今天的2016考研英語泛讀文章談及了考研英語中經常出現的一位艾薩克•牛頓爵士Sir Isaac Newton,文章獨辟蹊徑,認為真正的牛頓并不是理性時代的開國君主,而是最后的魔術師the real Sir Isaac Newton was not first king of reason, but last of the magicians。來看一下具體內容:
Sir Isaac Newton built the edifice of modern science, formulate the laws of motion, discovered the law of gravity, and provided the framework through which the observations of Galileo Galilei and the planetary laws of Johannes Kepler could be understood. His experiments with sunlight and glass prisms and mirrors helped him understand the origin of colours. He invented calculus, independently of Gottfried Leibniz, feuding with him over who was first. And he was the first to postulate that the laws of physics would be the same all over the universe.
He had become President of the Royal Society and was interred in Westminster Abbey. He left more than 7m words and sheets of paper. There were also letters to other scholars, pages of derivations of mathematics and physics formulae, and copious writings on alchemy and religion. The solitary and eccentric Newton apparently saved everything he wrote. But he was reticent about publishing his work, fearing controversy and criticism.
The Newton that emerges from the manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason. The architect of modern science was himself not very modern. He was obsessed with alchemy and believed that the Bible contained numerological codes. The truth is that Newton was very much a product of his time. The colossus of science was not the first king of reason, Keynes wrote after reading Newton’s unpublished manuscripts. Instead “he was the last of the magicians”.