Science Secrets

by Alberto A. Martinez

  9. John Conduitt, “Memoir of Newton” [1727–1728], Keynes Ms. 129 (A), Newton Project Archive, Kings College Library, Cambridge. Conduitt sent his memoir to Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle for his eulogy of Newton. Fontenelle, “Elóge de M. Neuton,” Histoire de l'Academie Royale des Sciences (Paris, 1728), 151–72. (Note that the Newton Project Archive is located at the University of Sussex, where there are copies of Newton's work; many of the original manuscripts are owned by King's College, Cambridge, and located there.)

  10. John Conduitt, draft of “Memoir of Newton” [1727–1728], Keynes Ms. 129 (B), Newton Project Archive, King's College Library, Cambridge.

  11. John Conduitt, Keynes Ms. 130.4, Newton Project Archive, King's College Library, Cambridge.

  12. Mr. de Voltaire, An Essay upon the Civil Wars of France, extracted from Curious Manuscripts. And also upon the Epick Poetry of the European Nations, from Homer to Milton [1727], 2nd ed., corrected by Voltaire (London: N. Prevost, 1728), 103.

  13. Ibid. Soon, the essay was published in French: M. de Voltaire, Essay sur la Poësie Epique. Traduit de l'Anglois (Paris: Chaubert, 1728), see p. 123: “C'est ainsi que Pythagore dût l'invention de la Musique au bruit des marteaux d'une forge, & que de nos jours M. Isaac Newton, en se promenant dans son jardin, conçut la premiere idée de son systême de la gravitation, en voyant tomber une pomme du haut d'un arbre.” In the preface to that French translation, Voltaire acknowledged his daring for having tried to write in English, having spent merely eighteen months in England, having an awful pronunciation, and being barely able to understand the language in conversation.

  14. M. D. V. [Voltaire], Lettres Ecrites de Londres sur les Anglois et Autres Sujets (“Basle” [actually London: William Bowyer], 1734), 15th letter: “Sur l'Attraction,” 121–22, trans. Martínez. The preface notes that such letters were written from 1728 until 1730, and, allegedly, were not originally intended for publication. The editors note that an English translation was in circulation in 1732. An English preface (in an edition of 1733) claims that the letters were written “between the end of 1728, and about 1731.”

  15. Voltaire acknowledged “Madame Conduit” in a similar account: “One day in the year 1666. Newton retired to the countryside & seeing fruits fall from a tree, according to what his niece told me (Madame Conduit), let himself go into a deep meditation about the cause that pulls all bodies in a line which, if it be prolonged, would nearly pass through the center of Earth. What is, he asked himself, that force which cannot come from all the imaginary vortices thus demonstrated to be false? it acts on all bodies in proportion to their masses, & not their surfaces, it would act upon the fruit that fell from that tree.” Mr. De Voltaire, Elemens de Philosophie tirez de Neuton et de Quelques Autres, revue, corrigée et considerablement augmentée par l'auteur in Œuvres de Monsieur de V, Nouvelle Édition (Dresde: George Conrad Walther, 1749), pt. 3, chap. 3, p. 189, trans. Martínez.

  16. Henry Pemberton, A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (London: S. Palmer, 1728), preface.

  17. David Brewster, The Life of Sir Isaac Newton (London: John Murray, 1831), 344.

  18. Joanne Keplero, Astronomia nova, Aitiologētos: seu Physica Coelestis, tradita Commentariis de Motibus Stellae Martis, ex Observationibus G. V. Tychonis Brahe…(Pragæ: Gotthard Vögelin, 1609), introduction, trans. Martínez.

  19. In view of Kepler's passage, one commentator remarked: “Who, after perusing such passages in the works of an author, whose writings were in the hands of every student of astronomy, can believe that Newton waited for the fall of an apple to set him thinking for the first time on the theory which has immortalized his name? An apple may have fallen, and Newton may have seen it; but such speculations as those which it is asserted to have been the cause of originating in him had been long familiar to the thoughts of every one in Europe pretending to the name of natural philosopher.” John Eliot Drinkwater, “Life of Kepler,” in Lives of Eminent Persons (London: Baldwin and Cradock, 1833), 24.

