The Clockwork Universe Part 1

The Clockwork Universe.

Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World.

by EDWARD DOLNICK.

Preface.

Few ages could have seemed less likely than the late 1600s to start men dreaming of a world of perfect order. Historians would later talk of the "Age of Genius," but the "Age of Tumult" would have been just as fitting. In the tail end of Shakespeare's century, the natural and the supernatural still twined around one another. Disease was a punishment ordained by G.o.d. Astronomy had not yet broken free from astrology, and the sky was filled with omens.

The only man-made light came from flickering flames and sputtering lanterns. Unless the moon was out, nights were dark and dangerous. Thieves and muggers prowled the streets-the first police forces lay far in the future-and brave souls who ventured outdoors carried their own lanterns or hired a "linkboy" to light the way with a torch made from a hunk of fat-soaked rope. The murder rate was five times as high as it is today.

Even in midday, cities were murky and grimy. Coal smoke left a "sooty Crust or Furr" on all it touched. London was one of the world's great cities and a center of the new learning, but it was, in one historian's words, "a stinking, muddy, filth-bespattered metropolis." Huge piles of human waste blocked city streets, and butchers added heaps of the "soyle and filth of their Slaughter houses" to the towering mounds.

Ignorance made matters worse. The same barges that brought vegetables to the city from farms in the countryside returned laden with human sewage, to fertilize the fields. When Shakespeare and his fellow investors built the Globe Theatre in 1599, the splendid new building held at least two thousand people but was constructed without a single toilet. Well over a century later, hygiene had scarcely improved. At about the time of Louis XIV's death in 1715, a new rule was put in place requiring that the corridors in the palace at Versailles be cleaned of feces once a week.

No one bathed, from kings to peasants. The poor had no choice, and the wealthy had no desire.1 (Doctors explained that water opened the pores to infection and plague. A coat of grease and grime sealed disease away.) Worms, fleas, lice, and bedbugs were near-universal afflictions. Science would soon revolutionize the world, but the minds that made the modern world were yoked to itchy, smelly, dirty bodies. (Doctors explained that water opened the pores to infection and plague. A coat of grease and grime sealed disease away.) Worms, fleas, lice, and bedbugs were near-universal afflictions. Science would soon revolutionize the world, but the minds that made the modern world were yoked to itchy, smelly, dirty bodies.

On the public stage, all was crisis and calamity. Through the early part of the century, Germany had suffered through what would later be called the Thirty Years' War. The blandness of the name obscures the horror of a religious war where one raping, looting, marauding army gave way to another, endlessly, and where famine and disease followed close on the armies' heels. England had been convulsed by a civil war. In London in 1649, a shocked crowd looked on as the royal executioner lifted his axe high and chopped off the king's head. In the 1650s plague swept across Europe. In 1665 it jumped the Channel to England.

In the wings, the events that would reshape the world went on unnoticed. Few knew, and fewer cared, about a handful of curious men studying the heavens and scribbling equations in their notebooks.

Humans had recognized nature's broad patterns from the beginning-night follows day, the moon waxes and wanes, the stars form their familiar constellations, the seasons recur. But they had noticed, too, that no two days were identical. "Men expected the sun to rise," wrote Alfred North Whitehead, "but the wind bloweth where it listeth." If people referred to "laws of nature," they had in mind not true laws but something akin to rules of thumb, guidelines subject to exceptions and interpretation.

Then, at some point in the 1600s, a new idea came into the world. The notion was that the natural world not only follows rough-and-ready patterns but also exact, formal, mathematical laws. Though it looked haphazard and sometimes chaotic, the universe was in fact an intricate and perfectly regulated clockwork.

From the cosmically vast to the infinitesimally small, every aspect of the universe had been meticulously arranged. G.o.d had created the world and designed its every feature, and He continued to supervise it with minute care. He had set the planets in orbit and lavished care on every one of a housefly's thousand eyes. He had chosen the perfect rate for the Earth's spin and the ideal thickness for a walnut's sh.e.l.l.

