal about Newton the master of mathematical science. This perspective
is not the only angle from which to view him, however, although we

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 NEWTON TERCENTENARY 563

have found it more convenient largely to

scientific personality that may have been
functioning as a scientist in the seventeenth
Newton was first of all a natural philos
more with understanding the structure of p
he was with the mathematical treatment of
itably, the geometrization of nature involved
application of mathematics in science. It imp
of Western mankind's conception of nature
there is no necessity that the world be s
depict. Through our nerves we perceive a
world itself, Descartes argued, consists sol
motion, particles that are qualitatively neutr
by size, shape, and motion. Out of Descartes'
century's mechanical philosophy of nature, t
within which the scientific revolution pr
leading figure of science in the seventeent
the mechanical philosophy. Newton was far
The mechanical philosophy of nature wa
ophy presented to Newton when he arrive
The universities of Europe continued to be d
philosophy that had presided over their form
tury; and Newton, like countless students of
was duly initiated into its mysteries. The no
survive; we can even identify the peripatet
we can state that his discovery of a differen
covery he recorded in the Quaestiones qu
entered in his philosophy notebook, was th
science. 7
The philosophical enquiry begun during h
tinued uninterrupted through his entire life
potheses non fingo" was in fact the most dari
revolution. He left behind an extensive se
attempted to probe the nature of reality-De
of light, the letter to Boyle of 1679 with th
aethere, a draft of a "Conclusio" to the first
was revised to be a preface and then dropp
Queries to the Opticks, the General Scholium
of the Principia, and the last significant thin
with the Quaestiones at the beginning fra
final additions to the Queries.

17 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS 3996, f

with an extensive introduction and commentary by
Newton's Undergraduate Notebook (Cambridge, 198

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564 RICHARD S. WESTFALL

Newton's lifelong philosophical enqui

to exploring the mechanical philosophy t
as an undergraduate. From the very b
philosophy that appeared to him to procl
realm and to deny the dominion of sp
speculations on reality after the Quaest
sionate attack on Cartesian philosophy
and Newton's long quest can best be descr
that would assert and ensure the primacy
cipia, something as essential to it as its
was a fundamental revision of the mec
a new category of being, forces of attract
particles of matter. In Newton's eyes, i
inclusion of forces in natural philosoph
viction that spirit is primary.
Is it possible to omit from Newton's
active philosophic concern with the natur
acterized his entire career in science? C
the average scientist of our own age. Look
articles which explore tightly defined qu
that the work fits into a general structur
the fact that our century has gone throu
in the conception of nature since the sev
was impossible for Newton and for hi
remembered not only a complete revision
in the recent past but a revision that e
repeat in his own education. Exposed in
university, each had gone through his
to embrace the new view of reality. No
losophy of nature for granted; every cont
felt compelled to assure himself that h
founded. In Newton's case the compuls
repeated the act of rebellion a second tim
then Descartes. His activity as a natu
characteristic of his scientific personality
science.
The hotly disputed question of Newton and alchemy can perhaps be
viewed in this context. The fact that Newton devoted extensive attention
to alchemy is beyond debate; he left behind a huge volume of manuscripts
that derived from the middle of his life when he was at the height of his
powers. They bracketed the Principia; from the point of view of alchemy
the Principia was an interruption of an activity that had dominated a
good half of his attention over the preceding fifteen years and would
again do so during the following decade. Yet what can be found in these
papers is not the (barely mentioned) pursuit of gold; it is rather the quest

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 NEWTON TERCENTENARY 565

in natural philosophy. The attraction of alch

have been its rejection of the materialism of
and its proffered picture of a reality in which
alchemy in the context of Newton's activity
to emphasize that every aspect of his scientifi
foreshadow the twentieth-century scientist.
If this is so of his concern with natural ph
true of another facet of Newton, his role as
the case of natural philosophy, Newton's int
private idiosyncracy but a reflection of a gene
nearly every scientist of the late seventeenth
person beyond the scientific community. The
anity stood to the rest of Western culture had
what it had been less than a hundred years b
more than a millennium before that, and perc
the problem.
Consider the early manuscript cited befo
almost exactly a century before Newton's mast
nal," Galileo noted as he considered whethe
existed from eternity, "from the ninth [book
text 17, lacks the potency of contradiction to
and this is opposed to the omnipotent power o
things must depend for their existence. "8 I
ileo's commentary, an assumption that repea
tradition of medieval scholasticism from whic
natural philosophy had to be pursued within
Christianity and that no conclusion in natu
dicted the teachings of Christianity could be
the Reverend Thomas Burnet concluded in
Earth that the Scriptural account of the cre
together by Moses in popular language to hold
people and that it could not possibly be receive
of the formation of the earth.19 Or consider th
Bellarmino, a man both of towering intellect a
who was the decisive voice early in the sev
Church's condemnation of Copernicanism b
with the overt meaning of several passages in
larmino's unshaken sense of assurance with
Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of

