Sir Isaac Newton, Alchemist 330
Hugh Pickens writes "Natalie Angier writes in The Hindu that it is now becoming clear that Newton spent thirty years of his life slaving over a furnace in search of the power to transmute one chemical element into another. Angier writes, 'How could the ultimate scientist have been seemingly hornswoggled by a totemic pseudoscience like alchemy, which in its commonest rendering is described as the desire to transform lead into gold?' Now new historical research describes how alchemy yielded a bounty of valuable spinoffs, including new drugs, brighter paints, stronger soaps and better booze. 'Alchemy was synonymous with chemistry,' says Dr. William Newman, 'and chemistry was much bigger than transmutation.' Newman adds that Newton's alchemical investigations helped yield one of his fundamental breakthroughs in physics: his discovery that white light is a mixture of colored rays that can be recombined with a lens. 'I would go so far as to say that alchemy was crucial to Newton's breakthroughs in optics,' says Newman. 'He's not just passing light through a prism — he's resynthesizing it.'"
Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Science is not a field of study it is the approach.
And lead CAN be turned into gold... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, it certainly isn't pseudoscience to turn elements into other elements. Nuclear reactions can do this, just not in large quantities. Their methods were incorrect, but the idea itself is not ridiculous.
Re:And lead CAN be turned into gold... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And lead CAN be turned into gold... (Score:5, Interesting)
This alchemist, he sought the truth, with an inkling that experiment would lead to proof. To get support from nobles and kings the alchemist spoke of untrue things. "I seek a way to form base lead into gold and an elixer that will keep you from every growing old." Popes and priests said truth comes from the bible, that silly games played in labs are just not reliable. The alchemist just smiled and gave them a nod, and told them that gold represents heaven and God. Upon hearing this the alchemist was found without guilt, for churches look so much better when covered with gilt.
What of the claims that life could be extended? And that the infirm would swiftly be mended? What of the claims of untold power? And of wealth unknown to all at that early hour? The philosopher's stone became much like an orange, for difficult to rhyme is the scientific method.
Re:Science (Score:5, Insightful)
"Science is not a field of study it is the approach."
I think one forgets that human beings start at near ground zero as well, it's easy after the fact to know things are errors then it is to know them during the time one lives. How many errors in science today will look just as bad as alchemy in the future?
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...
Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true. (Score:5, Funny)
Why are most scientists Catholic
What the fuck are you smoking?
Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true. (Score:5, Funny)
What the fuck are you smoking?
Some holy shit!
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From the contents of his post, I'd wager DMT.
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We need a "-1, Schizophrenic" moderation option.
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For now, it will cost you more than the gold is worth, but once energy becomes almost free...
...then gold and lead will be worth the same. Likely the value of lead will go up and the value of gold will go down in proportion to supply and demand of the respective elements.
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Actually, gold has more inherent worth than lead. Gold's not as likely to poison you. It's an excellent conductor. It doesn't oxidize and corrode to the same extent as other metals (lead doesn't either). Gold is highly reflective. It is more attractive to look at according to most people. It's (like lead) very malleable and ductile. It is even denser than lead, meaning that it would be preferable for shielding material if it was more affordable.
If energy were free, it's still not likely everyone would be ow
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Re:Science (Score:5, Insightful)
It's obvious because of the stability of lead that you won't be able to do it by chemical means (which is, I guess, often implied). However, with nuclear transmutation is definitely possible to change bismuth into lead and lead into gold. For now, it will cost you more than the gold is worth, but once energy becomes almost free..
It is obvious now after hundreds of years of rigorous theory and testing. In Newton's time, it wasn't clear whether some new, unknown chemical would turn lead into gold. We know now from atomic theory that lead and gold have different number of protons and simple chemical change would not convert one to another. Chemistry at the time was in its infancy. The law of conservation of matter wasn't stated by Antoine Lavoisier [wikipedia.org], which many historians consider the father of modern chemistry, until 1789 (some 60 years after Newton died). Even then Lavoisier proposed that heat was caused by a weightless fluid called caloric so he wasn't right about everything.
