Was Sir Isaac Newton autistic?
Apparently today is Newton's birthday, according to Google. I had always thought he was born on Christmas Day, but I do know that odd things were being done to the calendar around the time of his birth.
Was Sir Isaac Newton autistic? A lot of people have written about this question, even some authors of kids' books. And of course the Freud brigade have wasted many reams of paper with their psychoanalytic speculations about Newton during the last century. In my opinion, one of the best indicators that a dead famous person was autistic is the presence of a body of literature written from a Freudian or Jungian point of view alleging that the famous person was "neurotic" or "psychotic" or "schiziod". That's what they used to call us. I'm sure those waste-of-space analysts used to made a fortune out of foisting their attentions onto autistic kids and autistic adults, all to no good effect.
Here's a reading list about Newton's relationship with the autistic spectrum, if you are interested.
Was Sir Isaac Newton autistic?
Baron-Cohen, Simon (2003) The essential difference. Penguin Books.
[some discussion of Newton in this book about Asperger syndrome]
Elder, Jennifer and Thomas, Marc (Illustrator) (2005) Different like me: my book of autism heroes. Jessica Kingsley, 2005.
[Many famous people mentioned including Newton. Please note - this book is classified as a work of fiction, and it is obviously aimed at a junior readership]
Fitzgerald, Michael (2006) Autism, Asperger’s syndrome and creativity. Autism2006: AWARES Conference Centre. October 4th 2006.
http://212.74.184.44:8083/BM_DIRECTORY/E/BM000001662/7679/FIT1.PDF
http://awares.nemisys.uk.com/conferences/show_paper.asp?section=000100010001&conferenceCode=000200020002&id=42
[many famous people discussed including Newton]
Fitzgerald, Michael and James, Ioan (2007) The mind of the mathematician. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
[many famous people discussed including Newton]
Fitzgerald, Michael, and O’Brien, Brendan (2007) Genius genes: how Asperger talents changed the world. Autism Asperger Publishing Company, 2007.
[many famous people discussed including Newton, parts of this book available to read free through Google Book Search]
James, Ioan (2005) Asperger syndrome and high achievement: some very remarkable people. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2005.
[many famous people discussed including Newton]
James, Ioan (2004) Remarkable physicists: from Galileo to Yukawa. Cambridge University Press.
[Newton, Cavendish, Einstein and Dirac identified as autistic]
James, Ioan (2003) Singular scientists. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. January 2003. Vol. 96, number 1, p. 36-39.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=12519805
[Irene Joliot-Curie, J. M. W. Turner, Paul Dirac, Bela Bartok, Wittgenstein, Cavendish, Newton, Einstein]
Keynes, Milo (2008) Balancing Newton's mind: his singular behaviour and his madness of 1692–93. Notes & Records of the Royal Society. 20th September 2008 vol. 62 no. 3 p.289-300.
http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/62/3/289.full
[The author argues that Newton's suspicious personality was caused by separation from his mother in early childhood and was not caused by AS, full text of paper available free online]
Krull, Kathleen (2006) Isaac Newton. (illustrated by Boris Kulikov), Viking, 2006.
[junior biography in the Giants of Science series, Asperger syndrome discussed]
Royal College of Psychiatrists (2006) Royal College of Psychiatrists Annual Meeting 2006 Glasgow: Thatcherism founder had Asperger's Syndrome. (press release) The Royal College of Psychiatrists. 11th July 2006.
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pressparliament/pressreleases2006/pr820.aspx
[Sir Keith Joseph, Enoch Powell, Eamon de Valera, W. B. Yeats, Sir Isaac Newton]
Sacks, Oliver (2004) Autistic geniuses?: we’re too ready to pathologize (letter). Nature. May 20th 2004, Vol. 429, p. 241.
[a letter in which Sacks states that he does not believe that Wittgenstein, Einstein nor Newton “were significantly autistic”]
Sacks, Oliver (2002) Uncle Tungsten: memories of a chemical boyhood. Picador, 2002.
[in the notes from page 119-121 Sacks discusses Henry Cavendish, describing him as an “autistic genius” while diagnosing Newton with “neurosis” rather than autism]
Copyright Lili Marlene 2010.
Google is showing a falling apple an animated doodle on its home page to honor Newton's birthday.
ReplyDeletehttp://qualitypoint.blogspot.com/2010/01/apple-falls-on-google-homepage-to.html
Thanks for you comment, QualityPoint. What a great nation India is. I think it is great thing that the internet is making the world so much more interconnected, despite our considerable large cultural differences.
ReplyDeleteThat Nova interview with Dr Jed Buchwald about Newton that you linked to in your blog piece is quite interesting, and I noticed that you have a range of quotes by Newton that are interesting. Two strike me as being particularly relevant to being a person who has Asperger syndrome:
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”
Yes, and that is why autists often prefer to be mathematicians and not hairdressers or teachers.
“Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.”
It's a difficult art. You are always going to offend someone if you choose to discuss anything more importnat than small talk.
“I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
So many non-autistic people don't really notice the ocean because they are so preoccupied with the swimmers.
But I've got to point out that I have a suspicion that not all of those quotes in your article were from Sir Isaac Newton.