Sir Isaac Newton: Unhappy Scientific Genius | Full Documentary | Biography

[Music] you guys are up there and uh who's driving that's a good question I think Isaac could do it most of the driving right now [Music] it is enough that gravity does really exist and act according to the laws which we have explained and abundantly serves to account for all motions of the celestial bodies and our seas Isaac Newton Newton showed without any shadow of a doubt that the natural world is mathematical and that you could apply mathematical laws to explain everything from the tides to the falling of apples of trees true cause of the

length of the image was detected to be no other than light consists of rays of different refrigibility even lighted on light were very revolutionary I mean what he discovered and now accepted or the normal light is made out of different colors of light this particular Discovery concerning light and colors explain why the sky is blue why there's a brilliant Red Sun at Sunset and so on if I have seen further than others it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants this is a Colossus been like Einstein when they picked up Newton's uh works

well overwhelmed one is all around with the capacity to assimilate this vast knowledge he was a genius of extraordinary caliber in my understanding of things Genius of that order imposes certain penalties thank you there was little cheer to be found in England on Christmas Day 1642 the country was at war with itself the forces of King Charles the first and Oliver Cromwell were waging a fight for the hearts and souls of the divided people at War stop Manor in the county of Lincolnshire the birth of a premature baby was greeted with a sense of impending

doom only three months earlier the child's father had died and he was given little chance to live to everyone's surprise the fail child survived as Mama Hannah baptized him Isaac Newton after his deceased father in the hope of securing a more stable future for herself and her child Hannah accepted a proposal of marriage from Barnabas Smith the Rector of the adjoining Parish of North with him Isaac now only three years old was left with his grandparents for the next eight years Isaac saw little of his mother on the death of his stepfather Isaac's mother returned

to woolsthorpe now financially secure Hannah made plans for Isaac's education as a future gentleman farmer who sent away to King's grammar school in Grantham an introverted and reclusive student he made few friends and appeared to take little interest in his studies being a smaller boy in the school he was attacked by the school bully but in spite of his small stature he rounded on the bullet and gave the bully a thrashing so there is that incredible Steely toughness that runs through him Isaac roomed with Mr Clark who ran an apothecary shop seeing Isaac's interests in

the mysteriously labeled bottles and bubbling cauldrons Clark showed them how to mix potions and gave him access to his books Isaac's favorite book became the mysteries of Nature and art by John Bates a book full of recipes and schematics for mechanical toys soon he was hand-building kites model windmills and even a water clock Newton had discovered a refuge from the misery of his Loveless lonely life he began to excel at school and quickly Rose to the top of his class when Isaac turned 17 Hannah recalled him to woolstop to run the farm Henry Stokes Isaac's

teacher aware of his budding genius pleaded with her to let him stay on and apply for University reluctantly Hannah agreed [Music] 1660 stoke's star pupil was enrolled at Trinity College Cambridge teaching in Cambridge in those days probably wasn't very Advanced or sophisticated by prison standards and many students would have to learn things by themselves I think the formal instruction was rather limited and Newton probably learned much of what he did on his own with no financial support from his mother Newton had to work his way through college performing menial chores while other students indulged in

a vigorous social life Newton rarely socialized instead he pursued his unquenchable thirst for knowledge in the course of his Endeavors he came across the mechanical philosophy of Renee Descartes everything should be thought of in terms of a machine working parts in contact with one another so for example the planets were thought to move in gigantic swirling vortices of some sort of invisible matter Newton's interest in Cartesian philosophy brought him into contact with Isaac Barrow the Lucasian professor of mathematics and the battle's gentle tutelage Newton was introduced to Galileo's ideas on motion and gravity [Music] Kepler's

laws of planetary emotion and Descartes revolutionary work in algebra the geometry geometry is concerned itself with shapes and triangles and what Descartes did was to regiment it organize it to decide everything could be done by measurement and by mechanical calculation [Music] the study of Descartes algebra changed Newton's life forever he fell in love with mathematics or little interest he showed in Daily college life was now subsumed in a passionate frenzy of learning in one year from 1663 to 1664 he taught himself everything that was known about modern mathematics [Music] he knew the problems at the

