Welcome to the deep dive. Today we are taking
on a figure so foundational to modern thought.
It's well it's easy to feel like we already know
him. I'm talking about Sir Isaac Newton. Right.
But the simplified image we hold you know the
genius who merely happened to be sitting under
an apple tree. It hides a truth that is far stranger,
more contradictory, and ultimately far more compelling.
That's exactly where the sources become so essential.
Because when you actually analyze the entire
historical record, you see a figure of just unparalleled
intellectual rigor. The public scientist who
defined math and physics for centuries. The man
we all learn about in school. Precisely. But
he's existing simultaneously with this deeply
secretive private man. I mean, this was someone
obsessed with pursuits his contemporaries might
have labeled heresy or, you know, even black
magic. What are we talking about here? We're
talking about complex, unorthodox theology and
an extensive, decades -long devotion to alchemy.
Okay, so let's unpack this monumental life. Our
mission for you, the intellectually curious learner,
is to move far beyond the famous principia and
the laws of motion. We are plunging into his
golden years of secretive discovery. Yes. His
controversial spiritual beliefs that he had to
hide from the Anglican Church. His highly effective
real world role reforming the nation's coinage.
And I mean, why historians like the physicist
James Jeans were compelled to call him perhaps
the greatest intellect the human race has seen.
We're examining a polymath in the truest sense
of the word. You have Newton, the mathematician,
the physicist, the astronomer, the theologian,
the alchemist, and crucially, the master of the
royal mint. That's an incredible list. It is.
And his collected work is rightly considered
the most influential in bringing forth modern
science and really igniting the Enlightenment.
Yet his personal reality was this intense, often
volatile blend of... rigorous rationality, and
profound occult interest. So let's start at the
beginning, because to understand the towering
figure of the adult Newton, I think we have to
look at the unstable foundation he was built
on. Precisely. His was a difficult and unstable
start. He was born prematurely on Christmas Day,
that's December 25th, 1642, under the old style
calendar, which translates to January 4th, 1643,
in the new style at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire.
And his father died before he was even born.
That's right. Before you ever knew him, his father,
who was also named Isaac Newton, died three months
before his birth. So he was born into loss. And
then a few years later, he experienced what seems
like a profound abandonment. His mother, Hannah
Ascoff, remarried. She did. She married the wealthy
Reverend Barnabas Smith when Newton was only
three, and she moved away to live with her new
husband, leaving young Isaac to be raised by
his maternal grandmother. That's a massive psychological
shock for a small child. I mean, you can't overstate
that. It was. And the intensity of his resulting
resentment is, well, it's shockingly documented
in his own hand. We have a surviving list of
sins he wrote down that he had committed up to
the age of 19. A list of his own sins. Yes. And
among those entries, you find this revealing
and frankly, pretty alarming insight. He wrote,
threatening my father and mother Smith to burn
them and the house over them. Wow. This is the
psychological foundation of the man who would
later define the universe with cold, elegant
laws. He was intensely driven, often ruthlessly
competitive. And you have to think those traits
may well stem from this early instability and
this this need for control. So after an initial
period of schooling at the King's School in Grantham,
his mother, who was widowed again, tried to make
him a farmer. Right. An utterly miserable detour
for someone whose mind was clearly already operating
at a different frequency. Oh, it was a very brief
but miserable period for him. He absolutely hated
the idea of farming. But his time at King's School
from age 12 to 17 was essential because he had
already gained a significant foundation in mathematics
and geometry there. He was already standing out.
He was. He distinguished himself by building
these complex physical objects like sundials
and remarkably intricate working models of windows.
He only got to return to school after persistent
persuasion from his former master, Henry Stokes,
and his uncle, Reverend William Eiskoff. They
saw his potential. And that's what cleared his
path to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1661. But
he didn't start privileged. We often forget that
part of the story. He definitely had to hustle.
He was admitted as a sub -sizar, which meant
he had to perform menial valet duties for wealthier
students just to put his way. It wasn't until
1664 that he secured a scholarship. And that
provided the financial stability he needed to
complete his B .A. in August 1665. And it's during
these university years that he moved from reading
the classical curriculum of Aristotle to absorbing
the work of modern thinkers like Descartes and
Galileo. And that leads us to the great turning
point. Just as he finished his degree, fate,
you could say, intervened, shutting down the
entire academic world. The famous closure of
the university due to the Great Plague. Newton
returned to the quiet of his childhood home in
Woolsthorpe for nearly two years. And this period,
1665 to 1667, is arguably the single most productive
individual period in the entire history of science.
It's the origin story of modern science itself,
really. I mean, Louis Trenchard Moore, one of
his biographers, described it as the richest
and most productive ever experienced by a scientist.
