Demystifying Newton: The Force Behind the Genius

Einstein credited Isaac Newton, the father of physics and arguably the founder of scientific certainty, with “the greatest advance in thought that a single individual was ever privileged to make.”1 The compliment is not hyperbole: In his Principia2 and the discoveries that preceded it, Newton single-handedly deciphered more of the universe’s enigmas than perhaps any other scientist in history. He revolutionized mathematics, integrated the previously disparate fields of mechanics and astronomy, and thus opened the door to the science of force and motion as we know it. And yet, ironically, Newton himself remains an enigma to those biographers who attempt to identify the force that moved him—the motive that compelled him to strive for the discovery and validation of scientific truths on such a grand scale.

Most biographers shy from examining Newton’s motives, asserting that a genius and creative power of Newton’s magnitude defies mundane human explanation. One scholar, however, accepted the charge. Frank Manuel, in his biography, A Portrait of Isaac Newton, attempted to diagnose the source of Newton’s genius by means of what is, in effect, a retroactive psychoanalysis. In keeping with the neo-Freudian school of psychology, Manuel attempts to demystify Newton’s thought and behavior by speculating about repressed insecurities and unconscious defense mechanisms that may have commanded Newton’s psyche.

Since the book’s publication in 1968 and to this very day, biographers and Newton scholars defer to Manuel—with varying degrees of enthusiasm—on the question of what, in Newton’s character and soul, could have spawned his inexhaustible passion for discovering the nature of things. Manuel’s model of Newton’s underlying motives stands, by default, as the definitive account of the psyche whence sprang the Principia. For example, James Gleick, in his recent biography Isaac Newton, quotes—without critique or comment—Manuel’s interpretation of Newton’s relationship with his niece Catherine, whom he raised and nurtured into adulthood: “‘In the act of fornication between his friend Halifax and his niece was Newton vicariously having carnal intercourse with his mother?’”3 Such rhetorical suggestions offered in explanation of Newton’s words and actions abound in Manuel. And because other Newton scholars have defaulted on the task of evaluating Newton’s motives, such “suggestions” have stood unchallenged and unrefuted to this day—coloring the legacy and tainting the name of one of history’s greatest scientists.

It is easy to sympathize with biographers who struggle in vain to knit together the apparently disparate threads of Newton’s psychological life. By common accounts, Newton was a man of perplexing contradiction—described alternately as an arrogant, self-obsessed egomaniac and then as a neurotic “recluse” crippled by “searing” self-doubt.4 On one hand, he is the man who proclaimed his own theory of light to be “the oddest if not the most considerable detection which has hitherto been made in the operations of nature”5—which Manuel interprets as an instance of Newton’s “fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience and his self-image as the perfect one.”6 On the other hand, Newton himself, denying a friend’s compliments of his preternatural genius, mused that his success is the outcome of “nothing but industry & a patient thought.”7 And in the twilight of his years Newton reflected on himself as “only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”8 These are not the words of a “narcissist” or an “egomaniac” who is “completely wrapped up in himself,”9 as is commonly postulated—but of a man wrapped up in the quest for truth, and humbled by the vastness of its terrain. Indeed, Newton’s close friend John Locke described him as “a nice man to deal with and a little too apt to raise in himself suspicions where there was no ground.”10

This seeming contradiction between Newton’s supreme “arrogance” on the one hand and his apparent self-doubt on the other is what led Manuel to postulate that Newton was driven by deep-seated unconscious insecurities. But is there really any contradiction? In truth, when Newton was certain of his conclusions, he was unshakably sure of himself—and did not suffer criticism that he considered misguided, let alone dishonest. Yet when he was uncertain, he did not rest content until he copiously checked his conclusions against the facts. For instance, in 1666, he tested his theory of an inverse-square gravitational force, likely formulated in the early 1660s by deduction from Kepler’s elliptical theory, against observations of the moon’s motions. He found that the motions agreed “pretty nearly,”11 but not nearly enough—and because he could not explain the discrepancy, he set aside the theory until he could amass further evidence. Whereas his fellow scientists, from Ptolemy to Copernicus to Galileo, sought nothing further than approximate agreement between their theories and the empirical phenomena, Newton was “extreme” in his demands for accuracy.