best mathematicians of the age could solve he knew that he was better than any of them and I think at that point he set himself apart from others we have to remind that Newton was not a man who found social relations easy and I think he found mathematics as a metier through which he could live In 1664 Newton got his ba and won a graduate scholarship to continue his studies the following year plague struck Cambridge the University was closed and he returned to wolstorpe except for a short visit back to Cambridge Newton was to spend

the next 18 months at home working completely alone in that time he made revolutionary advances in mathematics and Optics as well as starting work on his greatest achievement the laws of gravitation Newton wanted us to believe that as you watched that apple fall he realized that the falling of the apple and the motion of the Moon must be similar phenomena there is however no real evidence that Newton had that advanced notion until quite a bit later he sets the date of 1666 for his Discovery to assure that he would get sole credit for his later

work in the pioneering days of 17th century science the means of staking claims to discoveries was to publish something Newton was very reticent to do and later regretted he wasn't too concerned with publishing making it available to other people and getting glory for his own sake he was an intellectual challenge that he wanted to deal with it was in his mathematical work at walsthorpe that Newton's failure to publish was most regrettable Newton made a number of brilliant discoveries in mathematics most notably calculus what Newton called fluxions The Invention of calculus was a major breakthrough in

mathematics a loving measurement of continuously changing motion and the areas of complex shapes on his return to Cambridge in 1667 he showed a copy of his work on mathematics to Isaac Barrow it took about two years of diplomatic prodding to get Newton to writer's first paper the analysis although Newton did allow a select group of mathematicians to see his work he still refused to publish every discovery that you have made had two aspects first usually made the discovery and second other people had to discover that he had made the discovery apart from his groundbreaking work

in mathematics and his growing appreciation for the laws of gravity Newton also applied himself to the study of light of all the mysteries of nature light and color were the most fascinating to scientists of that time Newton decided to approach the problem using experimentation and observation a method of inquiry suggested by Francis Bacon in the 16th century while it will stop he bought a prism to observe the phenomena of colors having darkened my chamber and made a small hole in my curtains to let a convenient quantity of the Sun's light I placed my prism at

its entrance entrance Isaac Newton 1666. what he did first of all was to find out as far as he could why the colors are produced by using an exhaustive series of tests he finally whittled down the possibilities to conclude that white light consisted of rays of different colors color was a property of light not of objects this particular Discovery concerning light and colors explain why we see colored objects most important of all he came to recognize that since a lens is like two prisms one on top of the other they'll be color fringes or different

refraction of the different colors and so he decided he would build a telescope in which the magnification was not produced by a big lens but by a mirror Newton constructed the entire telescope by hand including grinding the concave mirror in 1671 word of the invention of his reflecting telescope reached the Royal Society votation was sent out to Newton to demonstrate it Newton was flattened he built a second telescope and headed hand delivered to London it was enthusiastically received Newton was immediately voted a member Henry Oldenburg Secretary of the society wrote to Newton requesting permission to

register the invention in a rare moment of expansiveness Newton readily agreed and asked if he could submit a paper on light it was the first publication of Isaac Newton it's the first great scientific discovery to be published in a scientific journal it's the first great breakthrough that doesn't have any discussion in it of the nature of the Divinity the creation of the world General metaphysics it's a straight scientific paper expecting discussion to focus on his experiments Newton was angered to hear only polite division particularly infuriating with the comments of Robert Hook the recognized leader in

the field that Newton had borrowed from his work micrographia when new discoveries covered in science scientists don't throw away all their cherished beliefs only in storybooks does that ever happen What they'd rather do is to see whether they can find fault with the new presentation the first important discovery of the modern scientific era using experimental procedures was met with ridicule by the brightest minds of his time Newton who hated controversy was so disheartened by the criticism that he shelved plans for publication of his work in calculus in 76 frustrated by the lack of appreciation for

