Due to his teacher, Isaac Barrow’s interest in optics, the young student developed a sophisticated knowledge in this field, the area that he soon mastered and which would contribute to many of his breakthroughs.Įven here, fate was to take its course: During the course of his degree, the infamous Black Death sweeping through England meant that Newton had to return home for a year, due to closure of the university until 1667. During his studies, he was introduced to Cartesian physics and philosophy, as well as the work of Kepler in planetary motion and Galileo’s mechanics. Here, he had access to all the latest works in science, philosophy and religion, contributing to a well-rounded education. He returned to school and finished his studies, entering the notable Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1661, where he embraced the academic life and embarked on a course of self-improvement, always striving to fill gaps in his knowledge. His potential may have been wasted had his mother had her way and insisted on him becoming a member of the noble Lincolnshire farming community, but his Cambridge-educated uncle had different ideas and saw a great deal of untapped intellectual potential in the boy. During his school years, he showed inquisitiveness and a thirst for learning, burying himself in his books and neglecting his duties on the family farm. This practical side would influence his later scientific work in physics and alchemy as he voraciously devoured knowledge. As a child, he displayed an aptitude for mechanics, constantly tinkering and creating machines and devices, and constructing elaborate windmills, sundials and waterclocks. Isaac Newton really was a man who sprang from humble beginnings, as a child of an illiterate farmer, who died three months before Newton was born, but his inborn intelligence and intuition would soon see him rise out of this way of life. The Early Life of Isaac Newton – From Humble Beginnings Sprang an Intellectual Giant While most of us remember Newton as the discoverer of gravity, his research included mathematics, optics and philosophy in a revisiting of the great polymaths of old, a body of research that led him to create his great opus. This physical model would survive until the coming of Poincare, Einstein and General Relativity, and Newton’s methods are still widely used and are taught in schools around the world. However, during this shift in thought, one of the largest in human history, Newton followed on from Aristotle, Avicenna, Galileo, and Francis Bacon in shaping the scientific method and creating a model that dictated how the universe worked. While Newton was a religious man, his research, theories, and philosophy caused a subtle shift in thought and the shaping of modern science, as we know it, although the wider picture is a little more complicated the Reformation the rise of the New World and increased mobility of people and ideas also contributed.
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