The Life and Work of Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton has been considered one of the most outstanding

scientists of all time. He has often been portrayed as a man who saw

the world in absolutes and adopted an image of a scientist who after

centuries of ignorance and superstition gave rise to a time of

empirical science in a modern world. However various sources have

personified Newton in a different light. There is evidence to suggest

that Newton was a seeker of a synthesis of all knowledge and believed

that there was a unified theory of the principles of the universe. It

also suggests the he believed that this synthesis was once known to

mankind. Newton spent his life looking for this combination of

complex ideas not only through mathematics and physics but through the

pursuit of alchemy, chronology, and theology, always seeking to

include God in all his investigations. This essay will look at the

journey of Newton’s life, from his early years to his death, his

discoveries through his life in mathematics and physics, his

relationships and feuds with other scientists. It will also at how

Newton’s findings formed the basis of mathematics for the next three

hundred years.

In the seventeenth century, science was in its infancy. Many people,

including educated people still believed in witchcraft and sorcery.

Almost nothing was known about the fundamental principles behind the

way many things worked. According to White (1990) most people

believed that the universe was controlled by an all powerful deity and

many observed events and phenomena were caused by spirits and

inexplicable mystical forces. There were no proper theories of

mechanics or ideas abou...

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...greatest of the modern age of scientists, a rationalist,

one who taught us to think on the lines of cold and untictured

reason. I do not see him inj this light, I do not think that anyone

who has poured over the contents of that box which he packed away when

he left Cambridge in 1696 and which, thought partly dispersed, have

come down to us, can see him like that. Newton was not the first 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 intectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.

Isaac Newton a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas day.

1642, was the last wonder child to whom the Magi could do sincere and

appropriate homage.”