John Maynard Keynes and Isaac Newton

Mike and I were swapping emails today about the great (but oft-misinterpreted) economist John Maynard Keynes and Isaac Newton, and it seemed worth sharing. In the 1930s (if I recall the dates correctly) JMK bought a huge load of Newton's papers and took great delight in ploughing through them. Both of them, of course, were Cambridge men.

Keynes was invited to give a lecture about Newton at the Royal Society, London, in 1946 and he drafted a talk entitled 'Newton, the man'. Basically, the thrust of his talk was, Why was Newton such a genius? His answer was Newton's phenomenal ability to think about a question until the answer surrendered itself. (Keynes's sub-theme, however, was undoubtedly, 'Only a genius such as myself can truly know' - or something like that.)

"His peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had seen straight through it. I fancy his pre-eminence is due to his muscles of intuition being the strongest and most enduring with which a man has ever been gifted."

Newton didn't use experiments to figure things out - he used experiments to prove that he was right.

His experiments were always, I suspect, a means, not of discovery, but always of verifying what he knew already.

Anyway - sadly, Keynes died shortly before he was able to deliver the speech, and so it was presented by his brother, Geoffrey. You can download a PDF of the speech by clicking on the attachment below - assuming that I've done this correctly.....!

As an aside, coincidentally Geoffrey Keynes wrote A Bibliography of Robert Hooke - Hooke being a great rival/enemy of Newton. I think (if I quote him correctly) Mike would say that Newton destroyed Hooke and his reputation.