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Astronomers against Newton
Review
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Vol.28 No.1 March 2004
Astronomers against Newton Rebekah Higgitt Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Sherfield Building 448, Imperial College, London, UK SW7 2AZ
Francis Baily’s publication of the manuscripts of John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, provoked a furious response. Flamsteed had quarrelled with Isaac Newton, and described him in terms unforgivable to those who claimed him as a paragon of all virtues, both moral and scientific. Baily was condemned for putting Flamsteed’s complaints in the public sphere. However, his supporters saw his work as a critique of the excessive hero-worship accorded to Newton. Written when the word ‘scientist’ had been newly coined, this work and the debates it provoked gives us an insight into contemporary views of the role of the man of science and of the use of science to back political, religious and moral positions. Francis Baily’s Account of the Revd. John Flamsteed, ‘compiled from his own manuscripts, and other authentic documents never before published’, was a collection of the correspondence and autobiographical writings of the first Astronomer Royal (Fig. 1a) [1]. It caused a controversy because it retold the story of the quarrel between Flamsteed and his near contemporary Isaac Newton (Fig. 1b) in the words of the former and was one
of the first English works ‘in which the weak side of Newton’s character was made known’ [2]. Its revelations came on top of those made in a life of Newton by JeanBaptiste Biot, first published in 1822 and translated by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) in 1829. This essay had suggested that Newton had suffered a breakdown that permanently affected his mind, and criticized his role in the priority dispute with Leibniz over the invention of the calculus. Several years after the publication of the Account of Flamsteed, a witness wrote of the ‘singular warmth’ with which the quarrel ‘raged anew, as if it had been a personal affair of the present day’ [3]. The debate took place between those who wished to defend Newton, the hero of English science, from the charges made against his character, and those who both criticised the excessive hero-worship accorded to Newton and found a new figure to admire in Flamsteed. Baily’s Account of Flamsteed Baily, a former stockbroker, had made his name in the scientific community as a careful experimentalist and compiler of data (Fig. 2). He also played a fundamental role in the organisation of the Royal Astronomical Society
Fig. 1. Practice versus theory. (a) John Flamsteed (1646– 1719) by Thomas Gibson, 1712. (b) Isaac Newton (1642–1727) by Godfrey Kneller, 1702. Reproduced with permission from the National Portrait Gallery.
Corresponding author: Rebekah Higgitt ([email protected]). www.sciencedirect.com 0160-9327/$ - see front matter q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2004.01.012
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Flamsteed as obstructive, jealous and suspicious. It was believed that he refused to help Newton, needlessly delayed the catalog, and lacked the ability to understand the importance of Newton’s achievement. However, in the documents published by Baily, Flamsteed’s version of events was revealed. He claimed to have furnished Newton with all the observations he required, only to have been treated with contempt by the autocratic Newton, then President of the Royal Society. Most importantly, Flamsteed charged Newton with having made the decision to break the seal on a set of observations he had deposited with the Royal Society as a pledge to complete the publication of his catalogue – which amounted to a charge of theft. All the ill-temper, obstruction, suspicion and jealousy was laid at Newton’s door. Flamsteed even described an encounter during which Newton had thrown insults at him, the least of which was, apparently, ‘puppy’.
Fig. 2. Francis Baily (1774–1844). Reproduced with permission from the Royal Astronomical Society.