Nature's laws were vast in range but few in number; G.o.d's operating manual filled only a line or two. When Isaac Newton learned how gravity works, for instance, he announced not merely a discovery but a "universal law" that embraced every object in creation. The same law regulated the moon in its...o...b..t round the Earth, an arrow arcing against the sky, and an apple falling from a tree, and it described their motions not only in general terms but precisely and quant.i.tatively. G.o.d was a mathematician, seventeenth-century scientists firmly believed. He had written His laws in a mathematical code. Their task was to find the key.

My focus is largely on the climax of the story, especially Newton's unveiling, in 1687, of his theory of gravitation. But Newton's astonis.h.i.+ng achievement built on the work of such t.i.tans as Descartes, Galileo, and Kepler, who themselves had deciphered paragraphs and even whole pages of G.o.d's cosmic code. We will examine their breakthroughs and false trails, too.

All these thinkers had two traits in common. They were geniuses, and they had utter faith that the universe had been designed on impeccable mathematical lines. What follows is the story of a group of scientists who set out to read G.o.d's mind.

Part One: Chaos

Chapter One.

London, 1660.

A stranger to the city who happened to see the parade of eager, chattering men disappearing into Thomas Gresham's mansion might have found himself at a loss. Who were these gentlemen in their powdered wigs, knee breeches, and linen cravats? It was too early in the day for a concert or a party, and this was hardly the setting for a bull-baiting or a prizefight.

With its shouting coachmen, reeking dunghills, and grit-choked air, London a.s.saulted every sense, but these mysterious men seemed not to notice. Locals, then, for the giant metropolis left newcomers reeling. The men at Gresham's looked a bit like a theater crowd-and with the Puritans out of power and Oliver Cromwell's head on a pole in front of Westminster Hall, theaters had had opened their doors again. But in that case where were the women? Perhaps the imposing building on the fas.h.i.+onable street concealed a gentlemen's gambling club? A high-cla.s.s brothel? opened their doors again. But in that case where were the women? Perhaps the imposing building on the fas.h.i.+onable street concealed a gentlemen's gambling club? A high-cla.s.s brothel?

Even a peek through a coal-grimed window might not have helped much. Amid the bustle, one man seemed to be spilling powder onto the tabletop and arranging it into a pattern. The man standing next to him held something between his fingers, small and dark and twitching.

The world would eventually learn the ident.i.ty of these mysterious men. They called themselves natural philosophers, and they had banded together to sort out the workings of everything from pigeons to planets. They shared little but curiosity. At the center of the group stood tall, skeletally thin Robert Boyle, an aristocrat whose father was one of Britain's richest men. Boyle maintained three three splendid private laboratories, one at each of his homes. Mild-mannered and unworldly, Boyle spent his days contemplating the mysteries of nature, the glories of G.o.d, and home remedies for an endless list of real and imaginary ills. splendid private laboratories, one at each of his homes. Mild-mannered and unworldly, Boyle spent his days contemplating the mysteries of nature, the glories of G.o.d, and home remedies for an endless list of real and imaginary ills.

If Boyle was around, Robert Hooke was sure to be nearby. Hooke was hunched and fidgety-"low of stature and always very pale"-but he was tireless and brilliant, and he could build anything. For the past five years he had worked as Boyle's a.s.sistant, cobbling together equipment and designing experiments. Hooke was as bad-tempered and sharp-tongued as Boyle was genial. To propose an idea was to hear that Hooke had thought of it first; to challenge his claim was to make a lifelong enemy. But few questioned the magic in his hands. Hooke's latest coup was a gla.s.s vessel that could be pumped empty of air. What would happen if you put a candle inside? a mouse? a man?

The small, birdlike man was Hooke's closest friend, the ludicrously versatile Christopher Wren. Ideas tumbled from him like coins from a conjuror's fingertips. Posterity would know Wren as the most celebrated architect in English history, but he was renowned as an astronomer and a mathematician before he sketched his first building. Everything came easily to this charmed and charming creature. Early on an admirer proclaimed Wren a "miracle of youth," and he would live to ninety-one and scarcely pause for breath along the way. Wren built telescopes, microscopes, and barometers; he tinkered with designs for submarines; he built a transparent beehive (to see what the bees were up to) and a writing gizmo for making copies, with two pens connected by a wooden arm; he built St. Paul's Cathedral.