He even suggested there are no other examples
of achievement in the history of science to compare
with that of Newton during those two golden years.
It was just an explosion of solitary genius.
Totally. powered by his own furious drive and
a massive intellectual appetite. And during those
two years, he laid the groundwork for the trio
of discoveries that would change the world. You
have the initial development of his theories
on infinitesimal calculus, which he called fluxions,
the fundamental principles of optics, particularly
his theory of color, and of course the formulation
of the law of universal gravitation, all conceived
and developed in complete intellectual isolation.
And we also get glimpses into the mechanics of
his organized mind during this period. The sources
describe him as exceptionally organized when
it came to his note -taking. What does that mean
exactly? What was he doing? Well, he would dog
-ear important pages, and his indexes, which
were alphabetical, by topic, look remarkably
like the indexes we use today for quick reference.
And this organization was absolutely critical
because the sources identify him as a Janusian
thinker, named after the two -faced Roman god
Janus. A Genusian thinker, what does that mean
in an academic context? It means he had this
rare ability to look simultaneously in two disparate
directions. He could mix and combine seemingly
unrelated fields like, say, geometry and heat
transfer or astronomy and theology to get these
creative breakthroughs. That makes so much sense.
This ability to synthesize across intellectual
boundaries, it definitely explains his later
forays into alchemy and theology alongside his
rigorous physics. His mind was structured, but
it wasn't limited. So in 1667, the plague subsides
and he returns to Cambridge. He's elected as
a fellow of Trinity in October. But stability
brought its own crisis, the requirement that
all fellows take holy orders as Anglican priests.
And this was a ticking time bomb because Newton
had privately and fundamentally rejected the
central doctrine of the Anglican Church. Yeah,
the Trinity. He wasn't just ambivalent. He actively
rejected it. He did. He was, in secret, an unorthodox
Christian. possibly a Socinian sympathizer or
an Arian. The idea that Jesus Christ was co -equal
with God the Father was, in his eyes, a later
corruption of scripture, and so for him, worshiping
Christ as God was idolatry. That is a life -altering,
potentially career -ending, or even fatal heresy
in 17th century England. How on earth did he
navigate that risk? He was incredibly cautious
and, frankly, politically astute. He succeeded
his mentor, Isaac Barrow, as the Lucasian professor
of mathematics in 1669 at only 26 years old.
An amazing achievement at that age, it was. And
he successfully argued that this prestigious
position should exempt him from the ordination
requirement, emphasizing the time needed for
his profound scientific studies. This request
was actually accepted by King Charles II, which
averted a major public conflict with Anglican
orthodoxy that could have completely ruined him.
It's fascinating, then, that the same position
that saved his career was the one he seemed to
care least about in terms of its contractual
duties. That's the great irony. Despite being
the Lucasian professor, he was notoriously terrible
at the actual teaching part. Really? Oh, yeah.
Biographical accounts suggest his classes were
almost always empty. His assistant noted that
Newton would arrive on time, and if no one showed
up, he would just cut the lecture time from 30
minutes to 15, talk to the walls for a bit, and
then retreat to his experiments or his private
studies. So he was just checking a box. Exactly.
He fulfilled his contractual obligation to lecture,
but he enjoyed neither teaching nor students.
It paints this picture of a man who valued intense
personal study and discovery far, far above public
engagement. So having established the psychological
engine and that initial burst of solitary genius,
let's focus on the staggering output that followed.
The sources claim that Newton's work managed
to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics
then studied. And he was almost entirely self
-taught in the subject. Yeah, the historian Richard
S. Westphal confirmed this. He wrote that by
every indication we have, Newton carried out
his education in mathematics and his program
of research entirely on his own. He started developing
calculus, or fluxions as he called it, as early
as 1664. Wow. And by May of 1665, he was already
at the point where he could compute tangents
and curvature of continuous curves, and he was
recording these definitive tractates in his private
waste book. This brings us directly to, I think,
the most famous intellectual feud of the time.
Yeah. The calculus priority dispute with Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz. Yes, the controversy was bitter,
it was fueled by nationalistic pride, and it
seriously marred the later lives of both men.
And while both of them independently invented
the principles of calculus, the evidence is pretty
overwhelming that Newton formulated the core
ideas years earlier than Leibniz. He was way
ahead. He started his work almost a decade before
the German polymath published his findings. But
the irony remains that the elegant, highly functional
notation we use universally today, the Dicksteady,
is Leibniz's invention. Not Newton's. Exactly.