(RAS), and, in the year that the Account of Flamsteed was published, was the Society’s President. Although Baily had long considered producing an amended version of Flamsteed’s Catalogue of Stars, the biographical parts of the Account came about as the result of a coincidence. Three years earlier, in 1832, Baily’s neighbour had shown him a bundle of correspondence from Flamsteed to his assistant Abraham Sharp. This inspired him to search for further manuscript sources in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. It was Flamsteed’s meticulously kept records of his lunar and stellar observations that most endeared Baily to this maligned figure. The first Astronomer Royal exhibited the same scientific virtues that Baily believed the RAS existed to promote: accuracy of observation and standardization of results. His aim was to restore both Flamsteed’s Catalogue and character ‘to that high rank to which it is, by his extraordinary labours, so justly entitled’ [4]. Although Flamsteed and Newton had initially been friendly, exchanging information and complimenting each others’ work, they were to quarrel over access to the observations and the publication of the catalogue. Flamsteed, who made the observations and paid for much of his equipment, believed the data were his property; Newton and the Royal Society argued that because the observations were produced in the Royal Observatory, they were the property of the King and nation. In addition, Newton required the observations to complete the second edition of his Principia. Posterity bequeathed a history managed by Newton and his disciples, and it painted www.sciencedirect.com
Initial reactions Baily’s friend Augustus De Morgan, the former professor of mathematics at University College London, drew a caricature of the conflict between Newton and Flamsteed (Fig. 3). He generalized it as being a battle between astronomical theory and practice. His picture canonized the two historical figures, and their halos reflect the difference in their scientific approach – visible stars for Flamsteed and mathematically-calculated, elliptical orbits for Newton. This depiction reflects the fact that the debate following the publication of the Account of Flamsteed was, in part, between those who asserted the pre-eminence of theory in scientific discovery and those who privileged the role of experiment and observation. It raised questions about where credit should be given in collaborative work and how completing claims regarding intellectual property could be resolved. Perhaps most importantly, the question mark that hovered above the moral characters of both Newton and Flamsteed had implications for those who claimed that intellectual and moral greatness inevitably co-existed. As a result, the battle-lines were drawn along political, religious, geographical and institutional lines as well as scientific. In practice, the debate was largely between ‘the London-based defenders of Flamsteed’ and ‘the Oxbridge guardians of Newton’ [5]. Baily’s chief critic was William Whewell, Fellow and subsequently Master of Newton’s alma mater, Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1836, Whewell published a pamphlet that defended Newton’s character, chiefly by attacking that of Flamsteed. He was joined in his campaign by Stephen Peter Rigaud, the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. Rigaud’s anonymous articles backed Whewell in what he saw as a planned and joint campaign. He told Whewell ‘if Newton’s character is lowered, the character of England is lowered and the cause of religion is injured’, and urged him to remember their ‘Newtonian confederacy’ [6]. The first of these remarks indicates the extent to which Newton had, over the preceding century, been harnessed to establishment causes. Newtonian science underlay the British natural theological tradition, and in times of political and social unrest, Whewell saw a real danger in the possibility that the Account could lead
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Fig. 3. ‘Discordance between theory and practice’, by Augustus De Morgan, RAS De Morgan MSS 3, f. 70. Reproduced with permission from the Royal Astronomical Society.
readers to ‘cast away all reverence for the most revered name of our nation’ [7]. However, Baily received a much more positive response in other periodical reviews and from some of his private correspondents. It is clear that he aimed his publication at a particular kind of reader, and that it was this constituency that tended to respond with enthusiasm. Fortunately, a list of all those chosen by Baily to receive a copy of the Account survives in the archives of the Royal Observatory. A mere 250 copies of the work were printed at the expense of the Admiralty, the government department responsible for the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and the copies were given away free to individuals, observatories and scientific or educational institutions in Britain and abroad. In testament to the international nature of scientific networks, the book reached the Americas, Australia, South Africa and India as well as most of Continental Europe. A critic in The Times found it ‘monstrous, and without parallel’ that a ‘stigma upon Newton’s character, as a man of common honesty, and resting upon ex parte statements’ should be ‘thus circulated amongst the continental men of science at the expense and by the authority of the British Government!’ [8]. However, an analysis of those to whom Baily sent a copy of his book helps us to understand Baily’s motives and to identify a group who were receptive to his message. Baily’s list The list of recipients of the Account was in large part identical to list of individuals and institutions to which the RAS sent copies of their Memoirs and the Observations published by the Royal Observatory. Many of the 250 individuals were, therefore, already part of the identified community of astronomers that Baily wished to www.sciencedirect.com
consolidate. These people were not, in general, the leisured classes often associated with early 19th-century science, but had an active, expert, and for over half, professional interest in astronomy (Box 1). Using Flamsteed to promote the same values that he expounded as President of the RAS, Baily hoped to inspire that community with his heroic account of a practical astronomer and his key role in Newton’s achievement. His success among his Cambridge-trained friends was mixed, but sometimes instructive. George Biddell Airy, who became Astronomer Royal in 1835, was a close friend and was sympathetic to Baily’s message, but felt the Account should ‘shew that Newton was not necessarily a rascal at the beginning, though he might be an irritated man at the end’. Airy was a reformer of practical astronomy, but was more mathematically sophisticated than Baily, and he offered a more balanced view of the respective contributions of theoreticians and practitioners. Accordingly, he felt that ‘Flamsteed (a despiser of theory) could not estimate’ the importance of the Principia. Adam Sedgwick, another Cambridge-based correspondent, likewise asserted that ‘Flamsteed did not see the infinite importance of Newton’s theory. He had not the most distant notion of it’, while ‘Newton did see the great importance of Flamsteed’s observations to the completion of the lunar theory’. There was also an interesting difference in the attitude of two generations of the Herschel family. John Herschel was close to Baily, but admitted that the tone of the newly published correspondence caused him to think less of Flamsteed rather than of Newton. However, for his aunt Caroline, trained in practical astronomy rather than mathematics, Baily had rescued ‘our dear ill-used Flamsteed’ [9].
