OK, so today is Christmas day, December 25. On this day* a man was born who changed the world. He affected a growing tradition that has left no part of the world untouched, for good or ill. He revealed the workings of the universe. He spent his life teaching us to understand ourselves, and was constantly predicting the end of the earth, based on revelation. His piercing gaze made many quail before him, and he suffered hypocrisy not at all, but was generous with those of good faith. He fought his Adversary unceasingly, and is remembered also for his ideas about coins.
The reason for the season: let's give it up for...
Sir Isaac Newton.
*Old calendar. In the new Calendar he would have been born on 4 January, but then, we don't know much about the birthdate of Jesus, so the merely nominal identity of dates is sufficient to claim Christmas as Newtonmas.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
C'mon. Isaac Newton was perhaps the most personally unpleasant leading intellectual since St Paul. I'm sticking with Cab Calloway (born Christmas day exactly 100 years ago.)
Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi!
Ho-de-ho-de-ho-de-ho!!
He fought his Adversary unceasingly....
Do you mean Leibnitz, or "Half-Cocked" Shaftoe?
As Keynes has remarked, Newton was not so much one of the first scientists as one of the last of the magicians. Like Kepler, he practiced astrology. Like Swedenborg, he privately cultivated an occult belief system. Like Lyskenko, he ruthlessly used the political means available to him to marginalize and (where possible) destroy his foes.
He is best remembered as one of the great geniuses of mathematics, one whose conceptual breakthroughs happened to have wider applicability than any in history, with the possible exception of Euclid. He provided the generations of scientists who followed him with the sort of tool kit that made experiment possible for problems in which rates of change were involved.
Isaac was the person who started me on my lifelong journey as a historian of science and I still find him totally fascinating after studying his life and work on and off for forty years, and although I think that in depth, breath and scope there are very, very few scientists who can hold a candle to him and as father to the so called scientific method I think he is one of the most important philosophers of science of all times, he was without doubt a first class arsehole!
If one is going to write Adversary, singular and with a capital "A", then this can for Isaac, an Old Testament Christian of the first order, only mean the Devil in person! If one were to write adversaries then there is a whole long list to choose from including most of the leading scientists of the age. Newton believed that he, and he alone, had been chosen by God to rediscover "The Truths of Nature" and as Frank Manual put it, in one of his books, Newton regarded other scientists who claimed to have made new discoveries as being poachers in his garden of knowledge. However I like my gods to have feet of clay, and Isaac certainly had those, so I for one am happy to wish all who wander through this hallowed blog Happy Newtonmas!
"I'm sticking with Cab Calloway (born Christmas day exactly 100 years ago.)"
I suppose you're suggesting that a suitable Cabmas holiday celebration would be to take a ride in a car with platinum wheels, count up our money a million times, and generally kick the gong around?
I'm quite sure that for Isaac, Leibniz, Hooke, Shaftoe and all his other adversaries were just instances of his Adversary.
God rest ye merry, physicists
Let nothing ye dismay.
Remember Isaac Newton
Was born on Christmas day.
His gravity and calculus
And f=ma
Oh pillars of physics and math, physics and math,
Oh pillars of physics and math.
Theo, I like the tune, especially since it scans.
If anyone is interested in Newton's life, they might like this book, "Newton's Tyranny," which tells how Newton did his best to torpedo, sidetrack, delay, and suppress the discoveries of -Stephen Gray and John Flamsteed. He actually managed to delay the use of electricity for communication!
Re Thony C
Since Newton totally rejected the concept of the Trinity, I think referring to him as a Christian is seriously in error. Had his views on this subject been known at the time, he would have lost his job and quite possibly been incarcerated in the Tower of London.
Happy holidays to you, John, and a bunch of other worthies. You've helped make my year.
Why do you think somebody has to be a Trinitarian to be a Christian? Arians, Socinians and Unitarians are all examples of religious groups who considered/consider themselves Christians but who rejected/reject trinitarianism. Newton was a convinced Arian, which as you correctly point out made him a heretic in 17th and 18th century England and had he made his religious beliefs public he could have even been sentenced to death at that time. This is however unlikely as can be seen on the example of William Whiston who did publicly declare his Arianism and so lost his position as Lucasian Professor in Cambridge bur was otherwise not punished. Newton who had thoroughly studied the patristic literature formed the following view in the words of Richard Westfall:
Newton considered himself a Christian he just had a different view on the status of Jesus' divinity to an orthodox Trinitarian. Btw he would not have landed in the Tower as that was a prison reserved for political prisoners and not heretics!
Thony C wrote:
"Arians, Socinians and Unitarians"
Don't forget Mormons, since it is politically relevant here in the US as we go into the primary season. I just got my California State Primary Voter's pamphlet!
Re Thony C
1. Newton would not have been considered a Christian by either the Anglican Church or the Roman Catholic Church at the time (Newton rejected trinitarianism because of his total disdain for the Catholic Church). By the way, the Unitarian/Universalist Church is not a Christian Church, although there are Christians who attend services there. There are also non-Christians who attend Unitarian/Universalist services.
