GALILEO, that giant in physical science of the
early seventeenth century, died in 1642. On
Christmas day of the same year there was born in
England another intellectual giant who was destined
to carry forward the work of Copernicus, Kepler, and
Galileo to a marvellous consummation through the
discovery of the great unifying law in accordance with
which the planetary motions are performed. We
refer, of course, to the greatest of English physical
scientists, Isaac Newton, the Shakespeare of the scientific
world. Born thus before the middle of the seventeenth
century, Newton lived beyond the first quarter
of the eighteenth (1727). For the last forty years of
that period his was the dominating scientific personality
of the world. With full propriety that time has
been spoken of as the "Age of Newton.''
Yet the man who was to achieve such distinction
gave no early premonition of future greatness. He
was a sickly child from birth, and a boy of little seeming
promise. He was an indifferent student, yet, on
the other hand, he cared little for the common amusements
of boyhood. He early exhibited, however, a
taste for mechanical contrivances, and spent much
time in devising windmills, water-clocks, sun-dials, and
kites. While other boys were interested only in having
kites that would fly, Newton—at least so the stories
of a later time would have us understand—cared more
for the investigation of the seeming principles involved,
or for testing the best methods of attaching the strings,
or the best materials to be used in construction.
Meanwhile the future philosopher was acquiring a
taste for reading and study, delving into old volumes
whenever he found an opportunity. These habits
convinced his relatives that it was useless to attempt
to make a farmer of the youth, as had been their intention.
He was therefore sent back to school, and in
the summer of 1661 he matriculated at Trinity College,
Cambridge. Even at college Newton seems to have
shown no unusual mental capacity, and in 1664, when
examined for a scholarship by Dr. Barrow, that gentleman
is said to have formed a poor opinion of the
applicant. It is said that the knowledge of the estimate
placed upon his abilities by his instructor piqued
Newton, and led him to take up in earnest the mathematical
studies in which he afterwards attained such
distinction. The study of Euclid and Descartes's "Geometry''
roused in him a latent interest in mathematics,
and from that time forward his investigations were
carried on with enthusiasm. In 1667 he was elected
Fellow of Trinity College, taking the degree of M.A. the
following spring.
It will thus appear that Newton's boyhood and
early manhood were passed during that troublous
time in British political annals which saw the overthrow
of Charles I., the autocracy of Cromwell, and the
eventual restoration of the Stuarts. His maturer
years witnessed the overthrow of the last Stuart and
the reign of the Dutchman, William of Orange. In
his old age he saw the first of the Hanoverians mount
the throne of England. Within a decade of his death
such scientific path-finders as Cavendish, Black, and
Priestley were born—men who lived on to the close of
the eighteenth century. In a full sense, then, the age
of Newton bridges the gap from that early time of
scientific awakening under Kepler and Galileo to the
time which we of the twentieth century think of as
essentially modern.