Re:Science (Score:5, Interesting)
Alchemy was only partially about the transmutation of actual metals. When it talks about turning "lead" into "gold" it is usually talking about a spiritual refinement, a transformation of the base animal aspects of humanity (lead) to a higher, more platonically pure state (gold). If you've read Anathem by Neal Stephenson, you'll find many ideas of science and math that are informed by this tradition. The notion that alchemy was about making gold misses the entire point. The transmutation of metals was as much about misdirecting the Grand Inquisitors as it was about making gold.
For a very interesting discussion of alchemy, I highly recommend the book Stairway to Heaven: Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the Art of Spiritual Transformation by the great historian Peter Levenda. It's also worth reading Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages as an entertaining overview to the philosophical aspects of alchemy.
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If you've read Anathem by Neal Stephenson, you'll find many ideas of science and math that are informed by this tradition.
Never, ever take a science fiction story or novel (let alone technothriller or any other genre) as the sole source for something technical or historical. Fiction writers make stuff up, and while some of us try to lean toward more technically accurate than not (and Stephenson's usually pretty good at this, although he'll occasionally slip in a howler), we're not above tweaking something
Re:Science (Score:5, Insightful)
GP was merely suggesting a fictional work as a more approachable introduction to some of the concepts. He did not say "Anathem is the ultimate technical and historical guide to Alchemy and Philosophy."
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But, you'll find that fiction is among the best sources when it comes to ideas and that was what I was talking about.
In Anathem, Stephenson captures very well the essence of what alchemy does, which is apply scientific principles to human spirituality (and vice versa). He covered some of the same ground in The Baroque Cycle.
Alchemists realized that science
Science (Score:5, Interesting)
Even in Newton's time, science hadn't really fully evolved. Certainly the methodological underpinnings were well on the way, but it was really another 50-100 years after Newton that we saw science blossom. Guys like Galileo and Newton stand on the threshold, and Newton took some big steps in the right direction, but there was still a lot of mumbo-jumbo out there, some of which persisted in some sciences into the late Victorian era (take Victorian racial "theory", for instance).
Re:Science (Score:5, Informative)
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it takes place during Newton's lifetime and Newton himself is one of the more major characters, along with Leibnitz and other less famous "natural philosophers."
Does it feature the infamous Newton vs Leibnitz Calculus Slap Fight?
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It's been a while since I read it, but I think I remember that being mentioned. Also, it includes a rough recipe for distilling white and/or red phosphorous from vats-worth of fermented pee -- whoohoo!
Cheers,
Re:Science (Score:5, Informative)
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Also, don't give up reading the trilogy! It gets better and a lot of the pieces don'
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A while back (June 5 2009) Tom Levenson was talking about his book, "Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist," on Science Friday http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105012144 [npr.org]. A caller asked the Levenson about Stephenson's work. Levenson said that the Newton's voice was so plausible that he had stopped reading them until he had finished his own book.
Very interesting to note. I had been wondering about that part of the story.
Also, don't give up reading the trilogy! It gets better and a lot of the pieces don't come together until the final book.
Absolutely!. I am at the last 100 pages right now and it surely does not lose steam. Nor punk. (OK, I'll stop now)
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Hmm, I actually thought the third book was a huge let-down. I still love the trilogy (I mean "cycle") as a whole, though.
Re:Science (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why Galileo and Newton are still scientists, even though there was a lot they didn't know. They ran experiments, and looked at what really happened, instead of debating based on what someone said a thousand years before. In Newton's alchemy, he was still experimenting to see what could be done, not writing long dissertations without ever turning on a burner. Seriously, that's what people did before science: before the idea of basing things on evidence.
Nullius in Verba, "On the words of no man," this is what science is; if a man is not backed up by evidence, his words are useless.
Re:Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that even proponents of string theories admit that there's no evidence for it currently, and that it will be some time before we can even create the technology to indirectly test for these theories. As much as anything else, science is defined by how cautiously it approaches theories like super strings, brane theory, and so forth. They're intriguing ideas that physicists will be the first to state may explain the universe, or may just be delightful mathematical models that have nothing to do with reality.
The scientific method came into existence because of guys like Galileo and Newton, but the full genesis of methodological naturalism really wasn't until the end of the 18th century. I won't say that Newton weren't scientists within the framework of natural philosophy, but as far as being modern scientists like Darwin and Maxwell, they still weren't quite there.
Re:Science (Score:5, Insightful)
I won't say that Newton weren't scientists within the framework of natural philosophy, but as far as being modern scientists like Darwin and Maxwell, they still weren't quite there.
It would be interesting if you explained why you consider Darwin to be more of a scientist than Galileo.
Re:Science (Score:5, Interesting)
That's easy, Galileo first submitted his papers to a non-peer reviewed journal (The only 'peer' review available at the time being within the Roman Catholic church, which was going through a stuffy phase at the time). Galileo self published in the popular press ahead of such review (A definite no-no for a working scientist). Darwin went through a (admittedly a bit rudimentary by modern standards) peer-review process (that correspondence with Wallace and others).
I'm only half being tongue in cheek with this. Darwin used parts of the scientific method that were simply unknown in Galileo's time. For example, Darwin described a number of ways to falsify his theory, one of them being: "It being admitted that, if it were ever shown that the mechanisms of heredity allow unlimited blending, the entire proposal would become of no account". Darwin was more fully a scientist simply in the sense that he thought more about identifying what alternate explanations he considered and their implications, and how to test them. His work sustained more modern science (Crick and Watson's Noble for the discovery of the DNA coding mechanism was awarded in part because they had demonstrated that the genetic code the way it was implemented in real organisms didn't allow unlimited blending and so their research led inexorably to testing a never fully verified consequence of the theory of natural selection. Showing that a specific code that didn't support blending was the one nature actually used finished the process of putting Natural Selection on a solid footing that Mendel only started.). I'm not sure if there are any predictions made by Galileo that were unverifiable at the time but eventually proved to be more and more testable, so that generations of other scientists kept coming back to them, but I can't think of any.
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Re:Science (Score:4, Interesting)
The chief difference is that we have developed ways of at least separating legitimate areas of research from quackery. Homeopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists and the whole long litany of frauds and whackos certainly can gain some traction with the general public, but you won't exactly find them publishing in peer-reviewed journals. And even when you get the odd crackpot like Andrew Wakefield (well, more than likely he's a con-artist, but you get the point) who does manage to get past the gates, it doesn't last forever. In the case of the MMR-autism scam, the fault seems to have been in having the balls to just come out and declare the whole thing a fraud, but maybe in Britain, with its nutty libel laws, the Lancet had to be a bit more careful.
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Careful. Chiropractors don't like being discredited.
Re:Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Offtopic:
You mentioned chiropractors in your list of frauds. I was always under the impression that all chiropractors do is pop your joins back to how they supposed to be after you been an idiot by sitting in that uncomfortable chair for several days. Nothing more.
Is there some mystical part to the field being pushed that I am not aware of? Do they claim to do more besides physical task of setting your bones straight?
Re:Science (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, to put it mildly [wikipedia.org]
The core concept of chiropractic, vertebral subluxation, is not based on sound science. Research has not demonstrated that spinal manipulation, the main treatment method employed by all chiropractors, is effective for any medical condition, with the possible exception of treatment for back pain
Re:Science (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee, it's pretty clear to me that when an MD or a DO puts someone in traction for neck or back issues or sciatica, they are manipulating the spine. It's pretty clear to me that anti-inflammatory pills and muscle relaxants stopping spasms in the muscles of the neck, back, chest, groin, and buttocks work the same when an MD, DO, or chiropractor recommends them.
My MDs, DOs, and my chiropractors all recommended either pilates or yoga for helping keep the back in shape. They all told me that ice is good, massage is good unless there's a particular injury, and that a temporary heel lift could help with sciatica.
Both my MD at the time and my chiropractor at the time wanted to wait the exact same amount of time for me to have any adjustments or massage therapy for my neck after a car accident, and both recommended the same treatments for it once the inflammation in the joints had settled down except for one part: the MD wanted me on ibuprofen for the inflammation and Valium for the muscle spasms in the meantime, while the chiropractor wanted me on the ibuprofen for inflammation and some mineral supplements which are widely regarded as useful for helping with muscle spasms.
Now, I'm not saying all chiropractors are great people and that there's no quackery in the field. It's been my experience, though, that a reputable chiropractor will tell you up front when you can be helped and when you should go to an MD or DO instead.
Re:Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh huh, you lucked out - a good chiropractor is basically a physical therapist without that accreditation, or an actual physical therapist going by another name for some reason. It doesn't really matter that the fundamental chiropractic theory is complete and utter unsubstantiated bullshit equivalent to Chi or ghost stories; if the treatment works, after all, it works (though I and I'm sure many other people have philosophical objections to that, it's hard to come up with pragmatic ones).
Unfortunately, not all chiropractors are as good as yours, and not all people who go to chiropractors are as lucky as you. There's definitely bad chiropractors out there, who say that their manipulations can cure literally everything. I mean, don't you remember the three or four Slashdot articles about the British Chiropractor Association suing Simon Singh for libel [slashdot.org]? They sued him because he said that a lot of their claims were bogus (literally, they sued him for using that word), and they eventually dropped the case because the claims are bogus.
Here's the problem, though: you can't tell which kind it will be before you go to them. Sure, you can look up reviews and ask your friends, but that is pretty meaningless; unless your friends are trained medical professionals, they're not really going to have a good idea of whether or not the chiropractor knows wtf they're doing. If you were designing a house, you wouldn't just find a random architect on Yelp - you'd make sure you found one who had a good reputation and was a licensed architect. The problem with chiropractors, though, is that there's very little if any regulation on who can call themselves a chiropractor, and there's almost no educational requirements; Joe Random off the street can basically just decide he's a chiropractor one day and open up shop, which is not how it works for the MD you so casually disregard.
"Fine," you say, "it doesn't really matter! From a pragmatic standpoint, they're not really hurting anyone, right? Either they cure you, or they send you off to a real doctor who does." Unfortunately, it often doesn't work like that; in terms of actual medical problems, the time a chiropractor spends trying to fix you by adjusting your sublaxations and crackin' your bones is time that's wasted unless you actually had certain classes of muscular or skeletal problem. If you had, say, severe joint pain and spent a couple of weeks going to a chiropractor instead of going to a doctor, the chiropractor might not even know to look for lupus. In the worst cases, unethical chiropractors might refrain from referring a patient with problems they can't handle to a doctor, simply because there's really no standards of conduct for them.
And even then, the contention that what they can only harm you by delaying treatment might not even be true! It's been argued (quite convincingly, I think) that certain kinds of chiropractic manipulations on the neck can cause stroke. [quackwatch.com]
So yeah, it boils down to this: the actual art chiropractors practice (i.e, chiropractic) is a sham and a scam with absolutely no medical backing. Though there are actual chiropractors that know enough to heal you out there, there is no way of guaranteeing that any specific chiropractor won't try to adjust your neck and potentially give you a stroke, or give you bad advice that doesn't work, or string you along and delay effective treatment.
If you don't believe me, check your chiropractor's website or pamphlets - if they're in the USA, I bet you anything that they have something like the Quack Miranda Warning [rationalwiki.org] somewhere in there. And if they don't, they're not just a chiropractor - they almost certainly have some sort of real medical certification, which means that they don'
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I didn't get a diagnosis from the chiropractor. I got a diagnosis from an MD (an orthopedist in one case) who sent me to a chiropractor. The MD asked which school of chiropractic he went to and which state he was licensed in before he'd let me settle on which chiropractor to go to.
Some of them actually study things like kinesiology and tell you never to have anyone adjust your spine without x-rays telling them what is actually wrong. Some of them actually claim only to be able to help with the spine being
Re:Science (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. Chiropractic was originally a semi-mystical practice like a lot of pre-scientific medicine. The founders claimed that all sickness was caused by misalignment of the joints, so they could cure any disease by correcting the misalignments. A minority of chiropractors today still make those claims. They also oppose a lot of other modern scientific medicine, including vaccination.
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I think you're talking about Osteopaths.
Chiropractics is not regulated to the same extent (in the UK at least) and reeks of quackery and pseudoscience. Osteopaths fix your bones, chiropractors believe they can fix pretty much anything by popping your bones around.
scientism vs. belief (Score:2)
Some people are mentally wedded to a certain philosophical overview, and reject technology which use different philosophical overviews a-priori [merriam-webster.com].
The person you responded to has deduced that there is no merit whatsoever to chiropractic or accupuncture or homeopathy based on his experiences. Others have different experiences, and find value (some
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The chiropractor in the small town I live in used to have pamphlets around the office explaining how depression, the flu, and acne are caused by spinal misalignment. I'm guessing they aren't printed just for him.
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Re:Science (Score:5, Funny)
We're talking about Newton here. Why did you have to go and bring Economists into it?
Re:Science (Score:4, Interesting)
Newton was Master of the Mint for a quarter of a century.
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...homeopathy or magical crystals or other new age clapp trap...
Most homeopathy and new age healing methods don't actually make scientific claims (in part because they can't), they're spiritual endeavors that depend to a great degree on the belief of the "patient." If you put your "faith" in science and hard data, then, yeah, avoid new age healing. But there's nothing wrong with spiritual fulfillment and/or the placebo effect.
Yeah, there are frauds out there who claim they can cure cancer with magic charms, and that's dangerous. But most new agey healers deal with t
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From what I can tell new age healing systems do indeed make claims, and if you're going to make claims about physical phenomena then those claims can be tested. This is why the Brits are gearing up to stop taxpayers paying for all the alternative therapies. Want to throw your money at a witchdoctor in a lab coat, be my guest, just don't do it on the public's dime.
Re:Science (Score:4, Insightful)
Selling people lies is always wrong. You can dress it up in "spirituality" and "faith" and whatever other nonsense is currently popular in your society, but you can't change the fact that you're taking money from people by lying to them. The fact that you're also helping spread ignorance only adds insult to injury.
Re:Science (Score:4, Insightful)
The new age healers I've known are 1) nice people who want to help you, and 2) honest about what they can and can't do.
Don't forget that many people voluntarily give money to their church every sunday, and are happy to do so, and feel that it's the right thing to do. You could call that "taking money from people by lying to them," but you're ignoring that people are getting spiritual fulfillment and moral satisfaction from it. It's the same thing with spiritual healing. A lot of people do feel better afterwords, and in fact feel better served by spiritual healing than from whatever treatment a doctor gives them. Bear in mind that I'm talking about treatment for things like chronic pain and headaches, not cancer or infectious diseases.
Re:Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget that many people voluntarily give money to their church every sunday, and are happy to do so, and feel that it's the right thing to do. You could call that "taking money from people by lying to them," ....
And I do. Many people, likewise, voluntarily give their entire life savings to the Church of Scientology, or give their 13-year-old-daughters to the head of their cult. Saying that people do it "willingly" is meaningless when the problem at hand is that people are being manipulated and lied to.
Re:Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Most churches don't claim that giving money to them will bring you health or good fortune. They are asking for money for running costs and charity without any promise of a return. Making such promises - selling indulgences - was one of the abuses that launched Protestantism, you know.
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The Middle Ages called and want their sterotype back.
Seriously, I'm not even religious, but that is a pretty inaccurate view of most moder
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Don't forget that there's a strong thread in most forms of Christianity that being a generally good, charitable person who helps do God's work makes you more likely to be accepted into heaven rather than being damned to a rather unpleasant eternity spent in hell. This turns "just asking for charity" into "extracting money with (vague, ill-defined) menaces" in my book.
Disclaimer: I'm an atheist.
Most forms of Christianity teach that faith in Jesus is the way to salvation, not charitable works.
However, if you'
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Homeopathy does not operate that way. It makes claims about curing illness with like-like interactions, it makes claims about the alleged memory of water, it makes claims that the further something is diluted the more powerful it is. Homeopathists are frequently quoted in news articles saying things like "science just doesn't understand the mechanisms yet"
It's snake oil, through and through.
An assumption based on lack of evidence (Score:2, Insightful)
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And there's no such thing as Moped Jesus, either.
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And if both did exist, I-50 would likely pass mostly through portions of the country that take their late news at 10 or 12, based on where I-44 and I-64 run. Although I guess it could run all the way from Bakersfield, CA to Richmond, VA someday. :-)
The Alchemists (Score:2, Interesting)
Most people are unaware that the alchemists created a fairly accurate periodic chart of the elements before the science of chemistry took over. Obviously they did not know about the more exotic nuclear elements which are still being discovered from time to time.
Re: The Alchemists (Score:5, Informative)
No they didn't - they started off with the four elements of air, earth, fire and water. Then they realised that there were maybe a score of "elements" (even the concept was vague), and there was no systematic organisation or predictive value from it. This took a few hundred years. Most importantly they did not realise the that properties of the elements repeat themselves (which is where the concept of the periodic part of the name comes from).
The comment that they created a "fairly accurate periodic chart" is risible.
Re: The Alchemists (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is that while the alchemists' conception of the element was not very good, a truly better concept didn't really arise until the 20th century. Nobody seriously challenges quantum mechanics now, but it's easy to forget just how recent this understanding was really arrived at.
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Ladyboyarium springs to mind, with its unexpected extra Boson.
It is *now* becoming clear? (Score:5, Interesting)
This has literally been known .. well, since Newton. Hardly a secret he spent more time on alchemy than on what's subsequently been regarded as real science.
Many 'scientists' before science-as-we-know it dabbled in pseudoscience and nonsense, e.g. Kepler did astrology as well as astronomy.
Newton heralded the modern age of science, but he _wasn't_ the first scientist in the modern sense, he was 'the last magician', as James Gleick put it.
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Exactly. I remember reading about this when I was in high school, which is over 20 years ago.
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Nope. Pseudo-science is basically claims that use science-like nomenclature to make BS sound like it's supported by science. Intelligent Design is an example of pseudoscience.
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If it's BS then prove that it's BS. (Hint: you can't disprove anything based on lack of evidence. You can only say it's not likely and is unsupported.)
I really hate how so many people are anti-supernatural, anti-deity, anti-religious, and ridicule anyone who has any inkling there might be some purpose to life, yet they blindly claim that because there is no proof that there is disproof.
You really should understand the logic of proof before calling yourself a scientist. Just because you can see no reason to
His Alchemist Title (Score:4, Interesting)
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Didn't realise this wasn't widely known (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, Bill Bryson talks about it at some length in his eminently readable Short History Of Nearly Everything. As well as being into alchemy, he "spent endless hours studying the floor plan of the lost temple of King Solomon in Jerusalem (teaching himself Hebrew in the process, the better to scan original texts) in the belief that it held mathematical clues to the second coming of Christ and the end of the world."
Bryson also reports that John Maynard Keynes bought a load of his papers at auction, only to find that the great majority of them were about alchemy, rather than optics or astronomy.
Re:Didn't realise this wasn't widely known (Score:4, Informative)
It is widely known, but everyone except the /. editors.
Re:Didn't realise this wasn't widely known (Score:4, Informative)
More than mathematics or alchemy or anything else, he greatest love was theology. He spend more time writing about religion than any other subject. He was a non-Trinitarian Christian, probably Arian [wikipedia.org] in his theology, a position I'm somewhat sympathetic to. He had to keep this quiet during his life... there were serious consequences in Britain at the time for dissenting from Anglican doctrine... but he wrote effusively on religion and professed his deep love and awe for God and his works. Newton wouldn't be very sympathetic to Stephen Hawking's "no need for a God" reasoning:
"
Although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the Universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, "Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."
Modern scientists would largely consider his beliefs an embarrassment, but I admire the man a great deal. He was the very picture of a full life, mentally, physically, and spiritually. He accomplished more and blazed more trails than most of us will ever dream of doing. He was a polymath that did everything from improving the state of telescopes to serving in Parliament.
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I don't see why his beliefs would be an embarrassment at all. A little cognitive dissonance doesn't discount his science unless it distorts his method and findings.
Not news... (Score:4, Informative)
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Yup, that was my first reaction too. I think people often say 'not news' too quickly... But maybe they're all right.
Covered before... (Score:4, Interesting)
Only he presented his findings in a far more entertaining way via The Baroque Cycle books.
Interesting biographical resource - (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Interesting biographical resource - (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing wrong with seeking physical proof for even astrology. The only problem is when you ignore the evidence that shows it's useless.
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More than a physicist... (Score:5, Informative)
If I recall, according to his assistant's writings, the night that Newton gave his final edition of The Principia to the messenger to go out for printing, he immediately went back into his lab and fired up his alchemy furnace. Alchemy was one of his passions, and he was sincerely attempting to discover the philosopher's stone, and even an "elixir of life". Sounds silly now, but chemistry was so young at that time, nobody knew its potential. He was also passionate about biblical passages. He thought that one could extract important scientific information from the bible, ancient texts and architecture, allowing him to predict the apocalypse and other "insights". Supposedly he wrote more about this than science (in fact I remember hearing 90% was on the occult, 10% "scientific. No reference for that, though).
The wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] is actually pretty insightful.
If you ever have a chance to read even a chapter or two of The Principia, you should. It's an amazingly different perspective on what we now know as "Newtonian Mechanics". Geometry was clearly the tool of scientists as the time...
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Geometry was clearly the tool of scientists as the time...
You nailed it just there... Even relatively modern works, such as those of Gibbs on thermodynamics, much derivation and calculation is based on geometry.
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Geometry was clearly the tool of scientists as the time...
Yes. Descartes had only introduced analytic geometry about a generation prior and Euclid had been around for 2000 years. Hardly surprising, given that. (Annoying as sin, though, I will say that.)
He was also passionate about biblical passages. He thought that one could extract important scientific information from the bible, ancient texts and architecture, allowing him to predict the apocalypse and other "insights".
I have biography of Newton on my desk at work that suggests that he was just the opposite: firmly non-Christian, but he couldn't say anything because he was a professor at Cambridge (which usually required being clergy) and society was not friendly to non-Christians.
And in the end he was right (Score:5, Insightful)
You can transmute one element to another. It's called nuclear chemistry.
A bit harsh (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no civilization as we know it without currency. If people start debasing the currency, they are robbing from the rest of the populace - everyone has to work that bit harder to support them. Make enough to never have to work again, and you have effectively caused the rest of the society to chip in a lifetime worth of slavery just so you can sit on your ass. The crime is not really any different to counterfeiting, and every country takes that very seriously for that reason. So meh.
Newton may or may not have been personable, but it is difficult to argue that he contributed far more to the world than he took from it, and from that perspective he was one of the nicest guys to have ever lived.
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IIRC, he was a fairly prickly character, that's what I was referring to more than anything with the comment about him not being personable. And I suspect that Ratner was understating things when he talked about "trying" to scrape gold off coins. I'd be willing to bet that they did more than "try".
We are also judging Newton from our 21st century s
Re:A bit harsh (Score:4, Insightful)
If some accountant is calling themselves an engineer, then maybe follow it up with their head on a pike as a warning. MSCE was supposed to be the ridiculous thick edge of the wedge.
Unacceptable. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am getting very tired of "researchers" making claims with unpublished data that cannot be verified for accuracy (Gliese 581 g possibly a hoax [slashdot.org]), making 'groundbreaking' claims about history without even considering historical context (this and about 50% of similar posts on
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"Lo, for had we but lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have gone with them into astrology/nomy and alchemy and phlogiston chemistry..."
History is one of science's best safeguards; it ensures at least a measure of humility and humanity.
Hindu in, NYT out (Score:2, Insightful)
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It only sounds weird from today's point of view... (Score:4, Insightful)
So from that point of view, there's absolutely nothing wrong with Newton trying to "cook" some chemical elements seeking for new insights.
Causation does not equal ... the perfect cover! (Score:2)
Lets see - a person surrounded by intolerant people who's main focus in life is money... So "saying" you were doing all these "weird" experiments (to produce gold from a worthless substance) would be the perfect cover for carrying out studies that might be looked at as heresy. Just as someone who knows nothing about programming sees you code and, maybe, lets say a vision of a malicious hacker comes into their mind - you are demonized. Th
A couple of things... (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of things:
1. Alchemy has little to do with chemistry. It's about the purification of the soul through repeated heatings and coolings, and as Newton was learning Hebrew, I'd guess he'd probably figured out some of the fundamentals in play re Gnostic Christianity and similar. "Lead into Gold" is a metaphor, as was much else about alchemy. But I don't know much about Newton, so whatever. Maybe he really was trying to generate a money mill.