18 Wallace, Galileo's Early Notebooks, 53.

19 Thomas Burnet, Telluris theoria sacra (London, 168
in Paolo Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time, tr. Lydia Co
20 See for example the accounts in Giorgio de Santill
cago, 1955), 74-109, and Pietro Redondi, Galileo ereti

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566 RICHARD S. WESTFALL

1691. Ray's book followed a lengthy ser

through the second half of the century, th
of Christianity by demonstrating the exi
of nature. Ray's compulsion to add yet
erfully suggests that neither he nor ot
strations entirely convincing, and withou
that point in his conclusion. After fou
primarily at the evidence of design in
with an appeal to Pascal's wager. Sup
cannot be demonstrated. Equally his n
strated, and the atheist runs the risk
mistaken. "But on the other side, he t
there should be none, is in no Danger
possible to doubt that Western human
divide that separated one era from anot
The issues involved here, of course, go f
Even in the case of Newton, most of his
only tangentially upon his scientific work
fields of thought, all of the development
when he spoke of "the touch of cold ph
rise of modern science was the critica
century's touch of cold philosophy, an
with theological issues would be unintellig
that Robert Boyle, through a long and
ink in demonstrating and demonstrating
then, at his death, endowed a lectureship f
the same conclusion some more. Boyle
shifting under the traditional structure o
this, as did Burnet. Newton also understo
to grapple with it differed considerably
an issue that a serious scientist of the lat
avoid, and Newton's role in defining the
and Christianity was an essential feature
Although there is every reason to think
pious young man, in an age when norm
is no evidence that he devoted any lar
study until about 1670, when he was appr
suddenly he plunged into theology, which
inated his life for the following fifteen y
those scientific studies with which we associate his name. In the mid-

21 John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (7th ed
London, 1717), 403-5.
22 Basil Willey, "The Touch of Cold Philosophy," in R. F. Jones et al, The Seventeen
Century (Stanford, 1951), 369-76.

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 NEWTON TERCENTENARY 567

1680s the Principia interrupted his absorptio

he did not return to them with similar intens
the eighteenth century. From that time until
the overwhelming staple of his intellectual life
The character of his theological study is m
fact of it. From the very beginning the allied
God and the nature of Christ seized his attenti
step in theology, taken near the time when he
was to reject the full divinity of Christ and th
In theological terms, he became an arian.2
important steps that Newton ever took. His
conclusion that the dominant tradition in Ch
mistake but a deliberate fraud foisted upon
men in the fourth and fifth centuries, togeth
the reality that open preaching of arianism
cism, shaped many of the details of his subs
his years he grasped his secret to his breast, sh
and revealing it only to a tiny coterie of pr
around himself. His theological stance perv
known interpretation of the prophecies, which
entirely with foretelling what he called the
of trinitarianism. Finally, on his deathbed, New
statement from which concern with his pub
him more than fifty years; he refused the
Church.25 Alas, only his niece and her husband
Since the husband also had a public position, th
trumpet the information about, and the rumor
awaited the study of his papers in our own a
In other words, the touch of cold philosophy
and reject central aspects of received Christ
religious position more clearly than the theo
the 1680s, shortly before he turned to the Pri
of its chaotic manuscripts, Theologiae gentilis
Philosophical Origins of Gentile Theology.26

23 See primarily his theological notebook; King's Co

24 Perhaps the clearest statement of his position was
nature of Christ and his relation to God, composed ap
The Jewish National and University Library, Jerusale
his comments on a passage in Lactantius; ibid., ff. 173
full in my biography of Newton, Never at Rest (Camb
25 Recorded by John Conduitt, the husband of Newt
collected for a life of Newton; Keynes MSS 130.6, Boo
26 The primary manuscript of the Origines is in the
Library, Jerusalem, Yahuda MS 16.2. The rest of Ya
with the Origines; Yahuda MS 17 contains rougher m

