Sir Isaac Newton: Greatest Scientist of All Time?

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up north of it. Come on, so it comes to us. If you want ticket information, go to s y s K live dot com, which is our wonderful website powered by Squarespace, who are also sponsoring our tour because they're cool. That is right. So we'll see you guys in Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. This is the Stuff you should know. H that was my Isaac Newton press. Really yeah, you

didn't have an accent, that was That's what he sounded like. Oh, it's very it's a very common misconception that British people in the seventeenth century sound like British people today. They actually sounded exactly like how I existed. All right, well you did extra research, then it's pretty good. Let's travel back in time. We we just had a nice ten minute discussion Jerry and you and I about or me? Alright, uh, who cares? Yeah, about pop culture things that we've ingested

since our break six weeks ago. Yep, And that could be a show. Everyone wants to know what we watched and absorbed and how we feel about it, but they never will. We talked about making of a Murderer or making a Murderer. We talked about Hateful Eight and Star Wars and The Revenant. People want to know, but they never will. You gotta keep him mysterious, right, guys, that's right. And all this leads to Isaac Newton, who it was. So you know, um Wolf from Science World. Who Wolf

from Science World. It's a very very bona fide science website. No dumbing down there it so Wolf from put it like this, He's the bomb dignity. It is no, it is no exaggeration to say that Isaac Newton is the single most important contributor to the development of modern science. And Wolf from Science World knows what they're talking about

when it comes to contributors to science. Yeah, you know what, I will agree with that, even though we will see he was many things, including a little screwy, super screwy. But um, what I gathered after researching this dude, is that science this is seventeenth century stuff going on. Science was the wild West. And he came in like a sheriff and basically brought order and discipline and said, this is the way we should do things if we want to be taken seriously, guys, varmints. Um, you can't just

say things like the world's flat. You gotta prove it or or this is kind of the thinking. And he really kind of rose to prominence while the scientific revolution was already going, but he very much contributed to it because still at the time you could be like, well, the uh, the Earth spins because God spun it and it is God's will, and like people would be like, absolutely scientist. Not the case after Newton came along. Now it's like, you gotta prove the stuff. There's gotta be

a method in place, you gotta test things again. And again he was I didn't know this. He was one of the or if not the first person to average data. Yeah, what did they do before that? Just cherry pick something? Probably they're like, oh, that looks like the nice round number. I'll go, I'll use this one. So like, if he measured, say the how long a top spun because that's what scientists measure a lot of top spinning. Um, if he measured it four or five times, then he got different

measurements every time. Yeah, I guess before they would just pick whatever when they like the most. It just seems so he was the first one to average. Yeah. It just seems so second nature to think while averaging something is what you should do, But back then it wasn't. No, and that's that's so that came up a lot while I was reading this article. It's a very good article by Jacob Silverman one on Jeopardy. Pretty yeah, um he

uh he he. The way that he portrayed Newton. I think it gets across that we take Newton's work so for granted these days as just that's the way the universe works. That to think otherwise, it's just totally alien to us. And it's that's just such evidence of how much that man single handedly changed the world. But you also can't say single handedly he's His genius is unequivocal, right, But he also did definitely stand on the backs of giants, on the shoulders of giants, people who came before him,

a sis, and the work of his peers. But he also like to take a lot of the credit for himself, sometimes unnecessarily. He was a very complex man. He was a scientist who deeply believed in God. He believed that you that there was law in order that could be deduced, that could be investigated, but it was orderly and rational, because God was an orderly, rational creator. Yeah, he saw

logic and he thought God was that logic. He also thought that the stuff that he was uncovering was actually ancient wisdom that was being recovered from pre Christian civilizations. That's it gets a little screwy. Yeah, that had um kind of da Vinci coded, uh, this knowledge in things like pyramids and stuff like that, and that he was hand selected as a select view to uncover this knowledge. Yeah, so much so that he made he made a name

for himself, Chuck. And once you start to really investigate Newton, you can just kind of see him like tittering to himself as he's talking to himself in his chambers at Cambridge, calling himself this out loud to an empty room. Yeah, he was. He changed his name or didn't change it. I'm sorry. He had a special name for himself, Jehovah Sanctus Unice, which means Jehovah the Holy One. And he he got that name by rolling a twenty sided die

several times. So that was his special uh. I guess Council of of Unique Scientists, like a league of extraordinary gentleman. That was a super hero name. Yeah, and he was. He was an alchemist as well. He very seriously pursued the study of turning plain old metal into gold of um, finding long life Elixer's. He was a very complex man, and a lot of people like to put him in in this this um rational scientists compartment as like how

we view scientists today typically, And he wasn't that. You just can't look at science the same in the seventeenth century as you do today, No, because different. It wasn't like this guy was helping form science today, and at the time it was he was seeking answers to the universe where ever there it was. There weren't many boundaries to him, Like if he could come to conclusions about

the universe through weird mysticism, then whatever. He still came to the same conclusions that he did through mathematics, which by the way, a major part of of which he helped develop single handedly. Almost. Yeah, it's kind of a weird time because you could on one hand, be a very rational thinker and say you have to prove this, but you can also say that lady didn't float, so she's a witch and that's why she drowned, and and be completely like normal, say it with a straight face. Yeah.

