Alan Moore on William Blake's contempt for Newton | Royal Academy of Arts

As a major show of the revolutionary William Blake's work opens in Oxford, Alan Moore, the legendary comic book author, delights in the artist's subtle satire of Isaac Newton. It was during the Restoration, after the chaotic opening break of civil war where heads rather than polished balls were sunk in corner pockets, that the sport of billiards first became prominent and handed Isaac Newton a convenient metaphor on which to hang his laws of motion. This trick shot, predictably in a predictable and mechanistic universe, led to the table-clearing volley of acclaim cementing Newton’s godlike status, while enshrining his ideas as the sole rudder and the only sextant of the human mind in its ongoing expedition. In his later life, when having such a near-divinity both unemployed and unrewarded proved embarrassing, he was made Warden of the Mint. This posting, meant as no more than a sinecure, had not anticipated Newton’s post-apotheosis energies and drives. Within three years he’d overseen

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