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Box 1. Baily’s audience Baily distributed 250 copies of the Account of Flamsteed, a large proportion of which went to the same individuals and institutions that received copies of the RAS Memoirs (Table 1). The British recipients frequently had an expert or professional rather than an amateur interest in astronomy. They included professors and tutors at universities, mathematics teachers at schools and military colleges, paid observers in private or state-financed observatories, and so-called ‘scientific servicemen’ who practiced surveying, astronomy or geodesy while serving in the army or navy (Table 2). The Account had a remarkably wide geographical distribution that reached far beyond the London- and Cambridge-based founders of the RAS (Fig. I). This was made possible by connections with Continental and American astronomers and by the expeditions of British astronomers to far-flung parts of the Empire.
Table 1. Distribution of 250 copies of the Account of Flamsteed Distribution
Number
Individuals Institutions Observatories Foreigners
105 72 37 36
Table 2. The occupations of 95 British individuals who received the Account Occupation
Number
Scientific Scientific servicemen University College/school Observatory Other scientific occupation Non-scientific No paid occupation No data
47 13 12 10 8 4 28 14 6
Fig. I. The Freemason’s Tavern, London, where the Royal Astronomical Society was founded in 1820. q The Guildhall Library, London.
With the exception of these Oxbridge-based and trained individuals, the group of people to whom Baily chose to send his work was one for whom Flamsteed, rather than Newton, might be a suitable role-model. They were professionals, practitioners and observers rather than theoreticians. Flamsteed was a hero who championed the virtues of the scientific labourer and the necessity of his www.sciencedirect.com
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work, and both he and Baily argued that this was as important and as admirable as the mathematical genius of Newton. Without Flamsteed’s observations Newton would have been unable to proceed, and this underlined the importance of the observers in the world’s observatories who made up such a significant portion of Baily’s audience. Those who gave the most positive response to the Account were, like Baily, London-based Fellows of the RAS. In addition, many were non-conformist in their religion and Whig or Radical in their politics. These men epitomized the early Astronomical Society, which had been established 15 years earlier by a group of men who felt that the unreformed Royal Society, aristocratic and frequently unscientific, did not represent them [10]. While many of Baily’s correspondents found it unfortunate that Newton should be shown in a poor light, they were pleased to see Flamsteed rescued. John Rickman, a House of Commons clerk and statistician, was gratified to see ‘the justice (tardy but decisive) now done to his character’. He felt the fact that Newton ‘behaved so infamously, – treacherous to the fame & fortune of no unworthy associate, – an assistant to his own great work, – is shocking to human nature’. John Bostock, a professor of chemistry at Guy’s Hospital, felt it was ‘truly gratifying to see justice done to desert, especially such as appears to have been that of Flamsteed’. The radical publisher Sir Richard Phillips, who had been imprisoned for publishing Tom Paine’s Rights of Man and believed he had disproved Newton’s theory of gravitation, told Baily, ‘If I respect you for your high attainments during many past years; I almost worshipped you for your manly independence in tearing the mask from the character of Newton’. A more conventional figure was the ‘scientificserviceman’ Sir Thomas Brisbane, governor of New South Wales and founder of the Paramatta Observatory, who believed Baily’s work ‘must induce every one to change that opinion he had been led to form of the Dignity of our Great Philosopher’. Critique of hero-worship Most frequently, despite the fact that that Baily was trying to create a new hero in Flamsteed, his supporters applauded his critique of the hero-worship of Newton. One such was Thomas Galloway, an archetypical ‘mathematical practitioner’ having been a teacher of mathematics at the military academy at Sandhurst and, since 1832, an actuary in London and Fellow of the RAS. He believed that ‘justice to the memory of Flamsteed requires the truth to be told’ and that Baily had ‘exercised a sound discretion…in bringing the whole case before the public’ [11]. Galloway had already written a review comparing the biography of Newton by Biot with one by David Brewster, written in 1831 as a riposte to the Frenchman’s claims. Galloway criticized Brewster for his defence of Newton, saying that he was ‘animated by the spirit of a zealous partisan’. In Galloway’s eyes this ‘unhappy spirit of prejudice and intolerance’ was ‘alien to philosophy, and…incompatible with the impartial investigation of historical truth’ [12]. Benjamin Heath Malkin, like Galloway a member of the SDUK and reviewer of the Life of Newton, wrote of Brewster’s ‘error and incorrectness’ and suggested that