That was like like Newton, like I can turn this mercury into gold, right, there's an elixir that will let you live forever. And I can also say you should average data and write the principia. Right, I can also literally discover gravity, like there was no such thing as gravity as far as humans were concerned before Isaac Newton came along. All right, that's a great setup. That was even better than our field. So January four, which is yesterday in real time, was his actual birthday? Did not

know that? Weird timing? Um, it depends on the calendar. Depends on the calendar Christmas Day or January four, right, yes, but like a year apart rather than like a week or so apart. Right, Because one of the great myths is that he was born on Galileo's the day he Galileo died, which means that he's not true, right. Galileo reincarnated is what people say. It's some people catch you,

some people like Isaac Newton. Probably I don't think he said that, but yeah, that was using the old Julian calendar. When you use the Gregorian calendar, his birthday was actually Jane uh, January four of the following year, or no of the year before. I think, oh wow, he got younger. No of the same year. So like if he was born in December twenty on one calendar. For the other calendar, he would go back in time to the beginning ing

of that same year, so almost a year apart. And the reason that there is a weird discrepancy is um in fifteen eighty two the Catholic nations converted from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, full hundred or so years before Newton, or a little less than hundred years, But it wasn't until the seventeen fifties that the British Isles Protestants converted to that Gregorian or Catholic calendar. We should do one of calendars. Oh, we definitely should. More

complex than you think. But in the in in the in the continent, and in Great Britain or in the UK, um they I don't know still after all these years. So it's Great Britain in Northern Ireland, right, the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. I'm just gonna let you go down this road anyway. Uh. They used to notate dates with um old style and new style, depending on what calendar. So anyway, that's the whole discrepancy between his birthday. No, that makes sense, Oh it sure it does. Uh, all right,

so let's go back in time. Let's get in the way back machine and go back to one of those two days depending on our calendar that we have in the way back machine. How it's programmed, well, the way back machines programmed to um Gregorian. So it's fine. Great. Uh, So we are back when he was born as a little baby. He was a premature and very sickly. And here's how things can go in the world. He wasn't supposed to live. And like, what would the world have

been like without Isaac Newton? Pretty dark? Yeah, or at least it would have taken them longer. Maybe, yeah, maybe it just would have been someone else, like the clapper would have been invented, but we would just assume it worked because God willed it too. That's right. Born uh in eighteen I'm sorry, sixteen forty three, not eight um.

He was from a family of farmers that did pretty well for themselves, although his dad, Isaac died before a few months before he was born, and was an illiterate farmer who was successful at his work, but very big that his father died before he was born. Because he never quite got over that. He ended up um living for a short time with his mother and new stepdad,

Reverend Barnabas Smith. But he sounded like a jerk who did not like Isaac said, I cast the out, And he was cast out and lived with his maternal grandmother for nine years from age three to twelve. Yeah, I mean it was pretty much raised by his maternal grandmother. Yeah, and he was apparently old enough to realize what was going on, because the any psychoanalyst would have a field day with Newton, because he grew up to be a very insecure man who had a tremendous amount of difficulty

trusting people because he's rejected, yes by his mother. Um and who who who suffered from what you would probably call these days hostile attribution bias, where the any any slight or something was clearly intended by the other party. Everybody else was hostile and out. Again, I'm not necessarily making a paranoid but just any slight was intentional, even when it was unintentional. It's a way to live. Yeah, it took everything personally interesting. So this led over his

life to a couple of nervous breakdowns. Um, and you know that also had to do with the fact that he worked tirelessly and didn't sleep well and was in a lot of ways a prototypical scientists like he never got married, was just consumed with his work and didn't take care of himself and uh, sort of obsessed with his with his life's work. Yeah, and some people have posthumously diagnosed him, including Simon Baron Cohen who's a um

an expert on autism and uh uh Asperger's borat his relative. Interesting. I don't think it's his brother, but there are related Yeah, I was totally kidding. Well, you're totally right. So what are he diagnosed with Asperger's? But that's definitely come under fire lately. They think that So there's something UM called

