Newton, page 18
Boullée and his associates deliberately contrasted the vast arena of life and enlightenment above ground with the subterranean sublime darkness of death. Their designs resonated with Masonic symbolism, and the small, concealed entrances to Boullée’s cenotaphs provided limited, privileged access to universal space and scientific knowledge. Boullée was intimately involved in the yearly Academy of Architecture competitions, and even after his death, prizes were still being awarded for Newtonian cenotaphs based on his models.
Preoccupied by death and its representation, several of these visionary architects also chose to commemorate intellectual conquerors of the realm of knowledge rather than military heroes or aristocratic rulers. Just like their poetic contemporaries, they developed astronomical imagery to articulate sentiments of infinity, mortality and human insignificance. For instance, one of Boullée’s students was Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, whose dramatic plan for a new cemetery showed the earth surrounded by swirling clouds and planets. Ledoux is now notorious for his extreme version of this type of speaking architecture, a phallic brothel. However, he was also responsible for many of Paris’s important new buildings. In his books and lectures, Ledoux deliberately made the word ‘attractive’ resonate with multiple meanings of Newtonian physics, chemical affinity, and the visual appeal of beautiful structures.53
Newtonian attraction, astronomy and equality became ideologically fused in some Revolutionary imagery. In an early broadside showing the Astronomical system of the French Revolution, Equality is one of the forces radiating out like the sun to protect the nation from aristocratic despots and anarchic brigands hovering round the perimeter. The image’s planetary orbits of democracy and constitutional monarchy are shown as circular. Circles and spheres traditionally represented perfection, but in Revolutionary France they also became symbols of equality. The designer of a new monument explained in a neat little rhyming epigram that ‘a globe is the most perfect emblem of equality because it is always only equal to itself’.54
Architects wanted to transform the public spaces and buildings of French cities into physical declarations of circular equality. Every point on a circle’s perimeter is equally distant from its centre, symbolizing how in an egalitarian political system, all people are governed by the same laws. In the cross-section plan of his spherical Newtonian cenotaph, Boullée emphasized the circular divisions of the interior space, which dwarfs the Newtonian altar at the centre. Newton’s egalitarian gravitational attraction is embodied in the building. His interior design resembled other projects, particularly Jean-Jacques Lequeu’s Temple Dedicated to Equality, in which the figure of Justice stood on a globe so that her head was exactly central.
When Louis XVI’s scaffold was erected in the centre of the Place des Victoires, its location reversed conventional power symbolism. The guillotine dropped in the place normally reserved for statues of rulers, but now authority had switched to the spectators round the edge. Boullée’s colleagues stressed the equality of space rather than the sovereignty of the central figure, so that the middles of their symmetrical squares and circles became ambiguous places. The old astronomical metaphor of authoritarian rule from the centre was replaced by an idealistic vision of individuals subject to equal forces and moving freely through undifferentiated spaces. As a later architect commented disparagingly, ‘even in the palaces of kings, you can see a whole crowd thrown together confusedly according to the principle of holy philosophical equality’. Boullée designed a vast and empty cenotaph, whose luminescence modelled the Newtonian light of reason that pervaded a spacious universe democratically governed by mutually interactive forces. ‘Temples of death should’, wrote Boullée, ‘cast ice into our hearts . . . I wanted to place Newton in the abode of immortality, in the heavens.’55
6
GENIUS
Genius has privileges of its own; it selects an orbit for itself; and be this never so eccentric, if it is indeed a celestial orbit, we mere star-gazers must at last compose ourselves; must cease to cavil at it, and begin to observe it, and calculate its laws.
Thomas Carlyle, ‘Jean Paul Friedrich Richter’ (1827)
The last volume of Joseph Addison’s Spectator appeared in December 1714. Using a typically Enlightenment metaphor of illumination, the dissenting lecturer Henry Grove exclaimed in wonder: ‘How doth such a Genius as Sir Isaac Newton, from amidst the Darkness that involves human Understanding, break forth, and appear like one of another Species!’1 Remarks like this, appearing in a widely read journal, helped to establish Newton’s reputation among contemporaries who knew little about his theories. Yet although we instinctively empathize with Grove’s awe, we would be unlikely to couch our feelings in this way. This is partly because Grove was using a language that immediately strikes us as old-fashioned. But at a more subtle level, we do not even fully appreciate what he was saying. Interpreting such apparently transparent statements involves trying to enter the very different conceptual framework that governed eighteenth-century thought.
Grove and his contemporaries often used words that appear familiar, but have changed their meanings. Genius is now the label for a singular individual who is far removed from the central norm of society. But in Newton’s lifetime, it referred far more often to a specific characteristic that belonged to a person, nation or place. The man of genius was blessed by God with an exceptionally large amount of a particular ability, and so was quantitatively rather than qualitatively set apart from his peers. Writers referring to Newton’s genius commonly had in mind something closer to what we would call a special talent or gift, which could be for practical as well as mental tasks. Newton was celebrated for having an unusually strong genius for mathematics, but other people also possessed a genius that enabled them to excel in other fields – Pope in poetry, Kneller in painting, or a woman in embroidery.
