on astronomy. In attendance that night were some of the most important
thinkers of the century, including Robert Boyle and Henry Oldenburg.
In due time, Charles II granted a Royal Charter to the bourgeoning
scientists, and thus the name “Royal Society” is used. The complete,
proper name is “The Royal Society of London for the Improving of
Natural Knowledge.” It did not take long for those early members to
realize the gravitas of their “venerable learned society” (the “finest club”
in the world^21 ), and soon, regular meetings were occurring in London.
Speeches and presentations were given, with King Charles II oftentimes in
attendance, particularly for scientific demonstrations or dissections. “As
to our work,” wrote an anonymous member of the Royal Society in 1674,
“we are all agreed, or should be so, that it is not to whiten the walls of an
old house, but to build a new one.” Tearing down the old and starting again
from scratch is what revolutions are all about.^22
There are other genius societies that originated in the same era, such as
the Académie des Sciences (founded by Louis XIV in 1666), but it is
undisputable that the Philosophical Transactions (still in publication) is
the oldest scientific publication in the world, starting in 1665. “The Royal
Society invented scientific publishing and peer review. It made English the
primary language of scientific discourse, in place of Latin. It systematized
experimentation. It promoted—indeed, insisted upon—clarity of
expression in place of high-flown rhetoric. It brought together the best
thinking from all over the world. It created modern science.”^23
Copies of the Transactions (produced as a newssheet) were sent, of
course, to Oxford and Cambridge, eventually reaching a young man;
solitary and obsessive, abstemious and born of exceptional concentration
—Isaac Newton.
Isaac Newton’s entry into the world, in retrospect, is messianic. He was
born on Christmas morning in the bedchamber of a stone farmhouse. His
illiterate father, a yeoman who had inherited the carefully constructed,
local cream-colored limestone manor house and associated barns, died
months before Isaac’s birth.
A three-hour journey (on the A1 motorway), north of London to the
farming lands and forests of Lincolnshire, lies the small village of
Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth. Like thousands of hamlets and parishes
throughout the English countryside, it is a clutch of homes surrounded by
pastures and rolling hills. However, on the southeast corner of the