Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 255 correct in every instance. Nevertheless, I do not find this methodology art especially helpful way of approaching the Puritanism-science controversy. In any case, the real question, it seems to me, is not whether Wilkins was or was not a Puritan, but rather, what did his acceptance of certain ideas have to do with his involvement with certain political and religious groups in the social environment of the seventeenth century. By drawing the ideological lines so sharply between the Laudian Anglicans and the 'Puritan' Puritans, and by removing Wilkins (and many others) from the core of religious-political issues in conflict, Mrs. Shapiro leaves the analysis of that conflict to an examination of the extremes. But an understanding of how and why 'moderates' such as Wilkins did involve themselves in the conflict is precisely what would prove illuminating. In short, if we accept Mrs. Shapiro's proposition that Wilkins' liberal temperament reflected his desire to avoid dogmatism and the controversies which embroiled so many of his contemporaries, then surely, it becomes a curious question for the biographer why such a person should continuously be found attached to figures in the mainstream of political conflict (Lord Saye and Sele, Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, Richard Cromwell, the Duke of Buckingham, etc.) rather than enjoying the more peaceful eddies of life available to a man of Wilkins' talent and inclinations. There is much in Mrs. Shapiro's biography to commend it to the reader, not the least of which is her vigorous defense of her thesis. Nevertheless, the work is more likely to stimulate a new debate than to clear up the old one. RICHARD ASHCRAFT University of Cali[ornia at Los Angeles A Portrait of Isaac Newton. By Frank E. Manuel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968. Pp. xvi+478. $11.95) A subtitle indicative of the motif of Manuel's portrayal would read as follows: "Newton Psychologized, or the Child is Father to the Man, wherein imputed traumas and fantasies of the child are held to be potent and pervasive in the conduct of the man." In his Introduction, Manuel announces that it is his aim "to probe for the forces that shaped Newton's character" (i.e., "to delve in the junior part of his life for the roots of the consuming passions of the mature man"). He takes as the best guide to discovery Newton's four notebooks covering the last years in Lincolshire and the first in Trinity College, a Latin exercise book of a somewhat earlier date, and scattered marginalia in books that Newton owned as a youth. These materials, Manuel writes, "allow us to make conjectures about his temper, his moods, his emotions, his character . They may even be a window to his fantasy world." "General plausibility" is the professed goal of proffered conjectures about Newton's early psychic experiences and their subsequent effects. The reader is asked to accept, if he can, "an avowal that an element of speculation is consciously interwoven in this portrayal.... " Surmises expressed as such are readily recognizable, e.g., "The shakiness of Newton's self-esteem may have had one of its origins in an infantile failure to be satiated at the breast and in his littleness." Other origins of the alleged shakiness, however , are set forth as matters of fact rather than as conjectures. Thus, the death of Newton's father less than three months before his birth and his mother's remarriage leading to separation from her care from age three to age eleven are asserted to have been deprivations that implanted an enduring feeling of insecurity and engendered 256 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY a life-long rage against persons who threatened his self-esteem. The reader is told that Newton's fixation on his mother was absolute but ambivalent, and that loss of her to another man "was a traumatic event in Newton's life from which he never recovered." As concerns the loss of his father, Newton is depicted as being responsive to this in a special relationship early established. As a child he had been taught that his father, the yeoman Isaac Newton, was in heaven. The image of his own father was soon...