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‘excessive attachment to the fame of one may occasionally produce injustice to others’ [13]. This is exactly what Baily declared had happened to Flamsteed. Cartoonist Augustus De Morgan was another Londonbased critic of Brewster’s biography, and also a Fellow of the RAS, a friend of Baily, a Unitarian and a member of the SDUK. Over the next three decades, partly provoked by the hostility that the Account had inspired, De Morgan contested the ‘mythical’ Newton portrayed by Brewster and others. He researched and published several essays on problematic areas of Newton’s life. These included a discussion of the evidence for Newton’s anti-Trinitarian beliefs, for his involvement in the dispute with Leibniz, and for Newton’s niece being the mistress of his patron, the Earl of Halifax. De Morgan wrote, ‘I detest the fictitious association, as a matter of course, of moral with intellectual greatness; and I laugh at it into the bargain, as I should at the attempt to prove that all great minds have long noses’ [14]. De Morgan, who was, except in the period 1831 –1836, attached to the secular University College, wished to separate the mind of Newton, ‘an object of unqualified wonder’, from questions of orthodoxy or morality [15]. He launched a scathing attack against the hypocrisy of those who perpetuated the old image of Newton. ‘Who does not know the smug individual of this species, as he sees him picking his way through the world? His highest model is aristocracy; his social life is silver-forkery; his main pursuit is money-grubbery; and his whole religion is Sunday-prayery’ [16]. Conclusion Baily’s book should be seen as part of a campaign to assert the importance of a particular kind of astronomy, and it was recognized at the time as a statement on behalf of those who argued for the pre-eminence of practice over theory. However, it can also be considered as part of a concerted attempt in the mid-19th century to reappraise the image of Newton. It provoked both defenders of Newton and their critics to produce writings that signalled the beginning of serious Newtonian scholarship. On both sides authors claimed that they were writing impartial, document-based history, but there were vested interests at stake. Those who probed into to the less pleasant side of
Newton’s character hoped to challenge his traditional connection to the established order. Ironically, in the case of Baily’s Account, the religiously orthodox Reverend Flamsteed was used by non-conformists to help remove Newton, who was in fact a Unitarian, from his role as the cement in the holy trinity of the Church, the State and Science. References 1 Baily, F. (1835) An Account of the Revd. John Flamsteed, First Astronomer Royal. Reprinted 1966, Dawsons of Pall Mall 2 De Morgan, S.E. (1882) A Memoir of Augustus De Morgan, p. 256, Longman, Green, and Co 3 [Powell, B.] (1843) Sir Isaac Newton and his contemporaries. Edinburgh Review 78, 402 – 437 4 Letter from Baily to the President of the Royal Society printed in ‘Resolutions passed at the Annual Visitation of the Royal Observatory, 7 June 1834’ 5 Ashworth, W. (1997) ‘Labour harder than thrashing’: John Flamsteed, property and intellectual labour in nineteenth-century England. In Flamsteed’s Stars: New Perspectives on the Life and Work of the first Astronomer Royal (Willmoth, F., ed.), pp. 199 – 216, Boydell 6 The correspondence between Whewell and Rigaud is held in Trinity College Library, Cambridge, and is quoted by permission of the Master and Fellows of the College 7 Whewell, W. (1836) Newton and Flamsteed. Remarks on an Article in No. CIX of the Quarterly Review, p. 4, Cambridge 8 The Times, 5 Feb 1836 [6e] 9 Airy to Baily, 2 May 1835; Sedgwick to Baily, 5 Nov 1835; John Herschel to Baily; Caroline Herschel to Baily, 15 Feb 1836, RGO 60/3, Baily Papers, Royal Observatory Greenwich Archives, Cambridge University Library. They are quoted by permission of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the Syndics of Cambridge University Library 10 The society received its charter from William IV in 1831 11 [Galloway, T.] (1836) Life and observations of Flamsteed – Newton, Halley, and Flamsteed. Edinburgh Review 62, 359 – 397 (quotation p. 363) 12 [Galloway, T.] (1832) French and English Biographies of Newton. Foreign Quarterly Review 12, 1 – 27 (quotations p. 7 and p. 24) 13 [Malkin, B.H.] (1832) Brewster’s Life of Newton. Edinburgh Review 56, 1 – 37 (quotation p. 3) 14 De Morgan, A. (1885) In Newton: His Friend: and His Niece (De Morgan, S.E. and Ranyard, A.C., eds), p. 137, Elliot Stock. This posthumously published book was largely written in the 1850s 15 De Morgan, A. (1846) Newton, Isaac. In The Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies (Vol. 11) (Knight, C., ed), pp. 78 – 117, Charles Knight & Co., (quotation p. 117) 16 De Morgan, A. (1885) In Newton: His Friend: and His Niece (De Morgan, S.E. and Ranyard, A.C., eds), p. 137, Elliot Stock
