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Newton: The Making of Genius
Renowned for his theories of gravity and optics, Isaac Newton is now universally celebrated as a scientific genius, perhaps the greatest that ever lived.But he has not always enjoyed such legendary status. A reclusive scholar who wrote more about alchemy and theology than the natural world, he has been heroized by many, but denounced by others. His posthumous reputation has constantly changed and is riddled with contradictions.Newton is a brilliant and eye-opening portrait of our changing attitude to Newton and our intellectual heritage. Focusing on such extraordinary figures as Berkeley, Leibniz and Einstein, it charts Newtons transformation not only into a genius of science but also into a popular hero. Analyzing pictures, prose and poetry, Patricia Fara describes how Newton became a cultural phenomenon whose ideas spread throughout Europe to pervade every aspect of life. Beginning in the eighteenth century, when the word scientist had not even been coined, she reveals how the story of Newton is inseparable from the meteoric growth of science during the last two centuries.
347 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
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105 people want to read
About the author
Patricia Fara
24 books74 followersPatricia Fara is a historian of science at the University of Cambridge. She is a graduate of the University of Oxford and did her PhD at the University of London. She is a former Fellow of Darwin College and is currently a Fellow of Clare College where she is Senior Tutor and Tutor for graduate students. Fara is also a research associate and lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. Fara is author of numerous popular books on the history of science and has been a guest on BBC Radio 4's science and history discussion series, In Our Time. She began her academic career as a physicist but returned to graduate studies as a mature student to specialise in History and Philosophy of Science, completing her PhD thesis at Imperial College, London in 1993.
Her areas of particular academic interest include the role of portraiture and art in the history of science, science in the 18th century England during the Enlightenment and the role of women in science. She has written and co-authored a number of books for children on science. Fara is also a reviewer of books on history of science.
Her areas of particular academic interest include the role of portraiture and art in the history of science, science in the 18th century England during the Enlightenment and the role of women in science. She has written and co-authored a number of books for children on science. Fara is also a reviewer of books on history of science.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 24, 2024
‘If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants.’
I wonder what Isaac Newton really meant, when he included this line in a letter to Robert Hooke, in February 1676. Was it a generous statement of acknowledgement, or was it an unsubtle reference to Robert Hooke’s stature? All we know for certain is that Newton and Hooke had a number of disagreements, including about the nature of light. As both Hooke and Newton are scientific heroes of mine, I’d prefer to read the statement positively.
We know so little about the Isaac Newton the person, and yet most of us know of him and his achievements. We don’t really know what he looked like, and yet there are a number of differing images available. The accomplishments attributed to Newton in science and mathematics are significant. In his ‘Principia Mathematica’, published in 1687, Newton reasons the universe in terms of a few differential equations. This is profound, but was not accessible to many. The publication of ‘Opticks’ in 1704 had a more direct impact. In that work, Newton described the refraction of sunlight through a prism into a rainbow of colours. The arguments in this book had an immediate impact and its popularity caused greater attention to be paid to ‘Principia Mathematica’.
But this book is less about Newton’s science and mathematics as it is about his impact on other thinkers. Ms Fara also investigates the different ways in which Newton’s life and work have been interpreted over the past three centuries.
It is ironic that Newton, who never lost his Christian faith, had presented the Age of Reason with the tools to argue alternate views of the universe. Newton’s many admirers included Thomas Jefferson, François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) and his mistress Emilie du Chatelet. Voltaire’s admiration of Newton was part of an ‘Angolmania’ that spread amongst the cultural and intellectual elite of France in the 18th century. By the early 19th century, a Romantic reaction had set in against Newton and science. In ‘Lamia’ - John Keats wrote:
Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage
War on his temples. Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.
Three years earlier, Keats had agreed with Charles Lamb that Newton ‘had destroyed all the Poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism.’
In the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes had this to say:
‘Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians ... Isaac Newton, a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonder child to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage... Why do I call him a magician? Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood... He regarded the Universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty—just as he himself wrapt the discovery of the calculus in a cryptogram when he communicated with Leibniz. By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate.’
This is an interesting book about Isaac Newton and his influence. It is is not a conventional biography of Isaac Newton: the facts of his life have frequently been disputed and his posthumous reputation has its own contradictions. This book left me wanting to know more about Newton’s life, and also to read more of the books Ms Fara refers to.
