> Actually, he was a bit of a nutter.
Really? He was quite religious, certainly, in his own odd way. And he thought there was something to alchemy. Is that what you're thinking of?
To be sure, he was a hard-money man. Certainly the least attractive trait in an otherwise fascinating character.
There's a nice 18th-century statue of old Isaac in the antechapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. Wordsworth (who was a student at the neighboring and less grand St John's college) could see it from his window:
---------- And from my pillow, looking forth by light Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold The antechapel where the statue stood Of Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble image of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone. -----------
By all means let's hoist a glass to Isaac. Perhaps he couldn't have been so brilliant if he hadn't been so nutty. Considered in the round, he doesn't seem a very Hitchens-esque or Dawkinsonian figure.
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Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://www.cars-suck.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com
Any proposition that seems self-evident is almost certainly false.