2. If I remember correctly, Thomas More was incarcerated in the Tower of London. The question as to whether he was a political prisoner is rather fine as the real reason was due to his refusal to disavow the Catholic Church and approve Henry VIIIs' divorce and remarriage.
SLC wrote:
What the Anglican or Roman Catholic Churches may or may not have thought about Newton's status as a Christian is totally irrelevant, Newton considered himself a Christian so to call him a Christian is perfectly correct.
Newton's rejection of trinitarianism was not based on a disdain for the Catholic Church but on his own studies of the Bible and the patristic writers. As in all subjects Newton's views were based on his own studies of the source material.
SLC further:
I did not write about the Unitarian Universalist Church, which is a specific cult, but about Unitarians who do regard themselves as Christians.
SLC for the third time:
What ever you may think, the fact is that More was charged with, tried for and found guilty of treason; a political crime!
Re Thony
1. In the period in which Newton lived, the Anglican Church in England and the Roman Catholic elsewhere decided who was and who was not a Christian. How Newton thought of himself is irrelevant because, if it had been known that he rejected the Trinity, Newton would have been denied the sacraments of the Anglican Church. Even today, it is my understanding that both of these churches, as well as all the mainline Protestant Churches require belief in the Trinity as a part of their creed.
2. The charge of treason against Thomas More was phony. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London because of his refusal to agree to the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. He was later executed based on perjured testimony. There was not a shred of evidence that he conspired with Roman Catholic clerics to reverse the separation of the two churches. Therefore, there can be no doubt that his imprisonment and later execution was for religious reasons.
3. Apparently, Mr. Thony is not a resident of the US. In this country, the Unitarian and Universalist Churches combined several decades ago and the combined church is known as the Unitarian/Universalist Church. There is no longer such a thing as the Unitarian Church in the US. The combined church is manifestly not a Christian Church as many non-Christians as well as Christians attend services therein.
Re Thony C
By the way, according to at least one of Newtons' biographers, Newton loathed the Catholic Church, considering it the agent of the devil and further that the concept of the Trinity was an egregious doctrine falsely perpetrated by that Church. Therefore, the notion that the promulgation of the Trinity concept by the Catholic Church was of little relevance in Newtons' thinking appears to be seriously in error.
O ffs! Newton was an Arian, as were Milton, Whiston and many other leading puritan intellectuals of the late 17th/early 18th. His Arianism would have disqualified him from holding a fellowship at Cambridge or public office such as being Master of the Mint because these were reserved to the Church of England, so he kept quiet about it. He would have been in the same position had he been a Lutheran, a Baptist, a Presbyterian (in England), or of course a Catholic.
It would not have jeopardised his life at that date. He would have been regarded as a Christian heretic, not as a heathen.
The growth of Unitarianism in England, and secondarily America in the same period was initiated by the adoption of continental Arianism and Socinianism by a significant number of nonconformist intellectuals, but the movement took off in the early 18th when most English Presbyterian congregations adopted some form of antitrinitarianism. Arianism and Socinianism coexisted for a while, but Arianism fell out of fashion by mid-century. These people regarded themselves as Christians, and were regarded by conventional protestants as Christians, albeit heretical. Recent shenanigans in the US Universalist movement have nothing to do with it.
And yes, More was executed for treason. It is perfectly true that loyalty was defined partly by loyalty to the Church of England, but that was the whole point.
SLC
Your thinking, if I may say so, is sloppy and you would make a lousy historian!
A Christian is someone who follows the teachings of Jesus, a Roman Catholic is someone who lives (or at least theoretically) according to the creed of the Roman Catholic Church, an Anglican is someone who lives (or at...) according to the creed of the Anglican Church, a Lutheran is someone..., a Calvinist..., a Seventh Day Adventist... and so on and so forth. That each of these groups who claim to be Christians deny the validity of the same claim by all the other groups does not necessarily invalidate those claims. Newton followed the teachings of Jesus so it is perfectly correct to call him a Christian. That the Anglican or Catholic Churches might have disputed this designation does not make it invalid to do so.
Newton formed his religious beliefs after an intense study of the Bible and the patristic literature, even teaching himself Greek and later Hebrew in order to do so, after studying all of the relevant arguments he came to the conclusion that Arius was right and Athanasius was wrong and so rejected the trinity. His studies also led him to the conclusion that the early Church Fathers had corrupted various key passages in the Bible in order to strengthen the case of Athanasius against Arius. His disdain for the Catholic Church grew out of his acceptance of Arianism and not the other way round. A implies B does not mean that B implies A!
Unitarianism is a Christian movement, which has its modern roots in the 16th Century, its real roots of course are to be found by Arius. Just because one of the many Unitarian religious groups amalgamated with the Universalists in America in 1961 does not make the other Unitarian Churches or their decidedly Christian history disappear in a puff of smoke, even if you should wish it so.
Whatever Henry's "real" motives might or might not have been in his pursuit and persecution of Thomas More and whether the evidence against More was faked or not and whether he was guilty as charged or not is on a factual historical level concerning his arrest and imprisonment, irrelevant. Factually he was charged with the crime of treason and therefore was incarcerated in the prison for "political" prisoners, The Tower of London.