Rating: 
Summary: The Philosopher 's Pebble (? Hint, calculus= pebble)
Review: This is a a well-done and brisk short account of the Newton saga, whose title suggests, beside the account of the scientist, the man rediscovered by Keynes, the 'obsessive driven mystic', the alchemist who shouldn't be the great founder of material science, but was, midst the curious incidents, never elucidated, of the Rosicrucians of those times and days. One must doubt if Newton is the last sorcerer, at least among those attempting this occult quagmire, whose mysteries are either no mysteries at all, or else mysteries even more muddled by the esotericists, than the scientists, whose probably correct response is no doubt simple rejection. The problem is that we are victims of Newton's great success, and are rationally incapable of either understanding the real source of our science, or else prone to the driven mysticism so many New Age movements have regurgitated in response to Newtonian scientism and its bogus psychologism, or else the Darwin joke about man's evolution.
The mysterious irony is that Newton was not a party to what he is the source of. It is virtually hopeless thus for the scientific mind to grapple with their prime founder who never confused his theory of physics with suchwise delusions as pass for the current account of man, or Man, alchemist or not. Perhaps this irascible wonder, more steeped in theology and the occult than in his tossed-off method of fluxions (which he could barely bring himself to make public), had a premonition of what was to come. It is right for modern science to press the reset button attempt a fast getaway from the confusions of hermeticism. They do, as with Newton, create obsessive mystic delusions. Yet we must pause in wonder that, of all people, Newton was the most wary, and that the result of his science was to be the notably false and limited conception of man to come in an age of behavioristic scientism. It is a mysterious sermon, and one the Romantic poets, Rousseau, Kant, and others, heard as the undercurrent of this prodigious mechanization of the world picture, whose final outcome will be postmodernist or postpostmodernist revolt. What therefore is the 'source' of this clever mystery (please don't say 'hermetic esotericism', even the Pharaohs thought it nonsense). Remember old Socrates, 'these natural scientists keep claiming to know what they don't know, and the modern robot seeks his 'source-ery' once again, til the last sorcerer.
Good balanced account.
Rating: 
Summary: A life of an intellectual titan
Review: This is an easy to read life of Sir Isaac Newton. He is presented as a person rather than as a marble statue. While there is some approach to showing us the magnitude of his intellectual achievements the explations provided do not burdent the non-specialist with the heavy load of having to understand Newton's actual work.This biography doesn't shy away from that portion of Newton's thought that our thinking about science would find troubling today. There are many topics of investigation that Newton took seriously that anyone trained in present-day science would find more than odd (alchemy and bibal prophecy to name two). However, this is one of the facts of intellectual investigation as it exists throughout history. Remember Hegel includes Phrenology as a serious topic in his magnum opus "Phenomenology of the Mind". The living generation always views itself as modern and the sum of all human thought. It is hard to visualize how foolish we will seem to our descendents nor can we know for sure what aspects of our science or which of our "truths" will be overthrown by our children or their grandchildren. But we can rest assured the learning and forgetting will continue in the future as it has throughout all time. What is stunning is how much of Newton is still absolutely relevant today. Of all the books in print today most will crumble to dust and be forgotten. In three hundred years Newton's "Principia" will still be in print and revered. Few minds can that kind of priority. This book is a nice introduction and would be especially nice for students and anyone who would like to know the basics about Newton's life and work. It is a good launching pad for a more serious investigation in the work of one of the intellectual titans of human history.
Rating:
Summary: Science as fruit of the imagination
Review: True, Newton was a "man of science" and certainly among the
greatest. But "science" was not in the 17th Century what it
is to us today and like many of his contemporaries, Newton
inherited a scientific legacy which was steeped in alchemistic
mysticism dating back to the Ancients. White cites the undeniable alchemistic, mystical influences in
Newton's thinking not to stir up controversy or serve up "gossip"
as some would superficially contend. Rather he intends to point out the quasi-magical, occult leanings
in Newton's thought which enabled him to dream of or "conjure"
such unseen forces as gravity while other minds remained trapped
in commonplace and hence unfruitful modes of thinking. Basically, Newton's ability to shift his view of physical reality
to a new paradigm, White's book seems to be saying, was as much
a product of his sub-conscious imaginings as well as his
conscious, rational thought. Einstein purportedly said [and I paraphrase] that imagination
was more important than knowledge because new knowledge comes
to us nascently through sheer imagination. If this book seems to delve too much into Newton's mystical
beliefs then it is simply to compensate for the two-dimensional
and in some cases, untruthful "rational" biographical depictions
that have coloured our view of the man and ignored the role of
non-rational philosophies in driving modern science to where it
is today. The interesting question is: we speak of modern science as a
rational endeavor today but in another hundred years, how
superstitious and primitive will we appear to posterity?
Rating:
Summary: Science as fruit of the imagination
Review: True, Newton was a "man of science" and certainly among the
greatest. But "science" was not in the 17th Century what it
is to us today and like many of his contemporaries, Newton
inherited a scientific legacy which was steeped in alchemistic
mysticism dating back to the Ancients. White cites the undeniable alchemistic, mystical influences in
Newton's thinking not to stir up controversy or serve up "gossip"
as some would superficially contend. Rather he intends to point out the quasi-magical, occult leanings
in Newton's thought which enabled him to dream of or "conjure"
such unseen forces as gravity while other minds remained trapped
in commonplace and hence unfruitful modes of thinking. Basically, Newton's ability to shift his view of physical reality
to a new paradigm, White's book seems to be saying, was as much
a product of his sub-conscious imaginings as well as his
conscious, rational thought. Einstein purportedly said [and I paraphrase] that imagination
was more important than knowledge because new knowledge comes
to us nascently through sheer imagination. If this book seems to delve too much into Newton's mystical
beliefs then it is simply to compensate for the two-dimensional
and in some cases, untruthful "rational" biographical depictions
that have coloured our view of the man and ignored the role of
non-rational philosophies in driving modern science to where it
is today. The interesting question is: we speak of modern science as a
rational endeavor today but in another hundred years, how
superstitious and primitive will we appear to posterity?
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