portrait by Sir James Thornhill
Natural philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, theologian, author and physicist, and one of the most influential scientists of all time; Newton built the first practical telescope, made critical discoveries in the field of optics, developed calculus, made numerous scientific discoveries and also studied alchemy. He established science over faith as the most profound influence on modern thought and his discovery of gravitation revolutionized the study of astronomy. He established the laws of motion and mechanics that became a platform for the modern miracles of science. Exemplifying Gracian’s dictum, “All giants are really dwarfs,” stories of Newton’s absentmindedness proliferate. Asked to boil an egg for 3 minutes, he put his watch in the water and stared at the eggs. He would do things like go upstairs to change for a formal dinner but instead get undressed and go to bed. Voltaire considered him one of the greatest men who have ever lived.
Lineages
British Christian Scientists
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
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“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”
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“To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.”
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“Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.”
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“Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”
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“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”
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“If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.”
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“If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.”
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“Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.”
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“To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.”
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“Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said ‘Let Newton be’ and all was light.”
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“Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today—you shall be sure to be misunderstood but is it so bad to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
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“Who was the greatest man? Without doubt it was Isaac Newton for it was him who mastered our minds by the force of truth and deserves our reverence, not the Caesars, Alexanders, and Cromwells who enslave our minds with violence and war.”
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“Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.”
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“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
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“What Galileo and Newton were to the 17th century, Darwin was the the 19th... Darwin himself was a liberal, but his theories had consequences in some degree inimical to traditional liberalism... like Kant [he] gave rise to a movement which he would have detested.”
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“Newton's Principia marked the quiet assumption by science of its now unchallenged mastery over modern thought... Even in his lifetime, the world understood that Newton belonged to its heroes.”
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“Western civilization is the poorer for having abandoned magic in favor of treating the universe like a piece of clockwork as Newton did”
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