Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World

Most of us wonder about the things we see around us. "Why is grass green", "Why doesn't a ship sink?", "Why do the planets move?" Arguably, no one has wondered more fruitfully than Isaac Newton, who produced three revolutionary ideas: gravity, calculus (concurrently with Leibniz), and the particle theory of light. Serious math & science folks will find this book too elementary. It is also not an exhaustive biography, or a detailed treatment of Newton's ideas. This info is easy to find. Much rarer is a good synthesis view aimed at a popular audience. For those who never studied math or science beyond college survey courses, this book is a gem. Berlinski provides a rich sense of Newton's personality and times. More importantly, he explains some of the questions Newton asked, how he answered them, and the implications of some of those answers. Berlinski does this in a manner that is engaging without seeming weighty or tedious. I am a lifelong learner who never finished college. I found math difficult and impenetrable because my central question, "How do I use it" was never answered. With age and experience, I found that I needed math, particularly calculus, to answer many of the practical questions I pondered. I've read a number of books that dealt with what calculus does, but never found a useful explanation of what it IS. Berlinski shows us how calculus was made possible by Descartes' coordinate system, explores the fundamental questions that led Newton to calculus, and show us how Newton tied it all together. The real gift is that Berlinski does this in a comprehensible way,with concise illustrations and a clear, logical progression. The math is in the Appendix, for those who wish to delve deeper. I wish the author had recommended some further reading, but he does comment on several editions of "Principia" in footnotes. I find myself re-reading sections as I ponder the concepts. Now that's a book!

David Berlinski has created a marvelous intellectual history focusing on the progression of Newton's epic breakthrough thinking. He does this in a way that is totally accessible to those who are phobic about mathematics. The explanations are achieved through a skillful combination of simple sentences, symbols, pictures, and diagrams. The presentation is so effective that most readers will find their understanding of important mathematical and scientific principles greatly improved. This is a great book!Newton was a seminal thinker in the areas of mathematics (developing calculus), physics (with his propositions about gravity and motion), and optics (with his conceptualization of light as being comprised of particles moving in parallel). He also did much work in theology and alchemy, which are recounted here.A key challenge for David Berlinski was presented by Newton's reticence. He was not a very social person, and wrote almost nothing about how he developed his ideas. Berlinksi does a magnificent job of locating and sharing hints and clues about the bases of these intuitive leaps. This result is enhanced by considering the continuing themes in Newton's thinking, and assuming a connection to his intuition. I suspect that Berlinski is right in connecting the dots that way, but we will never know for sure.The centerpiece of our story turns out to be the tangent to a curve. From that humble beginning, most of our modern understanding of how physical motion takes place follows.I also enjoyed better understanding how Newton's thinking was aided by the careful observations and conclusions of Kepler.If the history of science were always this entertaining, this subject would be one of the most popular majors in colleges.As Berlinksi tells us in the beginning his purpose in the book is "to offer a sense of the man without specifying in details his . . . activities." This allows us to see the other sides of Newton, but without spending too much time on them. Newton was not perfect. We get glimpses of places where he wasted his time, such as his unsuccessful experiments with alchemy. We also see his flirtations and infatuations. Beyond that, we see what could enrage him, and how he took his revenge. This fleshing out of the whole man makes the scientific history all the more compelling.If you liked David Berlinski's book, The Birth of the Algorithm, you will probably like this one even better. The asides are much more contained and relevant here.For those who want a little more math with their scientific history, Berlinski has provided supplementary materials that are quite entertaining.After you have finished enjoying this wonderful romp, I suggest that you think about where everyday events are unexplained in your life. For example, why do the people you meet with act the way they do? Why is progress slow in many areas, and rapid in others? By looking for connections, you, too, may isolate fundamental principles that can expand our own appreciation as a sp

In his book Newton's Gift - How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World David Berlinski presents us with an engaging biography of Newton. What I personally liked was the fact that Berlinski avoided the trap of many biographies that merely present names, dates and places. In this book we see the person that Newton was and how it affected his study of mathematics.One of the main reasons that one should study the history of mathematics is to appreciate the human side of its creation. Berlinski presents Newton's human side quite well. If you are looking for a lot of detailed mathematics, you probably won't find it here. The mathematics is presented at a very readable and understandable level. This is certainly accessible to the average undergraduate math/physics major.I recommend this book without hesitation.

Bookstore shelves sag with with biographies of desperately uninteresting pop culture icons, self obsessed tycoons, and hollow celebrities. The tedious "rich and famous". But not all biography is so empty. Berlinski, brilliant and difficult, might be the perfect examiner of Newton: "Isaac Newton is the largest figure in the history of western science, his influence both inescapable and immeasurable... Newtonian mechanics is not only the first, but the greatest of scientific theories... it embodies a combination of simplicity and scope still denied any other scientific theory... Despite the brilliance of his reflected light, he himself stands where I suspect he wished to stand -- in the shadows." Like any work of Berlinski must be, this is an uncommon experience of mathematics and disciplined thought, presented in an effusion of verbal chromatics. A more widely accessible work than his A Tour of the Calculus.Says the author: "Like Einstein, his spiritual heir and only equal, Newton viewed mathematics as an instrument. In thinking about the calculus, Newton was already thinking beyond the calculus, planets in motion and falling objects moving across the enormous corridors of his mind."