Leibniz's notation was adopted across continental
Europe for its convenience in representing integrals
and derivatives. Newton's notation, which used
dots over variables to represent fluxions, is
still widely used in physics for things like
time derivatives. But yeah, Leibniz's approach
ultimately won the day for general mathematical
use. But there's a twist there, right, about
how modern mathematicians view Newton's original
work. There is, and it's truly fascinating. Roger
Penrose noted that Newton's original geometrical
methods were often more concise and elegant than
the formal calculus that replaced it. And Vladimir
Arnold went even further. What did he say? He
stated that comparing Newton's original texts
with later commentators reveals how Newton's
presentation is often more modern, more understandable,
and richer in ideas. See, Newton was obsessed
with limits and ratios, what he called the method
of first and last ratios, which allowed him to
avoid the philosophical quagmires of infinitesimal
quantities that really plagued his contemporaries.
So the very tool we use to understand his work
might actually be hiding the elegance and depth
of his original geometric thinking. That's a
profound shift in perspective. It really is.
And beyond calculus, I mean, the sheer scale
of his mathematical achievements is just breathtaking.
His first major breakthrough was the generalized
binomial theorem, which he discovered around
1664 -65. Why was that theorem so powerful and
significant? What did it unlock? Well, before
Newton, the binomial theorem, which tells you
how to expand expressions like a plus b to a
power, it only worked if the exponent was a positive
integer. Okay, pretty limited. Right. Newton
generalized this theorem, so it could be applied
to fractional or negative exponents. And this
discovery provided a powerful new tool for handling
complex algebraic expressions, and crucially,
it allowed him to easily approximate the area
under curves. It was essentially a massive shortcut
for integration. A foundational tool. It was
instantly hailed as one. And he didn't stop there.
We see his name attached to methods that are
still central to computation today. Absolutely.
He developed Newton's method for approximating
roots of a function, which is fundamental to
numerical analysis. He also created the Newton
polygon and originated the Newton -Coates formulas
for numerical integration. And even more surprisingly,
he pioneered the modern application of Gaussian
elimination in Europe. Gaussian elimination is
something taught in basic linear algebra today.
What was his contribution to that? So in 1669
-70, Newton noted that the existing algebra books
just lacked a clear systematic lesson for solving
simultaneous equations. So he supplied that method,
basically the organized process of substitution
and row reduction we know today, and established
the key terminology of extermination. which we
now call elimination. So he wrote the textbook,
essentially. He provided the first practical,
systematic guide for efficiently solving systems
of equations, which was critical for things like
astronomical calculation. And he initiated an
entire new branch of applied math, the calculus
of variations. He did. This is the field that
deals with finding the functions that minimize
or maximize a certain quantity. He kicked it
off by formulating and solving Newton's minimal
resistance problem in 1685. Which was? Finding
the optimal shape of a body to experience minimum
drag. Then in 1697, he famously solved Johann
Bernoulli's really challenging Brastochrone curve
problem. That's the curve down which a bead falls
in the shortest time. And he did it in a single
intense night of work. One night. One night.
And that resistance problem is still regarded
as one of the most difficult tackled by variational
methods prior to the 20th century. He also pioneered
vector analysis, introducing the notion of the
vector in principia, treating physical quantities
like velocity, acceleration, and force as directed
quantities, which is central to all modern physics.
Let's shift gears from pure mathematics to optics,
another field he fundamentally reformed during
those golden years. And it all begins with a
pretty simple experiment using a prism. It was
revolutionary in its simplicity. Around 1666,
Newton passed sunlight through a single prism.
And he observed that the resulting spectrum,
when he projected it, was oblong, not circular,
even though the source light was circular. And
from that simple observation... From that, he
came to the radical conclusion. Color is not
generated by the prism. It is intrinsic to light
itself. The prism simply separates the existing
colors because it refracts different colors by
different angles. This laid the bedrock for all
color science. Crucially, yes. He proved that
colored light does not change properties upon
reflection or scattering. So color is the result
of objects interacting with already colored light,
not the object generating the color itself. And
this immediately revealed a major problem with
the technology of the day. The telescopes. Exactly.
He concluded that refracting telescopes, which
use lenses, would always suffer from chromatic
aberration, that blurring of colors caused by
the lens refracting different wavelengths unevenly.
And being Newton, he didn't just diagnose the
problem, he invented the solution, the Newtonian
telescope. Yes, as a practical demonstration,
a proof of concept, he built the first known
functional reflecting telescope, which used mirror
instead of lenses, to eliminate that chromatic
aberration. Which must have been a huge engineering
challenge. Tremendous. He had to invent the technique
for grinding his own highly reflective speculum
metal mirrors, and he even used the phenomenon
of Newton's rings. these interference patterns
he observed, to judge the quality of the precise
shape of his optics. His methodology was also
decades ahead of its time, wasn't it? Particularly
in dealing with imperfect data. His approach
to measurement was incredibly sophisticated.