his work devoured never to publish again I see I have made myself the slave to philosophy I will resolutely bitted you to it eternally except what I do for my private satisfaction Isaac Newton it would be nine years before he would re-emerge to shake the very foundations of Western thought [Music] in 1669 Newton succeeded Isaac Barrow as location professor of mathematics as part of the requirement for the Post Newton was to be ordained a minister in the Anglican Church Newton being Newton approached this problem in a very typical manner instead of Simply either saying yes

or no he decided he would read up on it in his studies of early Christianity Newton became convinced that the doctrine of the Trinity was a fraud perpetrated in the third and fourth century he never ever could have admitted this in public it would have cost him his office bearing in mind of course he was a professor at the College of the Holy Trinity in Cambridge so you could hardly really come up with anti-trinitarian statements there he was set to resign his post when he received a dispensation it is a measure of the depth of

Newton's spiritual beliefs that he was willing to abandon all he held dear rather than compromise them his belief in God was the very basis of his existence [Music] he was born a month after his father died now in Newton this takes on an extraordinarily passionate quest for knowing his father's will the father whom he never understood God is the father God has a will and it is his duty to search out that will Newton's God was a personal God a Creator who was not only over the world but a part of it a rational God

who revealed himself in the workings of nature the mechanical philosophy of Renee Descartes had removed God from nature something Newton found abhorrent he turns to Alchemy and the hope of finding an answer Newton increasingly became worried about the materialistic atheistic implications of the mechanical philosophy was looking for a natural philosophy in which spirit rather than matter would be at the center of the world it's my understanding of his alchemy that he found that in the philosophy of Hulk and me Alchemy was as old as civilization essentially it was the study of natural magic a search

for the spirit and matter this Spirit manifested itself in physical change such as fermentation of milk to cheese the Curative properties of herbs or in the transmutation of metals Alchemy was concerned with manipulating What was seen to be four Elemental properties in nature the four elements earth air fire and water and realizing that these things made all substances that you could therefore not only make any other substance such as gold but you could also somehow learn the secrets by which God had put the world together these secrets were revealed only to those who could decipher

its Arcane language and imagery as found in the works of other Alchemists such as Hermes trismegistus athanasius Kershaw Michael Miles Newton believed that he had been ordained to use his god-given genius to reveal this Lost Wisdom he wasn't looking for girl but he wasn't looking for any particular substance he was looking for the wisdom which the alchemical practitioner believed that you gained once you had learned how Mata was composed it was almost a metaphysical activity in 1669 Newton purchased two furnaces and converted part of his Quarters at Cambridge into a laboratory throughout the 1670s and

80s with the help of his servant Humphrey Newton he worked long into the night Comfort Newton fought him to be a man possessed 7-10 so serious upon his studies he ate very sparingly now of times he forgot to eat at all he rarely went to bed till two or three o'clock the fire scarcely going out night or day he's sitting up one night as I did another till he finished his chemical experiments Humphrey Newton as intense as his work was in alchemy mathematics and physics it paled in comparison to his studies in theology interpretation of

scripture in the 17th century is easily as important for intellectuals as science was it seems difficult for us to understand that on this interpretation the whole meaning of existence depends because books of Prophecy are the truth that has been revealed to us and they've been shown to be true he wanted to know what the real meaning was of the Book of Revelations Apocrypha to the New Testament and the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament what was meant by the reference to the of Babylon he came to believe that there were ancient sources of wisdom

and that the way to get these was not through spiritual or mystical experiences but by analysis of the texts like many men of his generation Newton thought that mankind in ancient times held wisdom that had been lost over the centuries he believed that his discoveries and Mathematics and physics had been known to the ancient Greeks he saw Pythagoras in the Ancients and their numbers the belief that numbers lay at the heart of all films as the real founders of all rational knowledge Newton became convinced that Pythagoras had accumulated this wisdom from a meeting with the

