Michael White - Isaac Newton - The Last Sorcerer

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First time in ebook format, this biography of Isaac Newton reveals the extraordinary influence that the study of alchemy had on the greatest Early Modern scientific discoveries. In this ‘ground breaking biography’ Michael White destroys the myths of the life of Isaac Newton and reveals a portrait of the scientist as the last sorcerer.According to traditional accounts, Newton was the first modern scientist . As creator of the theory of gravity, calculus, modern theories of light and devisor of the three laws of mechanics, his methods are perceived as the genesis of modern science. Yet the traditional version of his life fails to tell, by some considerable margin, the full story. How for example could Newton’s apparent empiricism be married with his interest in alchemy and magic? What had inspired him in his discoveries? How did he reconcile his scientific discoveries with his religious faith? And, most of all, who was this man who, historians tell us, remained a virgin all his life and who seemed to be an argumentative ego maniac on the one hand and a kindly old man on the other?In this revelatory biography, White paints an original picture of Isaac Newton completely at variance with the traditional portrait.

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Following this, Hannah decided that her son should be supervised by a servant from the household who would look after him and give the boy proper instruction. Predictably, the idea failed because Newton quickly turned the situation to his advantage, allowing the servant to do all the work while he sloped off to read or to pursue other interests.

Each Saturday, Isaac set off dutifully with the servant to Grantham to sell the farm produce and to purchase supplies for the following week. Arriving at the Saracen’s Head, the inn in Westgate, he would instruct the servant to continue with the business of the day while he went off to visit Mr Clark at his shop in the High Street.

What drew Newton there was a collection of books that Clark had acquired from his recently deceased brother, Dr Joseph Clark, the usher (assistant teacher) of King’s School. The apothecary himself was interested in the collection, but had little time to read. Perhaps Newton had offered to catalogue the books in exchange for the chance to read them; be that as it may, somehow he managed to persuade Clark to allow him to spend almost all of each Saturday in the back room behind the shop in solitary bliss studying texts on physics, anatomy, botany, philosophy and mathematics – his first real exposure to these things. From Bate’s The Mysteries of Nature and ArtNewton had discovered the elements of experimentation and practical skills – lessons he would never forget but would employ both as an orthodox scholar and in his role as alchemist. But here were texts by greater writers and natural philosophers. We do not know for sure the contents of the library, but it is safe to assume a scholar such as Dr Clark would have collected the works of the great names of the past and perhaps the more controversial figures of the day, and it is likely that Newton now first discovered Francis Bacon and René Descartes, Aristotle and Plato, acquiring a fuller and more useful education than he could possibly have gained within the narrow confines of the school curriculum.

Word of Isaac’s truancy soon reached two different parties involved in the argument over his future. Hannah heard of her son’s antics through the complaints of the servant, and Henry Stokes discovered how his ex-pupil was showing admirable determination not to fall under his mother’s yoke. Stokes had tried to dissuade Hannah from taking Newton away from school but had been unsuccessful. Now, hearing how Isaac was doing everything he could to foil his mother’s efforts, Stokes decided to try again.

Initially, nothing changed. Despite the irritation caused by her son’s behaviour, Hannah would not listen to suggestions that he should pursue an academic career and desert the farm. To be fair, Hannah was herself poorly educated and could not have appreciated the world of learning that Isaac took to so naturally. To her, the only thing that mattered was the management of the estate: it was the source of their prosperity, and she could not understand what her son could possibly gain by attending university. She had already lost two husbands and was expected to maintain a farm, run a household and look after three young children. She could not bear to lose Isaac too.

But, after Stokes appealed to her a second time, she realised she could hold Isaac back no longer. (Her decision was no doubt sweetened by Stokes’s offer to remit the standard charge of forty shillings paid to the school by the parents of all boys who came from beyond the town. 26)

Stokes then talked to William Ayscough (who had probably influenced Hannah’s change of heart and was himself a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge), and probably to Humphrey Babington, a relative of the Clarks and a fellow at Cambridge University. Together they smoothed the way for Isaac’s admission, and by the autumn of 1660 the young man was back in Grantham preparing for Cambridge.

Helped by those around him who understood his desire to learn, Isaac now, for the first time, found himself completely content. Throughout his childhood and teenage years he had constantly been pulled in different directions. At school he clashed with the teaching tradition on the one hand and his contemporaries on the other. He eventually found his true nature not from the comfort of others or through the small accomplishments of orthodoxy, but in the discovery of a larger world beyond the confines of his upbringing. By 1660 he had passed the threshold and entered the world in which he would flourish.

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