In his studies of Newton's rings, he introduced
what he called an error -slaying method, systematically
averaging differences and reducing noise in his
measurements in a way that was just unprecedented
in the 17th century. And he applied this elsewhere.
He did. He applied this rigor later to astronomical
studies, and historians now credit him with inventing
a technique we know today as linear regression
analysis by averaging data sets and summing the
residuals to zero. He basically treated measurement
error like a separate problem to be solved mathematically.
And finally, his views on light itself hold a
surprising modern twist. For a classical physicist,
he was remarkably close to anticipating quantum
mechanics. It's true. Although the classical
view holds him up as the champion of the corpuscular
or particle theory of light, Newton was never
fully satisfied with it. He noted in his seminal
work Optics that light had both particle -like
and wave -like properties. Wave -particle duality.
He was trying to reconcile these two aspects,
really anticipating the concept of wave -particle
duality. The physicist David Finkelstein actually
called him the first quantum physicist for this
attempt to bridge the two descriptions. And if
we want a dramatic illustration of his power
as an experimentalist, we need to talk about
the sheer intensity of his burning mirror. Right.
So in 1704, he presented a burning mirror made
of seven concave glass mirrors. The estimated
radiant energy it achieved was a staggering 460
watts per square centimeter. I can't even picture
what that means. Well, the intensity was so extreme,
it was described in one account as being certainly
brighter thermally than a thousand suns. That
historians suggest it may have produced the greatest
intensity of radiation brought about by human
agency before the arrival of nuclear weapons
in 1945. That is incredible. Reports noted that
it could make metal smoke and even boil gold.
It wasn't just theoretical. His practical skill
could harness immense physical power. All of
this mathematical and optical work, it feels
like it served as preparation for the single
masterpiece that anchored his fame, the Philosophia
Naturalis Principia Mathematica. But the impetus
for returning to celestial mechanics actually
came from a renewed correspondence with a rival.
That rival was Robert Hooke, the secretary of
the Royal Society in 1679. And it was Hooke who
spurred Newton to work out the critical proof.
Demonstrating mathematically that elliptical
planetary orbits must result from a centripetal
force inversely proportional to the square of
the radius vector. And this leads to the monumental
publication in 1687. And we really owe a debt
of gratitude to Edmund Halley for encouraging
and financially supporting its printing. Halley's
role was absolutely crucial. The Principia might
have just remained a set of notes otherwise.
The core achievement was, I mean, it was the
first great unification in physics. It established
classical mechanics and formulated the three
universal laws of motion and the law of universal
gravitation, defining a single set of rules for
the entire cosmos. The scope of what these laws
explain must have felt like, I don't know, uncovering
the mind of God to his contemporaries. It was
completely transformative. The implications were
truly universal. These laws explained everything
from an apple falling on Earth to the precise
motion of celestial bodies. Using gravity, Newton
was able to derive Kepler's laws of planetary
motion. account for the tides. Yes, account for
the regular behavior of ocean tides, explain
the trajectories of comets, and even detail the
slow wobble of Earth's axis, you know, the precession
of the equinoxes. This body of evidence just
effectively eradicated all remaining scientific
doubt about heliocentricity. He also gave us
the first quantitative metrics for the solar
system, right? That was vital for establishing
a universal scale. Newton provided the first
quantitative estimate of the solar mass and determined
the masses and densities of Jupiter and Saturn.
This application of a universal law to specific
measurable bodies was hailed as the supreme expression
of the doctrine that one single set of physical
concepts applies to all matter everywhere in
the universe. But the work on gravity came at
a serious human cost. There's a deeply revealing
anecdote about the intellectual difficulty he
faced when applying his theory to the motion
of the moon. The complexity of applying the three
-body problem, you know, the gravitational interactions
between the Earth, the Sun, and the moon, was
just mathematically profound. Right. And Newton's
biographer reported that working on this specific
problem in the early 1690s caused him a severe
loss of appetite, acute sleep deprivation, and
intense headaches. He even confessed to an astronomer
that his head never ached but when he was studying
the subject. And he resolved that he would eventually
think of it no more. It was literally hurting
him to think about it. It was intellectually
debilitating. It shows the immense mental toll
of his greatest work. We tend to focus only on
the laws of motion and gravity. But Book 2 of
the Principia is a foundational text for an entirely
different field, fluid mechanics. It really is.
Book 2 was a critical pioneer. It provided the
first comprehensive quantitative treatment of
motion under resistance, so how objects move
in the real world through air or water. He formulated
the linear relationship between shear stress
and strain rate that defines a Newtonian fluid.