  20. Hooke suspected the inverse square relation by the late 1670s. For his quotations in table 3.1, see the following sources: Robert Hooke, Lectiones Cutlerianæ (London: John Martyn, 1674), reprinted in R. T. Gunther, Early Science in Oxford, vol. 8, The Cutler Lectures of Robert Hooke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931), 27–28; Robert Hooke to Isaac Newton, 6 January 1680, in Newton, The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. H. W. Turnbull, vol. 2, 1676–1687 (Cambridge: University Press for the Royal Society, 1959), 309. Additional sources for table 3.1: Kepler, Astronomia Nova, chap. 33; and Kepler, Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (Lentijs ad Danubium: J. Plancus, 1618), bk. 4, pt. 3, question 5. Ismaelis Bvllialdi, Astronomia Philolaïca. Opvs novvm, in quo Motus Planetarum per Nouam ac Veram Hypothesim Demonstrantur (Paris: Simeonis Piget, 1645), bk. 1, chap. 12 (“Whether the Sun Moves the Planets”), reprinted in Alexandre Koyré, The Astronomical Revolution, Copernicus, Kepler, Borelli, trans. R. Maddison (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973), app. 3; Isaac Newton, Add MS 3958.5 (ca. 1666–1671), f. 87, in A. Rupert Hall, “Newton on the Calculation of Central Forces,” Annals of Science 13, no. 1 (1957): 62–71.

  21. For discussion, see Richard Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 387, 402, 449–52, 511.

  22. Newton manuscript, early 1690s, quoted in J. McGuire and P. Rattansi, “Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan,’” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 21 (1966): 118–19.

  23. In a draft of the Scholium to Proposition IX, Newton wrote: “Pythagoras, on account of its immense force of attraction, said that the Sun was the prison of Zeus.” See Newton, manuscript (no date, early 1690s?), Library of the Royal Society of London (Gregory MS 247); translation from McGuire and Rattansi, “Newton and the ‘Pipes,’” 119; original Latin in Paolo Casini, “Newton: the Classical Scholia,” History of Science 22 (1984): 33. I suspect that Newton's source was Proclus, who wrote: “the Pythagoreans…. the centre they called the prison of Jupiter; because since Jupiter has placed a demiurgical guard in the bosom of the world, he has firmly established it in the midst. For, indeed, the center abiding, the universe possesses its immovable ornament, and unceasing convolution.” See Proclus, The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus, on the First Book of Euclid's Elements, trans. Thomas Taylor, vol. 1 (London, 1792), 118.

  24. Newton manuscript, early 1690s, in McGuire and Rattansi, “Newton and the ‘Pipes,’” 116–17.

  25. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio [ca. 430? CE], trans. William Harris Stahl (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 186–87.

  26. “Mr. Newton believes that he has discovered pretty clearly that the Ancients like Pythagoras and Plato &c. possessed all the demonstrations that he gives of the true system of the world, and which are based upon gravity diminishing inversely as the squares of the increasing distances.” Fatio de Duiller to Christiaan Huygens, February 1692, in A. Rupert Hall, Isaac Newton: Adventurer in Thought (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992), 346.

  27. John Conduitt, Keynes Ms. 130.5 (no date): ‘Miscellanea,’ no. 2, Newton Project Archive, King's College, Cambridge.

  28. David Gregory, The Elements of Astronomy, Physical and Geometrical, vol. 1 (London: J. Nicholson, 1715), xi. This work was first published as Astronomiae Physicae et Geometricae Elementa [1703].

  29. The Bible does not specify the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, but an early allusion to the apple appears in a poem by Alcimus Avitus, the Bishop of Vienne in Gaul, an active defender of the Orthodox Church who denounced heresies, especially the belief that Jesus is inferior to God (a belief that Newton later held in secrecy). Avitus, De Spiritalis Historia Gestis [ca. 510? CE], in Patrologiæ Cursus Completus sive Bibliotheca Universalis, Integra, Uniformis, Commoda, Oeconomica…Series Prima, J.-P. Migne, ed., vol. 59 (Paris: Venit Apud Editoem, 1847), 323–81; Alcimi Ecdicii Aviti, Poematum Mosaicæ Historiæ Gestis, Liber Secundus: “De Originali Peccato,” 334. Milton paraphrased sentences from Avitus, wit
hout giving him credit, see Philip Gengembre Hubert, “A Precursor of Milton,” Atlantic Monthly 65, no. 387 (January 1890): 33–52.

  30. John Milton, Paradise Lost: A Poem Written in Ten Books (London: P. Parker, R. Boulter, M. Walker, 1667). I cite line numbers from his revised edition, which has become the standard: Milton, Paradise Lost: A Poem in Twelve Books (London: S. Simmons, 1674), bk. 1, lines 286–91; bk. 3, line 583; bk. 8, lines 124, 130; bk. 9, lines 598–605, 679–93, 776–85.

