The Calculus Wars by Jason Socrates Bardi

Author:Jason Socrates Bardi [Bardi, Jason Socrates]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780786733644
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2016-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

FOR NEWTON, THE Principia was a turning point in his life. It gave him the confidence to write the text that would become Opticks later. Meanwhile, demand fueled work toward a second and then third edition of the Principia, and he carried on extensive (perhaps even neurotic) correspondence helping others correct, revise, expound, and improve it—work that occupied Newton part time for most of the rest of his life.

As the editions of the Principia grew, so did the legend of Newton—and the popularizations of his science both profound and profane. A good example of the latter appeared in 1739, when a book, Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d for the Use of the Ladies, was published. An Italian named Francesco Algarotti was the author, and he lauded his own efforts for bringing a new kind of amusement to the ladies of the continent, whom he felt should be obliged to thank him. “If I have brought into Italy a new mode of cultivating the mind, rather than the present momentary fashion of adjusting their head dress and placing their curls.”

Fame for his science aside, the Principia really changed Newton’s life. Just after it was published, he was elected to parliament, a post that brought him to London. And this led him to meet Christian Huygens, Leibniz’s old mentor, who visited London for the first time in the late 1680s. This meeting was a significant one not only because it brought together these two stellar intellectuals, but also because it would introduce Newton to a young mathematician and astronomer, Nicolas Fatio de Duiller, a Swiss national who lived for several years in London and would play a crucial role in Newton’s life.

Fatio is a fascinating character, and is a key player in the calculus wars. He entered the lives of Leibniz and Newton separately (the latter, in a most peculiar way), and was really the first person to stir up trouble between them.

Born in Basel, Switzerland, on February 16, 1664, Fatio was the bright son of a wealthy Swiss family. He went to Paris in the early 1680s to be educated, with a generous allowance and leave to study anything he wished. His father had made several attempts to study divinity, but Fatio chose to pick up mathematics and astronomy instead, for which he showed a great propensity, though his real talent in his early years seemed to be having the ability to be in the right place at the right time.

After Paris, Fatio went to the Hague to study, and at that point, as a young man of twenty-one, he met a certain Count Fenil. Fenil had been working as a military officer in France, when he shot dead his commanding officer and subsequently had to flee the country. He stayed at Fatio’s home for a while, during which time he confided in Fatio a plot he was hatching.

As a way of making amends, Fenil had proposed to France’s minister of war, the Marquis de Louvois, that he would seize William of Orange, then still the Dutch prince, and deliver him to King Louis XIV and France.

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