Things we still use today. Every day. He analyzed
Coet flow and studied the resistance of axisymmetric
bodies. I mean, he was solving problems that
wouldn't really be tackled again until the 20th
century. And his scope extended beyond mechanics
and fluids. Oh, yes. In the Principia, he inferred
the abladeness of Earth's spheroidal figure,
the fact that it bulges slightly at the equator,
a prediction later confirmed by geodetic measurements.
He also performed experiments to calculate the
age of the Earth and described a precursor to
the modern wind tunnel. It just keeps going.
It does. Separately, in 1701, he formulated the
empirical law of cooling, which was the first
heat transfer formulation, and the formal basis
of convective heat transfer. Even in sports physics,
he was the first to explain the Magnus effect,
how spinning objects curve in flight, based on
observing tennis players at Cambridge in 1672.
The sheer dread is just astounding. And all of
this incredible output rests on a fundamental
philosophical declaration that became the motto
for the scientific revolution. Hypotheses non
-fingo. I frame no hypotheses. This assertion,
which he famously placed in the concluding general
scolium of the Principia, was a strategic declaration
of his method, but it was also a direct shot
at his critics, particularly the Cartesians.
Who were complaining about what, exactly? They
accused him of introducing an occult agency by
postulating an invisible force gravity acting
over vast empty distances without explaining
how it worked. So his response wasn't, this is
how gravity works, but... I don't need to hypothesize
on how it works, only that it works. Exactly.
He insisted that whatever is not deduced directly
from phenomena is merely a hypothesis. And hypotheses,
whether metaphysical, physical, of occult qualities,
or mechanical, have no place in experimental
philosophy. So his rules became the bedrock of
modern science. They did. Admit only sufficient
and true causes, assign the same causes to the
same effects, generalize qualities of bodies
found universally, and treat observation -derived
propositions as accurate until contradicted by
other observations. This established a new, highly
rigorous scientific method. It wasn't enough
to just predict the movement of the planets.
The phenomena had to accurately measure the theoretical
parameters, forcing scientists to use provisional
propositions to guide successive approximations
toward the truth. It was a philosophical statement
demanding empirical grounding. He said, it is
enough that gravity really does exist and acts
according to the laws we have set forth and is
sufficient to explain all the motions of the
heavens and the sea. It was a firm line drawn
between mathematical description and metaphysical
speculation. Now we enter the shadows, the side
of Newton that was hidden for centuries. We've
described the hyper -rationalist of the Principia.
But that man was spending most of his time elsewhere.
That's the great paradox. And we know that over
half of everything Isaac Newton wrote concerned
theology and alchemy. Of his estimated 10 million
words of writing, approximately 1 million deal
with alchemy alone. A million words. It was an
enormous, decades -long, secretive commitment.
And we can verify his true range of interests
by looking at his library, which truly changes
the perception of his priorities. It absolutely
does. His personal library contained 1 ,752 books.
When you categorize them, works on theology represented
the largest, section 477 books, about 27 .2%,
and alchemy made up a substantial portion, 169
books, or 9 .6%. And how does that compare to
his main fields? Well, these two categories vastly
outnumbered his core scientific texts. Mathematics
accounted for only 7 .2 % and physics for just
3 .0%. He was arguably more devoted to finding
the true chronology of the Bible in the philosopher's
stone than he was to publishing advanced mathematics.
Let's start with his controversial religious
beliefs. He was devout, but his views would have
been considered extremely dangerous heresy. He
was a private heretic. He rejected the doctrine
of the Trinity, siding with Arius, who held that
Christ was a divine mediator, but ultimately
a creation of and subordinate to God the Father.
Newton profoundly believed that worshipping Jesus
Christ as God was idolatry, the grievous sin,
a belief he had to hide meticulously because
it was punishable by law. It's amazing he kept
this secret while maintaining such a high profile
at an Anglican university. He was a master of
self -concealment. He went to great lengths,
engaging in extensive biblical scholarship, including
detailed textual criticism, to prove that the
standard texts had been corrupted. His work included
an historical account of two notable corruptions
of scripture. He's applying the same rigor to
ancient texts as he was to planetary orbits?
Precisely. He also applied his computational
rigor to theology, producing complex biblical
chronology where he calculated the precise date
of the crucifixion to be 3 April A .D. 33. And
his contemporaries had no idea. Well, despite
his private heresy, he was respected as a theologian
by them. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas
Tennyson, once told him, You know more divinity
than all of us put together. But that admiration
was based on a false premise. They never knew
the full extent of his Unitarian beliefs. Now
for the alchemy. It wasn't a casual hobby. It
was a decades -long, intensive pursuit that may
have physically damaged him. Right. Alchemical
texts were always coded with allegory to protect
craft secrets, which made them perfectly suited
to Newton's intensely private, complex mind.