In Manuel’s account, such polar extremities of behavior bear the elusive signature of a “neurotic.” For Manuel, Newton’s apparent “swings” of extreme self-assurance and extreme self-doubt are symptoms of a deep neurosis rooted in his childhood. In true Freudian fashion, Manuel points to Newton’s abandonment by his mother when she remarried and sent him to live with his grandmother. He also points to Newton’s puritanical education, which allegedly inculcated in him a powerful fear of wrongdoing. These traumatic experiences, according to Manuel’s account, begat a combined longing for attachment and fear of punishment that molded his scientific thought. Manuel even goes so far as to speculate that Newton’s discovery of the gravitational force was inspired by his childhood anxieties: Newton “knew of the common metaphoric description of the attractive power of a magnet as love” and of the “‘sociability’ of liquids.” Consequently, Manuel speculates, Newton’s “longing for the absent ones, his dead father and his remarried mother” inspired his formulation of gravity as “a sort of an impulse or attraction.”12

And as for Newton’s vehemence in defending the certainty of his conclusions—this Manuel explains as a wall of defense against the puritanical guilt constantly clamoring to invade his mind. In one instance, Manuel cites a fervent (and thus, in his view, feverish) letter in which Newton defends his theory of light against a religiously motivated attack by a group of Jesuit scholars. The letter was penned in response to a charge by Anthony Lucas, a Jesuit who leveled a cavalier accusation against Newton’s measuring accuracy, claiming that Newton had incorrectly reported the length of an image of the light spectrum. Newton had previously refrained from defending himself against the unscientific accusations of the Jesuits, writing that he did not wish to become a “slave to philosophy”13 (which meant, in his terms, to empty sophistic bickering) by engaging them in argument. But now, he was infuriated: Lucas had challenged the accuracy of Newton’s experimental data, without bothering to supply any evidence in support of his challenge. Enraged, Newton wrote to Oldenberg, president of the Royal Society of London: “’Tis the truth of my experiments which is the business at hand. On this my Theory depends, & which is of more consequence, the credit of my being wary, accurate and faithful in the reports I have made or shall make of experiments in any subject, seeing that a trip in any one will bring all the rest into suspicion.”14 Ultimately the Royal Society duplicated Newton’s experiments and formally refuted Lucas’s objections, such that, in Newton’s terms, he stood “convicted” by the “trial of the Royal Society.” Lucas had miscalculated in groundlessly questioning the truth of Newton’s calculations; his error was in underestimating Newton’s reverential devotion to that truth.

In Manuel’s interpretation, such reverence bespeaks neurosis. Interpreting the incident, Manuel writes, “Ambivalent neurotics have a craving for certainty. The
more searing the doubt the more profound the need for a safe haven. Newton had two such refuges, a great blessing for a man in his state of everlasting tension: one was the Bible . . . the other was mathematical proof.” He proceeds to explain the neurotic basis for Newton’s intolerance of doubt: “Scientific error was assimilated with sin, for it could only be the consequence of sloth on his part and a failure in his divine service. For Newton a sin was not an act of human frailty that could be forgiven, but a sign that the culprit was possessed by evil.”15 Manuel thus diagnoses Newton’s preoccupation with scientific certainty and his impatience with doubt as symptoms of a psychotic insecurity, which stems, in turn, from his oppressive puritanical upbringing. But such a diagnosis seems quite peculiar if one considers that Newton is right. As is the case with his theory of light, Newton’s theories do stand or fall on the truth of his evidential arguments, because true theories admit of no contradictory evidence. If an objector such as Anthony Lucas were to discover an error in Newton’s empirical measurements, he would indeed cast doubt on Newton’s entire theory. Thus, in vehemently defending the truth of his experiments against those who launch a frivolous attack against it, Newton reveals his “religious” devotion, not to his puritanical schoolteachers or to a wrathful God who censures his every step, but to the real, physical world—and to his understanding thereof.

