In the dark, early hours of Christmas Day, 1642, two women dashed from a
farmhouse in England. They hurried over moonlit fields gleaming with frost,
and looked about warily. The civil war had begun, and night raiders roamed
about. On reaching a neighbouring manor, they roused a Lady Packenham. They
needed medicine for a gravely ill baby born that night. One of the women
lamented "How can such a child accomplish anything in the world? His father
died two months ago, his mother is poor, we are in wartime and a harsh winter."
The other replied "But he is a Christmas baby! Surely Providence holds something
special for him." Dashing home to the farm, they gave the sick baby his
medicine. The family prayed. Even so, many neighbours thought he would die.
But baby Isaac Newton managed to pull through that first Christmas Day,
and soon he grew in strength.
So begins John Hudson Tiner's gripping biography, written for young people, of the inventor and scientist often described as the greatest genius that ever existed. For several reasons, I found this extraordinary story of Newton's life deeply moving. Firstly, he had astonishing creativity and eagerness to explore nature, even as a child. Secondly, the Bible provided the driving force to his thinking, because he believed that God had designed order into the universe, describable by simple laws. Although he is regarded as not accepting the doctrine of the Trinity, the centrality of the Scriptures to his life and work is far different to the arid, philosophical unitarianism of today. Thirdly, this in turn motivated his revolutionary experiments, disproving erroneous ancient writings which enshrouded the teaching at Cambridge and prevented any real progress in science.
Even as a young child, Isaac showed phenomenal ability, making toys such as windmills and carts with moving parts. In one windmill, he hooked up a mouse to turn grinding stones, turning wheat into flour. It made me wonder if the best creativity might not be cultivated in today's children by giving them so many ready-made toys. He made a lantern and flew it in a kite at night, terrifying neighbours who thought it was a real comet forboding doom. And during a terrible storm that uprooted trees and destroyed buildings, his mother went out to find Isaac merrily jumping into the wind to measure its force by how far it blew him in the air!
Initially Isaac was a dismal schoolchild, preferring his attic boarding room, where he found books on astronomy, botany, chemistry and anatomy far more inspiring. But one day provocation from a school bully provided the spur for him to shine academically. Soon he was top of the whole school. Meanwhile, a family death required him to return home to run the farm. But try as he might, farming suffered: sheep strayed from the meadows while Isaac's mind was far away, deep in mathematical problems. Eventually, all his relatives conceded that Isaac was better suited to study. As his Uncle William remarked, "Providence has made Isaac to be a scholar."
So Isaac obtained a place at the University of Cambridge. Initially there, he paid for his lodging by doing chores and serving the professors their meals. It is here that the effects of the Scriptures on Isaac's life unfolds. He wrote home, describing the way sports and social life had become more important than studies, and of how Charles II's loose morals had spread to Cambridge. He yearned for the University to "get back to the business of training students in the study of scripture - which is man's proper study." He was also dismayed at the lectures, where they were merely told of the ancient Greeks: thus "Ptolemy said this" or "Aristotle said that." If an experiment did not accord with these ancient writings, the lecturers deemed the observations to be in error. He lamented that these were the writings of pagans who had not known the holy Scriptures.
At this point it appears that God was poised to honour Isaac's plight, by bringing to Cambridge a Bible-centred brilliant mathematician, scientist and preacher, Dr. Barrow, who became Isaac's chief mentor and friend. On graduation, Isaac was forced to flee as the Great Plague struck the land. Back at the farm, his mother now encouraged him to rest and study. He set himself up with a study table in the orchard. It was here that he was inspired to invent the binomial theorem. Then he tackled gravity. According to Tiner, an apple falling on his table really did trigger his ideas! As he held the apple, he noticed beyond it the moon rising. Until then the motions of the heavenly bodies were not thought to abide by laws on earth. Isaac thought otherwise. "Providence puts everything in order, both on earth and in the heavens."
After the plague, Isaac returned to Cambridge, gained a Fellowship there, and set himself to conducting experiments with light. Aristotle had claimed that sunlight was "pure", containing no colours. Isaac, however, created a spectrum from sunlight shining through a prism, and by placing a second prism in front of this spectrum he restored the white light. Aristotle was wrong! But to Isaac's bewilderment, when his research was published, scientists of his day were highly critical, because of either envy or failure to conduct the experiments themselves, or because they preferred the writings of the ancients. Yet Isaac had friends who encouraged him to continue, recognising his true genius. And, as the years passed, his ideas did become firmly accepted.
He decided to exploit his optics discoveries by designing a telescope. The big lens telescopes of his day were clumsy and warped easily. They also suffered from a ring of colours around all the objects viewed, which Isaac corrected by replacing the lenses with mirrors. He made other innovations to it, and set to work to build it himself, remarking "If I waited for other people to make things for me, I would never get anything done!... The mind grows tired when not balanced by honest labour with the hands." He had to experiment to find the optimum blend of metals that would allow the main mirror to be polished to the highest shine. When he had finished the telescope, it was only 6 inches long and gave a clear, sharp view of the planets. Soon King Charles II was admiring it, along with the most noted scientists in the land.
At only 27 years of age, he became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. Meanwhile, the problem defying scientists of his time was "gravity". The astronomer Edmund Halley (who rightly predicted the return of "Halley's comet") discovered that Isaac had "solved" the problem by describing gravity using the inverse square law. But, unconcerned for fame, Isaac had thrown this work into a drawer and forgotten about it. Halley urged Isaac to write the mathematical proof for the law, and to publish his other discoveries. Yet again his critics made life hard, but his friends urged him on. Isaac set to work on his masterpiece 3 - volume "Mathematical principles of Natural Philosophy" or the "Principia", with Halley kindly organising the publication details and printing costs. It was a great success, and Newton's fame spread worldwide. Soon, the poet Alexander Pope was to write "Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in nights: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light".
Alarming changes befell Cambridge when James II succeeded Charles II on the throne. Wanting to make the country Catholic, he planned to pack the University with Catholic Fellows, even though they lacked the qualifications. The University refused the King's commands. So the King charged the University with contempt and summoned 8 of the University officials before the High Court. Isaac was one of the 8. They were to face one of the most notorious, unpleasant men of all time, Judge Jeffries. They feared for their lives, knowing that Jeffries had just ordered 300 men to be hanged. But it was Isaac who urged the men to stand firm, and to prepare their argument in writing. When the trial came, Jeffries realised they had a strong legal case, and that he was powerless to oppose them. Isaac had saved the day!
Isaac's wider exploits included periods as a Member of Parliament and as warden of the mint, during which time he radically improved the country's poor coinage system. He was held in great honour, receiving the country's first knighthood for scientific discovery rather than for military prowess. When he died, he was laid at Westminster Abbey, in a burial plot reserved for a king.
There is a message in all this for us today. There continue to be unhelpful prevailing dogmas in science, supported by an established group which is very successful at resisting all alternatives. A clear example is evolution, particularly by natural selection: the creation alternative is scorned. But we can take heart from Isaac Newton. His firm belief in the truth of his observations bore fruit in the end and he triumphed over his opposition. Moreover, Isaac was a humble, unassuming man unconcerned to vaunt himself but with a passion for Scripture that provided the foundation and motivation for his exploration of science. Scientists today ought to acknowledge how much we are indebted to men like Newton, who hauled science out of the dark ages' stagnation of magic, superstition, and Greek error. Instead their roots in the Bible enabled them to recognise the world and the universe to be orderly, governed by laws that could and should be studied by experiment. With such foundations we can expect to discover more of the order and beauty of God's handiwork.
Sheena E.B. Tyler (December 1996)
Isaac Newton by Frank Tiner (1988) is published by Mott Media