The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, the formal name of this grab-bag collection of geniuses, misfits, and eccentrics, was by most accounts the first official scientific organization in the world. In these early days almost any scientific question one might ask inspired blank stares or pa.s.sionate debate-Why does fire burn? How do mountains rise? Why do rocks fall?

The men of the Royal Society were not the world's first scientists. t.i.tans like Descartes, Kepler, and Galileo, among many others, had done monumental work long before. But to a great extent those pioneering figures had been lone geniuses. With the rise of the Royal Society-and allowing for the colossal exception of Isaac Newton-the story of early science would have more to do with collaboration than with solitary contemplation.

Newton did not attend the Society's earliest meetings, though he was destined one day to serve as its president (he would rule like a dictator). In 1660 he was only seventeen, an unhappy young man languis.h.i.+ng on his mother's farm. Soon he would head off to begin his undergraduate career, at Cambridge, but even there he would draw scarcely any notice. In time he would become the first scientific celebrity, the Einstein of his day.

No one would ever know what to make of him. One of history's strangest figures, Newton was "the most fearful, cautious, and suspicious Temper that I ever knew," in the judgment of one contemporary. He would spend his life in secrecy and solitude and die, at eighty-four, a virgin. High-strung to the point of paranoia, he teetered always on the brink of madness. At least once he would fall over the brink.

In temperament Newton had little enough in common with the other men of the Royal Society. But all the early scientists shared a mental landscape. They all lived precariously between two worlds, the medieval one they had grown up in and a new one they had only glimpsed. These were brilliant, ambitious, confused, conflicted men. They believed in angels and alchemy and the devil, and and they believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws. they believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws.

In time they would fling open the gates to the modern world.

Chapter Two.

Satan's Claws Scientists in the 1600s had set out to find the eternal laws that govern the universe, but the world they lived in was marked by precariousness.2 Death struck often, and at random. "Any cold might be the forerunner of a terminal fever," one historian remarks, "and the simplest cut could lead to a fatal infection." Children died in droves, but no one was safe. Even for the n.o.bility, life expectancy was only about thirty. Adults in their twenties, thirties, and forties dropped dead out of the blue, leaving their families in desperation. Death struck often, and at random. "Any cold might be the forerunner of a terminal fever," one historian remarks, "and the simplest cut could lead to a fatal infection." Children died in droves, but no one was safe. Even for the n.o.bility, life expectancy was only about thirty. Adults in their twenties, thirties, and forties dropped dead out of the blue, leaving their families in desperation.

London was so disease-ridden that deaths outnumbered births; only the constant influx of newcomers disguised that melancholy fact. Medical knowledge was almost nonexistent, and doctors were more likely to harm their patients than to heal them. Those who fell ill could do little more than choose from a reeking cupboard of quack remedies. One treatment for gout called for "puppy boiled up with cuc.u.mber, rue and juniper." As late as 1699 the Royal Society was still debating the health benefits from "cows p.i.s.s drank to about a pint."

The main alternative was woeful resignation. "I have had the misfortune of losing my dear child Johney he died last week of a feaver," a woman named Sarah Smyter wrote in a letter in 1717. "It tis a great trouble to me but these misfortunes we must submit to."

The mighty had no better options than the lowly. Many times they were worse off, because they were more likely to face a doctor's attentions. When Charles II suffered a stroke in 1685, his doctors "tortured him," one historian later wrote, "like an Indian at a stake." First the royal physicians drained the king of two cups of blood. Next they administered an enema, a purgative, and a dose of sneezing powder. They drained another cup of blood, still to no effect. They rubbed an ointment of pigeon dung and powdered pearls onto the royal feet. They seared the king's shaved skull and bare feet with red-hot irons. Nothing helped, and the king fell into convulsions. Doctors prepared a potion whose princ.i.p.al ingredient was "forty drops of extract of human skull." After four days Charles died.