Old Testament patriarch Moses in Sudan to accommodate this historically Newton began compiling the chronology of the ancient Kingdom part of this scripture interpretation was to develop a whole system of chronology re-dating the history of the world pushing the the history of Greece 500 years out of the way [Music] of scripture he was convinced that in three chapters of the Book of Ezekiel could be found the dimensions of the Temple of Solomon he worked back and forth between a drawing and the text insisting that the text had to refer to a possible construction than from the

material necessities of the construction correcting the text where it was needed all of this as an effort to reproduce the true original Temple of worship that all of the early people going back to no one had used at the heart of all Newton's work was the conviction that a rational God had made a rational Universe whose laws could be discerned by analysis and Mathematics I would say that for him the world is God writing himself on the universe as history the history means there is a succession of events and the succession of events [Music] the

result of God's personal relationship with men as is alchemical experiments led him deeper into the search for the spirit of nature his understanding of the mathematical and physical walls of nature grew more profound approaching was a time when he would make claim of the Divine master plan the of the world Newton loved his mother even though she never understood as genius her Death in June 1679 saw the passing of Newton's only human relationship all that was left was his work while dutifully attending to her last wishes at wolstorpe Newton was reflecting on a recent correspondence

concerning astronomy with his arch-rival Robert Hook hook said have you thought of explaining the motion of planets according to my hypothesis which is that the planets move on along the tangent but there's a force that draws them toward the center a Newton caught on at once that hook had a a brilliant idea it was now that the significance of the falling Apple became apparent his interest in astronomical matters was further heightened by the appearance of a comet in popular folklore comets were Omens but to astronomers like Newton they were merely aberrations of celestial motion but

all astronomers were looking for was a mathematical explanation for Kepler's elliptical notion of planets in 1684 robertook Christopher Wren and Edmund Halle met at a coffee house to discuss possible mathematical solutions to the problem Valley recalled that out in Cambridge there was this absent-minded Professor who never published very much a smart man maybe he had the answer so out he went and asked Newton what he probably asked was if a planet moves in an ellipse what kind of force is operating and Newton said an inverse Square Force and how he said how do you know

that and Newton said I've proved it and how he said okay let me see the proof well Newton went through a kind of taradiddle and charade of some kind and said I can't find it and how he said well send it to me because it would be very important a few months later Newton sent a short paper called on the motion of revolving bodies Cali realized that this was the Holy Grail everyone had been looking for ever since Kepler had devised the modern system of the world ever since then people had wondered what kind of

force can hold that thing together and make it go in here and use it and found it how he couldn't believe it he rushed back to Cambridge and said this is extraordinary you've got to write this up in more detail and put it in the records of the Royal Society to guarantee your priority Ali was Keen that Newton should write a book on his discovery as the Royal Society was short of money he offered to pay for it himself it was an act of generosity for which future generations of scientists would be forever grateful Holly

was a great Diplomat had the self-confidence the natural Flair and the sheer Social Service quality to just handle Newton well as a result of this they formed a relationship that lasted best part of half a century Newton had come to realize that the application of his Discovery could possibly have wider implications contacted John flamsteed at the Royal Observatory to supply him with data on Celestial motion Newton seems to have realized in the revision of this track day Motu on motion that if the Sun is pulling on the Earth to keep it in its orbit the

Earth was pulled on the sun then Mars and Earth must attract one another and Mars and Jupiter and Earth and Jupiter and Newtons realizes he says that this problem is so complex that he didn't think the combined mathematical power of the human race was sufficient to deal with it the principia which he later wrote is an elaboration of how you deal with that problem in 1687 the principia was published acknowledging his love of ancient Greek thought the book was structured as a classical Treatise and rhetorical argument and logic the mathematical reasoning was largely in euclidean

Geometry the geometry of the ancient Greeks [Music] if you wanted to draw a picture of a country orbit he wanted to see the curve and he wanted to draw the Titan and he wanted to prove things about it by enjoying triangles and areas and because he thought that was closer to the actual physics the book opened with definitions of mass types of forces and inertia each presented in a radically new light using these definitions he postulated three laws of motion on these three laws Newton constructed his framework for Dynamics and Celestial mechanics the bases of

modern science using his laws of gravitation and measurable data he described as the structure of the universe he showed how to find masses of planets why the Earth is flat at the poles and why there is a bulge at the equator how the tides work the precession of the equinoxes and the motion of Commerce Newton's principia is generally reckoned to be the single most important scientific book ever written and published people attribute this singular importance to the principia because For the First Time it set forth a working quantitative exact mathematical system based upon experiment and