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Endeavour
Vol.28 No.1 March 2004
Astronomers against Newton Rebekah Higgitt Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Sherfield Building 448, Imperial College, London, UK SW7 2AZ
Francis Baily’s publication of the manuscripts of John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, provoked a furious response. Flamsteed had quarrelled with Isaac Newton, and described him in terms unforgivable to those who claimed him as a paragon of all virtues, both moral and scientific. Baily was condemned for putting Flamsteed’s complaints in the public sphere. However, his supporters saw his work as a critique of the excessive hero-worship accorded to Newton. Written when the word ‘scientist’ had been newly coined, this work and the debates it provoked gives us an insight into contemporary views of the role of the man of science and of the use of science to back political, religious and moral positions. Francis Baily’s Account of the Revd. John Flamsteed, ‘compiled from his own manuscripts, and other authentic documents never before published’, was a collection of the correspondence and autobiographical writings of the first Astronomer Royal (Fig. 1a) [1]. It caused a controversy because it retold the story of the quarrel between Flamsteed and his near contemporary Isaac Newton (Fig. 1b) in the words of the former and was one
of the first English works ‘in which the weak side of Newton’s character was made known’ [2]. Its revelations came on top of those made in a life of Newton by JeanBaptiste Biot, first published in 1822 and translated by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) in 1829. This essay had suggested that Newton had suffered a breakdown that permanently affected his mind, and criticized his role in the priority dispute with Leibniz over the invention of the calculus. Several years after the publication of the Account of Flamsteed, a witness wrote of the ‘singular warmth’ with which the quarrel ‘raged anew, as if it had been a personal affair of the present day’ [3]. The debate took place between those who wished to defend Newton, the hero of English science, from the charges made against his character, and those who both criticised the excessive hero-worship accorded to Newton and found a new figure to admire in Flamsteed. Baily’s Account of Flamsteed Baily, a former stockbroker, had made his name in the scientific community as a careful experimentalist and compiler of data (Fig. 2). He also played a fundamental role in the organisation of the Royal Astronomical Society
Fig. 1. Practice versus theory. (a) John Flamsteed (1646– 1719) by Thomas Gibson, 1712. (b) Isaac Newton (1642–1727) by Godfrey Kneller, 1702. Reproduced with permission from the National Portrait Gallery.
Corresponding author: Rebekah Higgitt ([email protected]). www.sciencedirect.com 0160-9327/$ - see front matter q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2004.01.012
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Flamsteed as obstructive, jealous and suspicious. It was believed that he refused to help Newton, needlessly delayed the catalog, and lacked the ability to understand the importance of Newton’s achievement. However, in the documents published by Baily, Flamsteed’s version of events was revealed. He claimed to have furnished Newton with all the observations he required, only to have been treated with contempt by the autocratic Newton, then President of the Royal Society. Most importantly, Flamsteed charged Newton with having made the decision to break the seal on a set of observations he had deposited with the Royal Society as a pledge to complete the publication of his catalogue – which amounted to a charge of theft. All the ill-temper, obstruction, suspicion and jealousy was laid at Newton’s door. Flamsteed even described an encounter during which Newton had thrown insults at him, the least of which was, apparently, ‘puppy’.
Fig. 2. Francis Baily (1774–1844). Reproduced with permission from the Royal Astronomical Society.