Two killers inspired more fear than any others. One was plague, the other fire. Both killed swiftly and in huge numbers, but in different manners. Plague leaped stealthily from victim to victim. Its mystery made for its horror. "For what is the cause that this pestilence is so greatly in one part of the land, and not another?" one panicky writer had asked during an earlier epidemic. "And in the same citie and towne why is it in one part, or in one house, and not in another? and in the same house, why is it upon one, and not upon all the rest?"

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Dance of the Skeletons (1493) (1493) Fire had scarcely any mystery about it. It terrified precisely because it killed spectacularly, mercilessly, and in plain view. In crowded, cramped cities built of wood and lit by flame, it was all but inevitable that somewhere a hot coal would fall from a stove or a furnace, or a candle would tumble against a curtain or onto a pile of straw. Once escaped, even a small fire could blaze up into an inferno that sped along like a leaping, crackling tsunami. Its desperate victims raced for their lives down one twisting alley after another, fleeing round this corner and down that street, trying to outrun a pursuer that grew ever more powerful as the chase continued.

The dread that these ancient enemies inspired never died away, for everyone knew that no lull could be counted on to last. Nor did anyone think of fire and plague as natural calamities, the way we think of earthquakes and volcanoes. The seventeenth century was G.o.d-fearing in the most literal sense. Natural disasters were divine messages, warnings to sinful mankind to change its ways lest an angry and impatient G.o.d unleash still further rounds of punishment. Even today insurance claims refer to earthquakes and floods as "acts of G.o.d." In the 1600s and long beyond, our ancestors invoked the same phrase, but they spoke of G.o.d's mysterious will with fright and cowering awe.

In that harsh age religion focused far more on d.a.m.nation than on consolation. For scientists and intellectuals pondering the course of the universe and for the common man as well, fear of G.o.d shaped every aspect of thought. To study the world was to ponder G.o.d's plan, and that was daunting work.

Today d.a.m.n d.a.m.n and and h.e.l.l h.e.l.l are the mildest of oaths, suitable responses to a stubbed toe or a spilled drink. For our forebears, the prospect of being d.a.m.ned to h.e.l.l was vivid and horrifying. "People lived in continual terror of what they were told awaited them after death," wrote the historian Morris Kline. "Priests and ministers affirmed that nearly everyone went to h.e.l.l after death, and described in greatest detail the hideous, unbearable tortures that awaited the eternally d.a.m.ned. Boiling brimstone and intense flames burned victims who, nevertheless, were not consumed but continued to suffer these unabating tortures. G.o.d was presented not as the savior but as the scourge of mankind, the power who had fas.h.i.+oned h.e.l.l and the tortures herein and who consigned people to it, confining His affection to only a small section of His flock. Christians were urged to spend their time meditating upon eternal d.a.m.nation in order to prepare themselves for life after death." are the mildest of oaths, suitable responses to a stubbed toe or a spilled drink. For our forebears, the prospect of being d.a.m.ned to h.e.l.l was vivid and horrifying. "People lived in continual terror of what they were told awaited them after death," wrote the historian Morris Kline. "Priests and ministers affirmed that nearly everyone went to h.e.l.l after death, and described in greatest detail the hideous, unbearable tortures that awaited the eternally d.a.m.ned. Boiling brimstone and intense flames burned victims who, nevertheless, were not consumed but continued to suffer these unabating tortures. G.o.d was presented not as the savior but as the scourge of mankind, the power who had fas.h.i.+oned h.e.l.l and the tortures herein and who consigned people to it, confining His affection to only a small section of His flock. Christians were urged to spend their time meditating upon eternal d.a.m.nation in order to prepare themselves for life after death."

G.o.d, who knew all the details of how the future would unroll, had decided already who would be saved and who punished. He would not be bartered with. Whether a person led a good life or a depraved one would do nothing to alter G.o.d's verdict; to say otherwise would imply that lowly man could direct all-powerful G.o.d.

A book called The Day of Doom The Day of Doom appeared in 1662, the same year the Royal Society received its formal charter, and explained such doctrines in verse. A huge success (it became the first best-seller in America), it dealt curtly with such matters as infants condemned to the flames of h.e.l.l: appeared in 1662, the same year the Royal Society received its formal charter, and explained such doctrines in verse. A huge success (it became the first best-seller in America), it dealt curtly with such matters as infants condemned to the flames of h.e.l.l: But get away without delayChrist pities not your cry:Depart to h.e.l.l, there may you yell,And roar eternally.