  31. The Reverend Joseph Spence recorded this quotation, noting that [Andrew Michael] Ramsay attributed it to Newton “a little before he died.” Ramsay knew friends of Newton such as Fatio de Duillier and Samuel Clarke. Spence died in 1768, and his collection of anecdotes remained as a manuscript sometimes used by writers, until it was finally edited and published in 1820. Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, of Books and Men, ed. Edmund Malone (London: John Murray, 1820), 158–59. The advertisement to the book argued that (pp. iv-v): “The great value of the present collection must always rest on its authenticity; every particular is sanctioned by the name of the speaker; and from that simplicity of taste and minute correctness which mark the character of the writer, we may confidently infer, that as he never embellishes, he scrupulously delivers the identical language of the speaker.” In his biography of Newton, Biot wrote that once “when his surrounding friends testified to him the just admiration his discoveries had universally excited, he said, ‘I know not what the world will think of my labours, but, to myself, it seems that I have been but as a child playing on the sea-shore; now finding some pebble rather more polished, and now some shell rather more agreeably variegated than another, while the immense ocean of truth extended itself unexplored before me'.” J. B. Biot, “Life of Sir Isaac Newton,” in [various authors], Lives of Eminent Persons (London: Baldwin and Cradock, 1833), 37. Biot's account includes a footnote that states: “This anecdote is mentioned in a manuscript of Conduitt. Vid. Turner.” I have not managed to find or confirm such a manuscript by Conduitt. Biot's article was first published in French: Biot, “Notice Historique sur Newton,” Biographie Universelle, vol. 31 (1822).

  32. John Milton, Paradise Regained (1671; reissued, London: Henry Colburn, 1827), bk. 4. In the original and second edition, “pebbles” is spelled “pibles.”

  33. Anonymous, “Conversations of Maturin.—No. II,” The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, Part I: Original Papers, vol. 19 (London: Henry Colburn, 1827), 570–77, quotation on p. 573.

  34. Leonhard Euler, 3 September 1760; in Euler, Lettres a une Princesse d'Allemagne sur Divers Sujets de Physique & de Philosophie, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg: Academie Impériale des Sciences, 1768), 208, 212, trans. Martínez. The letters were translated into German within a few years: Euler, Briefe an eine Deutsche Prinzessinn, pt. 1 (Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Junius, 1769), 179, 182.

  35. “Poets, Philosophers, and Artists, Made by Accident,” in Curiosities of Literature (London: J. Murray, 1791); reprinted in various publications, such as New England Quarterly Magazine 1, no. 1 (Boston: Hosea Sprague, 1802): 246–48.

  36. “Poets, Philosophers,” in New England Quarterly Magazine 1, no. 1 (1802): 247–48.

  37. Baron George Gordon Byron, Don Juan, Cantos IX. X. XI. (London: John Hunt, 1823), canto 10, st. 1 and 2, p. 25.

  38. David Drummond, Objections to Phrenology, Being the Substance of a Series of Papers Communicated to the Calcutta Phrenological Society (Calcutta: Drummond, 1829), 165.

  39. Bolton Corney, Curiosities of Literature by I. D'Israeli, Illustrated, 2nd rev. ed. (London: Richard Bentley, 1838), v, 64; writing about Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature, 9th ed. (London: Edward Moxon, 1834).

  40. Isaac D'Israeli, The Illustrator Illustrated (London: Edward Moxon, 1838).

  41. Bolton Corney, “Mr. Corney on D'Israeli's Illustrator Illustrated [March 1838],” in Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 9, New Series (London: William Pickering; John Bowyer Nichols and Son, 1838), 371.

  42. Meanwhile, the story continued to evolve, as other writers added or modified minor details. The astronomer Rev. Thomas Chalmers, for example, wrote that the apple fell “at his feet,” a version that likewise spread, but was too minor to generate complaints. Thomas Chalmers, “Popular Astronomy. Part I,” Saturday Magazine 12, no. 369 (Supplement for March 1838), 125.

  43. Augustus De Morgan, A Budget of Paradoxes, first published in Assurance Magazine and Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, vol. 11 (London: Charles & Edwin Layton, 1864), 194.

  44. “Art. IX.—Travels through the Alps of Savoy, and other parts of the Pennine Chain; with Observations of the Phenomena of Glaciers. By James D. Forbes, 1843,” North British Review, vol. 3, no. 2 (Edinburgh: W. P. Kennedy, 1844), 527–45; see p. 545.

