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You are here: Home / Open Threads / An Important Birthday Today, I Hear…

An Important Birthday Today, I Hear…

by Tom Levenson|  December 25, 20112:17 pm| 19 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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…of a fatherless boy,¹ so precariously brought into this world that as his mother lay on her birthing bed, it seemed unlikely so ill-conceived a child could live.²

But he did, and as his contemporaries bore witness, he would fashion miracles in their season.  As proclaimed by one of those who spread the good news — that which in Greek Old English we would call a gospel — “No closer to the gods can any mortal rise.”³

I’m talking about Isaac Newton of course.*  You were thinking of someone else?

Happy Newtonmas everyone!**

(Footnotes below the jump.)

1:  His father, also Isaac, died whilst Hanna Newton was pregnant with their son.

2:  His nurse recalled that at birth, Isaac fit into a quart pot. So unsure was the family of his survival that he remained unbaptized for three unchristened for one week.

3:  From Edmund Halley’s prefatory ode printed in the first edition of The Principia.

*You can read a bit more on Newton in this post I wrote a couple of years ago over at Executed Today about his less well known life as a cop.  But on t his, his birthday, it probably makes more sense to ponder this work, and recall that when “Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night/God said, Let Newton Be! and all was light.”

**This is always just a bit of a waffle.  Isaac  Newton’s Christmas birthday occurs in the Old-Style or Julian calendar still in use in England in 1641.  But given the arbitrary nature of the assignment of 25 Dec. as Jesus’s birthday, I don’t see much point in trying to maintain calendrical purity here.

Image: William Blake, Isaac Newton,  1795

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Reader Interactions

19Comments

  1. 1.

    SIA

    December 25, 2011 at 2:20 pm

    Well done.

  2. 2.

    Mnemosyne

    December 25, 2011 at 2:28 pm

    I always find the whole “Newtonmas” construction hilarious since Newton himself was a mystic, an alchemist, and a devout Christian.

  3. 3.

    Origuy

    December 25, 2011 at 2:35 pm

    Newton and the Counterfeiter is already on my stack of books to read.

  4. 4.

    Cermet

    December 25, 2011 at 2:54 pm

    Also the first human to conceive of a satellite orbit around the Earth.

  5. 5.

    FlipYrWhig

    December 25, 2011 at 2:56 pm

    @Mnemosyne: True. Of course, Jesus was a Jew, so there’s no good reason why the venerated figure and his later adherents have to uphold all the same doctrines…

  6. 6.

    sempronia

    December 25, 2011 at 3:05 pm

    This was an awesome post.

  7. 7.

    Mnemosyne

    December 25, 2011 at 3:09 pm

    Flip @ #5 (reply function sux on iPod Touch):

    My point is more that I find it funny that most of the people who celebrate “Newtonmas” do it as a demonstration of their devotion to pure rationality and atheism and ignore the actual beliefs of the guy they’re supposedly celebrating. Which kinda makes their complaints about religious people ignoring inconvenient facts ring a bit hollow to me. YMMV, of course.

  8. 8.

    Roy G

    December 25, 2011 at 4:53 pm

    And later, he gave his name to an even more important* figure – Newton Leroy Gingrich.

    *self important

  9. 9.

    (another) Josh

    December 25, 2011 at 4:57 pm

    Never heard of “Newtonmas” before: I like it. And, as Flip tried to explain, there’s no reason why Voltaire and others who celebrate Newton’s best-known accomplishments should be expected to defer to his religious beliefs, any more than one should ask admirers of Marx to show their loyalty to the guy by saying harsh things about Jews and making fun of gay liberation.

  10. 10.

    Roger Moore

    December 25, 2011 at 5:17 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    Newton himself was a mystic, an alchemist, and a devout Christian.

    He may have been a devout Christian, but he was definitely not an orthodox one. He was apparently not a trinitarian and may even have denied Christ’s divinity, so maybe it isn’t that bad to substitute Christmas with Newtonmas.

  11. 11.

    THE

    December 25, 2011 at 6:50 pm

    The true bringer of light to the world.

    But I really feel a Newtonmas tree should be an apple tree.

  12. 12.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    December 25, 2011 at 7:06 pm

    Merry Watchamahoozit to all! ;)

    I fired up the laptop and noticed that one of the tabs in my browser had an interesting description on it; “Day Two of the Great VAG”.

    The tab is on Redstate. That really made me lol!

  13. 13.

    Oriscus

    December 25, 2011 at 7:09 pm

    “Gospel” isn’t Greek, but Old English. The root-words modernize to “Good Spiel.”

    “Evangelion” is the Greek.

  14. 14.

    Oriscus

    December 25, 2011 at 7:10 pm

    & I’m a revolting pedant

  15. 15.

    Brachiator

    December 25, 2011 at 7:58 pm

    @Oriscus:

    “Evangelion” is the Greek

    And here I thought this was the title of an anime series.

    Revere Newton. Love Blake.

  16. 16.

    LowProfileinGA

    December 25, 2011 at 8:00 pm

    @Oriscus Thank you.

  17. 17.

    Betsy

    December 25, 2011 at 8:37 pm

    His nurse recalled that at birth, Isaac fit into a quart pot. So unsure was the family of his survival that he remained unbaptized for three weeks.

    Wouldn’t that be a reason to *rush* his baptism, rather than delay it?

  18. 18.

    Tom Levenson

    December 25, 2011 at 9:01 pm

    @Oriscus: Not a pedant; accurate. Fixt above. I actually once knew this properly, but in haste today, racing to my in-laws for the holiday, I fell back on muscle memory rather than the sources. Alas.
    @Betsy: amended; see above. Same excuse as offered to Oriscus.

  19. 19.

    bjacques

    December 26, 2011 at 12:29 am

    May I submit this as a Newtonmas carol?

    Jim Carroll Band’s “Wicked Gravity”

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