Children learned these poems by heart. Eventually such views would prove too grim to prevail, but they lasted well into the 1700s. Jonathan Edwards lambasted New England congregations with his most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry G.o.d," as late as 1741. "The G.o.d that holds you over the pit of h.e.l.l, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours."

This was standard doctrine. Wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d began with acknowledging His might in contrast with human puniness. "Those are my best days when I shake with fear," John Donne declared. Few sins were too small to bring down G.o.d's wrath and to stir up soul-wrenching guilt. At age nineteen, in that same Royal Society year of 1662, Isaac Newton compiled a list of the sins he had committed in his life thus far. The tally, supposedly complete, listed fifty-eight items. Thoughts and acts were jumbled together, the one as bad as the other. One or two entries catch the eye-"Threatening my father and mother Smith [i.e., Newton's mother and stepfather] to burne them and the house over them"-but nearly all the list is mundane. "Making a mousetrap on Thy day." "Punching my sister." "Using Wilford's towel to spare my owne." "Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese." "Making pies on Sunday night." These sins may strike us as minor and commonplace. In Newton's eyes, they were deeply shameful betrayals of himself and his G.o.d.

In this self-lacerating respect, at least, Newton was far from unique. The writer and theologian Isaac Watts, who would grow up to compose such hymns as "Joy to the World," first revealed his talent in an acrostic he composed as a young boy, in the late seventeenth century. It began: I am a vile polluted lump of earth am a vile polluted lump of earthSo I've continued ever since my birth,Although Jehovah grace does daily give me,As sure this monster Satan will deceive me,Come therefore, Lord, from Satan's claws relieve me.

A second verse spelled out similar thoughts for the name Watts.

Chapter Three.

The End of the World In the 1650s and '60s the long-simmering fear of G.o.d's wrath grew acute. Every Christian knew his Bible, and everyone knew that the Bible talked of a day of judgment. The question was not whether the world would end but how soon the end would come. The answer, it seemed, was very very soon. soon.

Almost no one believed in the idea of progress. (The very scientists whose discoveries would create the modern world did not believe in it.) On the contrary, the nearly universal belief was that the world had been falling apart since Adam and Eve were banished from Eden. Now, it seemed, the fall had accelerated. From high and low, in learned sermons and shrieking pamphlets, men pointed out the signs that the apocalypse was near.

At some moment, at any any moment, in one historian's summary, "The trumpet would sound, motion would cease, the moon turn to blood, the stars fall like withered leaves, and the earth would burn to the accompaniment of horrible thunders and lightnings." In the midst of this chaos, the dead would rise, and saint and sinner alike would receive a sentence that permitted no appeal and no pardon. In the minds of our ancestors, this was not rhetoric but fact. G.o.d had ordained it, and it would be so. moment, in one historian's summary, "The trumpet would sound, motion would cease, the moon turn to blood, the stars fall like withered leaves, and the earth would burn to the accompaniment of horrible thunders and lightnings." In the midst of this chaos, the dead would rise, and saint and sinner alike would receive a sentence that permitted no appeal and no pardon. In the minds of our ancestors, this was not rhetoric but fact. G.o.d had ordained it, and it would be so.