  45. Frederick Bridges, Phrenology Made Practical and Popularly Explained, 2nd ed. (Liverpool: George Philip and Son, 1861), 49. A similar claim was made in James Stanley Grimes, A New System of Phrenology (Buffalo, N. Y.: Oliver Steele/Wiley & Putnam, 1839), 86.

  46. S. R. Wells, Editorial reply to: “Beating Round the Bush. Phrenology Criticised,” Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated, vol. 50 old series (April 1870), vol. 1 new series (New York: S. R. Wells, 1870), 261.

  47. Phrenological Journal and Science of Health, vol. 103 old series (no. 1, June 1897), vol. 55 new series (New York/London: Fowler & Wells/L. Fowler & Co., 1897), 25.

  48. George McC. Robson, “A Great Discovery,” Science and Industry, vol. 4, no. 9 (October 1899) (Scranton: Colliery Engineer Company, 1899), 409. Robson's words are actually a paraphrase of Augustus De Morgan, Budget of Paradoxes, 81.

  49. Carl Gauss, quoted in W. Sartorius v. Waltershausen, Gauss, Zum Gedächtniss (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1856), 84, trans. Martínez.

  50. Michael White, Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 214 and 87, respectively.

  51. A. Rupert Hall, Isaac Newton: Eighteenth Century Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 18.

  52. David Brewster, The Life of Sir Isaac Newton (London: John Murray, 1831), 344.

  53. David Brewster, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Co., 1855), 27. In the second volume of this work, Brewster repeated his prior claim that the tree “was long ago destroyed by the wind.” See Brewster, Memoirs of the Life, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Co., 1855), 416.

  54. DeMorgan, A Budget of Paradoxes, first published in Assurance Magazine and Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, vol. 11 (January 1864), 194.

  55. R. G. Keesing, “The History of Newton's Apple Tree,” Contemporary Physics 39, no. 5 (1998): 377–91.

  56. Edmund Turnor, Collections for the History of the Town and Soke of Grantham, Containing Authentic Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton (London: W. Bulmer and W. Miller, 1806), 160.

  57. Mr. Walker to the Royal Astronomical Society, 12 January 1912, as quoted in McKie and de Beer, “Newton's Apple: An Addendum,” 334–35.

  58. George Forbes, History of Astronomy (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1909), 65.

  59. Keesing, “History,” 378.

  60. Richard Keesing, “A Brief History of Isaac Newton's Apple Tree,” University of York, Department of Physics, last updated on 26 January 2010, http://www.york.ac.uk/physics/about/newtonsappletree/.

  61. “Newton's Famous Apple Tree to Experience Zero Gravity,” Royal Society, Science News, 10 May 2010, http://royalsociety.org/Newtons-famous-appletree-to-experience-zero-gravity.

  62. Astronaut Ken Ham, quoted in “NASA's Atlantis Space Shuttle Ready for Final Voyage,” BBC News, 14 May 2010, http://historynewsnetwork.org/roundup/entries/126698.html.

  CHAPTER 4. THE STONE OF THE ANCIENTS

  1. Oswald Crollie, Philosophy Reformed & Improved in Four Profound Tractates. The I. Discovering the Great and Deep Mysteries of Nature, trans. Henry Pinnell (London: Lodowick Lloyd, 1657), 31.

  2. Although it has become common to write “Philosopher
's Stone,” it is more accurate to write “Philosophers' Stone,” in direct translation of early expressions.

  3. Newton, Commentarium [1680s], in Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 276.

  4. Ovid, Metamorphoses [ca. 8 CE], ed. Brookes More (Boston: Cornhill Publishing Co., 1922), bk. 11, lines 85–145.

  5. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 15.

  6. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 15. See also Giambattista della Porta, Natural Magick, in Twenty Books…wherein Are Set Forth All the Riches and Delights of the Natural Sciences (London: T. Young and S. Speed, 1658), bk. 2, chap. 2.

  7. Lucian's Science Fiction Novel True Histories: Interpretation and Commentary, ed. Aristoula Georgiadou and David H. Laramour (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 203.

  8. Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis (Natural History) [ca. 77 CE], trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949–54), bk. 19, sec. 30, also bk. 24, secs. 99 and 101, and bk. 25, sec. 5. Pliny acknowledged that some attributed the book on plants to the physician Cleemporus, but Pliny insisted that “an ancient and unbroken tradition assigns it to Pythagoras,” and that an author should be glad to assign his labor to the great Pythagoras, to enhance the book's authority.