But this pursuit had a very dark side. The mercury.
Yes. When his death mask was examined posthumously,
his hair was found to contain high levels of
mercury. This was almost certainly the result
of his alchemical experiments, which often involved
heating and handling mercury and other toxic
metals. And mercury poisoning is the leading
theory to explain his eccentricity and the nervous
breakdown we mentioned earlier. That's the consensus
among scholars. Mercury exposure, especially
chronic low -level exposure, is known to cause
paranoia, emotional instability, and wild swings
in temperament. This fits perfectly with a breakdown
that occurred around 1693. Which coincided with
what? With the abrupt end of his close friendship
with a Swiss mathematician, Nicolas Fatio de
Dulier. Tell us about that breakdown. What did
it look like? It was severe. During this period
of paranoia and emotional instability, Newton
sent these wildly accusatory letters to close
friends, including the philosopher John Locke.
He charged Locke with trying to embroil Newton
with women and by other means. Which was completely
unfounded. Completely unfounded and irrational.
And Newton later apologized, blaming lack of
sleep. But it was a clear, documented moment
where the intense pressure and likely the mercury
poisoning overwhelmed his otherwise rigorous
mind. And speaking of bizarre notes, his alchemical
notes also revealed what he thought was the best
cure for the plague. This is a stark reminder
that even the greatest scientific mind existed
during an era when science and superstition were
still deeply intertwined. Analyzing his notes
from the 1660s plague years, Newton suggested
a therapy based on the work of Jan Baptist van
Helmont. And what did it involve? The cure involved
suspending a toad by its legs in a chimney for
three days until it vomited up earth and insects
onto a dish of yellow wax and then died. The
powdered toad, combined with its secretions,
would be made into lozenges and worn about the
affected area to drive away the contagion. A
mixture of empirical observation and pure occult
practice. Exactly. Let's turn to his intense
personality. We know he was incredibly driven,
prioritizing work over health and controlling
his physical appetites, even becoming vegetarian
later in life. But he was complex, neurotic,
and fiercely competitive. He definitely presented
two faces. On one hand, he expressed this profound
humility, writing, I do not know what I may appear
to the world, but to myself I seem to have been
only like a boy playing on the seashore, whilst
the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered
before me. A beautiful quote. Yet, we know he
was intensely sensitive to criticism and held
massive grudges against intellectual rivals,
most famously Robert Hooke, which brings us to
perhaps the most misunderstood quote in science
history. The shoulders of giants. Ah, yes. The
full quote is, If I have seen further, it is
by standing on the shoulders of giants. While
it's typically celebrated as a statement of modesty,
many historians believe that in the context of
his vicious, ongoing dispute with Hook in 1675,
it was intended as a cruel personal attack. Oh,
so. Hooke was noted for being physically short
and hunchbacked. So even though the underlying
proverb suggests the speaker is the dwarf who
sees farther, using that specific language in
a letter to his rival is highly suspicious. It
suggests a streak of profound intellectual malice.
Around the age of 53, Newton made this dramatic
career pivot, leaving the empty lecture halls
of Cambridge for the high stakes world of London
government. This is where the hyper theoretician
becomes the hands on executive. He became the
Warden of the Royal Mint in 1696, a position
he got through the patronage of his friend Charles
Montague. He was later promoted to Master of
the Mint in 1699, which was a highly lucrative
position he held for the last 30 years of his
life. And these were usually do -nothing jobs,
right? They were typically sinecures, jobs that
paid well for very little work, but Newton treated
them as vital duties. He retired from Cambridge
entirely in 1701 to focus on it. The mint appointment
put him in charge of managing a massive national
crisis, the Great Recoinage of 1696. What was
the central problem facing the country? The currency
was collapsing. It was due to widespread counterfeiting
and specifically clipping. People would shave
small amounts of silver off the edge of hammered
coins and then hoard the silver scraps. So the
coins in circulation were worth less than their
face value. Much less. Since coins were valued
by weight, not just denomination, the silver
content of the currency had plummeted. Newton
estimated a staggering 20 % of the coins taken
in during the recoinage were counterfeit or clipped.
The national economy was at serious risk. And
this is where the genius theoretician becomes
an incredibly effective, bureaucratic, and often
ruthless crime fighter. It's one of the most
surprising twists of his life. Counterfeiting
was considered high treason, punishable by hanging,
drawing, and quartering. Newton personally took
charge of the enforcement. He knew he couldn't
rely on the existing, often corrupt, constables.