The debate about the timing of the end was intense and widespread. Today warnings that "the end is nigh!" are the stuff of television preachers and New Yorker New Yorker cartoons. In the seventeenth century this was urgent business. Deciphering biblical prophecies was as much a mainstream, high-stakes concern then as poring over stock market figures is now. Similar waves of fear had arisen before, for no clear reason, and then died down just as mysteriously. That was no consolation. "Books on the Second Coming were written by the score during this period," one eminent historian observes, "and members of the Royal Society were preoccupied with dating the event." They proceeded methodically, looking for hidden meanings in biblical texts or manipulating numbers cited in one sacred pa.s.sage or another. cartoons. In the seventeenth century this was urgent business. Deciphering biblical prophecies was as much a mainstream, high-stakes concern then as poring over stock market figures is now. Similar waves of fear had arisen before, for no clear reason, and then died down just as mysteriously. That was no consolation. "Books on the Second Coming were written by the score during this period," one eminent historian observes, "and members of the Royal Society were preoccupied with dating the event." They proceeded methodically, looking for hidden meanings in biblical texts or manipulating numbers cited in one sacred pa.s.sage or another.3 Many scholars and scientists pointed with alarm to a particular figure-1,260 years-that popped up at several different places in the Bible.4 At some point in the past, they believed, the clock had started ticking. Twelve hundred and sixty years from that moment, the world would end. The question that obsessed the most powerful minds of the Royal Society was, when had the countdown begun? One frequently cited date-400 At some point in the past, they believed, the clock had started ticking. Twelve hundred and sixty years from that moment, the world would end. The question that obsessed the most powerful minds of the Royal Society was, when had the countdown begun? One frequently cited date-400 A.D. A.D., a time of "great apostasy" when true Christianity had been subverted. It did not demand the mathematical talent of Isaac Newton to see that 1,260 years from 400 A.D. A.D. brought one to the year 1660. brought one to the year 1660.

Jesus himself had talked of the signs that would announce the final days. At the Mount of Olives the disciples had asked him, "What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?"

War and misery on Earth, Jesus had replied, and chaos in the heavens. "Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes." And then, after still more afflictions, "Shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven."

Now, both on Earth and in the heavens, danger signs abounded. Adulterers, blasphemers, and disbelievers had transformed London into a modern-day Babylon. Such carryings-on were nearly inevitable, for a long, dour Puritan interlude had only recently ended. Following Charles I's execution in 1649, theaters had been closed, celebrations of Christmas banned, dancing at weddings outlawed.

After the restoration of the monarchy, in 1660, the mood changed utterly, at court and throughout the nation. Charles I had been earnest, stubborn, hidebound. Charles II was witty and restless, always ready to play another set of tennis, gamble on another hand of cards, chase after yet another beauty. Life at court was notoriously indulgent, with everyone from the king on down "engaged in an endless game of s.e.xual musical chairs." (The "Merrie Monarch" kept mistresses by the score, but in these early years of his reign he observed a sort of fidelity, restricting himself to one mistress at a time.) For the wealthy and the well connected generally, the tone of the era was one of cynicism and self-indulgence.

Inevitably, many people ignored the prophets of doom or scoffed at their warnings and lamentations. But like distant sounds of shouting at a party, the signals of something amiss tainted the festive mood. G.o.d would not be mocked. In 1662, terrified onlookers in the English countryside reported that several women had given birth to monstrously deformed babies. At the same time a brilliant star had mysteriously appeared in the night sky. From Buckinghams.h.i.+re, in southern England, came reports that blood had rained from the sky. The heavens were all askew, just as Jesus had warned.

Then, in the fall of 1664, Europe and England saw a comet ablaze in the heavens. To the seventeenth-century mind, this was bad news. (The word disaster disaster comes from comes from dis dis, as in disgrace disgrace or or disfavor disfavor, and astrum astrum, Latin for star star or or comet. comet.) The sky, unlike the Earth, was a domain of order and harmony. Comets were ominous intruders, and they had been feared for millennia. "So horrible was it, so terrible, so great a fright did it engender in the populace," one eyewitness had written, about a comet in 1528, "that some died of fear; others fell sick... this comet was the color of blood; at its extremity we saw the shape of an arm holding a great sword as if about to strike us down. At the end of the blade there were three stars. On either side of the rays of this comet were seen great numbers of axes, knives, b.l.o.o.d.y swords, amongst which were a great number of hideous human faces, with beards and hair all awry."

Comets were cosmic warnings, signs of G.o.d's displeasure akin to lightning bolts but longer lasting. "The thick smoke of human sins, rising every day, every hour, every moment... [grow] gradually so thick as to form a comet," explained one follower of Martin Luther, "... which at last is kindled by the hot and fiery anger of the Supreme Heavenly Judge."

Unsettlingly, comets hung overhead for days before they disappeared. Where they went, or why, no one knew. Night after night, all one could do was check the sky to see if the dreaded visitor had appeared again and guess at what calamity it might foretell.

