Richard S. Westfall (1924–1996)

I have read a succession of Newton biographies: Christianson's, Gleick's, etc. Gleick's is best for the casual reader. Christianson's then if you want to go swimming. Westfall's if you want to go swimming in the deep end. Christianson's probably is the easier read, but Westfall's is the most thorough, the most detailed, the most engrossing. Westfall knew the material like no other, and is command and grasp of Newton's life and times thus the most detailed. And thus the longest. Thankfully, too it is properly FOOTNOTED, so you can see sources and digressions as you read. Now, being the longest biography, some of the physics and mathematics is quite detailed and, for me, a tad boring. More emphasis is laid on Newton's alchemy. Westfall's contribution to Newton scholarship is to quite distinctly link Newton's methodology and beliefs about alchemy to his methodology and beliefs about science (or, as it was called at the time, natural philosophy). Other authors, before and after Westfall, either separate Newton's science and alchemy or merely think that they run in parallel tracks. Westfall, however, argues (see especially chapter 8), that Newton's alchemy and science should not be separate or seen as distinct parallel things, but that they run in tandem, together, that they are blended. His belief in the atomic nature of matter and force (like gravity) working at a distance were grounded IN alchemy and moved to his science, not vice versa. A good book, with good images, good footnotes, good bibliographical essay, good indices. Good hardcover copies are hard to come by, so I had to settle for a thick paperback. If you are a Newtonophile, it is a necessary biography to own.… (mere)

This extensive biography goes into more depth than most of us care for, but it is through. The evidences are described as is their provenance. I skipped over many of the details as I read. I didn’t feel a need to know every twist and turn of the genesis of an idea.

His earlier life was with few friends. His middle life with little desire to associate with others; rather he worked with ideas. After he left Cambridge for London, I might say he became a political creature; turning on perceived enemies even though they might have been associates that he worked with. His capacity for spite was as great as his reputation. But then, perhaps that is true of most of us.

Most striking to me was that he was deeply religious but thoroughly hid his religious views because they revealed the corruption of the church from it’s original foundation.

Richard S Westfall has written half a dozen books with Newton in the title, and several others that look like the same time period, so Newton is probably included inside some of those books also.


“As we shall see, Newton was a tortured man, an extremely neurotic personality who teetered always, at least through middle age, on the verge of breakdown.” (Page 53)

“He was different from other boys ... As they came to recognize his intellectual superiority, the boys in the school apparently hated him.” (Page 58)

“In roughly a year, without benefit of instruction, he mastered the entire achievement of seventeenth-century analysis and began to break new ground.” (Page 100)

“Thus he computed sines to fifteen places and found devices by which he could compute roots and the value of pi to fifteen places or to fifty or five hundred if he wished.” (Page 112)

October 1666 “As it happened only one other mathematician in Europe, Isaac Barlow even knew that Newton existed, and it is unlikely that in 1666 Barlow had any inkling of his accomplishment. The fact that he was unknown does not alter the other fact that the young man not yet 24, without benefit of formal instruction, had become the leading mathematician of Europe.“

Hebrews 1:8-9 Newton inserted the comment next to the words thy God: “therefore the father is God of the son [when the son is considered] as God.” (Page 311)

“The conviction begin to possess him that a massive fraud, which began in the fourth and fifth centuries, had perverted the legacy of the early church. Central to the fraud were the Scriptures, which Newton begin to believe had been corrupted to support trinitarianism.“ (Page 313)

“The corruption of Scripture came relatively late. The earlier corruption of doctrine, which called for the corruption of scripture to support it, occurred in the fourth century, when the triumph of Athanasius over Arius imposed a false doctrine of the Trinity on Christianity.“ (Page 314)

“ There is no book in all the Scriptures so much recommended and guarded by Providence as this [the book of Revelation].“ (Page 319)

“More significant was the implicit de emphasis of the role of Christ, a step which came readily enough to an Arian.” (Page 355) (Chapter: Years of Silence)

“[John] Locke later [said] that he knew few who were Newton’s equal in knowledge of the Bible.” (Page 489)

“... two letters addressed to Locke ... [on] corruptions of Scripture ... were the prime trinitarian passages in the Bible, 1 John 5:7, and 1 Timothy 3:16. Newton also composed a third letter about some twenty-six additional passages, all lending support to trinitarianism, that were corruptions too;” (Page 489-490)

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comments, could only proceed from the council and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being… This being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as lord over off; and on account of his dominion he is want to be called Lord God, call, παντοκρατρωρ or universal ruler for God is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is the dominion of God not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. (Page 748)

“The true manhood of Christ was important to Newton, who believed that trinitarianism effectively denied his manhood and with it the reality of his suffering on the cross. However, ‘he was not an ordinary man but incarnate by the almighty power of God & born of a Virgin without any other father than God himself.’” (Page 824)
… (mere)