What did he do? He developed an intelligence
network. He personally investigated cases, often
disguising himself as a patron of bars, taverns,
and criminal haunts just to gather evidence.
He was a master physicist turned master detective.
He was meticulous. Between 1698 and 1699, he
conducted over 100 personal cross -examinations
of witnesses, informers, and suspects. He used
the same relentless, systematic interrogation
style he used on abstract problems, exploiting
the weaknesses in their testimonies until the
truth was revealed. And he got results. He successfully
prosecuted 28 coiners, ensuring they faced the
full penalty of the law. This included the infamous
serial counterfeiter William Chaloner. Chaloner
was a formidable opponent, wasn't he? He was.
Chaloner was a master confidence man and counterfeiter
who had nearly outmaneuvered the law. He had
previously used bribery and perjured testimony
to escape prosecution. But Newton was different.
Newton, seeing Chaloner as a genuine threat to
the stability of the entire economy, personally
gathered the damning evidence. Chaloner tried
everything, appealing to Newton's vanity, claiming
innocence, sending desperate letters. But Newton
was unyielding. He treated Chaloner's downfall
with the same intellectual rigor as he treated
a physics proof. Chaloner was found guilty and
hanged at Tyburn in 1699. Did he apply his scientific
mind to the actual industrial process of minting?
Absolutely. He used his unique combination of
organizational skill and engineering genius to
streamline the mint's operations. He dramatically
improved minting technology, raising the weekly
coin output from 15 ,000 pounds to an impressive
100 ,000 pounds. And the quality. More importantly,
he introduced unprecedented quality control.
He reduced the standard deviation of guinea weights
from 1 .3 grams to just 0 .75 grams, increasing
the accuracy and uniformity of British coinage.
These improvements lasted until the 1770s and
saved the Treasury massive sums. Beyond production,
he was also influencing national economic policy
with surprisingly modern views. He was way ahead
of his time. He believed that paper credit, such
as government debt, was a practical and wise
solution to lower interest rates, which would
in turn stimulate trade and growth of view often
debated at the time. And he had a radical view
on what gave currency its value. He did. He held
a radical minority opinion that the value of
both metal and paper currency was fundamentally
set by public opinion and trust a social concept
rather than simply the intrinsic material value.
And his most definitive economic action inadvertently
shifted the basis of the national currency. That's
right. His extensive report in 1717 led to a
royal proclamation that definitively changed
the bimetallic ratio between gold guineas and
silver shillings. The new ratio favored gold,
and the long -term effect of his adjustment was
to inadvertently move Britain from the silver
standard to its first operational gold standard.
Despite his profound success at the Mint, his
brief foray into parliamentary politics was far
less illustrious. Yeah, he served two short,
largely unremarkable terms as a member of parliament
for the University of Cambridge. there's a famous
anecdote suggesting his only recorded comments
during one term were to complain about a cold
draft in the chamber and politely request that
the window be closed he clearly preferred the
systematic precision of the mint to the messy
chaos of politics no question And even the greatest
minds are not immune to financial speculation,
particularly during the heady days of the South
Sea bubble. No, even the supreme rationalist
fell victim to the hysteria. He lost a staggering
amount, at least 10 ,000 pounds and plausibly
over 20 ,000 pounds, in the collapse of the South
Sea Company around 1720. And he had a famous
quote about that, didn't he? He supposedly remarked
afterward that he could calculate the motions
of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of
the people. Fortunately, he was already rich
before the bubble, so he still died a very wealthy
man. He received his knighthood later in life,
an honor that recognized his status. He was knighted
by Tween Anne in 1705, making him only the second
scientist to receive the honor after Francis
Bacon. Historians suggest this knighthood was
likely motivated by political considerations
connected with the parliamentary election that
year, rather than solely recognizing his scientific
work or his service at the Mint. Though certainly
provided the pretext. Of course. Newton died
in his sleep in London on March 31st, 1727, new
style. What kind of farewell did the world give
the man who had defined it? It was a monumental
event. Given his revolutionary status, he was
given a highly ceremonial funeral attended by
nobles, scientists, and philosophers. And he
was buried in Westminster Abbey among kings and
queens, a testament to his status. He was the
first scientist ever granted burial there. We
must definitively address the persistent, charming
myth surrounding his greatest discovery, the
Apple story. We all know the popular version,
but what did the sources actually record about
the event? Well, the story is a wonderful piece
of scientific folklore, passed into popular knowledge
largely by Voltaire, who heard it directly from
Newton's niece, Catherine Barton. So it comes
from the family, in a way. But what's the reality,
according to his contemporaries who recorded
the event? Acquaintances confirm Newton did tell
the story, but the apocryphal detail of him being
struck on the head is definitely false. William
Stukely's account, recorded in 1726, quotes,
Newton recalling the event, contemplating why
the apple always descends perpendicularly, always
toward the Earth's center. Okay. This led him
to hypothesize a drawing power in matter that
extends not just to the surface, but all the
way to the Earth's core. So the apple provided
the moment of introspection, the critical question,
not the immediate mathematical answer. Exactly.