It is not Newton’s departure from reality, then, but rather the intensity of his devotion to it that Manuel finds psychotic. Psychosis is generally defined as a state of delusion, a split from reality. A preoccupation with “divine service,” as Manuel describes it, implies obeisance to an invisible God at the expense of any rational judgments grounded in this-worldly evidence. But Newton’s alleged psychosis consists precisely in obeying the evidence of this world as he searches for scientific truth; the preoccupation Manuel refers to is not with an otherworldly authority, but with physical reality. Manuel does not seem to recognize this distinction, as he repeatedly lumps together Newton’s reverence for the truth with his deference to God and his alleged cringing fear of divine punishment. Manuel’s psychoanalytic model of the mind treats any pervasive behavior or thought pattern as symptomatic of childhood trauma or some other brand of prior conditioning.

What this model does not seem to admit as a possibility is a mind not buoyed along by external circumstances, but rather governing itself, holding the truth as its sole guide and master—a mind conscientiously committed to the pursuit of truth as its primary and fundamental motive. And yet such a scenario should not seem so far-fetched, given that grasping the truth is the mind’s proper and primary function. Viewed in this light, Newton’s “craving for certainty” is not a symptom of illness but of exemplary mental health. Indeed, the craving for certainty is a venerable virtue—for to crave certainty is to crave the truth, and truth is infinitely valuable. Given the advances in science enabled by the certainty of Newton’s laws, and the vast benefits ultimately conferred on human life by those advances, the objective value of Newton’s “preoccupation” with truth is indisputable.

But the Freudian model of human nature, which Manuel unquestioningly accepts, does not regard man as capable of recognizing or pursuing objective values. According to Freud’s theory of motivation, we are slaves to our psychologies: The innate drives that rise up from the unconscious (be it the portion allotted to the primitive id or to the moralizing superego) duke it out for domination of the conscious mind, which can only react defensively to the stimuli that impinge upon it from either direction.

But the case of Newton patently defies this model. Newton was not enslaved by unconscious drives and distortions in his scientific pursuits, but rather consciously chose to assess the real consequences of his actions and to pursue the objectively best course—namely, an unflagging commitment to evidence and accuracy in his science. This was a basic moral choice—a choice about how one ought to orient one’s mind—and it shaped his motives accordingly. Thus it is not necessary to delve into Newton’s deep psychological drives in order to ascertain his motive—because his motive was conscious and explicit, and thus is plainly visible to anyone who observes his life and work.

Newton was not blinded by innate Freudian defense mechanisms that blot out a painful reality; rather, he kept his eyes firmly fixed on reality and savored it with pleasure. He chose the truth as his basic motive, not because of any prior conditioning, but because he observed that knowing the truth is good—because it enables man to use the universe for his purposes. And the more truth he discovered, the greater the certainty and self-confidence that naturally, logically followed. Whether supremely confident in defending a theory he had ascertained to be true, or cautious and doubtful in the face of challenging or seemingly contrary evidence, Newton was consistently driven by one fundamental motive: an unwavering commitment to understanding reality.

As further evidence that truth-seeking, not neurosis, accounts for his actions and achievements, it is worth examining Newton’s extended interaction with Robert Hooke—a fellow scientist who, in his insecurity-driven pursuit of recognition, actually lends credence to Manuel’s model of human nature.

In Manuel’s interpretation, Newton’s scientific advances were driven by his insecurity with relation to various people in his life—whether his longing for a lost parent or, just as often, his driving need to assert superiority over his contemporaries. In fact, Robert Hooke epitomized this latter motive.

