Ghostwalk (34 page)
Authors: Rebecca Stott
FURTHER READING
On Newton
Fara, Patricia.
Newton: The Making of Genius.
London: Macmillan, 2002.
Gleick, James.
Isaac Newton.
New York: HarperPerennial, 2004.
Iliffe, Robert.
Newton: A Very Short Introduction.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
More, Louis Trenchard.
Isaac Newton.
New York: Scribner, 1934.
Westfall, Richard.
Never at Rest: Isaac Newton.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
White, Michael.
Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer.
London: Fourth Estate, 1997.
For the finest resource on Newton, his life and works, and access to published and unpublished writings, as well as links to other Newton sites, see the Newton Project: http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk, edited by Rob Iliffe and Scott Mandelbrote.
On Glass and Prisms
Douglas, R. W., and Susan Frank.
A History of Glassmaking.
Henley-on-Thames: Foulis, 1972.
Godfrey, Eleanor S.
The Development of English Glassmaking, 1560–1640.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
Klein, Dan, and Ward Lloyd.
The History of Glass.
London: Orbis, 1984.
McCray, W. Patrick.
Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice: The Fragile Craft.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999.
Neri, Antonio.
L’Arte Vetraria,
1612; translated into English as
The Art of Glass
by Christopher Merrett in 1662. New edition by Michael Cable published in 2001 by the Society of Glass Technology, Sheffield.
Polak, Ada.
Glass: Its Makers and Its Public.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975.
Schaffer, Simon. “Glassworks: Newton’s Prisms and the Uses of Experiment.” In
The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences,
edited by Simon Schaffer et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
On Alchemy
Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter.
The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy, or “The Hunting of the
Greene Lyon.”
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
———.
The Janus Face of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; new edition, 2002.
Eliade, Mircea.
The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structure of Alchemy.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
For biographies of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century scientists and alchemists, see Richard Westfall’s “A Catalogue of the Scientific Community in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” in The Galileo Project: http://galileo.rice.edu/lib/catalog.htm.
On Plague
Bell, Walter George.
The Great Plague of London in 1665.
1924; rpt., London: Bodley Head Books, 1951.
Defoe, Daniel.
A Journal of the Plague Year.
1722.
Porter, Stephen.
The Great Plague.
Stroud: Sutton, 1999.
Williamson, R. “The Plague in Cambridge.”
Medical History
1.1 (January 1957): pp. 51–64.
On Seventeenth-Century Cambridge
Defoe, Daniel.
A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain.
1724.
McIntosh, Tania.
Decline of Stourbridge Fair, 1770–1934.
Leicester: University of Leicester, 1998.
Newton, Samuel.
The Diary of S. Newton, Alderman of Cambridge.
Edited by J. E. Foster. Cambridge: Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1890.
Prynne, Abraham de la.
The Diary of Abraham de la Prynne.
Edited by Charles Jackson. Durham, 1870.
Ward, Edward.
A Step to Stirbitch Fair.
1700.
Wilmer, Clive, and Charles Moseley.
Cambridge Observed: An Anthology.
Cambridge: Colt Books, 1998.
On Entanglement Theory
Aczel, Amir.
Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics.
New York: Plume, 2003.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks go first to my father, Roger Stott, who gave so much to the book and to me; my agent Faith Evans, who understood it on first reading; my astute editor Helen Garnons-Williams at Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Cindy Spiegel at Spiegel & Grau; Emma Sweeney, my U.S. agent; Kelly Falconer and Alan Samson at Weidenfeld; and all the readers of drafts: Judith Boddy, Rob Iliffe, Sal Cline, Lucie Sutherland, Stephanie Le Vaillant, Jonathon Burt, Charlie Ritchie, and my son Jacob Morrish. For ideas and inspiration my daughters, Hannah Morrish and Kezia Morrish. For stories of the river, its punt chauffeurs and for descriptions of the way the light rises over the river at dawn, Jacob Morrish, accomplished part-time punt chauffeur and young hedonist. For beauty and entanglement, Jonathon Burt.
For help with research, the librarians of Cambridge University Library, the Wren and the Whipple libraries; Patricia Fara and Simon Schaffer; my colleagues at Anglia Ruskin University; and the staff and students of the History and Philosophy of Science Department at Cambridge. My thanks go too to Diane and Eric Pranklin for stories about a fenland abattoir in winter and to Melanie Piper for help with the illustrations.
I thank the Hawthornden Trust for granting me a month-long writing fellowship in Hawthornden Castle in 2004, where this book was completed, and for the companionship of Daniel Farrell, Susanna Moore, Heather Dyer, and Sarah Stonich.