‘We can only view Newton’s accomplishments and experiences through the refracting prism of a society that has itself been constantly changing.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
I wonder what Isaac Newton really meant, when he included this line in a letter to Robert Hooke, in February 1676. Was it a generous statement of acknowledgement, or was it an unsubtle reference to Robert Hooke’s stature? All we know for certain is that Newton and Hooke had a number of disagreements, including about the nature of light. As both Hooke and Newton are scientific heroes of mine, I’d prefer to read the statement positively.
We know so little about the Isaac Newton the person, and yet most of us know of him and his achievements. We don’t really know what he looked like, and yet there are a number of differing images available. The accomplishments attributed to Newton in science and mathematics are significant. In his ‘Principia Mathematica’, published in 1687, Newton reasons the universe in terms of a few differential equations. This is profound, but was not accessible to many. The publication of ‘Opticks’ in 1704 had a more direct impact. In that work, Newton described the refraction of sunlight through a prism into a rainbow of colours. The arguments in this book had an immediate impact and its popularity caused greater attention to be paid to ‘Principia Mathematica’.
But this book is less about Newton’s science and mathematics as it is about his impact on other thinkers. Ms Fara also investigates the different ways in which Newton’s life and work have been interpreted over the past three centuries.
It is ironic that Newton, who never lost his Christian faith, had presented the Age of Reason with the tools to argue alternate views of the universe. Newton’s many admirers included Thomas Jefferson, François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) and his mistress Emilie du Chatelet. Voltaire’s admiration of Newton was part of an ‘Angolmania’ that spread amongst the cultural and intellectual elite of France in the 18th century. By the early 19th century, a Romantic reaction had set in against Newton and science. In ‘Lamia’ - John Keats wrote:
Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage
War on his temples. Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.
Three years earlier, Keats had agreed with Charles Lamb that Newton ‘had destroyed all the Poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism.’
In the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes had this to say:
‘Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians ... Isaac Newton, a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonder child to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage... Why do I call him a magician? Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood... He regarded the Universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty—just as he himself wrapt the discovery of the calculus in a cryptogram when he communicated with Leibniz. By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate.’
This is an interesting book about Isaac Newton and his influence. It is is not a conventional biography of Isaac Newton: the facts of his life have frequently been disputed and his posthumous reputation has its own contradictions. This book left me wanting to know more about Newton’s life, and also to read more of the books Ms Fara refers to.
‘We can only view Newton’s accomplishments and experiences through the refracting prism of a society that has itself been constantly changing.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
August 24, 2009
This is a fabulous book, from Patricial Fara. It isn't a biography as I had originally thought, it is something much more than that. It looks at Newton's achievements as a scientist and thinker and then explores how his achievements affected science. It also looks at how Newton's ideas shaped the general public's perceptions of the natural world and how Newton was made into a hero, with statues being erected to him and his portrait being a popular addition to educated people's living rooms. I was very impressed by Fara's commitment to highlighting female scientists and the role of women throughout the book.
There is also a generous section devoted to heroic poetry written about Newton. This really got me thinking - back then poetry had a real function in terms of informing people about news events and achievements, nowadays we've lost this and I'm not sure that poetry has a real function any more, perhaps that's why in general poetry seems to need to struggle to find an audience. What does anyone else think?
There is also a generous section devoted to heroic poetry written about Newton. This really got me thinking - back then poetry had a real function in terms of informing people about news events and achievements, nowadays we've lost this and I'm not sure that poetry has a real function any more, perhaps that's why in general poetry seems to need to struggle to find an audience. What does anyone else think?
December 22, 2014
This book isn't really about Newton so much as the evolving concept of "genius" as a cultural, social, nationalist and gendered construct. Some of Fara's commentary on this subject is interesting but as a case study on Newton it's not so great. In the first chapter Fara assesses Newton's achievement which, in her telling, includes "provid[ing] a new cosmology" and "set[ting' theoretical work on a new experimental basis." But if Newton provided a brand new cosmology and invented the modern scientific method then we hardly need any cultural explanation for why he was and is revered as a genius. In fact, this is about the most hagiographic interpretation of Newton possible -- a more modest view, which certainly has currency among modern historians, is that Newton (brilliantly) formalized an existing (mainly Keplerian) cosmology and made excellent use of Galilean inductive science in his work on optics, much like Huygens was doing on the Continent, only perhaps better.
