Slashdot Mirror
Royal Society Finds Lost Newton Papers
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.'"
My favorite scientist, lead into gold.
Only Einstein.
---- Berlin Brown http://www.newspiritcompany.
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.
I dub thee, Newton, the Full Metal Alchemist.
...and working at the US Justice Department for Microsoft.
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
"believed to hold the secret for transforming base metals"
I beleive the word is Transmuting, no?
Here's another chapter you can include.
Science without religion is lame.
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.
Error 1404: Lead to gold transformation not found.
And we thought perl programming was a questionable profession. Now physics too?
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.
"A furnace straight from hell"?
Alpha and beta radiation doesn't feel warm. Not like microwaves or something. If you had enough radiation coming out of your furnace to be felt over the infrared emitted just by the fires, then you wouldn't have time to develop lesions and die a few days later.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Fear my awesome powers!
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
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.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
Yes, because knowing methods of how to counterfeit in NO WAY helps you fight counterfeiters.
So, we have been basing our laws on physics on the rants of a known felon? I propose we repeal all laws of physics straight-away!!
Seriously, though, is it really that much of a stretch to think that through various processes, we can transform lead into gold? I mean, think about a nuclear reactor. Uranium can be (and is) transformed into plutonium, barium, iodine, strontium, caesium, krypton, etc. etc. etc. on a daily basis. Given the right amount of research, funding, and time, I firmly believe that we could produce gold, or any other element/compound, at will.
bash: rtfm: command not found
Found in his notes:
1)Find lead
2)Convert to gold
3)Profit!!
At least we now KNOW that there's more ("new") material for another 1000 or so pages to Stephenson's Baroque Cycle... Maybe even more commentary viz. Newton and Leibnitz (...seguing to Gödel, Escher, and Bach?). i 4 1 am ready for some more well-rendered tasty math/physics/etc...
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?
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
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.
Your signature is fucking obnoxious. That is by far the most piss-poor attempt at karma whoring I have ever seen on slashdot. Why don't you just fucking beg for mod points while you are at it. If I were Newton, I'd have YOU drawn and quartered for being the sad wannabe slashdot troll that you are.
zosxavius photography
Anyway, I imagine on paper, it probably seems pretty simple. In nuclear fission reactors, we can get Uranium et al to break down to smaller atoms while releasing energy, but I imagine we don't really have much choice what it breaks down to. On the other hand, if we input a lot of energy we can fuse two hydrogen atoms into a helium atom (just out of curiosity, have we managed to fuse any larger atoms?). The theory seems simple on paper: break down an unstable atom and get energy, or put in a lot of energy and put two small atoms together. I don't know how stable the products are or how radioactive they are, I guess low and high respectively.
In the imagination of a non-Nuclear-Physicist, it looks pretty simple...
But, to be able to do this and control it specifically enough to actually choose the products that come out on a large enough scale to be usable will require ENORMOUS amounts of energy, won't it? Unless we manage to find sources of energy that seem quite common in science fiction, I don't imagine this becoming feasible, or at least not for a LONG time.
Of course, on the other hand look how much science fiction has become science fact over the last 50 years, and I guess it isn't too unimaginable.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Read TFA... the final paper by Issac Newton was an explanation of how to trap photons in a condensate of UHBF crystallite bosons. Mind you, this is hundreds of years before Einstein was born or particle colliders were even conceived. Newton was building minature colliders from the work of local craftsmen and the money of the royals. If there was ever any doubt that Newton was the premier genius of all time, it can be put to rest.
Drawing from the Baroque Cycle, I now have created the Penultimate Game that applies to any Slashdot story: Six Degrees to Neal Stephenson!
Don't give them ideas!
He thinks we should all go live in a lame but fully libertarian society where all we can do to escape the madness is dick around in an alternate online reality, getting infected by viruses along the way.
Le français vous intéresse?
Is Zonk the weekend publisher?
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!"
