William Rankin - Introducing Newton: A Graphic Guide

Who surpassed all men in genius

Who surpassed all men in genius

There is a statue of Isaac Newton in the antechapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. The poet Wordsworth on seeing it bathed in moonlight from his pillow, wrote

Newton, with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

By Wordsworths time Newton was already completely transformed from a creature of flesh and blood to a stone-faced demi-god presiding over the Industrial Revolution.

One continued series of labour, patience, humility, temperance, meekness, humanity, beneficence and piety without any tincture of vice. John Conduitt.

It is a long way from the retiring schoolboy who carved his name in a windowsill to the man who set his indelible mark on the centuries that followed. We must travel back to the beginnings of civilization to find the wellsprings of the scientific revolution that would change the world.

Our story has its beginnings in the simple practical activities of everyday life.

NUMBER, FOR COUNTING THE CATCH.
THATS ARITHMETIC.

AREAS OF LAND UNDER CULTIVATION.
THATS GEOMETRY.

VOLUMES OF GRAIN.
WHATS MOST IMPORTANT IS AN ALPHABET AND SOMEONE TO WRITE IT ALL DOWN.

On the Banks of the Nile

MEASURING FOR CONSTRUCTION AND NAVIGATION
THE DAY DIVIDED INTO 24 HOURS.
CALENDARS TO PREDICT THE SEASONS.
THATS TRIGONOMETRY.

The Egyptians had an intimate relation with the heavens and depended on the seasonal flooding of the Nile to bring fertility to their fields. These fields were taxed according to area. Each year it was necessary to check to see if land had been swept away to set the correct tax.

The Rhind Papyrus (above) describes solutions to such mathematical problems and includes a value for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

A SYSTEM OF NUMBERS EVOLVED.

= 3.616

By the Waters of Babylon

In the fertile lands irrigated by the Tigris and Euphrates a civilisation grew which recorded the movements of the heavens over thousands of years. The Babylonians had a system of numbers based on a unit of 60 which permitted calculations with very large numbers. Traces of their system still remain with 60 seconds making a minute, and 360 degrees to a circle.

Babylonian reckoning was certainly more advanced than that of Egypt but it was still only a collection of prescription-like rules for calculating areas with no proof. There was no logical method to apply to new problems as they turned up.

For a deductive system based on proofs, we have to await the return to the Greek island of Samos of a man who had been wandering thirty-four years abroad mongst priests and magi. He transformed number from a useful tool into the central principle of life. He called his new philosophy (mathematics). Eight hundred left their homes and families to follow him when he first presented his ideas as a sermon on a mount.

All is Number

HE STUDIED THE MYSTERIES IN EGYPT.
AND AMONGST THE CHALDEANS.
HE IS THE SON OF THE GOD APOLLO.
NO, HIS FATHER IS THAT SUBSTANTIAL CITIZEN MNESARCHAS.

Pythagoras was a combination of Einstein and the Maharishi. He advocated a religion based on the transmigration of souls and the sinfulness of eating beans. He preached to the animals.

THERE ARE MEN, THERE ARE GODS, AND THERE ARE BEINGS LIKE ME.
ALL THINGS BORN WITH LIFE IN THEM OUGHT TO BE TREATED AS EQUALS.
THE WHOLE HEAVEN IS NUMBER AND HARMONY.
INCLUDING WOMEN.
WHAT ABOUT CATS?

In the society he founded, men and women were equal, property was held in common, and even mathematical discoveries were collective.

Pythagoras discovered the connection between number and music: that the pitch of a note depends on the length of the string that produces it.

The sounds made by the planets as they sped through space combined to produce a music, The Harmony of the Spheres. This harmony was soon disturbed from within.

A Cloud of Infinity

That we still call numbers odd or even or talk of squares and cubes of numbers is due to Pythagoras. But he is best known for the Pythagoras Theorem. It was to destroy his order.