I don't remember what it's called. But in sixteen his second his second nervous breakdown in the sixteen nineties, he um they he stopped doing any kind of scientific research I for that, and he apparently declined mentally compared to his previous state, which means that he came down to about normal levels I would guess. But they think that it was actually mercury poisoning. Yeah, and that he wasn't

necessarily autistic. It's an easy catch all to put him in that in that again in that compartment these days, but we don't know enough about him to say that whether he was autistic, like like one of the um one of the evidences was that he didn't play with the other kids, Um, he just kept two himself. So they're like, well, that that shows a lack of social communication skills or or um, you know, being able to

connect with others. But then if you look back at historical data, he he he tried to hang out with his peers at school, but they didn't like hanging out with them because he was too smart for them, so they shunned him. So, you know, does that make him autistic or does does that mean he had autism spectral disorder spectrum disorder or aspergers. You can't say he may have, but easy to go back now and put people on

the on the spectrum. But they do think because he was exhumed a few hundred years after his death and they found a lot of mercury still like in his um system or in his bones, I would guess, um, and they think that he inadvertently poisoned himself and that that led to his second nervous breakdown and mental decline. Interesting, Yeah, all right, Well, let's take a break here and uh we'll talk about his schooling years right after this. All right, so Newton in school, Uh wasn't a great student in

high school? Um? He who was the mascot? Was there was there one? I don't think so, okay, because I thought they were God that would be like really great trivia Newton's high school mascot? What was yours in Silanto's mind? What you remember Silanto? The kid who's like watching me, watching me night. You guys went to the same high school. Remember I told you we were the Red and Raiders Raiders? Okay? Yeah, and my elementary school was the Red and Little Raiders. Ah.

That is cute, isn't it? H l I l Um. So he wasn't a great student. He was also a terrible farmer because of course, being uh the son of a farmer. They were like, you need to work on the farm. And there are some people that think he'd purposefully like he was clearly smart enough to do this, but purposely failed at it. So he didn't have to do it because he was really into book learning. Uh

so that makes sense to me. Um, he did continue his education because he wasn't farming I went on to Cambridge, but UM had to act as a valot to wealthy students for a little while. Yeah, way through basically what we would consider undergraduate school. Yeah, and then he got a scholarship which allowed him to continue UM through his uh graduate studies. But all that didn't happen in like some smooth things. So he went to school first. His mom came back for him, took him out of school,

tried to set him up as a farmer. He failed at that, ended up going to Cambridge, working his way, working to pay his own way to Why though, if they had money, did they not want to pay for school? I wonder. I think maybe his mom wasn't happy about it or something. I'm not sure because that's the only thing I couldn't figure out, because she didn't have money for sure. Um, but he had to pay his own way through Cambridge, at least undergrad. And while he was

there as an undergrad, chuck, he he pursued his own studies. Yeah. He basically got a syllabus each quarter, tore it up and said, you guys don't know this yet, but I'm Isaac Newton and I'm gonna invent a great figgy cookie and a lot of other great stuff. That is a great figgy cookie. Um So, so he almost he basically

failed out or almost self educating himself. But there is a man named Isaac Barrow who was the Lucazian chair professor, and he took a notice of Newton and said, I think there's a little more to this kid than appears to meet the eye. He was the Robin Williams to Newton's Matt Damon precisely, you know, precisely, except Damon was a custodian and Newton was an actual student. But he did clean rooms too. Yeah, so there is a pretty

deep parallel there. But um so, Newton got his hands on something by the guy who came up with the Mercader projection I can't remember his first name, and basically took this book and expounded on it um and it was just mind blowing stuff that he did. And he did it as like a year old. And Barrow got his hands on it and said, you need to stick around. So he ended up getting him basically a four year

scholarship for postgraduate studies. Yeah, and not only that, but he uh for various reasons which we'll get into here, and there. Newton was reluctant to publish a lot of times, and Barrow was the one that really helped him say, like, you know, you need to get this out there. This is great stuff you've got, ye, Matt Damon. Yes, Like you know what kind of movies you're going to be in after this? Yeah, you're going to be Private Ryan. Yeah. You give me Jason Bourne and The Martian. You can't

think of any other Matt Damon movies. Sure, uh uh of course. Oh you're gonna be The Scoundrel and The Departed. Yeah, great movie it is. I thought Jack really overdid it in that one. Oh. I loved it. Although, dude, I'll tell you something. Another movie I saw recently was The Shining. Yeah, I did say I saw it recently because I see The Shining probably every three months. Yeah, I saw it again recently. I think that that might be the best

movie ever made. It's pretty great, and no joke, I really think The Shining might be at least my favorite movie of all time. Boy he uh, he can set a mood. It is so good and you can watch it. I can watch it anytime, any time of year, any time of day, any day of the week. Christmas morning exactly. Yeah, and I'll enjoy it just as much as I would on like Halloween or something. You know, it's my honeymoon night. Let's watch the shining right all the normal times. So um,

