[55] A pamphlet by Styan Thurlby.
The most active and powerful minds at Cambridge became at once disciples and followers of Newton. Samuel Clarke, afterwards his friend, defended in the public schools a thesis taken from his philosophy, as early as 1694; and in 1697 published an edition of Rohault’s Physics, with notes, in which Newton is frequently referred to with expressions of profound respect, though the leading doctrines of the Principia are not introduced till a later edition, in 1703. In 1699, Bentley, whom we have already mentioned as a Newtonian, became Master of Trinity College; and in the same year, Whiston, another of Newton’s disciples, was appointed his deputy as professor of mathematics. Whiston delivered the Newtonian doctrines, both from the professor’s chair, and in works written for the use of the University; yet it is remarkable that a taunt respecting the late introduction of the Newtonian system into the Cambridge course of education, has been founded on some peevish expressions which he uses in his Memoirs, written at a period when, having incurred expulsion from his professorship and the University, he was naturally querulous and jaundiced in his views. In 1709–10, Dr. Laughton, who was tutor in Clare Hall, procured himself to be appointed moderator of the University disputations, in order to promote the diffusion of the new mathematical doctrines. By this time the first edition of the Principia was become rare, and fetched a great price. Bentley urged Newton to publish a new one; and Cotes, by far the first, at that time, of the mathematicians of Cambridge, undertook to superintend the printing, and the edition was accordingly published in 1713.
[2d Ed.] [I perceive that my accomplished German translator, Littrow, has incautiously copied the insinuations of some modern writers to the effect that Clarke’s reference to Newton, in his Edition of Rohault’s Physics, was a mode of introducing Newtonian doctrines covertly, when it was not allowed him to introduce such novelties [425] openly. I am quite sure that any one who looks into this matter will see that this supposition of any unwillingness at Cambridge to receive Newton’s doctrine is quite absurd, and can prove nothing but the intense prejudices of those who maintain such an opinion. Newton received and held his professorship amid the unexampled admiration of all contemporary members of the University. Whiston, who is sometimes brought as an evidence against Cambridge on this point, says, “I with immense pains set myself with the utmost zeal to the study of Sir Isaac Newton’s wonderful discoveries in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, one or two of which lectures I had heard him read in the public schools, though I understood them not at the time.” As to Rohault’s Physics, it really did contain the best mechanical philosophy of the time;—the doctrines which were held by Descartes in common with Galileo, and with all the sound mathematicians who succeeded them. Nor does it look like any great antipathy to novelty in the University of Cambridge, that this book, which was quite as novel in its doctrines as Newton’s Principia, and which had only been published at Paris in 1671, had obtained a firm hold on the University in less than twenty years. Nor is there any attempt made in Clarke’s notes to conceal the novelty of Newton’s discoveries, but on the contrary, admiration is claimed for them as new.
The promptitude with which the Mathematicians of the University of Cambridge adopted the best parts of the mechanical philosophy of Descartes, and the greater philosophy of Newton, in the seventeenth century, has been paralleled in our own times, in the promptitude with which they have adopted and followed into their consequences the Mathematical Theory of Heat of Fourier and Laplace, and the Undulatory Theory of Light of Young and Fresnel.
In Newton’s College, we possess, besides the memorials of him mentioned above (which include two locks of his silver-white hair), a paper in his own handwriting, describing the preparatory reading which was necessary in order that our College students might be able to read the Principia. I have printed this paper in the Preface to my Edition of the First Three Sections of the Principia in the original Latin (1846).
Bentley, who had expressed his admiration for Newton in his Boyle’s Lectures in 1692, was made Master of the College in 1699, as I have stated; and partly, no doubt, in consequence of the Newtonian sermons which he had preached. In his administration of the College, he zealously stimulated and assisted the exertions of Cotes, Whiston, and other disciples of Newton. Smith, Bentley’s successor as Master of [426] the College, erected a statue of Newton in the College Chapel (a noble work of Roubiliac), with the inscription, Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit.]
At Oxford, David Gregory and Halley, both zealous and distinguished disciples of Newton, obtained the Savilian professorships of astronomy and geometry in 1691 and 1703.
David Gregory’s Astronomiæ Physicæ et Geometricæ Elementa issued from the Oxford Press in 1702. The author, in the first sentence of the Preface, states his object to be to explain the mechanics of the universe (Physica Cœlestis), which Isaac Newton, the Prince of Geometers, has carried to a point of elevation which all look up to with admiration. And this design is executed by a full exposition of the Newtonian doctrines and their results. Keill, a pupil of Gregory, followed his tutor to Oxford, and taught the Newtonian philosophy there in 1700, being then Deputy Sedleian Professor. He illustrated his lectures by experiments, and published an Introduction to the Principia which is not out of use even yet.
In Scotland, the Newtonian philosophy was accepted with great alacrity, as appears by the instances of David Gregory and Keill. David Gregory was professor at Edinburgh before he removed to Oxford, and was succeeded there by his brother James. The latter had, as early as 1690, printed a thesis, containing in twenty-two propositions, a compend of Newton’s Principia.[56] Probably these were intended as theses for academical disputations; as Laughton at Cambridge introduced the Newtonian philosophy into these exercises. The formula at Cambridge, in use till very recently in these disputations, was “Rectè statuit Newtonus de Motu Lunæ;” or the like.
[56] See Hutton’s Math. Dict., art. James Gregory. If it fell in with my plan to notice derivative works, I might speak of Maclaurin’s admirable Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s Discoveries, published in 1748. This is still one of the best books on the subject. The late Professor Rigaud’s Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Isaac Newton’s “Principia” (Oxf. 1838) contains a careful and candid view of the circumstances of that event.