Grove’s understanding of ‘another Species’ was also very different from ours. He was living in the early eighteenth century, an era when most English people believed that the world had been created by God in 4004 BC, and since then had remained essentially unchanged. Strongly influenced by classical beliefs, Grove and his contemporaries still held the notion that a single continuous chain of being had been established by God at the Creation. Rooted in inanimate minerals, this chain extended through plants and the simplest organisms upwards to more complex animals, with human beings at the summit. Perched on top, a spiritual ladder stretched up towards God, so that newly released human souls could join the angels and other supernatural beings.
Grove envisaged his own posthumous spirit flitting round the universe to attain far greater knowledge than was possible on earth, a style of cosmic voyaging popular among poets. With varying degrees of elegance, Newton often appeared as an eternal traveller whose extraordinary intellectual abilities gave him holy status:
By death from frail mortality set free,
A pure intelligence, he wings his way
Through wondrous scenes . . .
Of saints and angels . . .2
When Grove gushed that Newton appeared to come from another species, he inferred that Newton belonged among these semi-divine entities arrayed progressively between people and God.
This vertical positioning is also implicit in Hogarth’s Weighing House, where the gentlemen are ranked according to how much gravity they have in their heads (Figure 3.2). Hogarth – as in so many of his caricatures – has inverted the accepted social order, here by placing the Stark Fool with no gravity at the top. Intuitively, of course, one would have expected Newton, whose head was packed with gravity, to occupy the superior place. The sequential upward ordering implied by the chain of being was embodied in many eighteenth-century literary images as well as material designs. Just as God had set human beings above the rest of creation, so too Newton loomed over lesser mortals from his scarcely attainable peak of knowledge:
[Newton] whose towering thought,
In her amazing progress unconfin’d,
From truth to truth ascending, gain’d the height
Of science, whither mankind from afar
Gaze up astonish’d.3
In addition to Newton’s metaphorical height, this verse also captures the physical feeling of staring up at a statue placed on a tall pedestal, or at a temple of genius mounted on the summit of a hill.
This progressive chain of being has long been replaced by the branching tree of evolution. For us, species are not fixed, but can change into new ones, and (at least in countries with a Judaeo-Christian background) there is generally a firm dividing line between the human race and God. Moreover, we now think statistically, evaluating people’s characteristics numerically in relation to the collective behaviour of a social group. Rather than imagining individuals ranged vertically in gradually increasing order, we visualize a population spread out symmetrically and horizontally about a central peak. Intangible mental abilities are, like easily measurable quantities such as height and weight, assumed to be normally distributed. By definition, most people lie in the central band, while those who are more unusual lie further out to the tails on either side. Newton no longer lies near the top of a great chain of being extending from minerals up towards God. Instead, he is now squeezed into the far right-hand tail of a human gamut that ranges from those of low IQ placed at the left, through a diffuse average, on past the high achievers to a tiny group of geniuses.
One way of approaching genius in the eighteenth century is to follow Samuel Johnson’s example in his Dictionary, and turn to Alexander Pope, Newton’s twin Enlightenment hero:
One science only will one genius fit:
So vast is art, so narrow human wit:4
Unfortunately, this couplet makes it clear that, compounding the difficulty of understanding older connotations of genius, the words ‘science’ and ‘art’ also meant something very different from now. Words that seem familiar can be just as treacherous as the deceptively similar ‘false friends’ of a foreign language. Pope was harking back to older distinctions between theoretical and applied knowledge, or between book learning and practical skills. ‘Science’ could cover any field of scholarship, including what we would call the arts, while ‘art’ often carried slightly derogatory implications of contrivance, unnatural artifice or manual labour.
Considering Pope’s verse underlines the fact that we are estranged from his notion of genius not only through linguistic shifts in the word itself but also through profound cultural changes. Traditionally, the accolade of genius had been most commonly reserved for poets, a usage stemming from classical beliefs about divine inspiration. Before Newton joined this heavenly throng, the only two men universally acclaimed as geniuses were Homer and Shakespeare. In the middle of the sixteenth century, the artistic writer Giorgio Vasari had promoted Florence by advertising the city’s painters and sculptors. Giving artists greater status served to broaden the group of men endowed with genius, even though they worked with their hands as well as their minds. Another huge shift took place towards the end of the eighteenth century, when scientific practitioners were becoming respected for their expertise, and the whole notion of genius was being reappraised. Newton’s followers placed him in a new category: scientific geniuses.