Newton eventually, uh, well, actually not eventually. He was forced to leave Cambridge for um a little while because the bubonic plague swathed through London to the tune of about a hundred thousand people dead in six months. That's qui. So they closed Cambridge and said everyone go home. He went home, and everyone go home to London. He went home and h had a what they called later a

year of miracles. He and us mirabilis uh. And it was a little bit mythical, and that supposedly he came up with all the great stuff of his career in this one year, probably played up for the newspapers or you know, for his own reputation of of the age, because in reality he did come up with a lot of great stuff, but he clearly didn't come up with

everything in that year. He might have started a lot of good uh conversations in his head about things, but um, it was a little trumped up that that was the year of miracles. So it probably, like you said, there were some things I'm sure that he thought of during this year. But again, he placed his entire career in this one year, including the apple falling from the tree. Should we go and cover that? Sure? Did it happen? Uh? Probably not, And even if it did, it didn't. Historians

are like, that is a fairy tale. On its face, you can tell it's a fairy tale. But Newton himself is like, oh no, this happened. That, this is really true. This is where the theory of gravitational um force sure came from. Yeah, Like he was laying on the ground, supposedly looking up at the moon, wondering, how's that thing just sitting up there? Spin off into space? Yeah, apple falls and he puts it all together. Sounds kind of unbelievable. Sounds like folklore to me, it does. But again he

promoted this story. He was definitely for somebody who was just a hair's breath away from being uh shut in. And there was a d in there. It was breadth not breath, I know the difference. Um And and he didn't have virtually any friends. He had not one, but two nervous breakdowns in his lifetimes. Very insecure. He was also like an astute self promoter. Yeah, he he had a lot of contradictory sort of traits I think so. Um. Like we said earlier, he was very much noted for

his precision with notes and experimentation. Um, with the averaging of data and uh what else the scientific method of course, putting these things into place. Yeah, the scientific method was

already around. He didn't come up with a scientific method, but he definitely refined it and created the scientific method as we recognize as it today under ideal scientific inquiry, when when a scientist today follows that scientific procedure, what he's doing basically or she is following in Newton's footsteps. Like Newton took this thing and said, here's the best way to do this. Like you, you make some observations.

From these observations, you come up with a theory, and then you figure out an experiment to test that theory, and then you either discard the theory or you um you yeah, you test it again until the theory becomes basically for all intents of purposes proven, And like you said, as a result, after after this coming up with it, when he laid this stuff down in his Principia mathematica UM, which is his big his not his life's work, but his his biggest published work as far as being widely

accepted and remarkable and game changing. Yes, universe changing quite literally, or at least it changed our understanding of the universe. Um. When he when he laid all this stuff down, it's it's. It wasn't like you could just say it is because God wills it anymore. It was like, here is the framework for science from here on out. Follow this, this is the best practice, and there's math behind all of it. And that was another thing too, Like, so let's talk

about you want to talk about his Principia mathematica. Well, yeah, I mean there was just a little thing in there called the three laws of motion. No biggie physics at all. Right, So there's inertia um, a body that is at rest tends to say at rest, acceleration which means things go super fast sometimes when they're falling, and action and reaction,

which is uh, the cub ball theory. Yeah, and those are while he didn't completely invent those he he you know, Galleo started a lot of that talk, a lot that jibber jabber, but Newton really solidified at all, and it's remarkable to think that all these years later that's still

the thing. Well, he solidified it. And so what Galileo did was he said, I've observed this, and it seems to be universally applicable that if if a ball is sitting there on a table and nothing's moving it, no wind is blowing, there's no force acting upon it, it's not going to spontaneously move. And people went, Galileo, that was that's amazing. Can you explain why? And Galileo was like, no. Newton came along and he said, I can explain why. And he added a third law of motion to that.

And the whole point was he figured out that everything has mass. Everything that has mass has some sort of force acting upon it, and as a result, also can exert force on other bodies that have mass. And what he figured out that force was, or that magical thing, was gravity universal gravitation, right, which his law of universal gravitation, which is also in the principia Um. And again, I

don't think you can overstate this, Chuck. People knew that like the moon went around the Earth and that it was somehow adhered to the Earth, but they didn't really know why. And out of nowhere, like no one before him had ever suggested, maybe it's this thing called gravity. Newton, his perspective of the universe, gave us the idea of gravity. It wasn't there before Newton. It's amazing it was there because of Newton. It's here now. Like that's a huge contribution,