To be fair, Hooke was an accomplished scientist and inventor in his own right; to his deep misfortune, however, he lacked what in the modern vernacular might be called “follow-through.” Hooke was a veritable jack-of-all-trades—and thus a master of none. A physicist acquainted with Hooke described him as possessing a mind “so fertile in expedients, so interrupted at every hour, at every endeavour, by the inrush of new concepts, new projects, that it is hard to disentangle his doings.”16 And according to physiologist Richard Waller, his successor as secretary of the Royal Society, “The fertility of his Invention . . . hurry’d him on, in the quest of new Entertainments, neglecting the former Discoveries.”17 Thus, whereas, Manuel observes, “from the five or six inquiries into which Newton plunged, he returned each time with a heroic victory”— Hooke’s many “facile victories” left him no great monument when he died.18

Hooke attempted to defend his own flighty volatility, stating in the preface to a series of published lectures:

No man is able to say that he will complete this or that Inquiry whatever it be, (The greatest part of Invention being but a lucky bit of chance. . . .) ’Twill be much better therefore to embrace the influences of Providence, and to be diligent in the inquiry of every thing we meet with. For we shall quickly find that the number of considerable Observations and Inventions this way collected, will a hundred fold out-strip those that are found by design.19

In other words, because no single man can hope to penetrate the fundamental truth of any subject, he might as well jump from subject to subject as chance dictates, dipping his feet into each one until some other gleaming pool of mystery catches his eye.

No wonder, then, that Hooke perceived such an immense threat in Newton—who lays Hooke’s theory to waste by his very example. Perhaps Hooke’s expectation that Newton would one day come to outstrip him (one hundredfold, as it turned out) motivated his first attack on Newton’s discoveries.

When in February 1672 Newton presented to the Royal Society his paper on the composite nature of white light—his first important public contribution—Hooke rushed to dismiss the paper and defend the superiority of his own theory. As one biographer writes, Hooke

contrived to imply that [he] had himself performed all of Newton’s experiments; and without examining the experiments closely, [he] asserted that his hypothesis would explain them as well as Newton’s. Hooke later wrote to Lord Brouncker that he had only four hours with Newton’s paper in which to write his critique.20

Hooke’s goal, as could be seen even at this early stage, was not to rigorously examine the evidence and determine the truth of the matter; rather, it was to stake out his own territory, to defend his status in the Royal Society’s eyes. He sought not truth but validation. And Newton, noting the lack of substantive evidence in Hooke’s attack, was wholly unscathed by it. Writing to Oldenberg, he mused that “so acute an objector hath said nothing that can enervate any part of [my paper]. For I am still of the same judgment & doubt not but that upon severer examinations it will be found as certain a truth as I have asserted it.”21 And so it was. Newton’s confidence was unshakable—because, unlike Hooke, he knew he was right. He had done the work to prove it first and foremost to himself, thereby fully earning his serene state of certainty. Consequently he did not feel compelled to enter into a rhetorical debate with his opponent.

Hooke, however, proceeded by a different means. Unable to puncture Newton’s theory and reputation directly, he launched increasingly underhanded attacks against Newton’s work—feeling, perhaps, that wounding Newton’s confidence would somehow help to nurse his own. He started by organizing his own “secret society” within the Royal Society’s ranks, conspicuously excluding Newton from the invitation list. This underground group, calling themselves the “New Philosophical Club” and comprising such distinguished members as Christopher Wren and John Hoskins, devoted their two inaugural meetings to discussing Newton’s theory of colors—in his absence. Writing in his diary, which he knew was publicly accessible to Society members, Hooke reported with furtive pride: “I showed that Mr. Newton had taken my hypothesis of the pulse or wave.”22 Although Hooke saw to it that Newton was immediately apprised of the society’s “secret” activities, Newton was unmoved and did not respond.

