Out of the Shadow of a Giant: How Newton Stood on the Shoulders of Hooke and Halley

Out of the Shadow of a Giant: How Newton Stood on the Shoulders of Hooke and Halley
John Gribbin

Mary Gribbin

What if Isaac Newton had never lived? Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley, whose place in history has been overshadowed by the giant figure of Newton, were pioneering scientists within their own right, and instrumental in establishing the Royal Society.Whilst Newton is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time, and the father of the English scientific revolution, John and Mary Gribbin uncover the fascinating story of Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley, whose scientific achievements neatly embrace the hundred years or so during which science as we know it became established in Britain. They argue persuasively that even without Newton science in Britain would have made a great leap forward in the second half of the seventeenth century, headed by two extraordinary men, Hooke and Halley.

Copyright (#ulink_7dae95b1-c382-51f4-8836-df8af8d98e6f)

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

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Source ISBN: 9780008220594

Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008220600

Version: 2017-04-27

PREFACE (#ulink_c3bbc6de-a550-5069-a627-5c4540c07489)

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

Cover (#u3996cbeb-8db2-5a57-9526-09fb562fb79f)

Title Page (#u80b4503f-9b8e-5426-a918-e0fc9294643f)

Copyright (#u6c501dff-e26b-5ae3-9373-391597bd8d49)

Preface (#uea0a1265-6dca-56e8-955e-0663ed6eff75)

Introduction: Out of the Shadows (#u88b25729-67e6-55a9-b370-5d408fa57d6c)

A Note on Dates (#ud3552013-3288-503c-b147-4612fedb20fa)

Chapter 1: From Freshwater to Oxford (#u1dfcccea-6fd7-5be0-b1b5-59269c3ac258)

Chapter 2: The Most Ingenious Book That Ever I Read In My Life (#u5f8d73d8-9daa-5592-820d-344ea1a5b142)

Chapter 3: Monumental Achievements (#u5799d623-326d-582c-938f-9ea52daeedbe)

Chapter 4: Meanwhile … (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5: From Hackney to the High Seas (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6: Of Spring and Secretaryship (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7: A Mission of Gravity (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8: Halley, Newton and the Comet (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9: Not Fade Away (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10: To Command a King’s Ship (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11: Legacies (#litres_trial_promo)

Coda: How to do Science (#litres_trial_promo)

Picture Section (#litres_trial_promo)

Footnotes (#litres_trial_promo)

Bibliography (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

INTRODUCTION (#ulink_6d359dbc-2336-5912-ac1b-4d38864264bd)

OUT OF THE SHADOWS (#ulink_6d359dbc-2336-5912-ac1b-4d38864264bd)

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, to say the least, economical with the truth, and attempted to write Robert Hooke out of history, having ‘borrowed’ many of Hooke’s best ideas. It has been established, for example, that the famous story of the falling apple seen during the plague year of 1665 is a myth, invented by Newton to bolster his (false) claim that he had the idea of a universal theory of gravity before Hooke. In fact, Hooke described such an idea, and the rule that every object (such as a planet) moves in a straight line unless acted upon by some outside force (ironically, now known as Newton’s First Law), in the mid-1660s, when Newton was an unknown and very junior member of Cambridge University (he only graduated in 1665). Until Hooke mentioned these ideas to Newton several years later, Newton subscribed – as surviving documents show – to the idea that planetary motion was caused by whirlpools in some kind of fluid filling the Universe. Newton also lifted much of Hooke’s work on light and colours, and Newton published (significantly, immediately after Hooke’s death) as ‘his’ own theory of heat, an idea that has been described by historian Clara de Milt as ‘very, very’ like Hooke’s earlier work. In one respect, though, Newton was a better scientist than Hooke: he was a brilliant mathematician. And he outlived Hooke, so he had the last word – until now.

We have not attempted to provide complete biographies of our subjects, who have been well served in that regard by Lisa Jardine (Hooke) and Alan Cook (Halley); our focus is on their scientific achievements, and how these were fundamental to the development of science in England. But there is, we hope, enough biographical background here to give some insight into the kind of people they were, and how they were both, in their different ways, products of the society they lived in.