Gleick: Isaac Newton
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Current revision as of 00:15, 15 April 2009
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James Gleick, Isaac Newton. New York : Pantheon Books, 2003. xii + 272 pages.
I was very impressed by this short but substantial book. Gleick has managed to write in what I think of as a "high" tone, a somewhat lofty rhetorical style on the poetic side, and sustain it throughout the book. It's a difficult voice to maintain, but he did it well and it suited the subject.
This was certainly not a detailed, laundry-list sort of biography, nor was it a scientific biography as such. It was more of a character piece, a gesture drawing sketched with ideas. It's as though the concepts and discoveries emanated from Newton and then we saw how they affected the times and people around him; these events then formed an outline, a silhouette of this eccentric, intellectual giant.
Gleick said he wanted to try to place Newton in his time, and he that did very well. I felt as though I was privy to what Newton and his contemporaries were thinking -- it was effective narrative. I enjoyed reading the book, and I came away with a much deeper appreciation of Newton than one might expect from a surprisingly short book.
To end, a couple of quotations. These aren't illustrative in any general way; they were just bits that amused me the most.
The first one I take entirely out of context, but I thought the rhythm and diction were sublime. It is Newton he's writing about:
Ceaselss ratiocination disordered his senses. [p. 149]
In this second one, we meet Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal from whom Newton had obtained some vital data, but with whom he obviously later fell out. I particularly enjoyed the little twisting of the knife that Flamsteed manages at the end with his "againe":
Flamsteed took some small pleasure in reporting rumors of Newton's death [to Newton himself]: "It served me to assure your freinds that you were in health they haveing heard that you were dead againe." [p. 154, spelling original, emphasis added]
-- Notes by JNS
