Newton Road, Salisbury

Newton Road is on the Churchfields industrial estate, on the west side of Salisbury. It is named after Isaac Newton, the scientist. This follows the theme of the other roads on the industrial estate, which are named after scientists or engineers. For example:

• Smeaton Road
• Watt Road

According to the Dictionary of National Biography,

There has never since been a time when Newton was not considered either the greatest scientist who ever lived or one of a tiny handful of the greatest.¹

Wikipedia says that he was

one of the most influential men in human history.²

Chronology

1642	Born
1661	Goes to Cambridge university
1665	Binomial theory of quadrants
1665	Gets his degree
1665-1666	Cambridge University shut down because of the Plague
1669	Invents and builds the worlds first reflecting telescope
1669	Buys the work on alchemy, Theatrum chemicum
1669	Gives an essay ‘Analysis per Equationes Numero Terminorum Infinitas to Isaac Barrow, then Lucasian professor of mathematics
1669	Barrow resigns and Newton is appointed Lucasian professor of mathematics
1670	Commences study of theology (compulsory for fellows of Trinity College)
1671	Bishop of Salisbury, Seth Ward, proposes Newton for admission to the Royal Society
1672	Newton elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society
1675	Publishes ‘Hypothesis of Light’
1679	Begins correspondance with Robert Boyle
1681	Edmé Mariotte fails to duplicate Newton’s experiments with the refraction of light. This damages Newton’s reputation in Europe 3
1684	Edmond Halley, Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren discuss the law of gravity
1684	Edmond Halley visits Newton to discuss both gravity and orbital dynamics. Newton asserts and then ‘proves’ that a planet’s orbit around the sun will be an ellipse.
1684	Newton writes De motu (‘Concerning motion’) – a letter to Halley
1685	Begins to formulate his three general laws of dynamics
1686	Sends volume 1 of his Principia to the Royal Society
1687	Sends volume 2 and 3 of Principia to Halley at the Royal Society
1687	Resists attempts by James II to have a monk invested (for religious or sectarian reasons) as a Master of the Arts at Cambridge.
1688	Elected to the convention parliament. Holds seat until dissolution of the Convention Parliament in 1690
1690s	Writes ‘Paradoxical questions concerning the morals and actions of Athanasius’ – supporting Arius, the founder of the Arian heresy, which questioned the trinity. Arius and Newton did not believe that God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit comprised on internal ‘entity’
1693	Finishes ‘Praxis his major alchemical work
1693	Suffers some sort of mental breakdown. Writes to Samuel Pepys saying ‘I must withdraw from your acquaintance, and see neither you nor the rest of my friends any more’
1695	Together with 7 other intellectuals was consulted about the Royal mint. Advocates a new coinage
1695	Offered the wardenship of the mint
1695	Becomes Master of the mint
1699	Is honoured as an associate of the French Academy of Sciences
1701	Becomes a Member of Parliament again until the dissolution of that parliament in 1702
1703	Elected President of the Royal Society
1704	Publishes Opticks
1705	Knighted by Queen Anne
1710	Publishes an essay ‘On the Nature of Acids’4
1714	Sits on a board to judge competing methods of determining longitude at sea
1727	Dies
1728	Posthumous publication of ‘The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended’
1733	Posthumous publication of ‘Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John’
1820	Newton’s apple tree cut down

⁵

Newton and Parliament’s windows

Incidentally, Wikipedia says that

Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England from 1689 to 1690 and in 1701, but according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about a cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed.⁶

I heard almost exactly the same story about Sir Michael Hamilton, who was Member of Parliament for Salisbury until probably the 1979 election, except in Sir Michael’s case the temperature was too hot he asked for the windows to be opened. ⁷

Newton’s religious views

There is a good discussion of Newton’s religious views at The Galilean Library.

The page I’ve linked to is an interview with Stephen David Snobelen, who is (or was at the time of the interview) Assistant Professor in the History of Science and Technology at University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Newton’s views were heretical – potentially dangerously so. Mr Sobelen outlines three areas of heresy in Newton’s thought:

• Newton’s denial of the Trinity. The orthodoxy was, and is, that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are of the same substance – all ‘very God of very God’. Newton did not see any support for this in the bible.
• Newton did not believe in the immortality of the soul – he believed that the bodies of the dead will be resurrected
• Newton rejected the idea of the Devil as an actual entity

Mr Sobelen says that Newton is opposing a what he might have seen as a Hellenistic influence on Christianity.

My limited understanding of this is that Plato believed in that there exists an ideal ‘type’ of any actual thing. So any actual, physical table is merely an instantiation of the ‘ideal type’ of table – an imitation of the essence of ‘tableness’. This concept of ‘essence’ of ‘ideal type’ is, for me, clearly reflected in the Devil as an essence of evil and in the immortal soul as the essence of humanity. I’d struggle a bit more with the Trinity being a Greek or Platonic construct, but I’m sure that’s my fault.

Anyway, for me there’s an interesting parallel between Newton rejecting what can be seen as a ancient Greek influence on religion and something of a rejection of the teachings of Aristotle when he was an undergraduate – a page on the Newton Project website tells us that Newton devoted himself

to private studies in mathematics and optics, largely ignoring the official university curriculum of classics, Euclidean geometry and Aristotelian philosophy. ⁸

As regards the danger inherent in Newton’s views, Mr Sobelen explains that somebody had been burnt at the stake for denying the Trinity as late as 1612, and that Newton’s successor as Lucasian professor lost their job for doing the same thing. For this reason, Newton kept his more radical religious views to himself.

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Budget rooms in Salisbury?

For accommodation, see the Hotels in Salisbury page.

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Footnotes

1. Richard S. Westfall, ?Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727)?, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20059, accessed 18 May 2009] [↩]
2. Isaac Newton – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [↩]
3. Isaac Newton’s Life [↩]
4. Isaac Newton’s Life [↩]
5. All of the facts in the chronology, except where individually referenced come from either: Wikipedia, the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica on Newton or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [↩]
6. Isaac Newton – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [↩]
7. Something I heard many years ago – probably totally unreliable! [↩]
8. Isaac Newton’s Life and Legacy at a Glance | Newton Project [↩]