critical observation I know of no other work which had so profound an effect upon the very nature of science itself [Music] principia Newton had given no explanation for what gravity was only how it worked to the followers of Descartes in Europe such as Godfrey de liebnitz the introduction of gravitational forces working at a distance seemed like a disguised version of medieval thinking it seemed to many scientists of what Newton's doing was bringing back magic Newton didn't know what gravitation was he admitted he didn't know what gravity was we don't know what gravity is today but

what we do have is a knowledge of the laws that it followed and this was a major break in the development of Western science above all Newton showed that time was an absolute quantity knowing what happened at one moment it was possible to calculate what happened at another events were determinable this discovery initiated a new era in Western thought one in which man would use the laws of nature to control his destiny [Music] the publication of the principia ended forever Newton's obscurity he was now the most famous scientist in Britain just prior to its publication

in 1687 Newton had already attracted the attention of the English ruling class the king of England James II was a Catholic and Keen to return England to Catholicism James sought to bring about this change by confronting a Bastion of protestantism Cambridge University was ordered to confer a degree in a Benedictine monk father Alvin Francis Newton who was a fiercely loyal Protestant and also a man of great courage and great personal integrity was the man who more than anybody else whipped around Cambridge University to stop them what you might call compromising and silly shelling about whether

they should do this or do that and Newton became effectively the leader of opposition against the granting of a degree to Walden Francis the overthrow of King James by William of Orange put an end to the matter Newton's leadership role earned him the election as a member of parliament for Cambridge he was party to the passing of the Bill of Rights and an honored guest at the coronation of William and Mary he was introduced and became friends with the movers and shakers and politics and Society all this brought about a change in Newton's personality before

that time we found the shy recluse after it the man who increasingly enjoyed public Fame he enjoyed being a famous man having disciples from all over Europe he enjoyed having Ministers of State fawning upon him and offering him high opportunities the trappings of Fame required a public office to go with them making use of his new friends and previous contacts from Cambridge a canvassed for a post but none suitable was often while waiting for an appointment Newton assumed the role of scientific Elder to aspiring young mathematicians with one of these aspirins fattier that douie he

formed as one and only emotional relationship I don't think Newton was interested in sex quite simply he was not a man who was interested in the physical Dimension at all and I think his relationship with fatteo was what you would call an intellectual friendship in fattier Newton saw reflections of himself as a young mathematician he also admired the ease with which fatia moved about in society and fancio decided to move back to the continent Newton asked him to stay his absence caused mutant effect on his inability to get a post his difficulties in dealing with

people in late 1693 Newton had a nervous breakdown there's no doubt whatever that he had the breakdown we do have two insane letters I don't think they can be called anything but insane letters I wanted to unlock there and one to Samuel peeps to John Locke sir being of the opinion that you Endeavor to embroil me with women and by other means I was so much affected with it is that when one told me you were sickly and would not live I answered to a better if you were dead Isaac Newton 1693 when word got

around that something was wrong with him during this crisis of the 90s peeps wrote no it's I'm afraid that something is happening to that brain of his that mind and one result of Newton's breakdown in 1693 was a permanent break with patio Newton recovered quickly but he was never again to achieve the Brilliance of his earlier years eventually her post was found for in 1696 he was made Warden of the mint at the Tower of London the letter that appoints him makes it clear that the appointment was being offered to him as a cynical no

one really expected him to involve himself in the Affairs of the mint but Newton was incapable of doing anything half Newton was given the job of re-coining the entire British concept and it may sound odd to give this to a great astronomer and mathematician but it was in many respects very appropriate it was concerned with Purity it was concerned with the techniques for mechanically manufacturing coins it was concerned with being able to make standardized weights of bits of metal lots of things which are concerned with mathematics we often think today that scientists are or rather

sort of head in the clouds Newton himself was an extremely efficient Runner of organizations and he totally overhauled the mint he made it a thoroughly successful government Department despite his Acclaim and success Newton was still an unhappy man he was known to have laughed only once in his life when asked what possible use geometry could be although living at the center of a vibrant social life in London he rarely entertained and never married it's books that are his guides he lives with books he doesn't live with human beings Newton's performance at the mint during the

