Out of the Shadow of a Giant: How Newton Stood on the Shoulders of Hooke and Halley. John Gribbin
William Collins
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017
Text © John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin, 2017
Cover design by Jonathan Pelham
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Source ISBN: 9780008220594
Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008220600
Version: 2017-04-27
The seed from which the idea for this book grew was planted during a conversation with Lisa Jardine at the Royal Society, following a talk by one of us (JG). We got to speculating about how science in Britain might have developed if Isaac Newton had never lived. Our conclusion, such as it was, was that although Newton had inspired a great advance, and fully justified his status as the scientific giant of his day, there were only slightly lesser men who would have been well able to set British science off on the road it followed after Newton, although the journey down that road might have taken a little longer. Two men, in particular, stand out as thinkers who made major contributions, not just to scientific discovery but also to the development of the scientific method itself, who lived and worked in the shadow of Newton. They have by no means been forgotten, but even many of the people who still know the names of Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley have little knowledge of the remarkable breadth and depth of their work. Hooke is remembered for a rather mundane ‘law’ describing the behaviour of a stretched spring; Halley for the comet that bears his name, but which he did not discover. Their other achievements, however, are so important that between them they arguably add up to the scientific equivalent of another Newton. So rather belatedly (and, alas, too late for Lisa Jardine to see it) we have decided to attempt to bring them out from the shadow of Newton, and present the men and their achievements in all their glory.
Contents
Introduction: Out of the Shadows
Chapter 1: From Freshwater to Oxford
Chapter 2: The Most Ingenious Book That Ever I Read In My Life
Chapter 3: Monumental Achievements
Chapter 5: From Hackney to the High Seas
Chapter 6: Of Spring and Secretaryship
Chapter 7: A Mission of Gravity
Chapter 8: Halley, Newton and the Comet
Chapter 10: To Command a King’s Ship
Isaac Newton famously commented that if he had seen further than other people it was ‘by standing on the shoulders of giants’. But even within his own lifetime, and increasingly since then, Newton was widely acknowledged as the greatest of all scientific giants, to such an extent that the remarkable achievements of his colleagues and contemporaries are often overlooked. Two of the pioneering scientists who lived and worked in the shadow of Newton would each have been regarded as giants in their own right if he had not been around, and it is our intention to bring them out of Newton’s shadow to put their achievements in perspective. They are (in chronological order) Robert Hooke (1635–1703), who was slightly older than Newton (1642–1727), and Edmond Halley (1656–1742), who outlived Newton. Their overlapping lives neatly embrace the hundred years or so during which science as we know it became established in Britain.
But what of Newton? He was,