just that alone. And he's not one of these scientists. It's like a seven century scientist said this, and he was close. But it turns out he was wrong in every way. But it was a good start, like Einstein, although Einstein did go on to change and uh uh not adapt well, I guess he adapted. But Newton was wrong in some cases. But some of these laws are still spot on right. And this is like the mid

to late six yea. Our understanding of gravity has been refined tremendously by by Um Einstein and the idea of relativity and quantum mechanics and all that. But for what Newton was doing, yes, he explained the universe. He was uh. He was the first person to say, you know what, uh, this white light you see isn't actually white. It's actually a spectrum of colors and everyone's like, what he did this as a student, and he said watch this and he got out of prism and bam and everyone went, whoa,

he got out of prison prism. He oh, I got it. Yeah, And then we had the Dark Side of the Moon album cover, so you can thank Newton for that as well. That's right. And he published that in seventeen o four, and which is way after he experimented with prisms because he was reluctant to publish things a lot. So let's talk about that. Was published an optics. Yeah, like magic. I guess they dropped magic. Yeah, sometimes magic spelled with a K, which you know, it's like the real thing.

So let's talk about that, chuck. He published um Optics in seventeen o four, but he was doing these experiments in like the sixteen sixties um, and he didn't publish this stuff in part because he could not handle being challenged criticized. He did not like it, and he got

into it a lot. Like part of the scientific revolution that was going on was that scientists around the world, well at least in the West, we're arguing with one another, we're picking apart one another's theories were um corresponding with one another about ideas and sharing all these thoughts, but a lot of it was contentious and um his first Newton's first nervous breakdown came because Robert Hook said that he stole some of his ideas, and then they had

it out in the journals through letters back and forth through the life. Yeah, and then he also the Jesuits didn't accuse him of stealing any of their ideas, but um, he was. He was corresponding with the monastery and they were like, we like your your thoughts, but we think your experiment might be slightly flawed. And he went for zerk. He's like what And then he had a nervous breakdown,

which was finally completed in sixteen sixty nine. I believe with the our sixteen seventy nine, I'm sorry, with the death of his mother, so he was doing experiments. He started to kind of come out with him publicly. They they were challenged in question, he lost his his he went berserk. It's probably stems from his rejection from childhood. Of course, he withdrew and then throughout the sixteen seventies didn't do any kind of um publishing or research. Yeah,

it kind of went dark. Yeah, then his mom dies and then um, he finally comes back out of it thanks to the help of like Isaac Barrow, and then later on other colleagues like Edmund Haley of Haley's comment, and then finally publishes. But if you notice the date of the publication of Optics, that comes after Robert Hook, who is his lifelong arch nemesis, has died, and they never worked it out. There wasn't some like, uh, leave on Helm, Robbie robertson deathbed, Hey, I still love you, man,

Like they died, now, come on, they died bitter rivals. Yeah, Newton and uh Hook. I know a band reference is probably lost on most people. Just google it. Google the band. Yeah. And there's also like a hundred dudes that are like, yes, what a reference? What else did he do? How about a little something called the reflecting telescope. Yeah, that's a big one. Back in the day, refracting tell us hopes

were all the rage. But you couldn't really focus that well on him, which is sort of key with a telescope, would be like, is that a stock? Sure, let's call it a stock. Uh, and let's name it after me. Um. But these mirrors that he said, you know what, dudes, let's use lenses. It can be about one twelfth size and in focus. Boom, and all of a sudden, like if you dropped the average size of a telescope down, that would be good enough. Yeah, even if it's still Yeah,

but he actually improved it as well. That's right, and that got him into the Royal Academy when he presented it at the urging a Barrow again, I think that was Barrow that actually did the presenting, but he said it's this guy and just stood off to the side with his security blanket around his shoulders. He had his woobie. Uh. And he also created a little something that I hate called calculus. I and you don't even hate calculus because I am that unfamiliar with it. Yeah, had to take

a calculus class and I wasn't good at it. The remarkable thing is he created calculus because the limits of geometry. He was like, we need more higher level of math to figure this out, and I'm gonna invent it, not to figure it out, to explain it makes sense of it what he figured out. Yeah, so he's like calculus, it's great with things in motion and geometry. Isn't. And he was all about, well not all about. He was

keen on things in motion. Yeah, well you kind of needed him, Like you could say, well this, you know, an ellipse is is Um. You can describe it geometrically, but you can't really describe an orbit of something. It's motion in the in an ellipse, just through normal geometry. So I'll just invent a supersized version of geometry to help explain my discoveries. Yeah, and um, it wasn't nuts. Yeah,

