110                        The Bible According to Einstein

Newton

Now it came to pass that, in the year 1609, Johannes Kepler wrote down the three laws of planetary motion.⁸² And suddenly did planetary motion have a mathematical description. And soon thereafter did Galileo Galilei observe and measure falling bodies. And suddenly he understood the falling motion of a falling body. And he realized all bodies fall the same. And he understood the projectile motion of a cannon ball.
     And so the seeds of classical mechanics were tossed into a fertile ground; in such soil would one man cultivate great things.
     And it came to pass that Galileo Galilei died in 1642.⁸³ And like the transcendental passing of a Dalai Lama, the scientific spirit of Galileo Galilei passed into the body of a newborn child. And that newborn’s name was Isaac Newton.
     Now in his youth, Newton studied the work of Aristotle, Descartes, and others. And Newton spoke:

"Amicus Plato,
amicus Aristoteles,
magis amica vertas."

The New Testament                                       111

     Now in the year of 1687, Newton wrote a book: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica – it would come to be a part of the old testament of physics. And it explained the movement of the planets. And it explained the movement of the Moon. And suddenly were Kepler’s laws derived from fundamental principles. And the universal law of gravity was understood: The Earth had always been attracted to the Sun; the Moon had always been attracted to the Earth; rain had always fallen from the sky. Now man knew why. Suddenly, like a revelation, the motions of the heavens were quantified. The three fundamental laws of classical mechanics were written down for good. Circular motion, harmonic motion, projectile motion, essentially all macroscopic motions were understood. Like magic, Newton could predict the positions of planets with geometry and calculus. And so when Principia was published, the foundations of mechanics were established.
     Now universality of gravity was like a miracle – it was as if Nature had somehow waved a magic rod. Of this, Newton wrote, "This most beautiful system of the Sun, Planets and Comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being, a God." To Newton, laws of Nature seemed like laws of God.
     Next Newton studied light. And light did Newton see. And light turned into words, as Opticks, another book of the old testament, appeared. And so in the year of 1704, there was another revelation – it was another physics revolution, for finally light was understood. And lenses, mirrors, diffraction and refraction were explained. And this was good. And when white light was separated into components with a prism, the rainbow was clarified and understood. Then Newton placed curved mirrors in a tube – the first reflecting telescope did he construct. And so the heavens were seen a little closer. Now some people said that light was made of waves. However, Newton said that light was made of corpuscules. Later, one would learn that light was both and neither. But for Newton, light was microscopic particles moving in an ether.⁸⁴
     And in the year of 1705, Queen Anne knighted Newton – the sword that touched the shoulder flashed a beam of light.
     And so in five-and-eighty years did Sir Isaac Newton write the gospel texts of classical mechanics and of gravity. And in Principia and Opticks did Newton deliver the laws of physics not in two books but on two slab blocks – not on paper but in stone.
     And on March 20, 1727, Newton died. And his body was placed in a tomb in Westminster Abbey. And there the body lay but not the spirit, for the spirit and intelligence of Newton escaped the tomb, rose up and were placed among the stars.⁸⁵

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⁸⁴ Ether was a hypothesized medium through which light could travel. Starting at the end of the nineteenth century, it was gradually realized that such an ether does not exist.
⁸⁵ The writings of Newton would not immediately affect the common man – eighteenth century man would not care if one could compute the position of the Moon among the stars. But a century later that would change, for the work of Newton and the work of others would produce a non-scientific revolution. That revolution would be the industrial revolution. The understanding of classical mechanics would pave the way from simple tools such as pulleys and levers to modern marvels such as rockets and robotic automation.