WATERHOUSE:Think of each one of them as saving a thousand pages of tedious explanations full of great stretched-out S marks.
RAVENSCAR:None the less, the cost of printing this is going to bankrupt the Royal Society!
APTHORP:So that is why Mr. Waterhouse is seated at a chair, with no banca -it is a symbolic posture, meant to express the financial condition of the Royal Society. I very much fear that I am to be asked for money at this point. Say, can either one of you hear a word I am saying?
APTHORP:Go ahead and read. I don’t mind being ignored. Are those documents terribly fascinating, then?
APTHORP:Ah, like a salmon weaving a devious course up-torrent, slipping round boulders and leaping o’er logs, my assistant is making his way back to me.
MINION:You were right concerning the Jew, Sir Richard. He wants to purchase certain commodities in large amounts.
APTHORP:At this moment on a Board in Amsterdam, those commodities must be fetching a higher price than is scribbled on our humble English Plank. The Jew wants to buy low here, and sell high there. Pray tell, what sorts of commodities are in such high demand in Amsterdam?
MINION:He takes a particular interest in certain coarse, durable fabrics…
APTHORP:Sailcloth! Someone is building a navy!
MINION:He specifically does not want sailcloth, but cheaper stuff.
APTHORP:Tent cloth! Someone is building an army! Come, let us go and buy all the war-stuff we can find.
RAVENSCAR:So this is the thing Newton’s been working on?
WATERHOUSE:How could he have produced that without working on it?
RAVENSCAR:When I work on things, Daniel, they come out in disjoint parts, a lump at a time; this is a unitary whole, like the garment of Our Saviour, seamless… what is he going to do in Book III? Raise the dead and ascend into Heaven?
WATERHOUSE:He is going to solve the orbit of the moon, provided Flamsteed will part with the requisite data.
RAVENSCAR:If Flamsteed doesn’t, I’ll see to it he parts with his fingernails. God! Here’s a catchy bit: “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction… if you press a stone with your finger, the finger is also pressed by the stone.” The perfection of this work is obvious even to me, Daniel! How must it look to you?
WATERHOUSE:If you are going down that road, then ask rather how it looks to Leibniz, for he is as far beyond me as I am beyond you; if Newton is the finger, Leibniz is the stone, and they press against each other with equal and opposite force, a little bit harder every day.
RAVENSCAR:But Leibniz has not read it, and you have, so there would be little point in asking him.
WATERHOUSE:I have taken the liberty of conveying the essentials to Leibniz, which explains why he is writing so many of these damned letters.
RAVENSCAR:But certainly Leibniz would not dare to challenge a work of such radiance!
WATERHOUSE:Leibniz is at the disadvantage of not having seen it. Or perhaps we should count this as an advantage, for anyone who sees it is dumbfounded by the brilliance of the geometry, and it is difficult to criticize a man’s work when you are down on your knees shielding your eyes.
RAVENSCAR:You believe that Leibniz has discovered an error in one of these proofs?
WATERHOUSE:No, proofs such as Newton’s cannot have errors.
RAVENSCAR:Cannot?
WATERHOUSE:As a man looks at an apple on a table and says, “There is an apple on the table,” you may look at these geometrical diagrams of Newton’s and say, “Newton speaks the truth.”
RAVENSCAR:Then I’ll convey a copy to the Doctor forthwith, so that he may join us on his knees.
WATERHOUSE:Don’t bother. Leibniz’s objection lies not in what Newton has done but in what he has not done.
RAVENSCAR:Perhaps we can get Newton to do it in Book III, then, and remove the objection! You have influence with him…
WATERHOUSE:The ability to annoy Isaac is not to be confused with influence.
RAVENSCAR:We will convey Leibniz’s objections to him directly, then.
WATERHOUSE:You do not grasp the nature of Leibniz’s objections. It is not that Newton left some corollary unproved, or failed to follow up on some promising line of inquiry. Turn back, even before the Laws of Motion, and read what Isaac says in his introduction. I can quote it from memory: “For I here design only to give a mathematical notion of these forces, without considering their physical causes and seats.”
RAVENSCAR:What is wrong with that?
WATERHOUSE:Some would argue that as Natural Philosophers we are supposed to consider their physical causes and seats! This morning, Roger, I sat in this empty courtyard, in the midst of a whirlwind. The whirlwind was invisible; how did I know ’twas here? Because of the motion it conferred on innumerable scraps of paper, which orbited round me. Had I thought to bring along my instruments I could have taken observations and measured the velocities and plotted the trajectories of those scraps, and if I were as brilliant as Isaac I could have drawn all of those data together into a single unifying picture of the whirlwind. But if I were Leibniz I’d have done none of those things. Instead I’d have asked, Why is the whirlwind here?
JACKKETCH:In the name of the King, stop and identify yourself!
BAILIFF:John Bull, a bailiff.
JACKKETCH:State your business.
BAILIFF:It is the King’s business. I have here a prisoner to be bound over for execution.
JACKKETCH:What is the prisoner’s name?
BAILIFF: A History of the Late Massacres and Persecutions of the French Huguenots; to which is appended a brief relation of the bloody and atrocious crimes recently visited upon blameless Protestants dwelling in the realms of the Duke of Savoy, at the behest of King Louis XIV of France.
JACKKETCH:Has this prisoner been accused of a crime?
BAILIFF:Not only accused, but justly convicted, of spreading contumacious falsehoods, attempting to arouse civil discord, and leveling many base slanders against the good name of The Most Christian King Louis XIV, a true friend of our own King and a loyal ally of England.