(RAS), and, in the year that the Account of Flamsteed was published, was the Society’s President. Although Baily had long considered producing an amended version of Flamsteed’s Catalogue of Stars, the biographical parts of the Account came about as the result of a coincidence. Three years earlier, in 1832, Baily’s neighbour had shown him a bundle of correspondence from Flamsteed to his assistant Abraham Sharp. This inspired him to search for further manuscript sources in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. It was Flamsteed’s meticulously kept records of his lunar and stellar observations that most endeared Baily to this maligned figure. The first Astronomer Royal exhibited the same scientific virtues that Baily believed the RAS existed to promote: accuracy of observation and standardization of results. His aim was to restore both Flamsteed’s Catalogue and character ‘to that high rank to which it is, by his extraordinary labours, so justly entitled’ [4]. Although Flamsteed and Newton had initially been friendly, exchanging information and complimenting each others’ work, they were to quarrel over access to the observations and the publication of the catalogue. Flamsteed, who made the observations and paid for much of his equipment, believed the data were his property; Newton and the Royal Society argued that because the observations were produced in the Royal Observatory, they were the property of the King and nation. In addition, Newton required the observations to complete the second edition of his Principia. Posterity bequeathed a history managed by Newton and his disciples, and it painted www.sciencedirect.com
Initial reactions Baily’s friend Augustus De Morgan, the former professor of mathematics at University College London, drew a caricature of the conflict between Newton and Flamsteed (Fig. 3). He generalized it as being a battle between astronomical theory and practice. His picture canonized the two historical figures, and their halos reflect the difference in their scientific approach – visible stars for Flamsteed and mathematically-calculated, elliptical orbits for Newton. This depiction reflects the fact that the debate following the publication of the Account of Flamsteed was, in part, between those who asserted the pre-eminence of theory in scientific discovery and those who privileged the role of experiment and observation. It raised questions about where credit should be given in collaborative work and how completing claims regarding intellectual property could be resolved. Perhaps most importantly, the question mark that hovered above the moral characters of both Newton and Flamsteed had implications for those who claimed that intellectual and moral greatness inevitably co-existed. As a result, the battle-lines were drawn along political, religious, geographical and institutional lines as well as scientific. In practice, the debate was largely between ‘the London-based defenders of Flamsteed’ and ‘the Oxbridge guardians of Newton’ [5]. Baily’s chief critic was William Whewell, Fellow and subsequently Master of Newton’s alma mater, Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1836, Whewell published a pamphlet that defended Newton’s character, chiefly by attacking that of Flamsteed. He was joined in his campaign by Stephen Peter Rigaud, the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. Rigaud’s anonymous articles backed Whewell in what he saw as a planned and joint campaign. He told Whewell ‘if Newton’s character is lowered, the character of England is lowered and the cause of religion is injured’, and urged him to remember their ‘Newtonian confederacy’ [6]. The first of these remarks indicates the extent to which Newton had, over the preceding century, been harnessed to establishment causes. Newtonian science underlay the British natural theological tradition, and in times of political and social unrest, Whewell saw a real danger in the possibility that the Account could lead
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Fig. 3. ‘Discordance between theory and practice’, by Augustus De Morgan, RAS De Morgan MSS 3, f. 70. Reproduced with permission from the Royal Astronomical Society.
readers to ‘cast away all reverence for the most revered name of our nation’ [7]. However, Baily received a much more positive response in other periodical reviews and from some of his private correspondents. It is clear that he aimed his publication at a particular kind of reader, and that it was this constituency that tended to respond with enthusiasm. Fortunately, a list of all those chosen by Baily to receive a copy of the Account survives in the archives of the Royal Observatory. A mere 250 copies of the work were printed at the expense of the Admiralty, the government department responsible for the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and the copies were given away free to individuals, observatories and scientific or educational institutions in Britain and abroad. In testament to the international nature of scientific networks, the book reached the Americas, Australia, South Africa and India as well as most of Continental Europe. A critic in The Times found it ‘monstrous, and without parallel’ that a ‘stigma upon Newton’s character, as a man of common honesty, and resting upon ex parte statements’ should be ‘thus circulated amongst the continental men of science at the expense and by the authority of the British Government!’ [8]. However, an analysis of those to whom Baily sent a copy of his book helps us to understand Baily’s motives and to identify a group who were receptive to his message. Baily’s list The list of recipients of the Account was in large part identical to list of individuals and institutions to which the RAS sent copies of their Memoirs and the Observations published by the Royal Observatory. Many of the 250 individuals were, therefore, already part of the identified community of astronomers that Baily wished to www.sciencedirect.com
consolidate. These people were not, in general, the leisured classes often associated with early 19th-century science, but had an active, expert, and for over half, professional interest in astronomy (Box 1). Using Flamsteed to promote the same values that he expounded as President of the RAS, Baily hoped to inspire that community with his heroic account of a practical astronomer and his key role in Newton’s achievement. His success among his Cambridge-trained friends was mixed, but sometimes instructive. George Biddell Airy, who became Astronomer Royal in 1835, was a close friend and was sympathetic to Baily’s message, but felt the Account should ‘shew that Newton was not necessarily a rascal at the beginning, though he might be an irritated man at the end’. Airy was a reformer of practical astronomy, but was more mathematically sophisticated than Baily, and he offered a more balanced view of the respective contributions of theoreticians and practitioners. Accordingly, he felt that ‘Flamsteed (a despiser of theory) could not estimate’ the importance of the Principia. Adam Sedgwick, another Cambridge-based correspondent, likewise asserted that ‘Flamsteed did not see the infinite importance of Newton’s theory. He had not the most distant notion of it’, while ‘Newton did see the great importance of Flamsteed’s observations to the completion of the lunar theory’. There was also an interesting difference in the attitude of two generations of the Herschel family. John Herschel was close to Baily, but admitted that the tone of the newly published correspondence caused him to think less of Flamsteed rather than of Newton. However, for his aunt Caroline, trained in practical astronomy rather than mathematics, Baily had rescued ‘our dear ill-used Flamsteed’ [9].
