Customer Reviews

Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

David Berlinski has created a marvelous intellectual history focusing on the progression of Newton's epic breakthrough thinking. He does this in a way that is totally accessible to those who are phobic about mathematics. The explanations are achieved through a skillful combination of simple sentences, symbols, pictures, and diagrams. The presentation is so effective that most readers will find their understanding of important mathematical and scientific principles greatly improved. This is a great book!

Newton was a seminal thinker in the areas of mathematics (developing calculus), physics (with his propositions about gravity and motion), and optics (with his conceptualization of light as being comprised of particles moving in parallel). He also did much work in theology and alchemy, which are recounted here.

A key challenge for David Berlinski was presented by Newton's reticence. He was not a very social person, and wrote almost nothing about how he developed his ideas. Berlinksi does a magnificent job of locating and sharing hints and clues about the bases of these intuitive leaps. This result is enhanced by considering the continuing themes in Newton's thinking, and assuming a connection to his intuition. I suspect that Berlinski is right in connecting the dots that way, but we will never know for sure.

The centerpiece of our story turns out to be the tangent to a curve. From that humble beginning, most of our modern understanding of how physical motion takes place follows.

I also enjoyed better understanding how Newton's thinking was aided by the careful observations and conclusions of Kepler.

If the history of science were always this entertaining, this subject would be one of the most popular majors in colleges.

As Berlinksi tells us in the beginning his purpose in the book is "to offer a sense of the man without specifying in details his . . . activities." This allows us to see the other sides of Newton, but without spending too much time on them. Newton was not perfect. We get glimpses of places where he wasted his time, such as his unsuccessful experiments with alchemy. We also see his flirtations and infatuations. Beyond that, we see what could enrage him, and how he took his revenge. This fleshing out of the whole man makes the scientific history all the more compelling.

If you liked David Berlinski's book, The Birth of the Algorithm, you will probably like this one even better. The asides are much more contained and relevant here.

For those who want a little more math with their scientific history, Berlinski has provided supplementary materials that are quite entertaining.

After you have finished enjoying this wonderful romp, I suggest that you think about where everyday events are unexplained in your life. For example, why do the people you meet with act the way they do? Why is progress slow in many areas, and rapid in others? By looking for connections, you, too, may isolate fundamental principles that can expand our own appreciation as a species of how we achieve understanding. The mysteries of how to improve thinking are still mostly unsolved, and many are relatively unexplored. Perhaps you can be the Newton of this important "last frontier" of self-limiting progress for humans.

Think about it!

Most of us wonder about the things we see around us. "Why is grass green", "Why doesn't a ship sink?", "Why do the planets move?"
Arguably, no one has wondered more fruitfully than Isaac Newton, who produced three revolutionary ideas: gravity, calculus (concurrently with Leibniz), and the particle theory of light.

Serious math & science folks will find this book too elementary. It is also not an exhaustive biography, or a detailed treatment of Newton's ideas. This info is easy to find. Much rarer is a good synthesis view aimed at a popular audience.

For those who never studied math or science beyond college survey courses, this book is a gem. Berlinski provides a rich sense of Newton's personality and times. More importantly, he explains some of the questions Newton asked, how he answered them, and the implications of some of those answers. Berlinski does this in a manner that is engaging without seeming weighty or tedious.

I am a lifelong learner who never finished college. I found math difficult and impenetrable because my central question, "How do I use it" was never answered. With age and experience, I found that I needed math, particularly calculus, to answer many of the practical questions I pondered. I've read a number of books that dealt with what calculus does, but never found a useful explanation of what it IS.

Berlinski shows us how calculus was made possible by Descartes' coordinate system, explores the fundamental questions that led Newton to calculus, and show us how Newton tied it all together. The real gift is that Berlinski does this in a comprehensible way,with concise illustrations and a clear, logical progression. The math is in the Appendix, for those who wish to delve deeper.

I wish the author had recommended some further reading, but he does comment on several editions of "Principia" in footnotes.

I find myself re-reading sections as I ponder the concepts. Now that's a book!

After reading the other reviews, I was eager to read this book. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed. There were three main problems.

The first was that the writing was far too cute for my taste. This was true for both the history and the math sections. The author seemed to be straining to find clever and erudite ways to say things. I assume the intention was to add color and interest to the text, but I found it cumbersome and irritating.

The second problem was that the author frequently flicked off allusions to the inner thoughts and motivations of Newton and other partipants in the story. I couldn't tell if there were any historical bases for his interpretations, or if they were just Berlinski's flights of fancy. It came across to me as gossipy and catty.

The third problem was that with all the cute writing, the book actually contained very little information. I thought it could have been tightened up to about 50 pages, and been much more readable.

The good news is that the book is a very fast read.