By January 1676, Hooke must have considered his opponent with a keener eye, because it appears that he found an effective means of manipulating Newton. Starting with a conciliatory letter, Hooke adopted a more subtle, sensitive strategy with respect to Newton: an appeal to truth. “I have a mind very desirous of and very ready to embrace any truth that shall be discovered,” he assured, “though it may much thwart and contradict any opinions or notions I have formerly embraced . . . Your designs and mine both aim at the same thing which is the Discovery of truth and I suppose we can both endure to hear objections. . . .”

Newton replied with an almost naïve eagerness; Hooke’s assurances had, at least temporarily, convinced him to set aside his reluctance and join Hooke in a discourse. “[I] think you have done what becomes a true philosophical spirit,” Newton replied; “What’s done before many witnesses is seldom without some further concern than that for truth: but what passes between friends in private usually deserves the name of consultation rather than contest, & so I hope it will prove between you & me.”23

Thus Newton and Hooke entered upon a scientific discourse. Hooke continued to feed Newton’s thirst for mutually respectful collaboration: “I do justly value your excellent disquisitions . . . I judge you have gone farther in that affair much than I did . . . I believe the subject cannot meet with a fitter and more able person to inquire into it than yourself. . . .”24 And Newton, in turn, encouraged Hooke to assume a more active role, to offer him “pertinent objections,” as he knew of “no man better able to furnish me with them than yourself.”25

Soon growing weary again of philosophical discourse, Newton neglected his communications with Hooke and turned to more pressing concerns. However, Hooke was insistent. In a 1679 letter he again pleaded with Newton to continue “communicating what shall occur to you that is philosophical,” assuring him that “whatever shall be so communicated shall be no otherwise farther imparted or disposed of than you yourself shall prescribe.”26 Newton reluctantly replied, reiterating his disinterest in a protracted philosophical discussion. To “sweeten his response” (as he later described it), and apparently feeling sufficiently at ease with Hooke after his assurances of camaraderie and strictly private exchange, Newton casually sketched a potential experiment to determine the trajectory of a heavy body falling to the earth.27 As but a “fanciful” hypothesis, he suggested that the body would fall in an eastward-deviating spiral.28

Immediately upon receiving this letter, Hooke rushed to the Royal Society and publicly announced that Newton had erred: According to the Society’s official record, “He showed, that it would not be a spiral line, as Mr. Newton seemed to suppose, but an eccentrical elliptoid. . . .”29 This public flogging was staged with an air of premeditated triumph by the man who had promised Newton total privacy just one letter prior. Hooke turned on Newton at the first opportunity, flagrantly violating his pledge in order to tout his alleged superiority over Newton.

His anger notwithstanding, Newton replied with grace; he granted Hooke’s correction so far as it went, and acknowledged that he had written carelessly. Moreover, adding his mathematical acumen to Hooke’s conjecture, Newton demonstrated by geometric means that the body—assuming uniform gravity—would fall, not in an ellipsoid as Hooke suggested, but in a more complex curve.30 Hooke then tried his luck further and, again without any mathematical demonstration (which he lacked the knowledge to undertake), maintained that his theory presupposes not uniform gravity but an inverse-square gravitational force. In this case, Hooke was accidentally correct—though his conception of the inverse-square force was, in the words of renowned scientific scholar Richard Westfall, “a medley of confusion.”31 Neither was he fully accurate in his description of the force (claiming erroneously that it would extend to the center of the earth), nor did he supply any evidence to suggest that he understood its nature and implications. All this he apparently hoped Newton would supply.

Failing to get a response, Hooke further supplicated Newton in a second letter, begging him to solve the problem of the curve. “I doubt not,” he wrote, “but that by your excellent method you will easily find out what that Curve must be, and its properties, and suggest a physical reason of this proportion.”32 This challenge extended by Hooke—while failing to elicit a reply from the slighted and rhetoric-weary recipient—set Newton on the crucial path of discovery he had laid aside after the failed moon test of 1666. This revival of his interest in a phenomenon he had begun contemplating decades ago would culminate in the publication of the Principia—and, consequently, the birth of natural science as we know it.

