Isaac Newton's Notebook

Under COVID restrictions, non-essential businesses like art museums are required to close their doors to help "flatten the curve". 

But closing galleries does not mean abandoning their mission, and many are now offering virtual access to collections and expertise. 

For example, today I attended a Zoom presentation by a curator at The Morgan Library & Museum.

In his short lecture, an expert from The Morgan’s rare manuscripts collection paged a small group of listeners through a digital facsimile of a small notebook belonging to Isaac Newton. 

The object itself is beautiful in its oldness and curiosity. It was somewhat accessible (written in English) and somewhat obscure (in archaic handwriting).

In this notebook, a young Newton captured ideas about how to draw and paint, how to catch birds, noteworthy items from meetings with people and things he had read, and later, data from observations of natural phenomena.

The notebook had a long life with Newton, starting in the mid 1600s when he was a grade schooler all the way through becoming a university student at Cambridge. 

The curator’s explanation moved us through time, as the focus of the notes shifted from trying to understand the world with words, to using numbers and mathematical modeling for which Newton became famous.  

The notebooks are fun and thought-provoking in places, for example in Newton's youthful interest in “extravagants” - freakish or unusual things and ideas of his time. 

It was not my first encounter with the legacy of Isaac Newton, having been to Cambridge several times while living in London, and once making a trip up to Woolsthorpe Manor the home of the theory-of-gravity-inspiring apple tree. 

But it was my first digital one and I have to say it was just as interesting. 

Well done, The Morgan!

You can see a digital facsimile of the notebook here … 

https://www.themorgan.org/collection/isaac-newton/memorandum-book