it wasn't called calculus though. It was called the fluxions, which I think, Uh, we should bring back, totally bring it back. We should call it. Everyone should call it the fluxions. You might as well. I refer to calculus so infrequently that I can just call it the flex and people be like, what does that mean? I'll say, look it up. All right, let's take a break here and we will get into the later years of Newton's life when things got a little weird. All right, So

we mentioned his lifelong rivalry with Robert Hook. Um, not the pirate, not the pirate? Uh? Was there a pirate named Robert Hook? Captain Hook from Peter Pan? Was it Robert. I don't know, he didn't have any on it. Know, I think I want to say that's James Hook. I think James Hook. I think you're right. Um so not the pirate U. He also had a rivalry with um. Well, he had a rivalry with many scientists. But another dude who claimed he invented calculus, Oh Liban's. So that's a

weird story, the story of calculus. Who invented calculus? Because think about it, people don't invent new, more refined forms of math every day, do they. Well, they don't. They think they might not even the state. Well, when they come down off the acid, they realized that it's all just chicken scraps and get this tinfoil hat off my head. So when when not only Newton said that he created calculus, Liban said that he did as well. Within a decade or some of each other, there was quite a bit

of hubbub over who actually created calculus. And to make the whole thing even more murky, they had corresponded with one another about the ideas of calculus. And scientists aren't not all scientists, but polease, don't write in and say I'm not like that, but scientists a lot of times in history, some of the more notable scientists aren't big on being like, yeah, we we totally like help each other. It's usually like, no, I invented that, because that's their legacy.

I think that they're fighting for sure, and sometimes it's definitely pride themselves on their legacy. And Newton was probably one of them, and big money so he um he and Leban's had this ongoing dispute and they had their supporters as well. Who who disputed? And it wasn't just a Leban's versus Newton in who created calculus. It was also the Aisles versus the continent, the Catholics versus the Protestants. There were a lot more divisions to it than just

these two men. But from what I can gather, historians now believe that um Liban's and Newton independently developed calculus on their own. Really is that the modern way of thinking? Yeah, Newton probably beat his notes suggests that he came up with calculus before Liban's, but that Leban's came up with it on his own as well. Wow, that's pretty remarkable. It is. It's almost like a soccer score. Everybody wins,

you know, Uh. He also in the dark years we talked about when he sort of fell off the radar and wasn't publishing much. That's when he was getting into the alchemy um, which we said, um range is what really was was sort of a precursor to chemistry in some ways, UM And now we look back on it

with a little more understanding. At the time though it was illegal up until like I think of right before his birth, was actually illegal because it was I guess like one of the dark arts or something, and they were burning people at the stake for practicing alchemy, right, which again at the time it was a little fruity, you know, but it wasn't so much so that uh, it wasn't science wasn't necessarily so close to the concept

of mystical truths as it is today. Um, So you could conceivably be involved in scientific inquiry and find yourself going down this alley of alchemy. Even still, Newton was like, this would be bad for my name, and I might be fired if they found out that I was into alchemy, and so he kept it a closely guarded secret. Yeah.

Not only did he, but his family after his death kind of kept that stuff quiet for a while, and I think it was the early ninety nineties when all of his works were finally published and they were like whoa, Yeah, it was really all over the place, well out there. Uh. We also mentioned earlier briefly that he thought that um, he thought that alchemy was like any ancient riddle, um, and it was up to him and other uh, up to him, Jehovah sank this unus Yeah, to figure it out,

and the answer is out there. And he's one in a line of great men chosen to do so little screwy Yeah at this point, right, m I being cold, He believed in the Philosopher's Stone. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him, having a scientific mind that was open to all sorts of stuff. And again, this was the seventeenth century, so let's cut him some slack.

But he did believe in the Philosopher's Stone, which was thought to aid in alchemy cure disease, and um, somethink or thought that like the key to eternal life was in the Saucerer's stone, Philosopher's Stone. Sorry, that's a whole different things, a little different, and chuck um. Not only was he into alchemy and mysticism as well. Um, he also was very much into uh like obscure Christian stuff too. Yeah. So, like one of his pursuits that he amused himself with

on the side was chronology. He wanted to he believed the Bible was a literal history of um the world, and that the prophecies in the Bible were directly from God who could who who could see to the end of time and knew everything that was gonna happen already. So everything in the Bible he called a history of

future events basically. And so his whole thing was, if you can go back, now that we understand time keeping better and astronomy, you could go back and sink, um, things that happened in the Bible to current astronomical dates. You can put a current date on them, so you could say when, um, you know this happened, when the walls of Jericho actually fell, because he believed all this stuff happened, or when something might happen in the future exactly.