The title "Newton's Gift" has, of course, a dual meaning. The book is about Newton's personal gift - his intellectual powers - and his gift to all mankind through his work in Mathematics (the Calculus), Physics (working out gravitation and motion), and Optics. When I walk into Borders and see the tens of thousands of books on the shelves and realize that this still represents a small portion of the books written I think about the works that will still be in print in 300 years. Probably you could pile them up in a small stack in the middle of a small room. Newton's "Principia" and his "Optics" will certainly still be among them. I believe these are among the immortal works of humanity.

Berlinski has a wonderful knack for making the arcane both accessible and lively. He has a style that seems breezy, but is more sophisticated than that and even has a bit of a shimmer to it. There are a few careless mistakes, but they won't get in the way of the story he is telling. For example, on page 33 the circumference of the circle is labeled as time, but it is the AREA of the shaded wedges that is time. The circle is distance. The point of the diagram, I believe, is that when an orbit is closer to the center it moves faster over distance, but the area between the end points of the orbit and center is that same as the area when the orbit is further away from the center and the orbiting body is moving more slowly. But anyone paying attention, I think, would see this pretty quickly.

I call this an Ideaography because the biographical portions are both helpful and concise, but by no means comprehensive. And the book is not technical enough to be considered an explication of Newton's thought. But it is quite successful as a Cook's Tour of Newton's life and thought. It is ideal for intellectually awakening high school students or a quick introduction for college students. It is a most helpful way to get the door open for further study and investigation. There is a most wonderful "Chrestomathy" of the fundamental concepts discussed in the book and the key dates of Newton's life.

However, the book could certainly have used a reading list for further study. Yes, other important works are mentioned throughout the text, but it would have been nice to have a good source for additional reading.

But these quibbles aside, I recommend the book as a nice to read introduction to Newton and his work.

Mr. Berlinski got 2 stars for teaching a little math and dropping hints on Newton's life. He also would like to have you understand that despite Newton's ability to read religious Greek, Latin, and Hebrew biblical sources, he was 'confused' about Christianity and embraced the Arian heresy. Was this a book on Newton's gifts, or Berlinski's religious beliefs? The book is mostly filler on a few biographical tidbits. Take Berlinski's advice: read "Never at Rest" by Richard Westphall instead.

This is not a detailed biography of Newton, nor is it a "pure" technical text dealing with Newton's great accomplishments. Rather, the author takes a quick bite at the overall accomplishments of Newton- which is inventing Calculus, propounding the laws of gravitation and the particle theory of light, with Newton's life story as the frame of reference. The result is a book which is a useful source for a quick introduction to the Life, time and accomplishments of Newton, even for the average reader without any background in physics or maths. My quibbles are the author should have put effort in explaining the science of Newton, rather than getting self-involved in writing charming prose. The author's intention was to give a "sense of Newton" to the reader, at which he succeeds. But, it doesn't give a feeling a satisfaction. It is an cross between reading a story , where some physics concepts are thrown in in a broad manner and punctuated by ornate writing. Obviously, i need to read other books on Newton to know more.

Some of the "superficial" knowledge i gleaned from the book, which i quote at random are:

Newton's enlargement of the binomial theorem made use of mathematical expressions known as Infinite series, which is a series of numbers that goes on forever.

He invented Calculus (Leibiniz also has claim to this honour).

He extended the forces of gravity to the orbit of the moon.. i.e established a connection of sameness between the gravity on earth which brings a apple down to the mystery force which keeps the moon orbiting around the earth without falling into earth.

He advanced the particle theory of light, which said that light was a stream of particles moving in a straight line through space.

He elucidiated his grand ideas on the nature of gravitational forces in his masterpiece "Principia". The universe revealed by principia containts particles, forces and mathematical structures. It has three specific laws of motion, two general principles of time and space. The three laws are familiar to any high school student- the law of inertia, law of acceleration and the law of action and reaction. The second law is the mysterious one which needs further explanation.; The principles of time and space wre absolute time and absolute space i.e time and space are measurable.

Why doesn't moon crash into the earth, instead of orbiting around it?? - Newton's analysis begins with the law of inertia. The moon's natural trajectory in the sky is a straight line. It travels in a fixed velocity, because no forces are inducing acceleration in it. But, since the moon is orbiting circularly around the earth, there is a force on it which is continuously deforming it's path. Since the resulting path is circular, the force must be centripetal whose origin is at the centre of the earth. (eg: carousel). Based on the second law, the force makes the moon accelerate continuously towards the centre of the earth. It does not fall into the earth because it's natural trajectory (straight line) and the centripetal force of the gravity from the earth balance out, due to which the moon falls forever without falling into the earth. (rotates).

Newton's universal gravity law states every material object attracts every other material object, with a force that is proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of distance between them.

Note, gravity is explained for what it does, what it affects, but there is no explanation for what gravity actually is. It remains a mystery.