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 568 RICHARD S. WESTFALL

sketch of human history drawn from

near eastern peoples, which Newton wa
ollection of their origins, which were als
deluge figured prominently in his accoun
the one family that survived it. Never
Christian scholarship on which he drew,
did not center on the Bible and the J
historical books of the Old Testament,
divinely inspired.27 Rather they embodie
Jewish people, one of the sources from
mankind but no more authoritative tha
which Newton used to fill in areas on which the Jewish records were
silent and to correct their account when necessary.
The sketch of human history provided the setting for Newton's real
interest, the religious history of mankind. The "gentile theology" of hi
title referred to a religion of twelve gods that originated in Egypt i
very early age and spread from Egypt to all of the ancient peoples, who
worshipped the same gods under different names. Gentile theology w
the incarnation of superstition and idolatry, for the twelve gods were t
deified ancestors of mankind, Noah, and his children and grandchildren
to use the names familiar to a Christian audience, though each of th
ancient peoples had had its own names for them. The religion of twe
gods was not the original religion of mankind, however, for Noah a
his children had worshipped the one true God, the creator of the world
Because mankind is prone to superstition and idolatry, they corrup
the original pure religion. God sent a prophet, Moses, to restore it amon
a single people, the Jews. Again it was corrupted into idolatry. Repeated
God sent prophets to recall his people; repeatedly they corrupted
true religion anew. Despairing at last of the Jews, God sent Jesus, t
latest in the series of prophets, to the gentiles. The Great Apostacy
the fourth century, the triumph of trinitarianism, only repeated earlie
apostacies in its idolatrous worship of a man as God.
It would be easy to let the prominence given to Noah and his childre
mislead one in the assessment of the Origines. Those quaintly famil
references, reminiscent of an earlier age when no one doubted that even
the historical books of the Bible were divinely revealed and literally tru

are other bits and fragments scattered through the Newton manuscripts. The sole
cussion of this important manuscript, which has only recently been identified among
theological papers, which themselves have only recently become available to scholars,
my article, "Isaac Newton's Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae," in W. Warr
Wagar (ed.), The Secular Mind (New York, 1982), 15-34.
27 Isaac Newton, Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of
John (London, 1733), 4-13. Cf. The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (Londo
1728), 357-58. Frank Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian (Cambridge, Mass., 1963),
60.

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 NEWTON TERCENTENARY 569

concealed a radical thrust completely alien to t

treated the historical books of the Old Testament as human documents
to be used in concert with other human documents. It reduced the comin
of Christ from the epochal event of human history to one in a series of
attempts to purge idolatry and restore the true worship of God. Abo
all, it gave central importance to the concept of an original pure religion
to which Christian revelation added nothing whatever. Chapter Eleve
of the Origines was projected to examine "What the true religion of the
children of Noah was before it began to be corrupted by the worship
false Gods. And that the Christian religion was not more true and di
not become less corrupted."28 At the time Newton did not write Chapter
Eleven. One of the principal theological concerns of his old age was th
exposition of the original true religion of the children of Noah. It was a
religion without a complex theology that consisted of two precepts, t
love God and to love one's neighbor.29 Newton never filled in much detai
concerning the second precept. As for the first, he made it abundant
clear, both in the Origines and later, that mankind learns to recogni
the existence of God and our duties toward Him from the study of th
creation. Here is the essence of the new definition of the relation between
science and Christianity. Long before Newton's death more radical spirits
would carry the redefinition far beyond anything he was ever ready to
accept. Nevertheless, the immense expenditure of time and attention that
Newton devoted to the problem justifies the contention that this endeavor
was a central aspect of his scientific personality.
The three characteristics singled out here to describe the scientific
personality of Newton help us to appreciate the precise nature of the
scientific revolution and of his position in it. The first, his natural incli-
nation toward the mathematization of nature, relates directly to what is
virtually the defining trait of modern science. Modern scientists imme-
diately recognize Newton as one of themselves because he did so well
what modern science has continued to do. One would scarcely want to
argue that the other two characteristics discussed here reflect the normal
activities of a twentieth-century scientist. Although we stand less than
half a century removed from a profound revision of the scientific con-
ception of nature, in a typical issue of any scientific journal today one
can scarcely find a reference to the concerns with natural philosophy
that loomed so large in Newton's life. The great majority of scientists

28 Yahuda MS 16.2, f. 45v.

29 See especially the manuscript "Irenicum" (of which many drafts exist in Keynes
MS 3 and at various places in the Yahuda MSS.) and "A short schem of the true
Religion" (Keynes MS 7). Both of these manuscripts were published by Herbert Mc-
Lachlan in Isaac Newton, Theological Manuscripts (Liverpool, 1950). His rendition of
"Irenicum" is badly misleading, however. It is a composite that McLachlan put together
from the various drafts, and it fails to convey what appears to me to be the true thrust
of the essay.

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570 RICHARD S. WESTFALL

are convinced that their work on indi

established understanding of nature a
anxiety on that score they are anxious
tasks. Theological concerns have dropp
the seventeenth century this was not p
involved at once the establishment of a n
the complete revision of the conception
of the relation of science to Christian
culminating figure of that momentous tr
precisely because he comprehended its f
inently in all of its major dimensions.

Indiana University.

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