Isaac Newton by James Gleick

A good introduction to the life and times of Isaac Newton. 

• The unwanted child
• The child tinkerer
• The alchemist
• The mathematician
• The Recluse
• The Politics of science and religion
• Explainer of gravity using geometry 
• Explainer of prisms and their optical properties
• Inventor of Calculus
• Head of Royal Mint
• Rich man

I liked that the book has tried to be as objective as possible (given that it's a selective biography) of a personality as controversial, famous, successful and impacting whole of science as we know it today.

However I've read and viewed quite a few aspects of his life and times from other sources, so actually I was expecting a big tome dedicated to going through his whole life and it's phases rather than selected portions of life and battles. What inspired him, motivated him, what lay at the core of his endeavours?

There's just enough of that to tantalise the reader. In fact I finished the book in a single sitting.

The author has kept the book mostly free of equations while talking about them in purely logical/physical terms. He's really good at explaining things via simplified analogies. Perhaps I was just expecting a book titled 'Isaac Newton' would have more about the man and his thought processes than the book wanted to delve into. Esp about the alchemy part.

The book is quite slender and is ok for an introduction or one time read for a starting enquiry into Newton's life, thoughts and glimmers of his thought processes. There's quite a big section of references which could be used to follow up the leads.

I would really have loved an exploration of how his extensive training in alchemy influenced and shaped his mind, tools and techniques and thoughts from distant and ancient lands esp Indian thought as percolated via Arabian/Greek sources.

The book is esp good as it quotes the original passages in the 'language of the tymes' from his writings both private and public showing the round-about, careful, secretive and definitely politicking nature of relations between competitors and rivals.

I'd seen a video on controversy between Newton and Liebniz on invention of calculus and read a book on 'History Of Mathematics' which looked at the personal lives of mathematicians and their circumstances that resulted in many discoveries.

So for the high price of the paperback book, it's not what I was looking for ie insight into the thought processes of this genius of physics.

However, the book still has something valuable to offer - a fleeting glimpse of an organiser of a system, a binding together of deeper principles into an overall encompassing framework for physics and science.

An INTP recluse who didn't drawback from experimentation as a feedback source to build a great system that explained the behaviour of one of the large building blocks of the world as we know it ie the principle of gravity explained via mathematics and not etheric mechanical pressure.

I've read 'Chaos' by the same author and it was a very good and clean introduction with superb illustrations which were missing in this book which contains line drawings from Newton's papers instead. More historical in that sense.