This newest comet refused to disappear. The fearsome sightings of 1664 persisted into November and then into December. On December 17, King Charles II and Queen Catherine waited late into the night to witness the spectacle for themselves. The public mood grew ever darker. In January, word came of an apparition near the comet-"a Coffin," floating in the sky, "which causes great anxiety of thought amongst the people."

An astrologer and member of the Royal Society, John Gadbury, warned that "this comet portends pestiferous and horrible winds and tempests." Another astrologer foresaw "a MORTALITY which will bring MANY to their Graves."

In March 1665, a second second comet appeared. comet appeared.

Closer to home, the natural world seemed just as unsettled. Rumors and omens started with worrisome sightings-clouds of flies swarmed inside houses; ants smothered the roads; frogs clogged the ditches-and grew ever more lurid. Like Egypt in ancient days, England had angered G.o.d. Even the well educated pa.s.sed along the latest news in horrified whispers, as frightened and fascinated as the most superst.i.tious countrymen. "A deformed monster" had been born in London, the Spanish amba.s.sador reported, "horrible in shape and color. Part of him was fiery red and part of him yellow. On his chest was a human face. He had the legs of a bull, the feet of a man, the tail of a wolf, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a goat, the shoulders of a camel, a long body and in place of a head a kind of tumor with the ears of a horse. Such monstrous prodigies are permitted by G.o.d to appear to mankind as harbingers of calamities."

The greatest scientists of the age, Isaac Newton chief among them, believed as fervently as everyone else that they lived in the shadow of the apocalypse. Every era lives with contradictions that it manages to ignore. The Greeks talked of justice and kept slaves. The Crusaders preached the gospel of the Prince of Peace and rode off to annihilate the infidels. The seventeenth century believed in a universe that ran like clockwork, entirely in accord with natural law, and also in a G.o.d who reached down into the world to perform miracles and punish sinners.

Many of the early scientists tended not to pay much heed to monsters and b.l.o.o.d.y rains, but they pored over their Bibles in an urgent quest to determine how much time remained. Robert Boyle, renowned today as the father of chemistry, studied the Bible not only in English but in Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldean, to ferret out hidden meanings. Newton himself owned some thirty Bibles in various translations and languages that he endlessly perused and compared one against another.

Every word in the Bible was meaningful, just as every twig and sparrow in the natural world offered up a clue to G.o.d's intent. The Bible was not a literary work to be interpreted according to one's taste, but a cipher with a single meaning that could be decoded by a meticulous and brilliant a.n.a.lyst. Newton devoted thousands of hours-as much time as he spent on the secrets of gravity or light-in looking for concealed messages in the dimensions of the Temple of Solomon and trying to match the prophecies in Revelation with the battles and revolutions of later days. "The fourth beast [in the book of Revelation]... was exceeding dreadful and terrible, and had great iron teeth, and devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet," wrote Newton, "and such was the Roman empire."

With nearly everyone in agreement that the end had drawn near, the debate turned to just how how the end would come. One faction maintained that the world would drown in a global flood, as it had in Noah's day; others held out for an all-consuming fire. The tide of fear rose ever higher as the ominous year 1666 appeared, because of the satanic a.s.sociations of the number 666. Fear turned to panic when plague swooped down on England in 1665, a year ahead of schedule, and death carts began spilling their cargo into ma.s.s graves. the end would come. One faction maintained that the world would drown in a global flood, as it had in Noah's day; others held out for an all-consuming fire. The tide of fear rose ever higher as the ominous year 1666 appeared, because of the satanic a.s.sociations of the number 666. Fear turned to panic when plague swooped down on England in 1665, a year ahead of schedule, and death carts began spilling their cargo into ma.s.s graves.

Chapter Four.

"When Spotted Death Ran Arm'd Through Every Street"

For a thousand years, whenever G.o.d lost patience with his creation, plague had swept across Europe. For a few hundred years, those waves of disease had taken on a fearsome rhythm, appearing and vanis.h.i.+ng at intervals of roughly ten or twenty years. In the deadliest a.s.sault, from 1347 through 1350, plague killed twenty million people. Somewhere between one-third and one-half of all Europeans died in that three-year span.

