Most of us likely first heard the name Isaac Newton when we were in primary school. For some, it may have been in a classroom; for others it may have been while viewing a television program – most likely a cartoon. However, in most all instances, I’d be willing to wager that the name was connected with a falling apple. As we grew, the caricature of the man in the long coat and knee-length breeches sitting beneath a tree and being brained by a falling pippin likely gave way to the image of Newton as an extremely intelligent man who did something with gravity and mathematics. This is where the story comes to a conclusion for most. Yet for those of us who remained interested in science or theology – yes, theology – details of Newton’s life continued to emerge and enlarge our image of him. The tricky part is that the more details that became known to us, the more confused we were likely to become as at a particular point they seem to describe not a single person but two, perhaps even three – all of whom would too easily be thought today to be polar opposites to one another.

Fortunately, there are scholars diligently seeking to uncover and assemble as accurate a portrait as can be achieved of Newton in all his seemingly contradictory aspects; one such scholar being Prof. Niccolò Guicciardini of the University of Milan, whose book Isaac Newton and Natural Philosophy offers interested readers a particularly well-written and well-illustrated portrait of Newton the mathematician, Newton the alchemist, Newton the theologian, Newton the cosmologist, and perhaps most overlooked, Newton the survivor.

Let’s take that last point up first. Simply reading the years of Newton’s birth and death – 1642 and 1727 respectively – won’t bring the historical events that occurred in England during his lifetime readily to mind in many other than the dedicated historian. As Prof. Guicciardini points out right at the beginning of the first chapter, Newton’s life spanned “the Civil Wars (1642-51), the Interregnum (1649-1660), the Restoration of the Stuarts (1660-88) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which placed William of Orange and Queen Mary Stuart on the throne, and finally the Hanoverian succession (1714).” And throughout this entire particularly turbulent period of English history, when lives and fortunes were lost according to one’s religious views and allegiances, and what was acceptable and even advantageous one year could spell one’s doom the next, Newton’s life and career progressed on an essentially uninterrupted upward trajectory. How did this happen? As Prof. Guicciardini explains, it was not by means of any complex machinations or constantly discerning which way the political or religious winds were blowing, but quite the contrary: Newton kept his attention fixed firstly, foremostly, and almost fanatically on his work.

Indeed, had some of the things that Newton was turning over in his ever-busy mind become publicly known, his career and perhaps even his life would have come to a very abrupt end. Newton was a devout Christian but a non-Trinitarian (one who denies the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and insists on the undivided unitary omnipotence of a single divine being, i.e., the Christian God), a theological idea that was simultaneously unacceptable to both the Catholic and Protestant denominations of Christianity. And yet, he managed to hold the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge where taking holy orders was mandatory for any professorship – a feat he accomplished not by dissembling what he actually believed but by keeping his own counsel, and seeking to be and succeeding in being excused from the requirement.

Newton was also deeply interested in alchemy. Not the alchemy that is now the topic of seemingly endless blather in some corners of the so-called social media, which is no closer to the alchemy of the early modern period as the astrology of today is to the astonishingly complex and mathematically rigorous astrology of that time. The alchemy of Newton’s day required a substantial amount of metallurgical knowledge and experimentation, and, as the prevention and prosecution of coin counterfeiting was of great importance in his time, it’s perhaps why later in his life Newton became and was very successful in the positions of Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint. However, without the explanation of these and related matters provided by Prof. Guicciardini in this biography, putting them in their proper historical context, it’s all too easy to misunderstand Newton’s alchemical pursuits.

Of course, Newton’s mathematical, physical science, astronomical, and cosmological works – particularly his Principia, his Opticks, and his design of the type of telescope that carries his name – are, as would be expected, prominently treated in this book, however Prof. Guiciardini’s explanations of the nuances of Newton’s work in these areas are what really have the power to bring the reader to understand what a fascinating and innovative thinker Newton was. He was absolutely committed to the power of mathematics to explain the mysteries of the natural world, yet his disputes with those who sought to bring about a modernization of the discipline were legendary (he preferred geometry to algebra not only because it yielded the solutions to his investigations but also was because it was more elegant). He plumbed the mysteries of planetary motions to the deepest extent possible in his day yet remained committed to the idea that such motions involved both a physical and a spiritual force to occur.

These is so much more that could be said about all that is to be found in and learned from this relatively short but very enlightening biography – I haven’t even touched upon his work in the now all-but-lost but then widely popular discipline of chronology (very roughly explained, it’s part Biblical exegesis, part mathematics, part history, part genealogy) – but it would be better for all those whose interest has been piqued by this review to read the book for themselves. Unlike many longer biographies of Newton, which often go much deeper into Newton’s work in mathematics and physics than the average reader may find readily intelligible, Prof. Guiciardini’s Isaac Newton and Natural Philosophy is particularly accessible to all those for whom this may be a first comprehensive introduction to the man, his times, and his works, as well as being a lively and interesting book for those who may already have some understanding of Newton but who are always keen to refine it and perhaps fit a few more pieces into the puzzle of his remarkable life.

Nota bene: thanks to The Warburg Institute, a very worthwhile video presentation by and discussion with Prof. Guicciardini about this book, as well as a number of other books in the Renaissance Lives series is available via the Institute’s YouTube channel.

Title: Isaac Newton and Natural Philosophy

Author: Niccolò Guicciardini

Publisher: Reaktion Books; distributed by University of Chicago Press

Series: Renaissance Lives

Format: Hardcover (no jacket)

Pages: 272 pp., with 12 color plates and 31 halftones

ISBN: 9781780239064

Published: February 2018

In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.