And apparently he did just that. He interpreted this one section of the Bible about the end of the world coming, and he dated it to coming up. We'll see, So uh, I read a little blurb from a scholar of on Newton who said, like he, this is something he did to amuse himself in private. It was never meant for perfect consumption. But he probably would have believed that he

got that date right. Oh really, Yeah, he he worried about getting dates wrong and didn't think that people should mess around with stuff like that because you are fallible and in setting dates like that. Um, which is probably why he never meant it for publication. But he probably thought he was right. Yeah, and that had he lived in twenty six he would have seen the end of the world. He also dabbled in something called arianism, which uh, has nothing to do with white people. Um, it was,

it was. It was actually a priest named Arius from Libya is the Olivian priest who came up with this. And the idea is that um the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, holy Spirit. And in Christian theology it disrupted that and said that Jesus may have been created by God, but he is not divine. If you believe in arianism, that's what you believe. And Newton was an adherent of arianism, which super popular at the time or ever. Probably it was basically stamped out by the seventh century, and here's

Newton in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century. Yeah, he's like, oh this, this makes a lot of sense to me. What an obscure, arcane thing to think of. And he got into a religion in college. Actually another weird thing to do, even at that time. Yeah, that's when you get out of religion. Sure, that's when you started to question things, right, that's when he got into it. Apparently one of the first things that he did he was

a bit of a prude. One of the first things he did was um, right down a list of every sin he ever committed. And they weren't exactly groundbreaking, like um Silverman points out that one of them was he broke the Sabbath by baking pies one Sunday. How dare he like? This is the kind of sins that he's like. He also said he wanted to burn his mother and stepfather alive in their home, which was one of the sins he recorded. So he did have a darker side, did he really? Oh yeah, oh we really did. That

wasn't a joke. I thought. I was like, that was a weird joke. No, he had quite arranged from baking pies to burning his parents alive, like just wanting to though, right, yeah, Okay, he didn't make an attempt to r no, no, no, no, that was yeah, the sin was threatening to her, wanting to I'm not sure if he got verbalized it or

if he just thought it in his head. Yeah, but like he was a rejected little kid, and yeah, yeah, who wouldn't want So we're talking about arianism though there's um it's a very heretical thought that Jesus isn't divine, but that you should still worship him, right, Yeah, it was a very unusual line of thinking, right, and and like critics of that kind of thinking say, well that that worships um poly or that creates poly theism because

you're worshiping God, but you're also worshiping Jesus, who's not divine. You're a wrong wrong wrong, wrong wrong. And the Council of New See you UM, which was a learned council that basically decided what went into the Bible UH in the fourth century, said uh, no, the Trinity is absolutely correct and anything against that is heresy and you should

be burned at the state. So even that, UM, I get the impression that his fellow dons at Cambridge I knew that he was into Arianism, or if they didn't, they may have suspected that he had unorthodox beliefs about Christianity, and so that just created an even wider gulf between him and and the people who he saw on a daily basis. Well, he definitely thought that Catholicism and uh some other like branches of major religions were very corrupt and not to be trusted. Uh, yeah, he was. He

was an odd guy. Uh, we can't get that across enough. Um. Later in life, but he did not sit on his laurels. Later in life, he was made uh he accepted a position at the mint um and apparently that that sort of sounds like the old I'm going to retire as the CEO and work as a consultant, Like I'll make more money than I did ever before for not doing much work. Um. Apparently that was the deal with the mint. He got appointed later on in your life to the mint and he kind of just made a lot of

dough and didn't do much. He was like, no, no, no, no no, no, I'm gonna actually do something. He like three years later became master of the Mint and he is the one responsible for changing the English pound standard from sterling to gold. Is that right? Yes, he was actually trying to get things done and he went after counterfeiters,

went after counterfeiters. Pretty interesting. Yeah, not bad. He was also later in life elected the president of the Royal Society of London, which is the Academy of Sciences in in the UK. Yeah, he was a member of parliament. He's elected to parliament, but he yes, he was twice. And actually he was knighted in seventeen o five and

the Queen apparently knighted him for political reasons. She wanted to help He was standing for parliament again and she wanted to help his chances of being elected, so she united him, not for his scientific achievements because of the election of se five. It didn't help. He still didn't unseat the guy that she wanted out of office, but he got knighted anyway. Good for him. Yeah, what a

complex dude. Yeah, there's a T shirt just a picture of him complex dude underneath, and we should We didn't really talk quite enough about it, but he definitely stole people's ideas in certain ways. There's a guy named um John Flamsteed, and he, like Newton, used a lot of his work to help form the basis of his theory of universal gravitation, and Um Flamsteed, I guess, rubbed Newton the wrong way, and Newton just removed any reference to