If we accept this latter view, then Fara's question later in the book as to why Newton but not Galileo or Kepler was hailed as a "genius" in the 18th century is a lot more pertinent. She doesn't really attempt to answer the question though, and she ignores a related (and to me really interesting) question: why did Galileo, who was not particularly revered in the 18th century, surpass Newton in the 19th in the popular imagination to become the hero of the Scientific Revolution, a position he has -- in my opinion --never lost? Evidence that he did so abounds: for instance, Fara briefly discusses the statues in the courtyard at Oxford, constructed in the middle of the 19th century by various Victorian sculptors. Newton is there of course, but so are Davy, Harvey, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, and others. The only non-Englishmen who aren't ancient Greeks? Galileo and Leibniz. And that Leibniz shows up at all, presumably as a co-inventor of the calculus, suggests that Newton's cultural dominance had limits.
I have theories about this. The late 17th and 18th century Enlightenment writers were classicists who made a clear distinction between the Ancients and the Moderns but much less of one among different generations of moderns. Hence, commentators might argue Newton vs. Descartes but Descartes' partisans rarely argued that Newton *needed* Descartes' writings (or Galileo's etc) to accomplish his own work. That is, they had a very different view of history than the modern one. In the 19th century, though, three factors came together to make Galileo more attractive as a "genius" than Newton, even in England (though, to be sure, among historians like Brewster there was some pushback.) The first was the rise of the positivist view of science in which generations of "geniuses" build on previous generation's accomplishments -- in that case, it mattered less that Newton was further along the chain than Galileo or Kepler or Descartes and hence more sophisticated than them. Second, the cutting edge of science was shifting from cosmology, technical astronomy and "laws of nature" to chemistry, medicine and life sciences, and the physics of energy (electromagnetism, radio waves) that were only loosely explained by Newtonian concepts and required searching, inductive approaches that harkened back Galileo's early experiments rather than to Newton's grander synthesis of 17th century physics. Third, the rise of genuine secular society and atheism (rather than deism) made secular reformers who had stood up to the clerical establishment -- of which Galileo was the obvious prime example in science -- enormously relatable and worthy of adulation.
One upshot of Galileo's capture of the historical imagination in the 19th century, though, was that it led gradually to an increasingly non-hagiographic treatment of Newton. Bailly's biography of Flamsteed was an early example that Fara touches on briefly. The rehabilitation of Leibniz was another. But modern Newton scholars, even Westfall (who Fara quite unfairly claims played down Newton's alchemial activities), have been remarkably clear eyed and unromantic about Newton -- his difficult character and ungenerous treatment of his influences; his questionable priority claims (see e.g. DT Whiteside's rejection of Newton's claims about his "Moon Test", closely related to the apple story), his un-modern (although hardly irrational) interests in alchemy, chronology and milleniarism.
Fine, but all this is a bit unfair to Fara since I'm basically criticizing her for focusing on aspects of her subject other than the ones I find most interesting. But even on its own terms, the book has some issues. It doesn't really have a clear thesis and the tone changes constantly. In the worst sections, Fara comes off as sniping and sour not just toward Newton but toward his historical admirers. Her opinions can also seem a bit trite: she weighs in repeatedly on the demerits 18th century poetic style and sneers at Voltaire's over-the-top praise of du Chalelet, but then later doesn't bother to tell us if she thinks the Marxist-materialist interpretation of Newton has held up against AR Hall's (and other's) criticisms. Once or twice she also comes very close to arguing that Newton's interest in alchemy undermines his claim to genius, which she surely doesn't believe. Put simply, to be a good historian you above all have to respect the past and try to approach it on its own terms. I strongly expect Fara does, but it doesn't always come through very well in this book.
If we accept this latter view, then Fara's question later in the book as to why Newton but not Galileo or Kepler was hailed as a "genius" in the 18th century is a lot more pertinent. She doesn't really attempt to answer the question though, and she ignores a related (and to me really interesting) question: why did Galileo, who was not particularly revered in the 18th century, surpass Newton in the 19th in the popular imagination to become the hero of the Scientific Revolution, a position he has -- in my opinion --never lost? Evidence that he did so abounds: for instance, Fara briefly discusses the statues in the courtyard at Oxford, constructed in the middle of the 19th century by various Victorian sculptors. Newton is there of course, but so are Davy, Harvey, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, and others. The only non-Englishmen who aren't ancient Greeks? Galileo and Leibniz. And that Leibniz shows up at all, presumably as a co-inventor of the calculus, suggests that Newton's cultural dominance had limits.
