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Isaac Newton
Scritto da James Gleick
Narrato da Allan Corduner
Azioni libro
Inizia ad ascoltare- Editore:
- HarperAudio
- Pubblicato:
- Apr 26, 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780060846329
- Formato:
- Audiolibro
Descrizione
James Gleick has long been fascinated by the making of science -- how ideas order visible appearances, how equations can give meaning to molecular and stellar phenomena, how theories can transform what we see. In Chaos, he chronicled the emergence of a new way of looking at dynamic systems; in Genius, he portrayed the wondrous dimensions of Richard Feymnan's mind. Now, in Isaac Newton, he gives us the story of the scientist who, above all others, embodied humanity's quest to unveil the hidden forces that constitute the physical world.
In this original, sweeping, and intimate biography, Gleick moves between a comprehensive historical portrait and a dramatic focus on Newton's significant letters and unpublished notebooks to illuminate the real importance of his work in physics, in optics, and in calculus. He makes us see the old intuitive, alchemical universe out of which Newton's mathematics first arose and shows us how Newton's ideas have altered all forms of understanding from history to philosophy. And he gives us a moving account of the conflicting impulses that pulled at this man's heart: his quiet longings, his rage, his secrecy, the extraordinary subtleties of a personality that were mirrored in the invisible forces he first identified as the building blocks of science. More than biography, more than history, more than science, Isaac Newton tells us how, through the mind of one man, we have come to know our place in the cosmos.
Read by Allan Couruner.
Informazioni sul libro
Isaac Newton
Scritto da James Gleick
Narrato da Allan Corduner
Descrizione
James Gleick has long been fascinated by the making of science -- how ideas order visible appearances, how equations can give meaning to molecular and stellar phenomena, how theories can transform what we see. In Chaos, he chronicled the emergence of a new way of looking at dynamic systems; in Genius, he portrayed the wondrous dimensions of Richard Feymnan's mind. Now, in Isaac Newton, he gives us the story of the scientist who, above all others, embodied humanity's quest to unveil the hidden forces that constitute the physical world.
In this original, sweeping, and intimate biography, Gleick moves between a comprehensive historical portrait and a dramatic focus on Newton's significant letters and unpublished notebooks to illuminate the real importance of his work in physics, in optics, and in calculus. He makes us see the old intuitive, alchemical universe out of which Newton's mathematics first arose and shows us how Newton's ideas have altered all forms of understanding from history to philosophy. And he gives us a moving account of the conflicting impulses that pulled at this man's heart: his quiet longings, his rage, his secrecy, the extraordinary subtleties of a personality that were mirrored in the invisible forces he first identified as the building blocks of science. More than biography, more than history, more than science, Isaac Newton tells us how, through the mind of one man, we have come to know our place in the cosmos.
Read by Allan Couruner.
- Editore:
- HarperAudio
- Pubblicato:
- Apr 26, 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780060846329
- Formato:
- Audiolibro
Informazioni sull'autore
Correlati a Isaac Newton
Recensioni
His treasure-trove of personal writings - kept hidden until near the middle of the twentieth century - show this man to be, like Luther before him, the last of the great medievalists who birthed the movement of modernity. With Newton came the Industrial Revolution and a rigid system that Einsteinianism had to loosen. He obsessed over thought after thought, most based on alchemy and Arian/Gnostic theology (not orthodox Trinitarianism), until modern physics was birthed, and with it a deductive mechanism from first "principles."
He was born the son of an illiterate father whom he never knew. He seemed destined to become a farmer, but instead, privately reckoned physics into being at Cambridge. He never married. He was haunted by lust. He became rich by overseeing the conversion of Britain's Mint. He left no will, was close to none, was a recluse, and wrote brilliantly.
He was a magician, an alchemist, and a heretical theologian. He dabbled in unreason to give birth to reason. He later became an authoritarian over scientific thought. He feuded with Leibnitz, a feud which in some senses persists to this day. (They both are right in their claims, and humanity is the big loser of the argument. They should be seen as independent co-founders of calculus.)
His Principia removed Aristotle's impulsivity and set gravity as the central cause of all of motion. He derived calculus to explain its movement in a universal language. He made mathematics the foundational language of humanity.
It wasn't until Einstein that science returned to solving problems as its fundamental method. Even Darwin proposed a universal system, not a solution. With Einstein, relativity (which was the popular version of the physical laws Einstein proposed, much as mechanism was the popular import of Newtonianism) became in imbibed by Western consciousness. Now, scientists see things through a team spirit relative to one's position in work. Few claim to be systemic masters any longer, as if there were a system to master in the first place.
The rigid system of Newtonianism stays with us on the outskirts. Every time someone exerts a will to claim overarching knowledge (which is, in Newton's world, power), they claim Newton's authoritarian dark side. Trump, old-school Calvinism, old-school capitalism, moralism. There is right and wrong for Newton. Again, it took an Einstein to relativize everything.
I think the real Isaac Newton would have liked to know that sage of Princeton Albert Einstein. It's unfortunate that I also dream that Newton would have found much reason to argue with him, much as Newton privately argued with Leibnitz in his own day and Einstein argued with Quantum Mechanics for the second-half of his life. At least Newton was private in his argumentation. He preferred not to argue publicly. That's a character trait we can all learn from, especially in a post-Newtonian, post-Einsteinian world.
James Gleick puts you directly into Newton's life and world through extensive quotations from letters and other documents, all with the original spellings. In some cases, like Newton's playing with infinite sums, Gleick reproduces a facsimile of the document itself.
No scientific life I know is as full of bitter rivalries, secrecy, and a continuum from the ultra-rational to the completely irrational. Towards the end of the book Gleick quotes Keynes' apt description of Newton: "Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago."
Gleick gets pretty technical. A lot of this book describes Newton's theories, including calculus, in no small amount of detail. I've been frustrated in the past by biographies that didn't go into enough technical detail about the discoveries of various scientists, so this may be a "Careful what you wish for" situation; I've always been shit at calculus, and much of this book flew right over my head.
But it does the job. At under 200 pages it's a snappy read, and I understand Newton and his place in history exactly as well as I want to, so: mission accomplished.
Gleick, to be fair, doesn't seem particularly interested in details outside of what Newton accomplished, but he still manages to impart a sense of Newton, the man, in addition to the scientist. His obsessions, idiosyncrasies, and feuds help to flesh out a rather interesting story.
Gleick does a great job of documenting his subject's accomplishments, presenting them in such a way as to remind us how firmly they've been ensconced in the realm of modern thought. And while I would have appreciated a greater sense of the world in which he lived, if only to provide a better context for what he achieved, Gleick deserves credit for a great biography of both the man and the birth of modern scientific thought.