.....You could do a lot worse than that as far as Christian fundamentalist obsessions go. Metaphorically speaking, as the figurehead of an international syndicate that has been banking off the perversion of Christ's teachings for two millennia, preying on the (near-)universal human need to understand our meaningful* place in the 'grand scheme of things' (which may or may not exist)..... yeah, that'll do for a Satanic archetype any day of the week. Especially Sunday. * in my opinion, as individuals we struggle to reconcile our subliminal awareness of the collective consciousness with the egoistic nature of our minds and sensory perceptions..... to me this is the impetus for the search for 'meaningfulness'.....
Alchemy is the transmutation resulting from the equal exchange of two distinct and separate matters. You can see it used today in the statutes of a state; it gives attention by its founding jurisdiction. Anything that is defined on paper is an application to the jurisdiction inherint in the courts established by that state or of the court superceding it. You'll never find an activating statute or "enabling clause" because statutes aren't law but serve to direct alien pursuits by a declaration at the verry encounter. They aren't alchemy until you volunteer to be converted and processed as a person. By the way, "person" originated in 14th century old french as a "mask worn from time to time". Are you a person (mask), a thing? There is your alchemy! Currently(!), the mechanism used by agents of the United States use confession and voluntary incrimination by use of a pen in order to presume this form of alchemy. IRS, US Treasury, Trust, Fund, all commit this same alchemy. I'll be composing a website on this feat soon, precept to a treatise on Redemption. Watch my journal for an update and direction to en.WikiPedia.org. I'm happy to say that Alchemy is not an agreeable form of involuntary process because in past days it was looked upon as an interpreted curse of witchcraft. Ask someone who they are and they'll confuse their time-clocked mask (person) with the religion in statutes, codes, treatise, and revenue police(y). It all appears justified, until the vigors of application are intent on your asphyxiation. Alchemy is equally applicable in representing the character of judicial proceedings, no less as electricity in the movement of societal energy. Not many people realize the alchemy in their daily life. Count for one the relative assignment of "I am" and how many people unconciously re-define themselves. "I am" this and "am I" that, but truth stands unchanged: just a man, standing on land, seeking-out living water; so saith Jesus. The structure of language flows as orders from a judge in an eternal courtroom: declarations, motions, quest(s/ions); and in person it is the movement of societal energy, or out of person it is the face of God moving across living water(!). Some construe societal structures radiating energy as being commerce; whereas even the (re)sister in their family is a key component in the huge scheme of things. I prefer to bipass the circuited courtship and move to remedy the affections directly in the supreme; call me biased if you want, but these 7th amendment "supplanted" inferior courts of limited jurisdiction only serve corporate interests in bipassing the Constitution with their orders of operation by one component per clocked cycle until all have been inducted into the corporate welfare state. Most people don't realize that it is not man, but a thing of man that serves as a component in circuit with others. In marriages: the combination of flesh, but in combining words and recorded to the movement of life from one branch(!) to another is an acceptable marriage (or merger), but is not the true marriage whence a child is born. In conveying the matter in a court of law, every aspect is as though an orchestra performing to describe the motion of SHIPS(citizen/battle/friend); whereas canons(!) are anointed with ink onto the respective wad of papers; brutish intruments to furl the matter composed of notes, transmitted(!) under the eyes of a conductor(!), and a neutral audience sitting to hear the motions with an amusing biase(!) for good and bad form. To me, it sounds like someone listening to a radio on a hot day. For each motion to discern between the man operating the vessel and its on-board transmitting utility as referenced in the Uniform Commercial Code, there is foundation. This is the alchemy hidden in the laws of man. The only people able to compete with
without prejudice
I think not.
Happy treasonous rebelion day, MoFo's.
Lead into gold - there's nothing crazy about it at all. How the hell else do you think cockroaches will be able to afford this car?
Greetings friend! This post may be a little offtopic, but it was just to abate the matter of Newton being an alleged "Christian Fundamentalist". Moderators, please have mercy...
I'll express all that I hope would solve the Satanic riddle. This pseudonym known as "Christian fundamentalist", intent on supplanting scripture is somewhat odd. If a man bears false witness of himself declaring such as "Christian," but by his actions is not Christian is he called a "Christian fundamentalist"? If there is any applicable fundamentalism, then it would rest on the compounded summary of the ten commandments and I show forth:
Matthew 22:35-50;
"[35]Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, [36]Master, which is the great commandment in the law?[37]Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.[38]This is the first and great commandment.[39]And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.[40]On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
Jesus advocated the ten commandments, and with God-like precision he compounded the ten with two.
That Pope is not in the original estate, but as a "Viccar" (imitation). Comparing the Pope to Jesus is like comparing Tofu to milk. I hope you don't forget that Adolph Hitler was in the blessings of the Pope of his day. Any words and actions that are not in scope and premise of the ten commandments, even as compounded by Jesus the Christ, surely you have authority by God to divide the truth from the lies. It's no different when people are confronted for doing this by so-called "Christian fundamentalists"; they're full of pride, hiding behind a goodly name, and don't realize they are the Synagogue of Satan. Yet, none who claim someon is Satanic doesn't actually know what Satan is but by comprehending the opposite of scripture. I suppose that any Bible can be Host also to those in opposition to it, such as Landover Baptist..
without prejudice
That is not fair. I've typed what I know on this subject and was not trolling. I had it all separated into four paragraphs, and thanks to Slashdot it has been reformatted into what looks like a treatise from a paraplegic monkey :-). This is what I don't like about moderators: they mod it down within feif minutes of posting, preventing the information from any view at the respectable post level. There is nothing bad in that post.
I can't wait to see a Slashdot patch that shows who is moderating each post. It's like renegade judges in here.
And there should be three separate blocks of text in this post, including this sentance; no different than how I posted the previous post that was modded -1 Troll.
It's a flocking instinct. If they all look the same, there's less chance of predators specifically targeting them.
Just watch out for the big yellow vans. You'll know one is close if you don't see any dark green Subarus.
HTH. HAND.
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.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
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.
1. lead
2. ?
3. profit!
Rich guy takes out patent to stifle innovation by little guy.
Who needs the good old days?
not redundant.
It doesn't even work if you browse at -1 like every good mod should do.
When the notes were decoded, they made reference to "Eat up Martha".
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I was hoping he would have stumbled upon something that would have turned the science world upside down like his laws of motion (no pun intended) or Calculus.... Like putting a little twist on Alchemy/Chemistry we never knew about...... Hey, it's possible. He wasn't extremely vocal about his other discoveries at first from what I have heard.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Um... How is this interesting if it was posted on /. a few days back?
From which we can derive dhazard's law: once something has been posted to Slashdot, it's no longer interesting.
A good read. You'll never think of Newton the same again.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Did I just write that? Better not press the Submit button.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
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..
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
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.
Anybody want a peanut?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Newton was appointed head of the Royal Mint.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
*snicker* I think also that "alchemy, which some scientists in Newton's time believed to hold the secret for transforming base metals" is ungrammatical. It should probably be, "some scientists in Newton's time believed held the secret". I could be wrong, but I'm certainly clearer.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
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.
Hopefully nothing like what David Morse's character was up to in this Bruce Willis vehicle.
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:
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
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Is anyone else getting really irritated that they keep finding lost works like this and they're keeping it to themselves? They should scan this stuff in and put it on the web. It's not like it is copyright anymore.
That is in a furnace?
If you put an emitting source in a furnace, heck, even in a campfire, how would you tell now that it is emitting? Its warmth is not noticeable.
You'd need to feel the actual effects of the emitted radiation, to fit in the with the quote.
I didn't think that it was possible to feel the heating effects of radiation and survive. But it appears I am wrong, because down below ColaMan links to a site with info that seems to indicate that it happened.
I still think it is very unlikely alchemists were making piles (as you say). To create a criticality with materials you just find around is quite difficult. You really need enriched materials, and these are difficult to make even if you know you are making them, let alone by accident!
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Indeed. That is his appointment in the aforementioned novel.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
He had actually gotten modded up. I think my comment got him modded down, at the expense of some karma. Oh well. :)
zosxavius photography
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.
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.
But the hidden secret modus is Clissus Paracelsi
Paracelsus' grave is in a small courtyard in Salzburg, Austria. The inscription emphasizes that he was a great physician who healed many people. The old churches in Salzburg are beautifully Baroque and mainly decorated with the eye-in-pyramid motif.