Flamsteed in his second edition of the Principia. I think all scientists build on the backs of those who came before them. But it's been it'd be cool to say, like, and this would not have been possible without the work of Flamsteed, not like, oh you know what, let's redact that and took his name out of there because I think it's a jerk. I don't like how it's spelled. Yeah. We'll end with his epitaph, though, because it definitely gets

the point across I think correctly. His epithap says, mortals rejoice. That's so great an ornament to the human race. Wow. I thought it was business in front, party in the rear. No, he invented the mullet. You know. Oh, I know, you're ready. I'm ready. If you want to know more about Isaac Newton, type those words into the search part how stuff works dot Com. Since I said search parts time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this don't yuck someone's yum. Hey, guys,

after listening, after listening for years, love you guys. Your Christmas episode had me yelling at my iPhone and I decided I need to send a note. You were both adamant about ever even trying fruitcake and then went on to insult it with open barrels. I probably would have agreed with you three weeks ago, because I also never touched a fruitcake or eating one. However, last week I finally looked at the ingredients was amazed. Sugar, molasses, ginger,

fruit loaded with rum. Uh, there is rum in the batter, and when done baking, you actually drizzle with more rum, wrap it and cheeseball to soak it in even more with rum. The only bad thing I can figure out about fruitcake is that this particular recipe needs to sit and rum for ten weeks before eating. So just because you have not tried fruitcake, you shouldn't be such naysayers. Give fruitcake a break. My nephew has several rules, and rule number four is don't yuck someone's yum. You know

that that's absolutely true. We were total youm yunkers. Uh. And as soon as I read this, I was like, man, I was a young yunker. I need to try fruitcake. Apparently there's this thing going on where Slate was like beer is too much hops in it? What's the deal? I've seen a lot of some somebody like that. It's hate down of it. That went viral. That was like,

what what is it to you? If you don't like hops and your beer drinking different kinds of beer, why do you have to publish an article about how you don't like hops. At the same time, it's like, really, is that taking away from your enjoyment of your happy beer to know that somebody at Slate doesn't like it.

I think what I've heard the complaint of, and this is on the Stuff you Should Know message board and otherwise, is that non hops enthusiasts are aggravated that the craft beer movement these days is way too hoppy and it's hard to find things other than pale ales and I p a s. But that's not true. There's plenty of craft beers out there that aren't p seems to be that there's a lot of i pas, but it seems

like a lot of people love them. That's probably what they're making them, right, Like I can't stand barley wines. But you don't hear me saying I can't stand barley wines. They're discussed much. Let's take the time to write an article about it. Yeah, who cares? Yeah, I guess I'm

conflicted about all this. They're both sides are wrong. Big shout out to our friend at Creature Comforts and Athens and they're delicious Tropicalia, which made I think their brewery was one of the top five best new breweries according to uh maybe Forbes some big magazine and a huge shout out checked the Bowler Beer Company, who sent us a bunch of huge bombers that were awesome. And um, I gave the barley wine one to know by the way, I really he like just soaked his beard in it

and let it seep in. Yeah. And while we're talking about free booze, I was lucky enough to take home the shaker and spoonbox that got sent to us. What it's like Blue Apron, but for cocktails. They send you everything but the booze, including like a zester. I needed a zester, like all the different kinds of like, um, Demoera syrup and everything you need plus cocktail recipes. You've been enjoying it. Oh, I, it's already long gone enjoyed.

They were great. It's just like ad bourbon and follow the recipes, but they're like really sophisticated smart recipes that you may never try that are like all the ingredients you need an easy instructions. So it was good. And the guy said, I think his name is Mike. He said, if you and Jerry wanted to box, he was totally hooked up. I strongly recommend. Yes, there were more than one tincture in the box. Uh and um to follow up, there's the longest list you mail ever on the Brooklyn

or I'm sorry the Boulder h Beer Company. Uh, You're hoodie T shirt that you sent me is one of my favorite new shirts. Yes and where all the time. Yes, he does alright, so that wait, hold on, it might as well. Thank Little Bit Sweets for the nice and thank you very much to Mona Collin Tinne and her family for sending the box. The annual box of Christmas

goodies that's always the precursor to our administring industry. Oh and thank you to the hex they sent us like a bunch of Corrabas gift certificates that we're gonna use for lunch. Oh really Yeah, and a bunch of other stuff too. But I mean like they sent us a significant amount of Rob's gift. Ki, you got this in your wallet? Yeah, I got them tucked in my cheek. Uh. So that is from Caroline from New York and her nephew. We didn't mean to yuck the yum. Yeah, you're right, nephew. Yep.

Sometimes kids can set adult straight. Yeah, just don't do it much or you'll get the old belt. Just kidding. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us to send us stuff, to send us an email to take us task coop cares. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast, and you can hang out with us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com