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Life After Gravity - Patricia Fara ***

Patricia Fara has a way of making history of science different by looking at what may be a familiar topic from an unexpected angle. In this partial biography of Isaac Newton, dealing with his time in London, she takes this approach with mixed success.

The best thing is that we see more of this time in Newton's life, which tends to be dealt with relatively quickly in standard scientific biographies, as his focus was primarily dealing with the Royal Mint and the Royal Society. That the word 'royal' appears twice here is no coincidence, as we see a picture of a new Newton emerging, getting away from his near-monastic scientific life at Cambridge to become a more social creature, with a distinct interest in keeping in with high society, including the royal family. Perhaps the most interesting thing for me was the way that Fara brings in a topic that I've rarely seen mentioned in Newton biographies - slavery. Newton might not have been actively involved, but the slave trade was pervasively connected to the wealth of the nation and it misses a significant aspect of what shaped his life and wealth (just as does the discussion of Newton's politics).

Unfortunately, for me, the whole didn't work brilliantly. The text felt quite fragmented and rambling, in part because of Fara's framing approach, which is to use a Hogarth painting of children putting on a play in John Conduitt's drawing room as a way of exploring different aspects of Newton's life, even though the painting dates from after Newton's death. The relevance of the painting is partly that a bust of Newton features in it, partly that Conduitt married Newton's niece, who had lived in Newton's London household, and also that Conduitt took on Newton's role as Master of the Mint. (There are also royalty and aristocracy in the painting, reflecting the social climbing.) 

It's true that the painting does reflect some links to aspects of Newton's London life - but still the use of it feels forced, not helped by the atrocious quality of the black and white on-page reproduction of the painting in the book. Such images have improved in quality over the years, but this was so murky you could hardly make out that there were people in it. It wasn't until I got half way through the book and realised that all the on-page images were duplicated in a colour plates section that I could see the painting and even there it was too small (it would have been far better to just have had the plates).

Although it's important to describe those around Newton to give his life context, there seemed too much on other people, either because they're in the painting or were influential in his life - I wanted more Newton. It's also the case that Fara's politics came through quite heavy-handedly, for example in the strange comment that in a largely ungendered English language it's notable that countries are feminine - I've never heard anyone refer to a country as 'she'. Similarly, while the exploration of the relevance of the slave trade to the life of the well-off of the period was one of the best parts of the book, Fara mostly made it seem as if this was all about Europeans capturing Africans to make them slaves, rather than purchasing those who had been enslaved by other Africans: this wasn't a one-sided trade.

Overall, then, there are good elements here, and I welcome attempts to look at creative ways to frame scientific history - but all creativity involves a risk of failure, and for me this one didn't quite come off.

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Review by Brian Clegg
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