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Box 1. Baily’s audience Baily distributed 250 copies of the Account of Flamsteed, a large proportion of which went to the same individuals and institutions that received copies of the RAS Memoirs (Table 1). The British recipients frequently had an expert or professional rather than an amateur interest in astronomy. They included professors and tutors at universities, mathematics teachers at schools and military colleges, paid observers in private or state-financed observatories, and so-called ‘scientific servicemen’ who practiced surveying, astronomy or geodesy while serving in the army or navy (Table 2). The Account had a remarkably wide geographical distribution that reached far beyond the London- and Cambridge-based founders of the RAS (Fig. I). This was made possible by connections with Continental and American astronomers and by the expeditions of British astronomers to far-flung parts of the Empire.
Table 1. Distribution of 250 copies of the Account of Flamsteed Distribution
Number
Individuals Institutions Observatories Foreigners
105 72 37 36
Table 2. The occupations of 95 British individuals who received the Account Occupation
Number
Scientific Scientific servicemen University College/school Observatory Other scientific occupation Non-scientific No paid occupation No data
47 13 12 10 8 4 28 14 6
Fig. I. The Freemason’s Tavern, London, where the Royal Astronomical Society was founded in 1820. q The Guildhall Library, London.
With the exception of these Oxbridge-based and trained individuals, the group of people to whom Baily chose to send his work was one for whom Flamsteed, rather than Newton, might be a suitable role-model. They were professionals, practitioners and observers rather than theoreticians. Flamsteed was a hero who championed the virtues of the scientific labourer and the necessity of his www.sciencedirect.com
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work, and both he and Baily argued that this was as important and as admirable as the mathematical genius of Newton. Without Flamsteed’s observations Newton would have been unable to proceed, and this underlined the importance of the observers in the world’s observatories who made up such a significant portion of Baily’s audience. Those who gave the most positive response to the Account were, like Baily, London-based Fellows of the RAS. In addition, many were non-conformist in their religion and Whig or Radical in their politics. These men epitomized the early Astronomical Society, which had been established 15 years earlier by a group of men who felt that the unreformed Royal Society, aristocratic and frequently unscientific, did not represent them [10]. While many of Baily’s correspondents found it unfortunate that Newton should be shown in a poor light, they were pleased to see Flamsteed rescued. John Rickman, a House of Commons clerk and statistician, was gratified to see ‘the justice (tardy but decisive) now done to his character’. He felt the fact that Newton ‘behaved so infamously, – treacherous to the fame & fortune of no unworthy associate, – an assistant to his own great work, – is shocking to human nature’. John Bostock, a professor of chemistry at Guy’s Hospital, felt it was ‘truly gratifying to see justice done to desert, especially such as appears to have been that of Flamsteed’. The radical publisher Sir Richard Phillips, who had been imprisoned for publishing Tom Paine’s Rights of Man and believed he had disproved Newton’s theory of gravitation, told Baily, ‘If I respect you for your high attainments during many past years; I almost worshipped you for your manly independence in tearing the mask from the character of Newton’. A more conventional figure was the ‘scientificserviceman’ Sir Thomas Brisbane, governor of New South Wales and founder of the Paramatta Observatory, who believed Baily’s work ‘must induce every one to change that opinion he had been led to form of the Dignity of our Great Philosopher’. Critique of hero-worship Most frequently, despite the fact that that Baily was trying to create a new hero in Flamsteed, his supporters applauded his critique of the hero-worship of Newton. One such was Thomas Galloway, an archetypical ‘mathematical practitioner’ having been a teacher of mathematics at the military academy at Sandhurst and, since 1832, an actuary in London and Fellow of the RAS. He believed that ‘justice to the memory of Flamsteed requires the truth to be told’ and that Baily had ‘exercised a sound discretion…in bringing the whole case before the public’ [11]. Galloway had already written a review comparing the biography of Newton by Biot with one by David Brewster, written in 1831 as a riposte to the Frenchman’s claims. Galloway criticized Brewster for his defence of Newton, saying that he was ‘animated by the spirit of a zealous partisan’. In Galloway’s eyes this ‘unhappy spirit of prejudice and intolerance’ was ‘alien to philosophy, and…incompatible with the impartial investigation of historical truth’ [12]. Benjamin Heath Malkin, like Galloway a member of the SDUK and reviewer of the Life of Newton, wrote of Brewster’s ‘error and incorrectness’ and suggested that