ILLUSTRATION AND TEXT SOURCES AND CREDITS
Endpaper art:
Ms.add.3970:ff:544v-545r. By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
70
Map of Murano, detail from the map of Venice drawn by Jacopo de’ Barbari, c.1500, a copy of which is in the Correr Museum in Venice.
72
Drawing of a glass furnace from a Whitall Tatum catalogue of 1879. Collection of Ian Macky.
73
Osias Beert the Elder,
Bodgon (Oysters and Glasses),
c.1610, oil on panel. Prado, Madrid. By kind permission of the Prado Gallery.
99
Newton’s drawing of his experiment with a bodkin, from the Portsmouth Collection, Add MS 3995, p.15; by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
102
Broadside of 1665: The Great Plague of London. Woodcut.
103
Map of Cambridge, drawn by George Braun in 1575, from George Braun and Franz Hogenberg,
Civitates Orbis Terrarum.
Coloniae, 1577–88.
107
Drawing of the
experimentum crucis,
MS361 of the Newton papers. A drawing for the second edition of the
Optique.
By permission of the Warden & Fellows, New College, Oxford.
198
Frontispiece from John Bate,
The Mysteries of Nature and Art,
1635.
202
Detail from drawing of Trinity by David Loggan,
Cantabrigia Illustrata,
1690, showing Newton’s rooms, garden, and alchemical laboratory.
Lyrics from “Dance Me to the End of Love” by Leonard Cohen © Stranger Music Inc. / Sony/ATV Music Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
Lyrics from “Have You Seen Me Lately” by Counting Crows © Interscope Geffen A&M Records. All Rights Reserved.
Extract from “The Dry Salvages” from
Collected Poems 1909–1962
by T. S. Eliot © Faber and Faber Ltd.
Every effort has been made by the author to contact the copyright holders of the material published in this book; any omissions will be rectified at the earliest opportunity.
1
The British Museum archive of letters written by John Greene to Allesio Morelli dated 1667–72 establish that Morelli had been supplying the London glass sellers Greene and Measey for several years. For Morelli’s reactions to the shifts in status between English glass and Venetian glass see Vogelsang Papers, pp. 33–37.
Return to text.
2
See Dan Klein and Ward Lloyd (1984),
The History of Glass
; Eleanor S. Godfrey (1975),
The Development of English Glassmaking, 1560–1640
; W. Patrick McCray (1999),
Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice: The Fragile Craft
; and R. W. Douglas and Susan Frank (1972),
A History of Glassmaking.
Return to text.
3
For Antonio Neri see W. Patrick McCray (1999),
Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice: The Fragile Craft,
pp. 153–55; for the death of Neri see Richard Westfall’s Web catalogue of biographical details on European alchemists, http://galileo.rice.edu/lib/catalog.htm.
Return to text.
4
For Morelli and Greene see R. W. Douglas and Susan Frank (1972),
A History of Glassmaking,
p. 14; Ada Polak (1975),
Glass: Its Makers and Its Public,
p. 115; and McCray (1999),
Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice,
p. 148.
Return to text.
5
See Antonio Neri’s
L’Arte Vetraria (The Art of Glass;
1612, translated 1662).
Return to text.
6
See R. J. Charleston (1957), “Glass,” in
History of Technology,
vol. 3, edited by C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall, and T. Williams, pp. 206–44.
Return to text.
7
For the history of the Fens drainage see H. C. Darby (1956),
The Draining of the Fens
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sir William Dugdale travelled across the Fens on several occasions between 1650 and 1665 and wrote several firsthand accounts, including “Things Observable in our Itinerarie begun from London 19 May 1657” and
The History of Imbanking and Draining of divers Fens and Marshes both in Foreign Parts and in the Kingdom, and of the Improvements thereby
(1662). See also the account of Elias Ashmole, an alchemist and collector, “Observations in my Fen Journey, begun 19 May 1657” from Elias Ashmole (1717),
Memoirs of the Life of Elias Ashmole
(London).
Return to text.
8
A subsizar was the lowest status of scholar. Subsizars worked their way through their studies in the employment of a fellow. Though Newton’s family was not poor, it is interesting that his mother was not prepared to pay for him to have a higher status.
Return to text.
9
For Newton’s reading in Descartes see J. Lohne (1968), “Experimentum Crucis,”
Notes and Records of the Royal Society
23, pp. 169–99; Westfall,
Never at Rest,
pp. 345–47; M. Mamiani (1976),
Isaac Newton Filosofo della Natura: Le Lezioni Giovanni di Ottica e la Genesis del Metodo Newtiano,
pp. 81–94.
Return to text.
10
Key works on optics in the seventeenth century are A. I. Sabra,
Theories of Light from Descartes to Newton
(London, 2nd ed., 1981), and Allen E. Shapiro, “Kinematic Optics: A Study of the Wave Theory of Light in the Seventeenth Century,”
Archive for the History of Exact Sciences
11 (1973), pp. 134–266.
Return to text.
11
Robert Hooke (1665),
Micrographia,
p. 54.
Return to text.
12
For the most extensively and densely researched account of Newton’s experiments with prisms see Simon Schaffer (1989), “Glassworks: Newton’s Prisms and the Uses of Experiment,” in S. Schaffer and S. Shapin (1989),
The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences.
See also Rob Iliffe (1995), “‘That Puzleing Problem’: Isaac Newton and the Political Physiology of Self,”
Medical History
39, pp. 433–58.
Return to text.
13
For the history of Cambridge in the plague years see C. H. Cooper,
Annals of Cambridge,
5 vols. (Cambridge, 1842–1908), vol. 3; C. P. Murrell (1951), “The Plague in Cambridge, 1665–1666,”
Cambridge Review,
pp. 375–406; Raymond Williamson (1957), “The Plague in Cambridge,”
Medical History
1:1, pp. 51–64.
Return to text.
14
Keynes Ms. 130.10, ff. 2v–3 Newton Project. Newton also remembered buying a prism early in 1666, as he wrote to Henry Oldenberg: “In the beginning of the Year 1666 (at which time I applied my self to the grinding of Optick glasses of other figures than
Spherical),
I procured me a Triangular glass-Prism, to try therewith the celebrated
Phaenomena of Colours.”
Newton to Henry Oldenberg, 6 February, 1672; ed. H. W. Turnbull 1959–61, 3 vols Cambridge University Press
Correspondence 1,
95–96.
Return to text.
15
Westfall argues that Newton was in Woolsthorpe for the entire period from early August 1665 to 20 March 1666. There is no conclusive proof, however, that Newton did not return to Cambridge for brief periods of time that winter. On Newton’s hypochondria and remedies for sickness see Rob Iliffe, “Isaac Newton: Lucatello Professor of Mathematics” in Shapin and Lawrence (1998),
Science Incarnate,
pp. 121–55. London: University of Chicago Press.
Return to text.
16
For the location of Newton’s rooms in Trinity see Lord Adrian, “Newton’s Rooms in Trinity,”
Notes and Records of the Royal Society
18 (1963), pp. 17–24.
Return to text.
17
Simon Schaffer has discovered several other natural philosophers who worked with prisms; see H. Peacham (1606),
The Gentleman’s Exercise
; John Bate (1654),
The Mysteryes of Nature and Art
; G. Della Porta (1658),
Natural Magick
; and T. White (1654),
An Apology for Rushworth’s Dialogues.
Return to text.
18
Westfall,
Never at Rest,
p. 23.
Return to text.
19
Keynes Ms. 136 (part 3): William Stukeley’s memoir of Newton, sent to Richard Mead in four installments (26 June to 22 July 1727), each with a covering letter to Mead. Newton Project.
Return to text.
20
See Westfall,
Never at Rest,
p. 62; Stukeley, p. 43; Keynes Ms. 130.2, p. 24.
Return to text.
21
More was not a practising alchemist until quite late in his life, but he was driven from the 1650s on by philosophical questions and beliefs that are inseparable from those of alchemical and kabbalistic writings; this is especially so in his passionate quest to demonstrate the intellectual inadequacy of any purely materialist account of either nature or man.
Return to text.
22
Newton referred to More’s book
The Immortality of the Soul
in his notebook, under the heading “Of Attomes,” describing it as the book in which the existence of indiscernible small particles is “proved beyond all controversie”: Cambridge University Library Add. Ms 3996, fol. 89r.
Return to text.
23
See More to Anne Conway, 8 May 1654 and 18 April 1655 in Marjorie Hope Nicolson, ed.,
Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More and Their Friends
(New Haven, 1930). See also Vogelsang Papers, pp. 34–41.
Return to text.
24
See Vogelsang Papers, p. 55.
Return to text.
25
Westfall,
Never at Rest,
pp. 290–91.
Return to text.
26
Keynes Ms. 130.10, f.2v.
Return to text.
27
Louis Trenchard More (1934),
Isaac Newton,
p. 45.
Return to text.
28
Michael White (1997),
Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer,
p. 95.
Return to text.
29
Westfall,
Never at Rest,
pp. 176–77.
Return to text.
30
Ibid., pp. 177–78.
Return to text.
31
See Richard de Villamil (1931),
Newton: The Man,
p. 14. London: Gordon Knox.
Return to text.
32
See Samuel Newton (1890),
The Diary of Samuel Newton, Alderman of Cambridge,
edited by J. E. Foster, p. 72.
Return to text.
33
Vogelsang Papers, p. 56.
Return to text.
34
Vogelsang Papers, p. 57.
Return to text.
35
Vogelsang Papers, p. 60.
Return to text.