Hooke, true to form, abandoned this latest pet project for lack of a methodical approach to resolving it—though he did not fail to ridiculously assure his fellow scientists that he “had it, but that he would conceal it for some time that others trying and failing, might know how to value it, when he should make it public.”33 Meanwhile Newton plunged himself into solving the problem with his customary depth of focus. By the time he emerged, he had integrated mechanics and astronomy under a rigorous mathematical model and had rallied empirical data across a vast range of phenomena in support of his new, comprehensive system of the world. All this evidence was codified in the Principia, published in 1687. The distinction between Hooke’s and Newton’s relative contributions to the discovery process, and their respective attitudes toward its completion, highlights the very distinction between the pursuit of truth and the insecurity-driven pursuit of recognition à la Manuel—and makes abundantly clear which man operated on which motive.

When Newton’s friend Edmund Halley proudly presented Book I of the Principia to the Royal Society in April 1686, Hooke immediately jumped onto the proverbial soapbox and cried out that he had been plagiarized. He deserved credit for having planted the idea of the inverse-square force and the elliptical trajectory of planets in Newton’s mind; indeed, he had as good as discovered gravitation himself, he maintained, and Newton had only worked out the mathematical kinks.

Though ample evidence suggests that Newton, Christopher Wren, and Christiaan Huygens, among others, had known and debated the implications of the force law for decades before Hooke had even conceived of it, let us set aside the details of who might have first suspected the inverse-square proportion and consider the meaning of Hooke’s accusation. Newton himself expressed it most eloquently in an enraged letter to Halley after news of Hooke’s protestations reached his ears:

He had done nothing & yet written in such a way as if he knew & had sufficiently hinted all but what remained to be determined by the drudgery of calculations & observations, excusing himself from that labour by reason of his other business: whereas he should rather have excused himself by reason of his inability. For ’tis plain by his words he knew not how to go about it. Now is not this very fine? Mathematicians that find out, settle & do all the business must content themselves with being nothing but dry calculators & drudges & another that does nothing but pretend & grasp at all things must carry away all the invention as well of those that were to follow him as of those that went before.34

Even granting the dubious claim that Hooke had been first to guess the inverse-square proportion and its mathematical relation to the ellipse, it is ludicrous to suggest that such guesswork can compete with the mathematical rigor and marshalling of empirical data that had led Newton to a universal theory of motion, encompassing a massive range of phenomena and proven with an unprecedented degree of certainty. Newton had, after a long and arduous excavation, at last laid his hands upon the truth; Hooke had shot from the hip, accidentally grazed one of his many unexplored inklings, then shrugged off the job as too difficult and went off in pursuit of new conquests. Newton had earned his claim to his discoveries by rigorous, painstaking intellectual work—and he deserved the glowing pride and recognition that accompanied it. Hooke wished to steal Newton’s accomplishment and enjoy that recognition for himself—without having done any of the work. Perhaps he hoped that, by deceiving the scientific community and himself, he could enjoy Newton’s pride vicariously.

Unfortunately for Hooke, the evidence in Newton’s favor was overwhelming. Once the members of the Royal Society laid eyes on the Principia, Hooke’s ravings about priority fell on disinterested ears. A few statements made in a letter, not backed by proof or explanation, could not compete with a monumental treatise that stood to shake the scientific and epistemological foundations of the Western world. Newton’s Principia was published, in its complete, three-volume form, in July 1687. Hooke was, by all reports, broken. Newton’s victory is described as having “darkened” Hooke’s life, as he was “observed from that time to grow less active, more melancholy and cynical.”35 For all his irrepressible curiosity about the true trajectory of orbiting bodies, he was strikingly dejected when the truth was found. It was not the truth he had hungered for; it was the recognition by others of his (in truth, lacking) ability to discover it. Hooke had yearned to bolster his confidence, not by the achievement of real merits, but by the false praise that would aid him in pretending that those merits already existed.