I have theories about this. The late 17th and 18th century Enlightenment writers were classicists who made a clear distinction between the Ancients and the Moderns but much less of one among different generations of moderns. Hence, commentators might argue Newton vs. Descartes but Descartes' partisans rarely argued that Newton *needed* Descartes' writings (or Galileo's etc) to accomplish his own work. That is, they had a very different view of history than the modern one. In the 19th century, though, three factors came together to make Galileo more attractive as a "genius" than Newton, even in England (though, to be sure, among historians like Brewster there was some pushback.) The first was the rise of the positivist view of science in which generations of "geniuses" build on previous generation's accomplishments -- in that case, it mattered less that Newton was further along the chain than Galileo or Kepler or Descartes and hence more sophisticated than them. Second, the cutting edge of science was shifting from cosmology, technical astronomy and "laws of nature" to chemistry, medicine and life sciences, and the physics of energy (electromagnetism, radio waves) that were only loosely explained by Newtonian concepts and required searching, inductive approaches that harkened back Galileo's early experiments rather than to Newton's grander synthesis of 17th century physics. Third, the rise of genuine secular society and atheism (rather than deism) made secular reformers who had stood up to the clerical establishment -- of which Galileo was the obvious prime example in science -- enormously relatable and worthy of adulation.
One upshot of Galileo's capture of the historical imagination in the 19th century, though, was that it led gradually to an increasingly non-hagiographic treatment of Newton. Bailly's biography of Flamsteed was an early example that Fara touches on briefly. The rehabilitation of Leibniz was another. But modern Newton scholars, even Westfall (who Fara quite unfairly claims played down Newton's alchemial activities), have been remarkably clear eyed and unromantic about Newton -- his difficult character and ungenerous treatment of his influences; his questionable priority claims (see e.g. DT Whiteside's rejection of Newton's claims about his "Moon Test", closely related to the apple story), his un-modern (although hardly irrational) interests in alchemy, chronology and milleniarism.
Fine, but all this is a bit unfair to Fara since I'm basically criticizing her for focusing on aspects of her subject other than the ones I find most interesting. But even on its own terms, the book has some issues. It doesn't really have a clear thesis and the tone changes constantly. In the worst sections, Fara comes off as sniping and sour not just toward Newton but toward his historical admirers. Her opinions can also seem a bit trite: she weighs in repeatedly on the demerits 18th century poetic style and sneers at Voltaire's over-the-top praise of du Chalelet, but then later doesn't bother to tell us if she thinks the Marxist-materialist interpretation of Newton has held up against AR Hall's (and other's) criticisms. Once or twice she also comes very close to arguing that Newton's interest in alchemy undermines his claim to genius, which she surely doesn't believe. Put simply, to be a good historian you above all have to respect the past and try to approach it on its own terms. I strongly expect Fara does, but it doesn't always come through very well in this book.
June 29, 2024
Patricia Fara's approach in this book aims to provide a nuanced portrayal of Isaac Newton, often challenging the traditional image of him as an untouchable scientific hero. Fara emphasizes the human aspects of Newton, including his flaws and the more controversial aspects of his personality and career. This perspective can sometimes come across as critical or even negative, which might contribute to your impression of the book portraying Newton as a villain.
Fara's intention is likely to balance the historical narrative by highlighting the complexities and contradictions in Newton's life. This includes his sometimes contentious relationships with other scientists, his deep involvement in alchemy, and his role in the politics of the Royal Society.
I find this book dull, it might be due to its focus on the social and cultural context surrounding Newton, rather than solely on his scientific achievements. This broader approach can sometimes make the narrative less engaging for readers primarily interested in the science itself.
Fara's intention is likely to balance the historical narrative by highlighting the complexities and contradictions in Newton's life. This includes his sometimes contentious relationships with other scientists, his deep involvement in alchemy, and his role in the politics of the Royal Society.
I find this book dull, it might be due to its focus on the social and cultural context surrounding Newton, rather than solely on his scientific achievements. This broader approach can sometimes make the narrative less engaging for readers primarily interested in the science itself.
July 10, 2011
I mentioned this book in my recent commentary on Titus Burckhardt's Alchemy because it develops further on how people, well, men perceived inspiration in terms of intellectual acheivement. It also has a fascinating section on the churches designed to worship that paragon of modern science Isaac newton, and describes his influence in colonial America. This is an easy to read history of science with some radical content. much enjoyed. I should probably reread it.
March 12, 2011
Not what I had expected. It's not a biography of Newton, but a history of how the world viewed/views him. It was interesting, but I found the author's choice of thematic organization a little confusing- chronological would have been easier to follow.
August 20, 2014
Fascinating
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews