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Science

Royal Society Finds Lost Newton Papers 267

Posted by Zonk from the it's-in-a-book-reading-rainbow dept.
Quirk writes "The Royal Society has a story on a Lost Newton manuscript rediscovered. From the article: 'The notes are written about alchemy, which some scientists in Newton's time believed to hold the secret for transforming base metals, such as lead, into the more precious metals of gold or silver...The notes reflect a part of Newton's life which he kept hidden from public scrutiny during his lifetime, in part because the making of gold or silver was a felony and had been since a law was passed by Henry IV in 1404.'"
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Royal Society Finds Lost Newton Papers More

Royal Society Finds Lost Newton Papers

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  • alchemy as an allegory (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 03, 2005 @02:25AM (#12972478)
    Alchemy is not so crude or base, it's an allegory for the purification of the soul. Transformation from human soul to the divine, base matter to gold. Only the ignorant and the greedy would pursue this craft solely for monetary rewards with singed hair, blasted retorts and noxious chemicals used in an unsafe fashion. They got what they deserved while true alchemists achieved something far more subtle and rewarding than is commonly accepted in our western, material society.
    • Links please... Please expand upon this.
      This is the most interesting description I've ever heard of alchemy.

      • Re:alchemy as an allegory (Score:5, Informative)

        by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @02:34AM (#12972513) Homepage Journal
        My guess is he's referring to G. Jung's works on the subject. Here's a couple of links:

        http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/57 05.html

        http://www.thezodiac.com/alchemy.htm

        • thanks to everyone for the very interesting links.
          I find this sort of reading to be very entertaining and very interesting.
          • "The notes reflect a part of Newton's life which he kept hidden from public scrutiny during his lifetime, in part because the making of gold or silver was a felony and had been since a law was passed by Henry IV in 1404."


            Am I reading too much into this or are geeks always into some sort of trouble ?

        • Re:alchemy as an allegory (Score:5, Interesting)

          by h4rm0ny ( 722443 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @04:01AM (#12972727) Journal

          If you want a narrative account that deals with Newton and the transition of alchemy to chemistry, you could do worse than Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. It's hardly authoratitive, but it is one of the most fantastic stories I've every read.

          • Oh, and also Neal Stephenson's novel Con-fusion.

            Right now the main character has just met with Netwon and they are discussing the disappearance of a certain volume of gold with certain special qualities. (Not to mention going into the conflict between Newton and Leibniz). Meanwhile the other protaganist in the story is making weapons - using 'alchemy' - in hindoostan out of urine.

            This is one of the more compelling novels I've picked up for years. Highly recommended.

            • Oh no. Plese tell me Stepheson won't now be writing a sequel!

              What I loved about the first volume was following the story of Newton and the Royal Society experiments and thought patterns. I'd never have thought a mostly fictional account of mostly failed experiments and meandering alchemists' thoughts could be so gripping. But everything else was so much padding and I gave up about a hundred pages into the second volume. If Stephenson wrote a biography of Newton, I'd probably devour it, though.
          • I'd advise against getting the audio book though. I bought that and had a very hard time keeping track of the personas. Large parts of the book was also just cut out. Totally frustrating.
        • Dude, you are thinking of C. Jung [wikipedia.org]. G. Jung [wikipedia.org] was a drug kingpin.
    • So we're calling religious dogma "alchemy" these days, I take it?

    • Re:alchemy as an allegory (Score:5, Informative)

      by drwho ( 4190 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @11:29AM (#12973727) Homepage Journal
      This is partly true, partly false. The modern view of alchemists is that they were nothing more than frauds and schemers trying to make gold from lead, and failing miserably. The reality is that alchemy is /was much more complex. To the alchemical mind, the forces of spirit and soul are not separate from the forces of the physical world. They believed in both spiritual and physical transformation. Looking at many old alchemical recipies, they were in fact rites of transformation of the mind first, having much in common with religious and magical ceremony. The best representation of this is the idea of The Philosopher's Stone, which is symbolic much like the Holy Grail (or the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch), but nonetheless it is also thought of by many as a physical object. Both of these may in fact be true.

      The alchemical tradition is really interesting to study. It has a lot of parallels to other spiritual belief systems, but like other systems became corrupted and gradually fell into disrepute but the middle of the seventeenth century.

  • Well (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 03, 2005 @02:26AM (#12972486)
    I dub thee, Newton, the Full Metal Alchemist.
    • Perhaps after the Fullmetal one arrived in our world, in his quest to reach the stars, he researched various forms of physics. Then published under the name Newton! it would work!!!

      As for me, a scientist, I can now say with complete sincerity if Newton is the Fullmetal one then "I for one welcome our new fullmetal overlord!"
      • The Fullmetal Alchemist was on a quest to revive his dead mother... The young brothers studied alchemy hard for years, got togheter all the components that were nessesary to build a human body. Well, not gonna ruin the story for those who haven't read it, but one lost some of his limbs, the other his whole body.

        To learn why he's called Fullmetal, read the manga.

  • Lead to Gold? No Problem! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday July 03, 2005 @02:28AM (#12972495) Homepage Journal
    The notes are written about alchemy, which some scientists in Newton's time believed to hold the secret for transforming base metals, such as lead, into the more precious metals of gold or silver

    *Ahem*

    Simply place the lead into the path of a strong neutron stream. Wait awhile. You should get some gold if you're patient. However, the gold will be highly radioactive and otherwise generally unsuitable for use. Given enough time, it will also turn back into lead.

    I read an interesting article once that suggested that alchemists had developed some of the earliest atomic piles. Apparently, many accounts of alchemists include information such as "they had a furnace straight from hell" and that they "suddenly developed lesions and died a few days later." Considering that radioactivity/atomic reactions were not understood until later, it is not a bad hypothesis that alchemists figured out that "warm rocks" such as pseudo-silver (radium) deposits might have special properties. If they piled enough up to create a critical mass, then they would have had a very interesting furnace.

    I wish I still had a link to that article. :-/

    • Re:Lead to Gold? No Problem! (Score:5, Funny)

      by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Sunday July 03, 2005 @02:35AM (#12972516) Journal
      Easier way to turn lead and radium into gold:
      * Throw away the lead.
      * Sell the radium.
      * Buy a shitload of gold with the proceeds.

    • Re:Lead to Gold? No Problem! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @02:39AM (#12972531) Homepage Journal
      A book I picked up in a used bookstore spoke to the supposed knowledge of 20th century alchemists. The Morning of the Magicians [amazon.com] is a fun read dealing to a large extent with Black Magic as practised in the Third Reich.
    • "Enough time" would be only a few minutes at the most, and usually less than a few seconds; the only long-lived isotope of gold is Au-195, which has a half-life of 186 days. Also, this particular isotope happens to also be the only one that cannot be created by neutron irradiation. It is instead created by electron capture, a process whereby an electron is combined with a proton in the nucleus, resulting in a neutron and a neutrino, the latter of which is ejected.

      So it would seem the very properties that
      • the only long-lived isotope of gold is Au-195, which has a half-life of 186 days
        WTF? If that were the case then all gold jewellery would disappear within ten years. There must be isotopes which are much longer-lived than that.
    • AKAImBatman: Simply place the lead into the path of a strong neutron stream. Wait awhile. You should get some gold if you're patient.
      Homer: That's good.
      AKAImBatman: However, the gold will be highly radioactive and otherwise generally unsuitable for use.
      Homer: That's bad.
      AKAImBatman: Given enough time, it will also turn back into lead.
      Homer: Uhhh
      AKAImBatman: That's OK!
      Homer: Can I go now?

  • Base metals into gold (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 03, 2005 @02:28AM (#12972496)
    He found greater success in his alternative research - scrap paper into gold. Just get a suitably famous person to scrawl nonsense onto the paper (some crap about alchemy should work) wait a few centuries and sell it for all the gold you can eat.

  • Orthodoxy in Science (Score:3, Insightful)

    by md81544 ( 619625 ) * on Sunday July 03, 2005 @02:29AM (#12972502) Homepage
    This prompts me to state something that I've wanted to say for quite a while. There's a large /. fraternity who will jump on anyone who proposes anything outside the current scientific orthodoxy. And yet here we are reminded that one of our foremost scientific forebears dabbled in a lot of stuff that, today, we see as rather esoteric (to be charitable). I think the reason he is seen as a giant of science is because he was not straightjacketed by orthodoxy. To quote Shakespeare:
    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

    • Re:Orthodoxy in Science (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CaptKilljoy ( 687808 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @02:37AM (#12972525)
      There's a large /. fraternity who will jump on anyone who proposes anything outside the current scientific orthodoxy. And yet here we are reminded that one of our foremost scientific forebears dabbled in a lot of stuff that, today, we see as rather esoteric (to be charitable).

      Unorthodoxy is science is fine, as long as the resulting discoveries are repeatable / provable.

      Pseudo-science is still pseudo-science, no matter how many fine minds have indulged in it.
      • Unorthodoxy is science is fine, as long as the resulting discoveries are repeatable / provable.

        And just how do you know which unorthodox things are repeatable and provable before investigating them? Supreme intuition? :)

        Many scientists today are comfortable sitting on the soulders of giants, but are afraid to jump off. The great leaps in history are made by those with the courage to try things without knowing beforehand whether or not they will work.

        • just how do you know which unorthodox things are repeatable and provable before investigating them?

          If you know before investigating it's not science, it's good guessing.

          Many scientists today are comfortable sitting on the soulders of giants, but are afraid to jump off.

          So what would you define as jumping off? Deciding that E != mc^2? That V/I doesn't equal R?

          Do you actually understand what the analogy you're straining actually means?

    • Re:Orthodoxy in Science (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @02:49AM (#12972550)
      No scientist has ever won a Nobel Prize by posting [AOL]Me Too![/AOL]

      Overthrowing orthodoxy is the career making Holy Grail of every scientist.

      All you have to do to collect your Nobel is . . .do it!

      Ah, there's the rub. There are these nasty things called "facts" in the way. You're not allowed to make up just any old shit and collect your prize (or chair).

      Neither was Newton. That's why we all know about the laws of motion, but the papers on alchemy were hidden.

      They didn't work.

      KFG

      • He certainly hoped it would prove otherwise, though. I remember hearing that back in the '70s they analysed a strand of Sir Newton's hair, only to find it contained a concentration of Mercury that was forty times higher than 'background exposure.'

      • Re:Orthodoxy in Science (Score:5, Interesting)

        by tloh ( 451585 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @03:51AM (#12972705)
        Well said!

        Quackery is more or less recognizable in any age. I feel obliged to contribute an addendum of particular relevence which sheds some light on how Newton's notes on alchemy were regarded before they were lost. The following is taken from the end of Chapter 22 in Martin Gardner's "Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?"

        When Newton's manuscripts on alchemy were sold in 1936 at a Sotheby auction, the economist John Maynard Keynes was the major buyer. In a brilliant speech on Newton, given at the Royal Society's Newton Tercentenary Celebration in 1947, Keynes spoke of having gone through some million of Newton's words on alchemy and found them "wholly devoid of scientific value." Newton's "deepest instincts were occult, esoteric - with a profound shrinking from the world - a rapt, consecrated, solitary perusing his studies by intense introspection, with a mental endurance perhaps never equaled."

        As for Newton's discoveries in mathematics and physics, Keynes believed they resulted less from experiments than from an incredible intuition. Later Newton would dress them up with formal demonstrations and proofs which had little to do with the insights that seemed to enter his head by sheer magic. Keynes put it this way:

        In the eighteenth century and since, Newton came to be thought of as the first and greatest of the modern age of scientists, a rationalist, one who taught us to think on the lines of cold and untinctured reason. I do not see him in this light. I do not think that anyone who has pored over the contents of that box which he packed up when he finally left Cambridge in 1696 and which, thought partly dispersed, have come down to us, can see him like that. Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. Isaac Newton, a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.

    • Alchemy was the chemistry of its day. There are plenty of ways that Newton overthrow the established views, but dabbling in alchemy would have been a fairly typical thing for a scientist of his day.
    • I know what you mean. I find it disturbing too -- those who are the Orthodox MIT type. You even mention the idea of cold fusion to this type and they'll start flipping out. They think that all cold fusion people are quacks, and won't waste their time by reading papers on it or trying any experiments themselves. Anything that Pons or Fleischman have touched is soiled.

      Bah...I say approach this stuff carefully but with an open mind.

    • Orthodoxy is required, to the first approximation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ccmay ( 116316 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @12:17PM (#12973962)
      I think the reason he is seen as a giant of science is because he was not straightjacketed by orthodoxy.

      There are different types of challenges to scientific orthodoxy. Though we are not omniscient, our understanding of the world advances ever closer to perfection. Some challengers to scientific orthodoxy are far more wrong than others.

      Asimov used the example of the shape of the earth, as understood over the centuries, to illustrate this:

      • The man who said the earth was a flat disc spinning in space was wrong, but not as wrong as the man who said it was the shell of a giant tortoise standing on elephants.
      • The man who said it was a sphere was wrong, but not as wrong as the flat-disc guy.
      • The man who said it was an oblate spheroid was wrong, but not as wrong as the fellow who said it was a sphere.
      • The man who said it was almost an oblate spheroid with a few little bulges here and there, and described them in a scientific paper wih measurements accurate to within a meter or so, is still wrong, but not as wrong as all who have gone before him.

      So Einstein's special relativity approximates to Newton's laws of motion when v is much less than c. The quantum model of the atom approximates to Bohr's model of the atom in every high school chemistry lab. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies to every mass, but is unmeasurably small except on the scale of electrons and photons and quarks.

      All the great challenges to scientific orthodoxy, for all their brilliance and insight, give results comparable to accepted orthodox wisdom except at the extremes of measurement. If someone makes a claim that does not fit this pattern, he can safely be dismissed as a crank or charlatan.

      Newton was a genius when it came to mathematics and physics, and a deluded fool when it came to chemistry. These are not mutually exclusive propositions.

      -ccm

  • Error 1404? (Score:3, Funny)

    by EnsilZah ( 575600 ) <.moc.liamG. .ta. .haZlisnE.> on Sunday July 03, 2005 @02:31AM (#12972507)
    Error 1404: Lead to gold transformation not found.

  • On second look (Score:4, Funny)

    by LandownEyes ( 838725 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @03:03AM (#12972591)
    Seems like these papers contain nothing more than plans on how to get a cockroach to navigate a room while perched atop a ping-pong ball. Oh, the progress we've made.

  • Not quite lead into gold... (Score:5, Funny)

    by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @03:08AM (#12972604)
    But I've turned bread into mold!

    Fear my awesome powers!

  • Lost??? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by otter42 ( 190544 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @03:09AM (#12972607) Homepage Journal
    As an American, I never understood how Europeans could just lose this kind of thing. You're always hearing about some lost Michelangelo sculpture emerging, or a late Beethoven piece being discovered, or a Rembrandt revealed underneath a clown. My question was always, "How???"

    Then I moved to France.

    If you've never been to Europe, it's difficult to explain the shear amount of art here. It hangs of walls in homes, sits in the middle of city squares, and looms of staircases inside public buildings. They've got it everywhere, and over time, and especially because of a much higher level of secrecy in private, everyday life, these things just get forgotten.

    It works like this: a grandmother knows that HER grandfather treasured a certain document and hid it away in a chest. She doesn't know what it was, as her grandfather never confided the secret to her, and when she passes away, her children find just another nameless ancient document in her affairs. They forget about it for generations, having no idea of its worth or origins.

    In another example, the Naitonal Archeological Museum of Naples, Italy has so much art and sculpture that they simply haven't cataloged it all yet. In the middle of the building is a gigantic courtyard that is replete with statues that have no name and are just wearing away in the rain and shine. No one knows where they came from, or who made them.

    Europe has just got so much of the stuff, hidden away as family heirlooms, in church vaults, or in plain sight in museums that they just can't analyze it all.

    Anyway, just my meager attempt to help my fellow Americans what people mean when they talk about "Old" Europe.

    • Re:Lost??? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by moonbender ( 547943 ) <moonbenderNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday July 03, 2005 @06:45AM (#12973045)
      For what it's worth, Newton died in 1727. Since then, there have been numerous wars, famines, political shifts and so on. When you're trying to survive, hanging on to crackpot theories by a historic VIP probably isn't your top priority. I don't think it's really due to secrecy (and I really can't echo your sentiments in that regard), but more due to different priorities in some stages of Europe's history that some art and manuscripts were lost or destroyed.

    • Re:Lost??? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by drwho ( 4190 )
      Also, don't forget about all the wars that Europe has had. Don't forget that what is considered notable today wasn't often though of as such at times in the past. Consider that, even today, certain documents and artifacts are even illegal to have copies of in some countries, and that most 'antiquities', when discovered in private posession, will be seized by the government. I am sure there is much privately held, and its value comprehended, that will not see by the public for many years. Just imagine what t

  • First slasdotter ever! (Score:5, Funny)

    by BlackMesaLabs ( 893043 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @03:24AM (#12972649)
    Found in his notes:
    1)Find lead
    2)Convert to gold
    3)Profit!!

  • Early spam? (Score:3, Funny)

    by duncanbojangles ( 787775 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @03:27AM (#12972656)
    From the article:
    "It is therefore no wonder that - in their advice lay before us the rule of nature in obtaining the great secret both for medicine & transmutation. And if I may have the liberty of expression give me leave to assert as my opinion that it is effectual in all the three kingdoms & from every species may be produced when the modus is rightly understood: only mineralls produce minerals & sic de calmis. But the hidden secret modus is Clissus Paracelsi wch is nothing else but the separation of the principles thris purification & reunion in a fusible & penetrating fixity."

    Is it just me, or does that snippet of manuscript read like spam to you guys?

  • Simple (Score:5, Funny)

    by asadsalm ( 647013 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @03:35AM (#12972669)
    Oh... you didn't know?

    You can make gold by a simple double decomposition reaction. You just need Copper and Aluminium:

    Cu + Al = Au + Cl

    :)
    • Only on slashdot will there be people who not only understand the joke, but laugh at it instead of want to hurl large objects in your direction.

      Be proud!

    • Dude, are you nuts? That formula produces toxic amounts of Chlorine gas!! Anyone fool enough to try to extract the gold from that mixture would have their lungs dissolve in their chest.

      Much safer is Pa + U = P + Au. Nothing dangerous about good old phosphorus, right?

  • Useful alchemy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mortiss ( 812218 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @03:38AM (#12972674)
    Alchemy while often laughed at has provided not only basis for chemistry it has lead to some practical discoveries. For example, discovery of porcelain in Europe is attributed to one of the court alchemists (forgot the name thou).

    Can anyone recall other discoveries, pioneered by alchemists ?

    Even now a days scientists in the lab often peroform semi-"silly" experiments (late at night) which are based on only partial understanding and hunch. Those often yield intersting results which warrant proper scinetific research.

    P.S.You would be surprised what sort of results you can get when you start throwing random synthetic peptides on the virus infected cells. :)
  • If he leveled up enough to get the +20 modifier for eating materials for effects. Alchemy has always been a favorite cross-class skill of mine too!

    I figure newton would love to play a CRPG. "Oh shit! That's totally my laws of physics... wait why is the beast clipping out of the world! My theories!"

  • Startling confession! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Zork the Almighty ( 599344 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @06:20AM (#12972990) Journal
    Apparently the theory of gravity was all just a hoax! Religious conservatives will be happy - it was after all "only a theory" and not real science, like intelligent design.

  • Lots of scientists were also quacks (Score:4, Interesting)

    by trime ( 733350 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @06:36AM (#12973028)
    Bill Bryson has some interesting examples in his book 'A Complete History of Nearly Everything'. Such as a noted geologist who published several rather long and dry but important papers about rock formation, but was convinced that given the right materials, he could make himself invisible.

    The discovery of matches arose from a scientist convinced that urine could be turned into gold (primarily due to the colour similarity). He had buckets of it in his basement, and eventually they evapourated to form a compound high in phosphor which would spontateously ignite. At one time this substance was so valuable they enlisted the entire Swedish (I think, some northern European) army to generate bucketloads of urine. It turned out to be worth 5x its weight in gold!

    Newton also did other experiments, such as staring at the sun until he couldn't bare the pain, to see what would happen; he once stuck a needle in his eyeball and moved it around. In both cases (amazingly) he suffered no long term damage, but did have to spend a long time inside after staring at the sun before his vision returned.

    Just because we (the unwashed masses) now 'understand' science, we have a different opinion of what now seems ludicrous in the past. Imagine what Newton would have thought of quantum mechanics (heck, I think it's quackery and I have a degree in physics!). Nature is weird and wonderful, and often the only way we can seperate fantasy from fantastic reality is through seemingly bizzare experimentation.
    • devising experiments which explore popularly held beliefs doesn't make them quacks. We still have that going on today, and even in the slashdot science section we see articles reporting the debunking of popular misconceptions that even our scientists hold. By the way, Newton DID hold to a quantum theory: he believed light was composed of particles.
  • If interested in this aspect of Newton's life, read the novel Dark Matter : The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton: A Novel [amazon.com] by Philip Kerr. It's a fictional murder mystery set in the Tower of London, during the turn of the 17th century, but the backdrop is set in fact. Newton lead the recoinage of the period and held a post in the tower and indeed was involved in alchemy as well as casting off the requisite religious beliefs of the day.

    A good read. You'll never think of Newton the same again.

    blakespo

  • Was that there wasn't much for a full on geek to get on with. Galileo Galilei was at least a genius instrument maker whose day job was challenging - but he had enough spare time to get into real trouble. Newton had all that brain and nothing much to think about, so he spent time going down dark alleys like Protestant biblical exegesis, numerology and alchemy while making major contributions in cosmology, physics and mathematics, and being a successful civil servant. If someone had been able to introduce him

  • are nuclear physicists liable ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dario_moreno ( 263767 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @09:57AM (#12973420) Journal
    In England laws from the middle ages are still in vigour (it is forbidden for instance to kill or wound a fairy). So I wonder if nuclear physicists are liable for having transmuted matter in nuclear reactors, like in the one around Oxford..

  • Also Found (Score:5, Funny)

    by FrankDrebin ( 238464 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @11:04AM (#12973638) Homepage

    Incantation 229

    Take the pod of durham and triticale, mill to fine white powder. Add bovine lactation, and yolk from flightless fowl. Reduce fruit of fig tree, fill earlier mixture and fire result for 15 minutes. Alas, it is not gold, but these Fig Newtons do sell rather well.

  • Illegal...not really (Score:3, Informative)

    by drwho ( 4190 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @11:19AM (#12973693) Homepage Journal
    According to C.J.S. Thompson in his book "The Lure and Romance of Alchemy" ) on page 140, he says that is was in 1414 that King Henry IV forbidding the use of the craft [alchemy] in efforts to multiply gold [Thompson says nothing about silver], and the penalty for contravening it was considerable. On the other hand, the practice of alchemy was legalized pursuant to letter patents, and various persons were granted permission or licences to carry on the art of transmuting metals."

    Is it likely that someone so notable as Newton, in such a prominent and respected organization as the Royal Society, would have had any trouble obtaining such a license from the king? I hardly think so. In fact, Newton did dabble in alchemy and was in contact with noted alchemists during his life.

    What is more likely is that, during the 17th century, alchemy had fallen into disrepute (especially after Ben Johnson's play "The Alchemist"), and that his alchemical interests were hidden (occulted?) by those who would hold Newton up as the achetype of the modern scientist, trying to break with the alchemical tradition.

    See my other comments to this story on what I think alchemy really is.

  • ...that Newton ended up running the Royal Mint? Neal Stephenson's amusing hypothesis, that Newton only ran the Mint in order to keep tabs on alchemical gold (see the Baroque Cycle books), is a lot more fun than the drudgery of reports like these [pierre-marteau.com] which were a staple of the job, if you can call manipulating the gold price as alchemy.

  • Newton at the beginning of the scientific method (Score:3, Interesting)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @01:05PM (#12974164)
    You have to remember that Newton was almost a founding member of the first scientific society (The Royal Philosophical Society) and first scientific journal (its letters and minutes). It was innovative that a bunch of scientists would read their results to each other, debate them, and reproduce or discredit them. In the past professionals could either be guild-like secretive or accept ideas without reproduceable proof.
    So Newtown was on the cusp. He was tardy disseminating his ideas, some which never made it out of his private writings.

  • was Newton an autistic numerologist? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Sunday July 03, 2005 @01:15PM (#12974219)
    One common thread with Newton's researches was his search for numerical patterns in all kinds of things whether it was the motion of heavenly bodies, chemical reactions, or Biblical chronologies. In his day the division between "kosher scientific" and psuedo-science subjects was not yet distinct.

    Newton was thought to have a mild case of autism called Aspegers. Many of these people are infatuated with numbers and patterns and music, e.g. the Rainmaker movie. whether the guy could do all sorts of "hard" calculations. These people also have difficulty in social situations, unable to read and deal with interpersonal emotion. Newton was an eccentric who had a hard time making any friends at all.
    • Newton was thought to have a mild case of autism called Aspegers.

      I'm not sure that could be determined at this point, but I do hear that he stuttered and had epilepsy, so it could be. I'm sure it's possible to be intelligent and be mostly normal/conventional/neurotypical in most other respects at the same time. But to achieve the things guys like Newton have achieved, the level of perseveration has to be such that they at least need to be OCD. I hear Thomas Edison didn't read until he was 12 -- had some l

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