Newton’s Annus Mirabilis–

Connections to the Spring 2020 School and Work Closures all over the World

OR

How being sent home from school (London plague years, 1666-1668) helped foster science, the dawn of the modern world, and, yeah, even geology!

 

FAMOUS GEOLOGIST—SIR ISAAC NEWTON!!

Ok ok, maybe NOT a geologist….
To be fair, Isaac Newton actually spent a lot of time working out the age of the earth, but lacking a true science of geology (which wouldn’t show up until the early 19th century), and the fact that the bible never says how old the earth is, he had nothing else to use but the method of “biblicalchronology.”

This method simply adds up the ages and lifespans of all the people mentioned in the bible (including Methuselah who lived a long time!) and then further tacks on the durations of civilizations and the reigns of kings. He ended up with right about the same age that everyone else was getting who used this method (back then and even today), a value around 6000 years. Certainly, a little short of the modern interpretation of 4,500,000,000 years, but let’s not quibble!

I bring up Sir Isaac, because I’d like you to ponder three links between Newton and our world today:

Link One:

(Hopefully rather obvious and involves closing school)

When Newton was 23 years old and wrapping up his undergraduate studies at Cambridge (perhaps not all that smart?—CU students typically finish well before 23!), a return of the bubonic plague that periodically devastated Europe, started killing off most of London.

Pestilence, by the artist William Blake

Cambridge University shut down, and Newton left London, returning to his family home for nearly two years.
He later recounted that this may well have been the most creative and productive period of his life.

Although modern historical scholarship has called the details of his recollections into some question, there is little doubt that during these years, and all on his own, he developed the fundamentals of an entirely new branch of mathematics, called “calculus.” He then went on to become the first person to understand the composite nature of light (what we call “the spectrum”). And then to top it off, he refined an entire theory of gravity and motion (yup, those three laws you have to memorize in science class) that finally explained how rolling carts and falling apples on earth were controlled by exactly the same physical laws as the motions of the moon, planets, and stars. In one fell swoop, he merged the seemingly separate realms of earth and the heavens!
The middle of this time-off-from-school, was 1666, and for very good reason it has come to be known as Newton’s Annus Mirabilis, the year of miracles; a true turning point in human history.

Interlude, Hold on!
I took a geology class, because I HATE physics (and calculus and laws of motion and all that stuff)…  Where are we going with this??

 

 

 

Link Two:

(This one is the Big Idea, and hang on, it’s a bit philosophical)

Really? The development of “Newtonian Mechanics” (gravity and laws of motion) was one of the key turning points in human history?
Maybe for you Mr. Science, but I’m not sure about me…

By itself, figuring out the fundamental science and math necessary to point rocket ships at distant worlds and then land them safely would be quite noteworthy.
But Newton’s reach runs a far deeper thread.
He literally “sealed the deal” on recognizing our world as being run by fundamental laws and rules-of-nature. Unwittingly, he took God out of the equation, or at least set him in the role of a master watch-maker who built a spectacular machine (the universe) and then set it running.

There was an important synergy between Newton’s science—in particular, the nature of gravity and the motions of the heavens—and the philosophical underpinnings of what we call the “Enlightenment” of the 18th century.

This was a time when top-down, from the big “smarty-pants” thinkers (right out of PHIL 101) like Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Hume, to the common folk, it was becoming clear that even if we live here on earth for a relatively short time before the trip to eternal heaven, human beings are capable of rather amazing accomplishments and they deserve basic rights and freedoms. It led to revolutions like our own in 1776, and that of the French a dozen or so years later.

By shoring up the idea that the universe obeys fundamental and unalienable laws, Newton’s work suggested that perhaps the world of men should also have basic and unassailable rules, above and beyond the power of malicious monarchs or governments.

Thomas Jefferson (on right), himself a big thinker and extremely well read, was hugely influenced by Enlightenment philosophy in general and, in particular, by the political philosopher John Locke (on left).

“… to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…”  and
…  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”

The words above (hopefully recognizable, from the Declaration of Independence)—and referring to discoverable truths (natural laws) and Laws of Nature and unalienable rights—are all straight out of the Newtonian play book that helped establish Enlightenment philosophy.

 

Link 3:

(Newton’s “mechanistic science” becomes the template for the science of geology)

Remember that big word—uniformitarianism? It’s in all the introductory geology textbooks. It was the brainchild of James Hutton (1726-1797), who is often referred to (excuse the paternalistic terminology) as the Father of Geology. In a nutshell, he recognized that given enormous spans of time, the slow inexorable forces of erosion and uplift, operating in the past as they do today, could generate all the geologic features of the world.

Interestingly, Isaac Newton died in the same year that Hutton was born, 1726!
It was the middle of the Enlightenment and assemblies of thinkers like the Royal Society were in full force. The Society’s motto, Nullius in Verba (take nobody’s word for it—a call to arms for examination and experimentation) was bringing to bear the power of rational thought and experiment on anything and everything.

Crystals and fossils were coming out of the curiosity cabinets and under the gaze of these new scientists. In particular, fossils, whose odd shapes were once thought to be the result of magical in situ growth, as inanimate nature attempted to imitate life, were becoming recognized for what they really were, true relics of the past.
And what an amazing past—full of creatures that no longer seemed to exist!
Perhaps earth history had a deep and ancient story? Perhaps the earth was not always as it is today?

In the midst of all this, Hutton goes to school at his local college, the University of Edinburgh. While there, he has a professor named Colin Maclaurin, who had studied with Newton (in his later years) and by some miracle was actually liked by Newton.
(Newton, for all his contributions and brilliance, or perhaps because of, was a bit of a jerk: often arrogant, unkind, and belittling of those beneath his level, which was nearly everyone!)
Maclaurin espoused Newtonian science and philosophy, and under this influence Hutton yearned to see a “mechanistic” pattern to earth and its past. Hutton’s efforts were all about finding the fundamental laws by which the earth operates, much like the machinery of Newton’s universe.

He found this machinery in the interplay of erosion and uplift.
Hutton envisioned a world where raindrops could eventually wear away entire mountains. But he also recognized that there must be a balancing restorative force, and he correctly recognized it to be the earth’s internal heat engine that is ultimately responsible for raising the denuded landscapes.

To be honest, he got in a little hot water for saying (of earth history), “We find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.” And not just with religious folks! Any self-respecting scientist would tell you that infinity is a long time, even for a planet’s existence. But putting a cap on earth’s age, even if it’s 750 thousand times what Newton thought (4.5 billion divided by 6000)… is, well, another story.