Sunday 20 October 2013

Chasing Rainbows

Today I start a week-long mini-series on 3 lgbt scientists who worked on meteorology and climatology.

One scientist is most associated with the rainbow – or, more accurately, the spectrum – and that is Sir Isaac Newton. I place him in this mini-series because the spectrum and the rainbow are created in the same manner – by the splitting of light rays.

When it comes to listing historical lgbt people more often than not we are attempting to put modern labels onto people who were alive before such labels were invented. Were all Ancient Greek soldiers gay because they were expected to have regular sex and relationships with younger men? Did homosexuality exist before it was given that name? You could also ask if gravity existed before Newton gave it a name? Yes it did, we just understood it differently.

It may help to think of historical sexual orientation by using a phrase I encountered recently in reference to a scientist I’ll deal with in 3 days time, Alexander von Humboldt – “Queer refers not only to bisexual or homosexual men and women – it also includes straight people whose sexuality nevertheless falls outside social norms of behaviour”. In this respect I place Isaac Newton on my “queer” list.

In his own lifetime Newton was considered a bit eccentric because he was so engrossed in his work, was a private man at heart, and was noted for his criticism of other scientists than for his praise.

Before he went to Cambridge University Newton may have had a girlfriend, Catherine Storer, but nothing written by either of them survives so we’ll never know the exact nature of the relationship. Much later in life, it is said, Newton proposed marriage to Lady Norris, who obviously turned him down because Newton remained a bachelor all his life.

In between these two female love interests Newton had two male interests which have made historians and biographers question the nature of his friendship with them both.

In 1663 Newton began to share rooms at Cambridge with John Wickens. They lived together for 20 years. In that time they became very close (hardly surprising). Young John assisted Newton in his early experiments, including those into the colours of the rainbow, though whether John understood what Newton was doing is another question. Whether they were actually lovers will never be known, but, as was common practice right up to the 20th century, it is known that they slept together (by “slept together” I mean “slept together”).

The academic curriculum at universities at that time was based on the Classics, and all young undergraduates would have been taught about the Ancient Greeks and their same-sex practices. It is possible that many students would have secretly followed the practice themselves in imitation of the great civilisation and wouldn’t have considered it immoral or sodomy. With this in mind it makes it likely that Isaac Newton could have had sexual relations with John Wickens, a possibility rather than a probability. They may have enjoyed a non-sexual love. In the end their relationship ended when John left Cambridge to become a country vicar.

We move onto more substantial evidence of a relationship with the arrival on the scene in 1689 of a young Swiss mathematician called Nicolas Fatio de Duillier.

Fatio was as much a fan of alchemy and mysticism as Newton, probably more so, so they had more than a shared interest in maths. But it was Newton’s gravitational theories that helped to create the biggest pull (pardon the pun). Fatio was well established in England before he met Newton. The nature of their relationship raised eyebrows and people began to think of Fatio as a bad influence, calling him “a person of no value”, “a mere debauchee”, and “Newton’s ape”.

Newton was certainly flattered by Fatio’s attention and gave him money and gifts, and an offer of accommodation. Letters between them reveal a mutual attraction which hints at something more than their mentor/pupil relationship, going beyond the accepted norms of the time. No letters written to women, by either of them, survive which contain such affection – “… the reasons I should not marry will probably last as long as my life”, wrote Fatio to Newton knowingly.

Fatio’s career took him around Europe though it was not to help with his reputation. Having joined a fanatic French religious sect he was condemned with them as cheats and false prophets and placed in the stocks. The whole affair took Fatio away from regular contact with Newton and contributed to Newton’s breakdown.

They never lost touch completely. Fatio sided with Newton against Leibnitz over the debate about who created calculus. After Newton’s death he helped Newton’s nephew to design the monument in Westminster Abbey familiar to all “Da Vinci Code” fans.

We’ll never know for sure what romantic feelings Sir Isaac Newton felt towards his fellow men – or women. To use an analogy with his work, it would be like chasing rainbows. Whether or not we can truly call Newton gay, there is little doubt that his strong emotional attachments to men more than to women places him on my queer list.

5 comments:

  1. I didn't know they slept in the same bed if that is your assumption is not the same that sleep in the same home. The truth is that we will never know the nature of these relationships and if these could be physical or even strong emotionally beyond common friendship and his sexuality in general (hetero, bi, gay, asexual or ''queer'') , but nevertheless good article.