It is precisely this kind of self-deception, and the consequent repression required to keep up the lie in one’s own soul, that engenders real subconscious insecurities—of the sort Manuel ironically attributes to Newton. Thus, if anyone could fit Manuel’s model, it would be Hooke. He was driven not by the truth but by a neurotic drive to plug the holes of his own insecurity.

To Manuel, Hooke and Newton are essentially similar. But to anyone willing to grant the human potential to seek the truth, they are polar opposites. In contrast to Newton, Hooke had chosen not the truth but the judgments of other men as his primary motive and master; hence his frenetic (and futile) quest for unearned recognition. Manuel, however, generalizes from men like Hooke—who may, perhaps, represent the great majority of mankind—to all human beings. Not recognizing that men are free to choose, if they will, to judge themselves with painstaking objectivity, with the truth as their standard, he considers all men to be vultures feeding off each other’s approbation. Thus a man like Newton—who chooses differently—has no place in Manuel’s deterministic scheme. The facts of his life must therefore be contorted into strange and implausible shapes in order to fit the form of Manuel’s theory.

What is to be drawn from Newton’s example? Can anyone set his mind to relentlessly seeking the truth—even someone like Hooke? Or is this possible only for a towering genius? In other words, is Manuel’s Freudian account of human nature applicable to all but the Newtons of the world?

Toward answering that question, it is instructive to look at Halley’s relations with Newton and with the Principia. Halley, an observational astronomer who too had independently—and certainly with no help from Hooke—derived the inverse-square relationship,36 approached Newton in August of 1684 with a question similar to Hooke’s: What would be the trajectory of a body governed by this relation? Newton told him that he had computed the trajectory, and that it was an ellipse. In November, he sent Halley his mathematical derivation in the form of a short tract that would evolve two years later into the Principia. Halley was overjoyed at what he immediately recognized to be a groundbreaking masterpiece—a mathematical unification of the two central and previously disconnected branches of scientific inquiry, Keplerian astronomy and Galilean mechanics, into a single theoretical whole. Thus Halley proudly took it upon himself to enter Newton’s tract into the Society’s register. Heralding Newton’s achievement, Halley rejoiced that a man had been found who could solve the great dilemma that had weighed upon all their minds. He eagerly recognized Newton’s achievement, thrilled to be so much nearer the truth by virtue of this man’s efforts and ability.

In this same spirit of unrelenting support, Halley single-handedly undertook both the funding and printing of the Principia. And his encouragement of Newton’s scholarship did not end there. When Hooke cried “plagiarism,” the last threads of Newton’s patience unwound at the seams, and it was Halley who assumed the tender responsibility of sewing them back together. Infuriated by Hooke’s claims, Newton threatened to withhold the third book of the Principia entirely; “Philosophy is such an impertinently litigious Lady,” he bemoaned in a letter to Halley, “that a man had as good be engaged in Law suits as have to do with her. . . .”37 Halley, understanding the source of Newton’s rage, did not attempt to dismiss it or sweep it aside as irrational; instead, he reassured Newton that Hooke was an aberration, that the world at large—and he himself, first and foremost—did not enviously begrudge Newton’s achievement, but gratefully welcomed it.

I am heartily sorry, that in this matter, wherein all mankind ought to acknowledge their obligations to you, you should meet with any thing that should give you disquiet, or that any disgust should make you think of desisting in your pretensions to a Lady, whose favours you have so much reason to boast of. ’Tis not she but your Rivals envying your happiness that endeavor to disturb your quiet enjoyment. . . .