re coinage earned him a promotion to Master of the mint in 1699 a post he held to his death and which gave him considerably more leverage with the political Elite when Queen Anne assumed the throne in 1702 Newton ingratiated himself by minting a special coin 1705 Queen Anne traveled down to Cambridge to Knight him for his work in science Sir Isaac Newton was now the most famous man in Britain [Music] [Music] upon the death of Robert Hook in 1703 Newton was voted president of the Royal Society his First Act was to obliterate all references to

hook Newton then began the process of molding the society in His image by the force of his personality and of course his scientific standing we gave it weight and in many ways he could be said to be the first major scientific political figure nowadays we take it for granted that there are scientists who advise governments and so on well Houston's the first scientist of that caliber and his basement that all Sadi was his performing that role foreign the following year he published through the society his work Optics the book was a refinement of his earlier

paper on light unlike his first paper on light it was received without a word of criticism as an appendix he published his early papers in calculus as well as a section he called queries these were General assertions about the order of nature which he was convinced were true but which nevertheless he did not pretend he could demonstrate to be true to some extent then they are programs of Investigation for others Newton now laid plans for the second edition of the principia to update the data he needed new astronomical readings over dinner with John flamstead Newton

offered to publish his work on Celestial observations plumstead refused when John Clancy was appointed as the head of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1675. he was given virtually no resources on money to do his great product of observing the heavens he therefore felt very annoyed when Newton assumed that he should start handling observations over him because effectively there were observations paid for out of Fancy's own pocket not to be denied Newton convinced Prince George to fund the publishing which Newton offered to oversee an offer flamsteed dare not refuse when the results were delivered up

to Newton and into Newton's Hands Newton did nothing about it flamste became increasingly irate and angry and genuinely felt that he had been betrayed he felt that he was quite simply the victim of Newton's autocracy and the real Blow To Flames feed came in 1712 when Newton actually got Halle to publish a version of flamsteed's catalog his lifetime's observations without flanstein's permission now this was in many ways an absolute attack on flamstein's integrity and he loathed an abominated Halle as the man who had actually made that possible the second edition of the principia came out

the following year all mentions of famstead were edited out Newton now returns to his work on calculus in his younger days Newton had shied away from conflict as an old and powerful man he embraced it the controversy had been brewing since leibnitz published his work on calculus in 1676. up till now Newton had allowed his admirers to defend his priority he now took hold of The reigns through his devoted disciples he began a systematic attack he released his early work and his personal correspondence with leibnitz to justify claims that the German had stolen his discovery

to resolve the dispute Newton suggested that a committee be formed to investigate we now know from the manuscripts that Newton wrote the first draft for them when the thing came out he wrote a long review occupying some 20 or 30 pages of a philosophical transactions of the Royal Society but this was published anonymously so Newton didn't behave about things the way ordinary people do zebnet's dimes are broken in hook that cease to exist flamster died before the publication of his life's work in the last years of Newton's life he received a never-ending stream of praise

and deification in Europe Voltaire and his followers idolized him when Newton died in 1727 he was given the pump and Circumstance of a state funeral Fit For A King he was buried amid royalty in Westminster the poet Alexander Pope composed as epitaph nature and Nature's law hid in night God said let Newton be and all was light [Music] in the century that came after me in the 1800s we find that the fascination with science with order and with reasoned knowledge really set the whole tone of that culture the one single figure from whom they drew

most deeply was in fact Isaac Newton his major work the principia has become to science what the Mona Lisa is to Art it is the master work the Pinnacle of scientific expression three two one in the 20th century Mankind's greatest achievement the space program is also Newtonian Sciences greatest Triumph Professor chandreska Nobel Prize winner for astrophysics summed up Newton's stature and science this way every time I look at what Newton did feel like a Schoolboy admonished by his master I do not know what I may appear to the world to myself I seem to have

been only like a boy playing in the seashore and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother Pebble or prettier shell of an ordinary while the great ocean of Truth lay undiscovered before me [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you