2. Not knowing something isn't a crime. Exploration of ideas and the world should never be punished if the person searching is doing so out of an honest desire to learn and isn't hurting anybody in the process. People are far too hard on each other for being ignorant, and too defensive when their ignorance is pointed out. Learning shouldn't be a punishable offense.
-FL
Re:A couple of things... (Score:4, Interesting)
Alchemy has little to do with chemistry. It's about the purification of the soul through repeated heatings and coolings, and as Newton was learning Hebrew, I'd guess he'd probably figured out some of the fundamentals in play re Gnostic Christianity and similar. "Lead into Gold" is a metaphor, as was much else about alchemy.
That is indeed one branch of traditional alchemy, but a lot of alchemists were very serious about transmuting literal lead into literal gold. Once you get used to the jargon, it's fairly easy to separate the texts of one branch from those of the other. (There's a third strand in alchemical writings: lofty-sounding gobbledygook cranked out and sold to turn an easy profit, much like the get-rich-quick TV infomercials and spam of the present day. Theophrastus Paracelsus was one of those, complete with miracle cures for all that ails you and an extra helping of the-Lord-works-in-mysterious-ways if it didn't work.) It's worth noting that the less-than-noble physical alchemists, denounced as "puffers" by the spiritual alchemists, were the ones that stumbled their way into the beginnings of modern chemistry.
As for the Gnostics, they were largely unknown in Newton's time, having been completely suppressed more than a thousand years before his time. The rediscovery of the Gnostics by the lay public came later. In any case, Hebrew would not have helped Newton understand the Gnostics: all their writings were in Greek, just like the rest of early Christian writings before the rise of the church in Rome. Newton may have been influenced by Christianized versions of the Kabbalah that were much admired by alchemists and other occultists in the early modern period, but that's just speculation, as documentary evidence is lacking.
Yellow journalism (Score:4, Informative)
How could the ultimate scientist have been seemingly hornswoggled by a totemic pseudoscience like alchemy [...]
There's an amazing amount of sensationalism and cluelessness tightly packed in that one clause.
First of all, Newton was hardly "the ultimate scientist". He was a very good scientist and a brilliant mathematician, but his achievements and fame have a lot to do with being one of the first modern scientists. He wasn't the only early scientist working on the problems of optics or, for that matter, gravity, and Leibniz developed calculus independently around the same time. Had Newton decided to go into alchemy full-time, someone else would have discovered the same things before long. Calling him the ultimate scientist is just pseudo-journalistic puffery.
And secondly, alchemy wasn't obvious bullshit when Newton was working on it. It's only obviously bullshit now that we have an understanding of real chemistry and -- even more recently -- nuclear physics. More to the point, one of the most important bullshit detectors in the arsenal of science is modern statistics, which rests upon a foundation of calculus, which Newton (along with Leibniz) invented! To stand today on the shoulders of Newton and complain about his lack of perspective pushes the outer limits of irony.
this is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
alchemy is laughable, in 2010
alchemy is respectable, in 1710
what exactly is the point of applying 2010 standards to 1710?
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It's true that things tend to happen in a continuum. Still, the Principia stands out even in a quick run through of recorded history as one of the greatest achievements of the human mind. Newton certainly stood on the shoulders of his own giants, but that is definitely a moment in time in which our entire view of the Universe changed in fundamental ways. Yes, Copernicus, Galileo and Leibniz, among others, pointed the way, but there's an incredible gravity (pun intended) to the publishing of the Principia
Re:Human experience is not quantized (Score:5, Interesting)
I found it kinda sad when I went to see his grave at Wesminster Abbey, I asked one of the attendents where Newton's grave was and he said "Ahhh, a Davinci code fan, eh?", I replied a little indignantly - "No, I'm a Newton fan".
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stuck pins in his eyes to investigate the nature of light,
Wow, seriously? I have more respect for the guy than ever, that takes serious guts; I have trouble even touching my eyeball.
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