It prompted him to grapple with the idea that
terrestrial gravity extends to the moon in an
inverse square proportion, which he was working
on as early as the late 1660s. The crucial missing
piece, the scientific gap that took him two decades
of intense mathematical struggle, was proving
that the Earth's gravity acts as if all its mass
were concentrated at its center point. That was
a real work. That highly complex proof was the
20 -year battle, not the simple fall of the apple.
The acclaim he achieved, both in his time and
posthumously, places him in a class by himself.
You simply can't overstate the impact of his
life's work. No, you can't. The sources are full
of hyperbolic yet genuinely earned praise. Joseph
Louis Lagrange called Newton the greatest genius
who ever lived, and he added, the most fortunate,
for we cannot find more than once a system of
the world to establish. Even Einstein. Albert
Einstein himself, someone who later superseded
aspects of Newton's work, stated that Newton's
creation of calculus in relation to his laws
of motion was perhaps the greatest advance in
thought that a single individual was ever privileged
to make. James Gleich's assessment cuts right
to the core of his achievement. Gleich wrote
that Newton discovered more of the essential
core of human knowledge than anyone before or
after. and Ludwig Boltzmann simply called Principia
the first and greatest work ever written about
theoretical physics. So where do historians rank
him? This immense respect places him generally
alongside Carl F. Gauss and Archimedes as one
of the three greatest mathematicians of all time.
But his combined achievements as the theoretician,
an experimentalist, and mathematician, put him
in a class by himself among empirical scientists.
His honors are global and enduring. The unit
of force is named for him. Right. He was named
Time Magazine's Person of the Century for the
17th century, and he was voted the greatest Briton
in a 2003 poll, ahead of massive figures like
Winston Churchill. Even the Nobel Prize -winning
physicist Lev Landau ranked all physicists on
a logarithmic scale of genius from 0 to 5, the
highest ranking 0 was assigned only to Newton.
Wow, just... Acknowledging his singular contribution.
Ultimately, the Principia was more than a physics
text. It provided the philosophical framework
that sparked the Enlightenment itself. That's
the deeper legacy. Newton's publication of the
Principia is considered a crucial turning point
that started the Enlightenment. His conception
of the universe, based on natural, universal,
and rationally understandable laws, provided
the philosophical seed for Enlightenment ideology
across all disciplines. How exactly did that
scientific framework inform political and economic
thought? Well, Enlightenment thinkers took the
idea of universal natural laws and they applied
them to human society. Think of John Locke and
Voltaire, who applied concepts of natural law
governing the heavens and earth to political
systems, advocating for intrinsic, unalienable
rights for humans. And Adam Smith in economics.
Similarly, yes. Adam Smith applied natural conceptions
of human psychology and self -interest to economic
systems, seeking the invisible hand that governed
markets. Newton provided the clockwork universe,
and Enlightenment thinkers sought to find the
clockwork governing human behavior and governance.
What an incredible journey through a life that
defied simple categorization. We started with
the apple, but we ended up with universal laws,
a successful war against counterfeiters that
stabilized a national currency, and a secret
life involving both ancient heretical texts and
mercury poisoning. It's the profound paradox
that must stick with you, the listener, the man
who fundamentally changed the basis of the scientific
method. demanding that explanations be grounded
strictly on observable data with his famous rejection
of unsupported hypotheses, hypotheses, not Fingo.
Right. That same man spent decades searching
for the secret fire of nature through alchemy.
a field that blurred the line between science
and magic. That seems like an utterly human,
necessary contradiction contained within the
supreme genius. He had the rational side that
wrote the laws of motion and the intuitive, exploratory
side that risked his life searching for secrets
in the dark. It does. And this raises an important
question for you, the learner. If the supreme
genius of science operated simultaneously on
multiple seemingly contradictory intellectual
pathways, the intensely rational and the passionately
occult, what does that tell us about the true,
meth -y nature of breakthrough discovery? That's
a great question. What contemporary fields or
pursuits, dismissed today as marginal or non
-scientific, might actually hold the scientific
seat of tomorrow? Something to mull over as you
encounter new, strange ideas. A fantastic thought
to end on. Thank you for joining us for this
deep dive into the paradoxical world of Sir Isaac
Newton. We'll see you next time.