England's population crashed so far that it did not return to its pre-plague level for four centuries. In Florence the dead lay piled in pits "like cheese between layers of lasagna," in the words of one repelled, stunned observer. The survivors could do little more than gape at the devastation. "Oh happy posterity," wrote the Italian poet Petrarch, "who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable."

This was the bubonic plague, a disease spread to humans by fleas that had bitten infected rats, though no one would know that for centuries. Plague sputtered along between full-fledged outbursts, claiming a few lives almost every year but seldom flaring out of control. For decades in the mid-1600s England had been granted a respite. Plague had devastated one European city or another through those years, but since 1625 it had spared London.

No city lay beyond reach, though, for plague traveled with s.h.i.+ps, armies, and merchants-with any travelers who unknowingly brought rats and fleas with them. England had begun to grow rich in the seventeenth century, and much of its wealth was based on trade. From all over the world, s.h.i.+ps brought tea and coffee, silk and china, tobacco and sugar, to England's teeming ports. Europe, in the meantime, had spent the 1650s and '60s watching helplessly as plague moved across the continent. Italy and Spain had succ.u.mbed first, then Germany. In 1663 and 1664, plague devastated Holland.

In England, all was quiet-a single plague death in London at Christmas, 1664; another in February; two in April. On April 30, 1665, Samuel Pepys mentioned plague in his diary for the first time.5 Pepys was still young, just past thirty and newly embarked on a career as a Royal Navy bureaucrat. The diary that would one day become a world treasure was only a private diversion. Pepys's first reference to plague was brief, an afterthought following a cheery description of dinner and the state of his finances. He had gone through his account books and found, "with great joy," that he was richer than he had ever been in his life. Then a quick observation: "Great fears of the sicknesse here in the City, it being said that two or three houses are already shut up. G.o.d preserve us all." Pepys was still young, just past thirty and newly embarked on a career as a Royal Navy bureaucrat. The diary that would one day become a world treasure was only a private diversion. Pepys's first reference to plague was brief, an afterthought following a cheery description of dinner and the state of his finances. He had gone through his account books and found, "with great joy," that he was richer than he had ever been in his life. Then a quick observation: "Great fears of the sicknesse here in the City, it being said that two or three houses are already shut up. G.o.d preserve us all."

It is hard to read that first, ominous pa.s.sage without hearing a horror movie's minor chords in the background. In the face of the calamity that lay ahead, Pepys's mention of "two or three" tragedies would come to sound almost quaint.

Plague killed arbitrarily, agonizingly, and quickly. "A nimble executioner," in the words of one frightened observer, it could kill a healthy man overnight. No one knew the cause; no one knew a cure. All that was known was that plague somehow jumped from person to person. The sick fell and died, and the not-yet-infected cowered and waited.

The first symptom could be as innocuous as a sneeze (the custom of saying "Bless you!" when someone sneezes dates from this era). Fever and vomiting followed close behind. Next came "the surest Signes," in the words of one pamphlet from England's epidemic of 1625, an onslaught of blisters on the skin and swellings beneath it. Blue or purplish spots about the size of a penny appeared first. Shortly after, angry red sores flared up, "as if one did burne a hole with a hot iron." Then followed the dreaded black swellings that marked the end. They bulged out from the neck, armpits, or groin, sometimes "no bigger than a Nutmeg... but some as bigge as a Man's fist." Victims oozed blood from the tender lumps and moaned in pain.

Once plague had struck, doctors could provide no help beyond a soothing word. Authorities focused all their attention on safeguarding the healthy. Those who had fallen ill were forbidden to step out of their homes; hired guards stood watch to keep the prisoners from escaping. Food was supposedly left on the doorstep by "plague nurses," but they were as likely to rob their dying charges as to help them.

Many houses where plague had struck were nailed shut, with those inside left to die or not as fate decreed. (Thus Pepys's reference to "houses already shut up.") Some slum tenements held half a dozen captive families. The houses of the condemned carried a large cross, marked on the door in red chalk, to warn others to keep away. Scrawled near the cross were the forlorn words, "Lord have mercy upon us."