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  2. (this comment is part 1 of 2)
    "Lady Norris" could also be a way of saying "nurse". As "norris" was sometimes used to mean nurse. History may have confused things a little. At the end of his life he may have had a nurse that looked after him. At that time it was uncommon for women to be nurses, it was only after Florence Nightengale began training women to me nurses in the late 1800's that the profession became more populated by women then men. So to refer to his nurse as a Lady nurse would have been likely. To confuse this by someone suggesting he wanted to marry his lady nurse then is possible. So, calling her Lady Norris might be likely. Since it's clear Newton was attracted to men and not to women, and being aware that the church he belonged to then frowned on sexual relationships between two men, Newton clearly only allowed vague hints to appear in his written works. He was a brilliant person, it's impossible that one of the greatest authors of all time, having written the book that explained gravity, would not know that some of his words in other things he wrote, and which he allowed to pass from his hands to the hands of others upon his death, hinted he preferred men to women And it's clear that if he slept in the same bed with another man for twenty years, during the time when he was employed by a prominent university and given a very good wage, there is no reason why he could not have afforded to purchase a second bed in which he could sleep alone and his friend could sleep in the other bed, alone. And yet, it is documented that they both chose to sleep in the same bed together night after night for twenty years. During the same busy years when Newton would have had ups and down and felt his feelings about his work and the critisim of his work by others and then come home and crawl into bed with someone and that someone he didn't hold and seek comfort from, like everyone does when they need that quiet comfort in the night from the other one in their bed. And there would be nights of joy too, happiness over the good things that happened in the daytime away from the house, such that a night in bed with the one they shared the bed with it's impossible to imagine that hands did not go roaming and giggles turn into kissing and so forth. One could dismiss these thoughts as potntially just imagining if they had done this sharing for a year or two. Maybe even up to five years. But after a while, certainlly long before 20 years was up, your bed mate does become your comfort mate and realisticly, your playmate. Grown men, in the prime of their lifes, as those two were, any male alive now, be he hetro, homo, bi, or asexual can all tell you that when they are in their prime of life, their sexual nature cannot, in the mind anyway, be denied. They may be able to supress it to some degree, but not every single night in bed with somebody for twenty years. Even the asexual who doesn't even want sex, will still feel the esence of desire to some degree, else he would nto even know what it was. Asexual dont feel sexual vry much, but they do feel it enough to understand it and thus be able to explain that they just don't want sex hardly at all. But the most telling of this idea are prisoners who are locked up in single sex prisons. At some point, most prisoners must face their inner world of desire for sex and desire for comfort. And long before twenty years go by, they may permit things sexually and for comfort from their same sex people behind bars that if not locked up they would probably see women for. So, yeah, Newton didn't write a book on his sexual activity and publish it like he did books on other topics. But he was human, like the rest of us, and one whose emotions were alive and quite vivid as reported by those who saw him display his emotions on topics other than sex.

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    Replies
    1. Lady Norris was a real person, not his nurse. She was Elizabeth (nee Read), the widow of Newton's friend Sir William Norris. Nurses were not regarded as equals so Newton would never consider marrying one. Nurses didn't acquire any form of respect in the community until 1911 when Sister Henrietaa Stockdale and the Sisters of St. Michael and All Angels in Bloemfontein persuaded the Cape Colony government to introduce state resigtration and real medical training on a par with doctors. Florence Nightingale did little to advance nursing, apart from improve hygeine in Crimea, provide basic standard courses, and have lots of politician friends who promoted her work. Nightingale opposed any effort to improve nurses reputation - they were unpaid, unskilled, and Nightingale wanted them to stay that way.

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  3. (this comment is part 2 of 2)
    He had feelings and wasn't terribly good at hiding them. So, in bed with the same man for 20 years and he was able to hide his feelings such that his bed was a place devoid of any human emotion? That in bed he become a ridge slab of flesh that suddenly all of who he was suddenly disappeared and he was asexual and there only to sleep and all his feelings suddenly turned off totally and the slept alsmost as a dead man, only to wake up and only after he stood and rose and the last bit of him lost contact with the bed, then suddenly, magically, his personality was restored to him and he went about his merry way? I think not. They chose to live together, they chose to sleep with each other in the same bed every night, and they chose to maintain that arrangement for twenty years. Like all relationships it must have cooled till one day they agreed that Newton's friend would be moving on. Then, after some time, another male came along and it was again observed by the people of the day that these two men got very close. Um hum. Newton had a sexual urge as his lists of sins that he kept of himself which contained sins he noted he'd done such as felt sexual urges strongly. This rules out asexual. And, as any straight man will tell you, if another man hasn't tried to get into a woman's pants by the time he's thirty, its pretty clear he's not interested in doing so. Cause if you're a straight man, you know how badly you want a woman startig from your early teens onward. If you're still a virgin at 30 you're just not trying. Cause there are plenty of women out there and even the ugliest smelliest stupidest man will usually have found some way to get a woman to have sex with him by age 30. Even if he has to pay her. So, what this brilliant man, with one of the finest minds that humanity has ever produced, for him to allow it to be knon he wasn't interested in the company of women, but was totally interested in the company of men, AN, he was interested in the company of men when not just at work or doing research, no, he wanted men around him even at home, even when he was resting and not working, even when he was doing anything other than work. For all those times too, he only wanteed men around. Ummm hum. He was attracted to men. Did he write down the date and time he stripped naked with another naked man and they proceeded to touch each other with wild abandon seeking sexual expression and gratification? No, he did not. Which, was quite the norm in that day. For neither did his neighbors, the burly handsome man who lived with his big bosomed woman wife and their nine children. That couple also did not write down the date and times when the man stripped naked and his wife striped naked and in the privacy of their own home behind doors that shut their children out of the room the parents were in when the parents were in the process of creating their eleventh child, who, by the way, turned out to be not the 11th, but the 11th and 12 children. A boy and a girl. Fraternal twins. Both of which grew up to be bisexual, each of them taking multipule lovers of both sexes, but never told anybody that either. Lets agree to be real. Sure, we can say that we have no definite proof Newton was gay. But, he was one of the smartest persons to have ever lived. We absolutely cannot forget this. He knew what he was doing then. He wasn't stupid. So neither should we be.

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  4. Don't put modern interpretations onto historical actions. Men sharing a bed was common - in fact all men did it if they were single and lived with another man (father, brother, son, cousin, friend). Sex and "sleeping together" have no connection until the late Victorian era. Also, people did not sleep naked in bed. Social history is often overlooked in research yet it tells us a lot.

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