Three Hundred Years Since The Birth Of Newton

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 82, 7 April 1943, Page 2

Three Hundred Years Since The Birth Of Newton

Last Christmas Day marked the 300 th anniversary of the birth of England's greatest scientific genius, Isaac Newton, 1642-1727. Were it not for the conflict and chaos of war, this event would doubtless have been celebrated on a worldwide scale. In London, however, in spite of the grim trials that city has endured and is still faced with, Newton was not forgotten. Four leading scientific men of our day, paid their homage by contributing to the Christmas issue of Nature four virile articles that shed a wealth of light on the life and achievements of this great man. By A. W. B. Powell Newton lived in stirring times. In his early youth Parliament gained its victory over King Charles I. After the-death of Cromwell and the Merry Monarch, Charles 11., was restored, Newton was still a young Fellow of Trinity. When, at the age of 44, his greatest work, "Principia," was going through the press, he represented the University of Cambridge in its struggle against King James 11. Later he played an important role in adjusting the relations between' his university and King William llland Queen Mary. His long and brilliant career terminated just prior to the death of King George I. Incidentally,- Newton disappointed his mother's early desire that he should administer the modest paternal farm. Newton's aim seems to have been to explain natural phenomena in terms of forces acting in matter, and on the whole he refrained from framing explanations concerning the matter and the forces that he assumed in his work. "Most Original Book Ever" Newton's scientific work consisted of three parts: the optical, the mathematical- and the astronomical. It is scarcely necessary to explain what a remarkable achievement this work represented. It is sufficient to summarise the. contents of the "Principia," as stated in one of the abovementioned articles by Processor S. Brodetsky—"This is not a text book of existing knowledge with original additions, here and there: it is one of the most original books ever

written. The Galileo-Newton laws of mechanics are here formulated for the first time; the mathematical ideas required in the argument, equivalent to the calculus, without which modern mathematics is unthinkable, are those invented by the author himself; the force of universal gravitation, invoked to explain the heavenly motions, is postulated as the result of Newton's own intuition —the results achieved have been the admiration and inspiration of hundreds of mathematicians and astronomers, and will continue, to be so for many centuries to come—and with it all there is a spirit of simplicity, dignity, sanity and soberness, and a grandeur of conception, that places Newton and his work on an unequalled level of eminence." His Unbounded Faith ■In-spite of his absorbing studies Newton found time to interest himself in contemporary politics, and withall he.. v .was a deeply religious man, having a very clear impression of the destinction between human rights and divine sanction. It was Newton who wrote, while fighting against Royal attempts to exercise unlimited authority—"The authority of emperors, kings. and princes is human; the authority of bishops and presbyters is human; the authority of the prophets is divine." Like many great men whose work is ahead of their generation, Newton's "Principia" was not fully understood by his contemporaries. This resulted in criticisms of some of his views, and although he had an unbounded faith in his own achievements Newton was always afraid of criticism. He once announced that he would not publish anything at all if he had to be a "slave to philosophy." 'it was inevitable that Newton made some mistakes in his scientific work, but the only marked evidence of this is his optical ideas, which greatly retarded the development of the achronistic telescope and were an obstacle to the evolution of the wave theory of light. On the whole, however, Newton's work has stood the test of time. In his concluding remarks, Professor Brodetsky says that "it is well to-day to remember Newton not only as the man who. made the heavens intelligible to'humanity, but also as a man who helped to give liberty to humanity so that it may be free to look up into heaven."