In complete contrast with the situation in Newton’s lifetime, genius is now most strongly associated not with literary or artistic creativity, but with scientific originality, particularly in physics and mathematics. This shift is one that Newton – or rather, his posthumous representations – helped to effect. Viewed retrospectively, this may seem like a smooth transition, but in actuality it occurred gradually and unevenly. British people disagreed not only about the rewards brought by Newton’s approach to the world, but also about the concept of genius itself. Moreover, the processes of change were not the same in England as abroad. In particular, the story of Newton’s celebration as a scientific genius differed in England from in France, the other country that became a leading centre for neo-Newtonian ideas in the early nineteenth century.
Historians are less inclined than philosophers to pose counterfactual ‘What if?’ questions, but they do sometimes wonder what would have happened if Newton had not lived. Would someone else have introduced the laws of gravity, expounded the spectral nature of light, and redated the chronology of ancient dynasties? Very probably all of Newton’s discoveries would have been made sooner or later, but not all by the same person. What is clear, however, is that Newton would not now be celebrated as an undisputed genius if huge social transformations had not occurred since his death.
The turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a key period not only for Newton’s reputation, but also in the histories of science and of genius. Examining Newton’s elevation to the realm of genius is not to question his ability, since he was undoubtedly an extraordinarily gifted man, but to ask why it is that he in particular should enjoy such a special status. That we should celebrate him as a unique scientific genius depends also on the vital importance now attributed to science and technology, and on the almost religious reverence that we attribute to particular types of ability. Far from challenging the value of Newton’s innovations, to inquire why we call him a genius deepens our understanding of the role he has come to play in modern society.
Anodyne accounts simply accept Newton as a great – perhaps the greatest – scientific genius who ever lived. But why were Kepler and Galileo not hailed as geniuses in the eighteenth century? Why do women still not earn this coveted title? Were inventors like James Watt called geniuses, or was the accolade reserved for scientific innovators? How did poets and musicians reconcile the cult of genius with more mundane concerns about earning a living? By seeking answers to these questions, we can explore why Newton is so important to us.
Classical culture
William Pattison was a Cambridge drop-out who, despite possessing an ‘uncommon Genius for English Poetry’, spent uncomfortable nights trying to sleep on park benches. Despite financial assistance from Pope, Pattison died of smallpox only a few months after Newton, but left behind a glowing tribute to this newly minted intellectual hero among his poems. Doubtless with his own plight in mind, Pattison declared that British people should encourage native talent, and stop relying on the standards of classical civilizations. Newton, he proclaimed, was to be the new national leader:
Our Land can furnish Men of Fame,
To eclipse the Greek, and Roman Name . . .
Newton shall lead our ravish’d Souls . . .
Our Nation’s boast, our Country’s Love.5
Pattison presciently articulated major transformations that would take place during the course of the eighteenth century. An accomplished classicist, he lived at the peak of what was often called the Augustan Age, when English gentlemen modelled their lives and literature on an idealized view of imperial Rome. Looking back, we might interpret the early eighteenth century as a period of transition, when an older, classically oriented culture was dying out and being supplanted by an industrial, commercial society. But for the participants, no such clear pattern was discernible.
Latin was still the international language of scholars, equally appropriate for scientific, literary or theological works. Augustan schoolboys were routinely expected to round off Latin essays on natural philosophy with a witty poem, and gentlemen – even the very occasional woman – translated important works from English into Latin. Members of learned correspondence circles exchanged Latin verses that mingled discussions of Newton, politics and religion with bawdy humour. Newton himself wrote in Latin, turned to ancient texts for mathematical inspiration, and sat for portraits carrying allegorical references to the past. This allegiance was well known: the posthumously published frontispiece of his book on fluxions stressed how Newton’s philosophy was rooted in classical thought (Figure 3.1). In 1741, the Gentleman’s Magazine ran a competition to translate Pope’s famous couplet about Newton:
Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night.
God said, Let Newton be! and All was Light.
Strange though it might seem to us, they received far fewer entries in French than in Latin (and even one in Greek).6
Pattison evidently admired Newton, but during his own lifetime it was Pope, his literary patron, who enjoyed greater fame. When Voltaire visited England, he remarked that ‘the portrait of the Prime Minister is over the mantelpiece of his room, but I have seen Mr Pope’s in a score of houses’. Although he was often satirized, Pope was also held up as the ideal modern Augustan. His own poetry was rich in classical allusions, and he had become wealthy through translating Homer, frequently admired as the outstanding example of enduring genius.7 But by the early nineteenth century it was Newton rather than Pope who was regularly included in the roll-call of the country’s great men. Nowadays Pope does, of course, occupy a prominent position in the literary canon, but outside academic circles he is far less well known than Newton.
On the eve of the French Revolution, the eminent Edinburgh judge Lord Kames was worried that British mathematics was slipping into terminal decline like the arts of Greece and Rome. Still measuring modern achievements with a classical yardstick, he praised ‘the great Newton, who, having surpassed all the ancients, has not left to his countrymen even the faintest chance of rivalling him’. Kames was vastly outnumbered by more optimistic commentators who congratulated themselves on the rapid rate of recent discoveries. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scientific enthusiasts hailed Newton as an emblem of progress towards a great British future:
