Newton biography of the scientist

The very thought of this would seem to them absurd and wild! Only by the end of the twentieth century, the Western and domestic history of science began to revise this stereotype. The reconstruction of the image of “Historical Newton” makes modern scientists think about how difficult this breakdown of the scientific tradition took place, how many connections were associated with the remnants of the traditional worldview, the pioneers of modernist science, which, perhaps, did not understand: what they gave rise to.

Let us turn to this extremely curious side of the activities of the great British scientist and its coverage in historical scientific research of our days. According to all Newton biographers without exception, the creator of classical science was characterized by deep and sincere religiosity, which he carried through his whole life. Over the next years of life, he also did not stop theological studies, so that reading the Holy Scriptures and theological comments on him turned into the usual leisure of Newton, and in his old age, being already a well -known scientist, recognized by the scientific circles of all European countries, he was generally almost completely devoted to classes of theology, continuing his long -standing work of books of the Old Testament and the revelation of the Holy John.

Contrary to the already mentioned opinion of the positivist historians of science, Newton's religious reflection was not at all the phenomenon of consciousness, parallel and incomprehensible with the actual scientific activity of the great Englishman. Modern domestic researcher V. Kirsanov notes that the departure of I. Newton from the positions of Cartesian physics was due to the fact that Newton was completely unacceptable in the philosophy of Descartes, the interpretation of the relationship between God and nature, Kirsanov writes: “Newton’s atomistic views were undoubtedly formed under the influence of Mora ...

The fact is that Mor was not satisfied with the mechanistic philosophy of Descartes, mainly because it ... allowed the possibility of building a picture of the world that did not need the presence of God. He considered this approach to be wrong and unacceptable and made every effort to emphasize the need to introduce God into the picture of the world as a picture of the world as a picture of the world as a picture of the world as a picture of the world as The fundamental, active beginning of the universe.

In letters to Bentley Newton, he tried to give a scientific refutation of materialistic cosmogony, in the framework of which the explanation of astronomical phenomena was carried out without involving the concept of a supernatural essence. For these purposes, Newton put forward three main arguments, which we consider here to consider in more detail, since they represent a vivid evidence of the uniqueness of the Newtonian interpretation of the influence of the divine will on natural processes.

In accordance with this, Newton concludes that such an additional impulse, which twisted the initial paths of the planets, was given to them by God at the time of the creation of our planetary system the famous “Divine Primm”; in the ratio of speeds and masses of celestial bodies. According to the fair remark of B. Hessen, this system of arguments is of undoubted interest for those historians of science who aimed at a full -scale reconstruction of Newton's worldview, since it indicates that “the concept that comes down to the appeal to the divine mind as the organizer of the Universe was not at all by chance, it is a necessary consequence of its concept of the basics of mechanics.

In this regard, B. Hesse indicates: “The first law of movement attributes matter to the ability to maintain the condition in which it is, that is, either a state of rest, or mechanical movement ... In this sense, Newton's Matter is inert in the full sense of the word. An external impetus is always required to drive it in motion or to change and stop this movement. It is easy to notice that this Newtonian interpretation of matter is in line with a Protestant approach to nature, which in Lutheranism, and in Calvinism, and in English puritania usually appears as “the inert and passive performer of the will of God” 7.

It turns out that when analyzing the internal evolution of Newton’s ideas about nature, which received their final completion in the form of a picture of the world of classical physics, Newton’s Protestantism cannot be considered in no way as a secondary, side fact of his intellectual and spiritual development. Born in a Protestant country, Newton from childhood absorbed that set of “natural interpretations” through which Protestantism determines nature, and this circumstance, of course, could not but affect Newton's purely scientific research in the field of dynamic physics and heavenly mechanics.

This, however, does not have a large paradox, because in all three cases we observe a clear departure from tradition. The most significant theological work of Newton Isaac is the treatise on the prophecies of the Holy Scriptures, and especially on the prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of the Holy, Newton explains the main idea of ​​this volumetric labor at the very beginning of his work: “The stupidity of people who wanted to interpret prophecies came from the desire to extract from them about future events, as if God had an intention to make them from them Prophets ...

God's intention was completely different. He gave the Apocalypse, as well as the prophecies of the Old Testament, not in order to flatter human curiosity, allowing them to read the future in them, but so that the prophecies, once perfect, could be interpreted by events, and so that his foresight could not be detected by prophets ”8. In these words, by the way, the very essence of the method by which Newton hoped to clarify the numerous prophecies available in the Bible: the great scientist, who was always characterized by the originality of the course of thoughts, suggested that the key to the riddle of the prophets, which have already found confirmation in the real events of the past, for example, the prediction of the destruction of the destruction The Jerusalem Temple, thanks to which you can create a kind of "dictionary" of the allegorical language of biblical soothsayers.

After that, armed with his own method of interpreting the foggy language of the prophets, Newton began to explain the specific prophecies available in the Holy Scriptures, while showing remarkable knowledge in ancient history according to the remarks of biographers. In this regard, Newton's classic biographer J. Bio writes that “Newton’s work is huge ... He hugs not only the main eras, important events of ancient times and the Middle Ages, but many other special facts, chronological research and observations of civilian and religious monuments of antiquity and in all this a variety of and deep scholarship, gleaned from the best sources” 9.

However, the French historian of science, having examined in his book this Treaty of Newton10, as befits a positivist, exclaims with surprise: “How is this strong and high mind, accustomed to the severity of mathematical evidence ... Could combine such ridiculous assumptions? At the same time, in favor of the fact that Newton’s theological surveys were not a kind of “worldview ballast”, which he got from their “ignorant” era, but were an important component of the Newtonian concept of the universe, without which it is impossible to completely understand the mechanics and physics of Newton, says at least the next circumstance, which has passed by the attention of positivist historians like railway.

BI: When trying to reveal the true meaning of the prophecies of the Holy Scriptures, I. Newton uses the same method as in his physical or mathematical research, namely a method, which, generally speaking, can be characterized as empirical. In this sense, the worldview ideas of I. Newton are quite solid and harmonious, which can not be said about the ideas about nature proposed by modern experimental natural science, which, when knowing being, as if splitting it into many relatively autonomous angles: physical, chemical, biological.

Scripture recorded the same higher truth, just as if in different languages. However, in order to come close to understanding these features of the worldview of I. Newton, we must also turn to the alchemical and esoteric studies of the great physics, during which, in fact, these mystical views were formed into nature.

In the works of modern foreign and domestic biographers of Newton, we find a lot of evidence that the scientist devoted quite a lot of time to the study of literature on alchemy and hermeticism. Thus, the American historian of science, Ch. Magic and the formation of modern science ”notes that the presence in Newton's library of the books of Paracelsus and his students of Sendvetiy and Van Helman testifies that Newton was familiar with the cornerstones of traditional occult sciences: alchemy, astrology, hermetism and natural magic according to their estimates, the volume of alchemical works that have gone through hands have gone through the hands Newton, exceeded 5 pages, such a deep interest in the occult sciences, of course, was not limited to studying the relevant books: Isaac Newton made his contribution to the development of esoteric disciplines and a considerable part of Newton's creative heritage are made up precisely by alchemical manuscripts, which, according to V.

Kirsanov, “are still waiting for their researcher” in this connection, the domestic historian of the science of V.Kirsanov notes that Newton’s alchemicals were the motive for true knowledge, since the scientist “did not satisfy the idea of ​​the Universe subordinate to soulless mechanical laws, he sought to compensate for the narrowness of mechanistic philosophy by the ideas of the unity of living and inanimate nature, gleaned by the alchemists” in the above statements of V.

In this regard, we can cite the words of the aforementioned Ch. In this standard interpretation, the degree of epistemological shift that occurred between Paracelsus and Newton ”is exaggerated in this standard interpretation” Another American science historian F. Menyell goes even further and in his book “Portrait of Isaac Newton” characterizes Newton as the “Last Magician of the West”.

In particular, Magnuell writes: “The more carefully analyzed theological, alchemical, chronological and mythological works of Newton in their integrity ... It seems all the more obvious that in the moments of awareness of his greatness he saw himself the last of the interpreters of God's will in its action, living in the eve of the fulfillment of the times”, however, one should not forget, that Newton as a person whose life came across In the turning point, with all its appearance, it seemed to be the bifurcation and ambiguity of the historical figures of such times.

However, Newton himself, the former deeply religious nature, would probably be horrified to find out what conclusions the further development of some postulates of its dynamic physics led to European science. Kirsanov V.