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‘excessive attachment to the fame of one may occasionally produce injustice to others’ [13]. This is exactly what Baily declared had happened to Flamsteed. Cartoonist Augustus De Morgan was another Londonbased critic of Brewster’s biography, and also a Fellow of the RAS, a friend of Baily, a Unitarian and a member of the SDUK. Over the next three decades, partly provoked by the hostility that the Account had inspired, De Morgan contested the ‘mythical’ Newton portrayed by Brewster and others. He researched and published several essays on problematic areas of Newton’s life. These included a discussion of the evidence for Newton’s anti-Trinitarian beliefs, for his involvement in the dispute with Leibniz, and for Newton’s niece being the mistress of his patron, the Earl of Halifax. De Morgan wrote, ‘I detest the fictitious association, as a matter of course, of moral with intellectual greatness; and I laugh at it into the bargain, as I should at the attempt to prove that all great minds have long noses’ [14]. De Morgan, who was, except in the period 1831 –1836, attached to the secular University College, wished to separate the mind of Newton, ‘an object of unqualified wonder’, from questions of orthodoxy or morality [15]. He launched a scathing attack against the hypocrisy of those who perpetuated the old image of Newton. ‘Who does not know the smug individual of this species, as he sees him picking his way through the world? His highest model is aristocracy; his social life is silver-forkery; his main pursuit is money-grubbery; and his whole religion is Sunday-prayery’ [16]. Conclusion Baily’s book should be seen as part of a campaign to assert the importance of a particular kind of astronomy, and it was recognized at the time as a statement on behalf of those who argued for the pre-eminence of practice over theory. However, it can also be considered as part of a concerted attempt in the mid-19th century to reappraise the image of Newton. It provoked both defenders of Newton and their critics to produce writings that signalled the beginning of serious Newtonian scholarship. On both sides authors claimed that they were writing impartial, document-based history, but there were vested interests at stake. Those who probed into to the less pleasant side of
Newton’s character hoped to challenge his traditional connection to the established order. Ironically, in the case of Baily’s Account, the religiously orthodox Reverend Flamsteed was used by non-conformists to help remove Newton, who was in fact a Unitarian, from his role as the cement in the holy trinity of the Church, the State and Science. References 1 Baily, F. (1835) An Account of the Revd. John Flamsteed, First Astronomer Royal. Reprinted 1966, Dawsons of Pall Mall 2 De Morgan, S.E. (1882) A Memoir of Augustus De Morgan, p. 256, Longman, Green, and Co 3 [Powell, B.] (1843) Sir Isaac Newton and his contemporaries. Edinburgh Review 78, 402 – 437 4 Letter from Baily to the President of the Royal Society printed in ‘Resolutions passed at the Annual Visitation of the Royal Observatory, 7 June 1834’ 5 Ashworth, W. (1997) ‘Labour harder than thrashing’: John Flamsteed, property and intellectual labour in nineteenth-century England. In Flamsteed’s Stars: New Perspectives on the Life and Work of the first Astronomer Royal (Willmoth, F., ed.), pp. 199 – 216, Boydell 6 The correspondence between Whewell and Rigaud is held in Trinity College Library, Cambridge, and is quoted by permission of the Master and Fellows of the College 7 Whewell, W. (1836) Newton and Flamsteed. Remarks on an Article in No. CIX of the Quarterly Review, p. 4, Cambridge 8 The Times, 5 Feb 1836 [6e] 9 Airy to Baily, 2 May 1835; Sedgwick to Baily, 5 Nov 1835; John Herschel to Baily; Caroline Herschel to Baily, 15 Feb 1836, RGO 60/3, Baily Papers, Royal Observatory Greenwich Archives, Cambridge University Library. They are quoted by permission of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the Syndics of Cambridge University Library 10 The society received its charter from William IV in 1831 11 [Galloway, T.] (1836) Life and observations of Flamsteed – Newton, Halley, and Flamsteed. Edinburgh Review 62, 359 – 397 (quotation p. 363) 12 [Galloway, T.] (1832) French and English Biographies of Newton. Foreign Quarterly Review 12, 1 – 27 (quotations p. 7 and p. 24) 13 [Malkin, B.H.] (1832) Brewster’s Life of Newton. Edinburgh Review 56, 1 – 37 (quotation p. 3) 14 De Morgan, A. (1885) In Newton: His Friend: and His Niece (De Morgan, S.E. and Ranyard, A.C., eds), p. 137, Elliot Stock. This posthumously published book was largely written in the 1850s 15 De Morgan, A. (1846) Newton, Isaac. In The Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies (Vol. 11) (Knight, C., ed), pp. 78 – 117, Charles Knight & Co., (quotation p. 117) 16 De Morgan, A. (1885) In Newton: His Friend: and His Niece (De Morgan, S.E. and Ranyard, A.C., eds), p. 137, Elliot Stock
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