Newton and the Law of Gravitation [1965d]

Abstract

There has been recently a welcome revival of Newtonian studies. The Royal Society has at long last made a start with the publication of the correspondence¹. Various scholars have brought to light much interesting new evidence from the too long neglected Newton manuscripts². For the first time a thorough and competent study³ has been made of a side of his activity which had hitherto remained obscure: his historical researches, coloured by theological considerations, to which he himself attached great importance. By piecing together all this new evidence with long known, but little understood facts, one arrives, as I intend to show, at a view of Newton’s personality rather different from the traditional one. The latter is very much influenced by hero worship⁴, but it does not help to react to this — as recent biographers are inclined to do — by hero debunking. Newton’s personality is not easy to understand: secretive and suspicious as he was, one has to catch him, so to speak, in unguarded moments to get a glimpse of his thoughts and of his passions. To reconstruct a coherent portrait from the scraps of evidence gleaned from his papers, his letters and his actions is a hard detective work, but a rewarding one.