Customer Reviews

Newton (Ackroyd's Brief Lives)

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This is a marvelous book. It both explains Newton's development as a human being and as one of the greatest scientific thinkers and experimenters of his or any era. Carefully and clearly written, it is a total success. I enjoyed it far more than James Gleick's NEWTON, perhaps because Ackroyd is so good at explaining what he knows how to explain and avoiding what he does not know how to explain. As he notes, neither Newton nor anyone else in his era could explain gravity -- but Newton was able to explain the laws governing gravity and thus provide a foundation for later scientists, notably Einstein, to go further and explain gravity. Ackroyd is also wonderfully skilled at explaining links between Newton's occult studies and his scientific studies. All in all, a must read for anyone who wants to understand a pivotal thinker.

Isaac Newton is someone I've been curious about since grade school when some teacher gave me the impression that he discovered gravity when an apple fell on his head. Even then, that didn't make much sense to me--people must have been aware of gravity since the first caveman dropped a rock on his foot--and I was pleased to learn through Peter Ackroyd's wonderful book that the apple incident probably never happened. What Newton did do through careful observation and applied mathematics was to prove the existence of universal gravity and show the laws which governed it. There is much more that Newton accomplished of course: His work on optics was seminal. His three laws of motion are still quoted in physics' classes. And his great book on the principles of mathematics was a wonder of his age.

All of this, Ackroyd explains in a conversational style that even someone like myself who has trouble adding up a supermarket bill can understand. But Ackroyd does not neglect Newton's human side. He was not, in many ways, a very nice person: A control freak who was always ready to take disagreement personally, he had few real friends and often broke up with those he did have. His life-long passion for alchemy and his belief in the Arian heresy made this already secretive man even more secretive.

Ackroyd's book is short, sweet and not annotated. It is surely not for scholars. But for those who want to pay a brief visit to a scientific genius in the company of a wise and entertaining guide could do far worse than to read this book.

The audience for this book is really quite large. Adult readers who know little of Newton and young readers interested in a manageable first encounter will find Peter Ackroyd's text perfectly suited to their needs. Let me mention a few items from this book that caught my attention. First, Newton from a young age appeared to be gifted mechanically; not "mechanics" as an abstraction, but the actual business of building and constructing devices. Second, it would have been next to impossible to predict greatness from Newton based on his family line. Third, Newton appears to have suffered a mental breakdown of sorts at one point in his life. Fourth, Newton worked to balance two, somewhat contradictory impulses: he was reclusive and, at the same time, sought public respect. Finally, even an intellect of Newton's stature could not resist becoming mired in petty quarrels, as witnessed by his running confrontations with the Royal Astronomer. Ackroyd's Newton offers a nice return to readers willing to invest a small amount of time.

This is the third in the series of "Brief Lives" written by Peter Ackroyd, the distinguished author of "London: The Biography" and "Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination." It is one of the new compact but thorough book treatments that have recently become popular (it runs a mere 170 small pages, not including index). I have marveled in past Amazon reviews at these concise books how much information a skilled and knowledgeable author can pack into a brief space, and this book is no exception. Ackroyd covers all of Newton's life (1642-1727). It is the perfect book for folks like me that have heard a lot about Newton, but are not inclined to want to read one of the longer biographies now available (e.g., that by James Gleick). The author wisely chooses not to probe too deeply into Sir Isaac's mathematical and scientific accomplishments, which is perfect for the general reader, but he offers enough insight so that the reader is aware generally of what Newton is up to and why he is such a giant in the history of science and enlightenment. His invention of calculus, study of optics, celestial mechanics, gravity and so much more are all concisely covered. One learns all sorts of interesting things about Newton, who certainly was not a conventional academic: his interests in alchemy; astrology; and arcane religious concepts to name just a few. Interestingly, Newton spent the bulk of his career not as an academic but as Warden of the Mint, which allowed him to amass quite an estate. If this be an example of "knowledge in a nutshell," let it be: it accomplishes it purpose superbly.

Eventually humans understood that there were physical laws that governed the universe, and that these laws could be made mathematically precise and could be verified. No one person enabled this understanding more than Isaac Newton, who obsessively tracked down laws of motion, gravity, optics, and pure mathematics. Since his death almost three hundred years ago, there have been many biographies attempting the impossible task of explaining Newton's unparalleled genius. In _Newton_ (Nan A. Talese), Peter Ackroyd has made no such attempt. For one thing, his book is part of his "Brief Lives" series (Chaucer and Turner have gone before), and it is a small volume. For another, Ackroyd has not described many of Newton's scientific achievements in detail; the account of his _Principia Mathematica_ is almost cursory. But the brevity of the volume is actually one of its strengths. We aren't going to understand genius, but we can understand some of the personality, and Ackroyd has done a wonderful job in describing what sort of a person Newton was. Of necessity, the portrait is unpleasant. Newton was among the most unlikeable of geniuses, but it might well be that if he had been less arrogant and selfish, he might have accomplished less.

An uncle saved Newton from being a farmer, enabling him to continue schooling and go to Cambridge. Ironically, he became a professor at Trinity College, while his religious studies led him to abhor the concept of the Trinity. He was certain that the priests and bishops who preached a Trinity were practicing idolatry. He was particularly interested in biblical chronology and prophecy, working out a date for creation half a century later than the famous 2004 BC of Bishop Ussher, and attempting precise calculation of the date of Jesus's return to Earth. He knew from his studies of the Book of Revelation that the Catholic Church was the Antichrist therein. Newton's other secret study, also outlasting his physics and mathematics, was his alchemy. He had a huge library of occult alchemical texts and he spent days and nights in his lab, forgetting to sleep or eat as he fired up experiments that had to go for weeks at a time. Ackroyd is surely right, however, when he explains that in his obsessive digging into alchemical or scriptural matters, Newton was using the same frame of mind that stood him in good stead in the research that made him famous. The enormous idea that there were three laws of motion, for instance, and that they were universal and applied, as he wrote in 1687, "everywhere to immense distances" is still breathtaking. Likewise, the idea that an apple falls and that the Moon goes around the Earth, and both are expressions of one universal force, is so counterintuitive that it compels admiration for the mind that could unite the two. By the way, distrust the legend that an apple bonked him on the head and he had an immediate epiphany of how gravity worked. Newton himself instigated the story, but no one knows if it is true, because he told four separate versions to four separate people. It is clear, however, that whatever inspiration the apple gave him, there was a long period of contemplation and calculation before he established the universality of gravity.

It was in only a few years of his mid-twenties that he explained gravity, demonstrated that white light was a blend of rainbow colors, invented the calculus, and made one of the first reflecting telescopes. The rest of his years he was doing his alchemy and scriptural researches, and more practically, he was Warden of the Royal Mint. He was in all his capacities an almost thoroughly dislikeable man. He was uninterested in art, literature, music, or women, and because of our times it must be specified that his sexual interest in men is mere undocumented speculation. As a founder of science, he knew the value of experimentation and was a genius at it, but he was furious if someone implied that another experiment had shown a contrary result. He was petty, ruthless, and vindictive. His famous catfight with Leibnitz over who invented calculus was childish (matched, it must be said, by childishness on Leibnitz's side), but it was representative of how he got along with anyone who crossed him. He had few friends, and when he presided over meetings of the Royal Society, anyone who attempted a witticism or who laughed was asked to leave the room. He seldom laughed himself; an assistant of years said Newton laughed exactly once, when he was asked what the use was of studying Euclid. Perhaps you just had to be there; Ackroyd writes, "The exact meaning of this laugh is not exactly clear." Newton was an astonishing figure, gigantic in his accomplishments and his follies, and Ackroyd's model biography shows both sides well.

I love the sceinces but more important are the men behind their ideas and thought processes. This book very much focuses on this aspect, the man Sir Issac Newton. I actually wished there had been more information but it did move along quickly and was well written. I've felt I got to know him better.

I recently read James Gleick's equally brief Isaac Newton before coming across Ackroyd's book. Given Ackryod's exceptional reputation as a biographer, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two. I prefer Geick's approach - more poetic at the expense of keeping both feet on the ground, as Ackroyd does - but Ackroyd's rates five stars for its precise construction and sharp portrait.