Isaac Newton by Kathleen Krull

Author:Kathleen Krull
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2010-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

In fact, Hooke had been one of his influences. But now he charged that Hooke’s ideas were “not only insufficient, but in some respects unintelligible.”

Hooke made the mistake of writing back, and the more he wrote, the more enraged Newton became. He answered Hooke’s objections carefully and, at first, patiently, but later with growing irritation. Newton typically made twenty or thirty drafts of a single document, using a quill pen to cover pages in his tiny spidery handwriting. Dealing with Hooke was taking up valuable time.

His fear of publicity grew worse. His only recourse, as he saw it, was to stop publishing his findings. “I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new or to become a slave to defend it,” he pouted.

Over the years, Newton’s relations with Hooke deteriorated further. In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, he once accused Hooke of being “a man of strange unsociable temper.”

Yet circumstances in the small world of English science demanded that the two men try to remain civil. They continued to exchange letters with a veneer of courtesy. But Newton turned away from the Royal Society, which he associated with Hooke. The quarrel was kept alive for thirty-one years. It ended only with the death of Robert Hooke.

Certainly one could say that Newton’s reaction to criticism was childish, even irrational. It was also bad for science. Sharing ideas is a critical part of the scientific progress. But ever since he had spent so much time alone as a boy, Newton liked to spin in his own orbit. Now he went into genuine mourning over the loss of his “former serene liberty.”

The result was that he failed to engage with other leading scientists, perhaps impeding his own and others’ progress. He would not let others stand on his shoulders.

Most importantly, Newton delayed the publication of Opticks—the full account of his revolutionary theory of light and color—for some thirty years, all the way until 1704. The year was no coincidence—Hooke had died in 1703.

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