Regarding Newton's personal life- his spars with Robert Hookes, Leibiniz shows him in poor light - as somebody vindictive, vain and secretive. His successful stint as the Master of Mint, in a bureacractic role of crushing counterfieting which was profuse at that time, is an achievement unique in the sense that we do not often find a great scientist and Govt official in the same person! Also, another curious aspect of Newton's life was he never married and is widely considered to have lead a celibate life; and yes, the apple boink on his head is apocryphal.

Isaac Newton is the largest figure in the history of science, the author asserts. His PRINCIPIA brought mathematical physics into existence. Newton was born in 1642 and died in 1727. A posthumous child, he was born the year Galileo died. He had frightening mental powers and mechanical gifts. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1661. The curriculum was Aristotelian and Newton ignored it. He was self-taught in mathematics and natural history. He was excited by Descartes, analytic geometry. After four year at Cambridge, Newton was exiled to the countryside at Woolsthorpe for sixteen months at the time of the plague. He continued his solitary studies. The year spent in isolation was fruitful. Newton used both Kepler's laws of planetary motion and Galileo's laws of freely falling objects. Both Leibnitz and Newton discovered the leading ideas of calculus independently, but the discoveries were not quite comparable.

In 1667 Newton returned to Cambridge, spending twenty-seven year there. His passion for mathematics had exhausted itself. Newton discovered that gravity could be extended to the orb of the moon. At age twenty-seven Newton became the Lucasian professor of mathematics. In the 1670's Newton lectured on white light, (the particle theory of light). In 1670 he designed and made a small reflecting telescope. He was made a member of the Royal Society.

Hooke wrangled with Newton over his theory of color. In 1684 Newton produced ON THE MOTION OF BODIES IN AN ORBIT. Newton spent the next two years composing the PRINCIPIA. He delivered the manuscript to the Royal Society in 1687. It covers Newton's law of inertia, law of acceleration, law of action and reaction, law of absolute time, and law of absolute space. The treatise is both mathematical and physical. It explains change in the universe. Newton succeeded Hooke to the presidency of the Royal Society. THE OPTICS was published in 1704.

At the end of his life, Newton reinvented himself as a civil servant, Master of the English Mint. He sought to break the wheel of counterfeiting. The Appendix is termed a descent into detail by the author. There is also a Newton chronology and an index at the close of this engaging book.

In his book Newton's Gift - How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World David Berlinski presents us with an engaging biography of Newton. What I personally liked was the fact that Berlinski avoided the trap of many biographies that merely present names, dates and places. In this book we see the person that Newton was and how it affected his study of mathematics.One of the main reasons that one should study the history of mathematics is to appreciate the human side of its creation. Berlinski presents Newton's human side quite well.

If you are looking for a lot of detailed mathematics, you probably won't find it here. The mathematics is presented at a very readable and understandable level. This is certainly accessible to the average undergraduate math/physics major.

I recommend this book without hesitation.

Bookstore shelves sag with with biographies of desperately uninteresting pop culture icons, self obsessed tycoons, and hollow celebrities. The tedious "rich and famous". But not all biography is so empty. Berlinski, brilliant and difficult, might be the perfect examiner of Newton: "Isaac Newton is the largest figure in the history of western science, his influence both inescapable and immeasurable... Newtonian mechanics is not only the first, but the greatest of scientific theories... it embodies a combination of simplicity and scope still denied any other scientific theory... Despite the brilliance of his reflected light, he himself stands where I suspect he wished to stand -- in the shadows." Like any work of Berlinski must be, this is an uncommon experience of mathematics and disciplined thought, presented in an effusion of verbal chromatics. A more widely accessible work than his A Tour of the Calculus.
Says the author: "Like Einstein, his spiritual heir and only equal, Newton viewed mathematics as an instrument. In thinking about the calculus, Newton was already thinking beyond the calculus, planets in motion and falling objects moving across the enormous corridors of his mind."

Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World, written by David Berlinski, is a very informative novel that seems to let you see views of the world through Newton's eyes. While it was very informative and showed great appreciation for Newton's accomplishments, the author tends to ramble. While talking about one topic, he will go off on a tangent for quite a while, before going back to his original topic. The author tries to be funny, but often assumes what was taking place at certain times in Newton's life. He might mention what the weather was probably like or pointless details about how Newton was probably sitting in his bed reading with the window closed to keep out the cold air.

Berlinski does cover important aspects of Newton's life and discoveries. He mentions his influences and inspirations, ranging from being struck on the held by an apple, to Euclid and Descartes, whose works spurred his imagination. Also, Berlinski covers what was going on in the world of science during the time period that Newton was making his famous discoveries and working diligently on new ideas. The author also explores challenges that Newton faced, as well as adversaries that tried to stand in his way or beat him to his goal. Since Sir Isaac Newton, scientific history has changed and has not been the same. Berlinski talks about how Newton's Principa has affected the scientific community, and helped it evolve into how it is today.