With careful, measured logic, Halley recounted the events that had led to Hooke’s claims of priority, assured Newton that the Society members were not swayed by those claims, and emphasized that “the Society have a very great appreciation in the honour you do them, by your dedication of so worthy a treatise.”38 Halley was on a crusade to unveil this worthy treatise before the world—because to him, the truth of its contents was holy. This reverent attitude, so kin to his own, no doubt resonated with Newton. As history will testify, Halley’s earnest reassurance quelled Newton’s anger, and the Principia was published in full. Halley’s review of the treatise, written directly after its publication, concluded: “it may be justly said, that so many and so Valuable Philosophical Truths, as are herein discovered and put past Dispute, were never yet owing to the Capacity and Industry of any one Man.”39

Halley, like Hooke, could have viewed Newton as a rival; he too had vaguely conceived of the inverse-square proportion before ever speaking to Newton, and he too had contemplated its effect on the heavenly bodies, though he lacked the necessary skill to derive it. But while Hooke was driven to a jealous rage because he had been denied credit for that which he had not achieved, Halley rejoiced at the appearance of the Principia—because of the truths it held.

Newton acknowledged and expressed gratitude for Halley’s contribution in the Principia: “In the publication of this work the most acute and universally learned Mr. Edmund Halley not only assisted me in correcting the errors of the press . . . but it was through his solicitations that it came to be published. . . .”40 So much for Manuel’s judgment, stated in connection to Newton’s quarrel with Hooke, that Newton “had a blinding sense of independence and to accept help from others was a defeat; it was tantamount to being subordinate to them.”41 Considering Newton’s eagerness to acknowledge his true contributors, Manuel has to evade obvious facts in order to force reality to fit his stilted model of human behavior. That Newton was, indeed, fiercely independent in forming his conclusions—letting no one, be it Hooke or Halley, dictate the truth to him, but only letting them point him toward facts of nature that he would then see and judge for himself—Manuel can explain only as a “blinding” fear of subordination. What he cannot conceive is that Newton actually sought to gain sight of the truth, rather than settle for blurry speculation à la Hooke—and that he knew he could not be certain of any conclusion he had not independently and meticulously derived from the evidence. For Hooke, a half-baked speculation merited a priority claim; not so for Newton, who grasped the copious labor and consolidation of evidence required to ascertain a scientific truth.

And what of Newton’s desire to be properly recognized for his labors in discovering gravitation? Manuel credits yet another unconscious psychic drive. Explaining Newton’s desire to be acknowledged as the priority discoverer, he writes, “Among the scientists there was a great jealousy of the favored one who first saw light pass through the peephole. For many of his contemporaries, and for scientists since, discovery filled profound psychic needs, and total exclusive secret possession was one of them.”42 But this phrasing appears absurd, if one considers the fact that discovery does fill a need, a very real, objective need: The acquisition of knowledge is what enables man to live and progress and prosper. The need of truth is not an invention of a neurotic imagination; it is a fact of human life that naturally presses on any healthy, functioning mind. And a man’s desire to be recognized for having made great discoveries is not neurotic; it is a desire for justice. Newton had achieved profoundly valuable truths—truths that showered new possibilities on all of mankind—and he deserved credit for having done so. Hooke, by contrast, envied Newton for having achieved what he himself could not and harbored a “psychic need” for undue recognition. Manuel fails to distinguish these starkly contrasting motives because he dismisses the pursuit of truth as impossible.

In fact, the pursuit of truth is the natural function of a healthy human mind. On that score, few human minds throughout history have exhibited such supreme health as Isaac Newton’s. But the choice to maintain an unflagging commitment to the truth is not beyond the reach of normal men. Any man capable of reasoning can choose to seek the truth in his endeavors as a matter of course. Anyone can aspire to intellectual heroism—and among the intellectual heroes one might emulate, Newton stands tall.

About Veronica Ryan

Veronica Ryan (a pen name) earned her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Virginia. She received her BS in psychology and philosophy from Tufts University, and subsequently worked for two years as a clinical interviewer and research assistant in the Massachusetts General Hospital psychiatry department. She has served as a contributor and editor for The Undercurrent, a national campus publication. She is a two-time winner of the Ayn Rand Institute's Fountainhead Essay Contest and a graduate of the Institute's four-year academic program.

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