A later prince-bishop had a hydraulic-robotic aviary which could reportedly produce a great many bird calls accurately.
Fascinating people there, upon a time. Wonder if any of Newton's successful "science" was also derived from Paracelsus?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
you had me at #!
Similarly, Einstein's theories are wrong, as is the quantum model of the atom, although both of these were improvements on the theories that preceded them. String theory is also wrong, and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle might also be wrong, but I'm not ... certain ... about that one. Nevertheless, these are all good theories because they improve on the theories before them in some way (well, string theory still has a way to go before that can be said without argument), and can be shown to be false. In fact, much of the early advances in quantum theory came by Einstein proposing means of showing it to be false!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
'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."'
That's your quote. They put the stuff in the furnace, then they say the furnace is hotter than normal. For that to be the case, they'd have to be feeling the effects of the radiation, not feeling that the lump is 30C in a room that is 25C. I don't see how the self-heating of these lumps would fit in with the quote you posted. That was my original point.
Again, in your next quote, I said feel the heating effects of radiation and survive. I know you can survive radiation bursts, you normally do, you would survive 1-2 days without tons of medical treatment. And yes, radiation will burn/char you in high doses. I thought by the time you felt the heating effects, you would fall into this category. I was wrong.
Your enrichment post is a joke. Apparently you missed it though. You're not going to separate useful amounts of U235 with a bucket centrifuge. And remember also that your instructions have the advantage of understanding nuclear physics. How difficult is enrichment when you don't even know what it is or that you need to do it? Very.
And as to your comments about that mine in the Ozarks, even if it contains fissile material at all, it is very unlikely that it is a material that could be usefully used to create a critical reaction. And you're not going to feel the heating effects of a reaction that isn't at least very close to critical.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
nt
It's the long-lost last line of "Old Mother Hubbard."
Modern science exists because of the efforts of the pseudo-scientists of the past. For thousands of years the principle funded scientific activity was Astrology, which led to the secondary supporting activity of Astronomy. Governments have never been interested in science for its own sake, and society as a whole believed that personal and social destiny was expressed by the motions of the planets. For this reason only was so much effort spent on measuring the motions of the planets. Without this pseudo-scientific belief in the significance of heavenly motion, the science developed through the lineage of unnamed Babylonians, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and finally Newton would never have been supported. Newton was the end of the Astrological line here, and took himself no interest in Astrology. But his immediate predecessor Kepler is considered by many to have been the most successful Astrologer in history, though he kept his method to himself.
As astronomy, calculus, and mechanics can look to Astrology as the supportive parent, so, perhaps, can Chemistry look to alchemy.
In any case note that it is not the attempt itself that is unscientific, but the method. There is nothing necessarily pseudo about looking at the effect of planetary positions on human behavior, as long as one proceeds in an accepted scientific fashion. It is also instructive to consider that the leading Astrologers of the past considered themselves the best of scientists, and were respected by society as great modern scientists are. Our contemporary fashion of science may look equally pseudo from the perspective of the future.
Hackers turn caffiene into software (exchangeable for gold in some parts) all the time.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
The baroque cycle by Neal Stephenson covers many of these topics in a historical fiction way. I would expect that many slashdot nerds by now would have read this. The Royal Society also did dog vivisection, but supposedly Newton was against that. He did experiments on his own eyeballs to determine their optical properties, etc. I expect, it being Stephenson, most of this is factual.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
A friend of mine sells used cars. He showed me a trick, where if he painted a car's wheels with silver paint then more people would buy cars. Some cars didn't have hubcaps, so he just painted the spokes that were assembled around the lugnuts. Some wheels were just ugly rims and he'ld paint those silver too. I was amazed at what such a lame-ass wheel paint-job would improve, but I think people in general are to blame.
1) Take old crappy car
2) Paint wheels with silver-chrome paint
3) ???
4) Profit!
... when it was called Hudson Hawk.
Before any liberals are tempted to mod up one of my comments, a word of warning: I'm actually making fun of you.
these days alchemists transform crappy OSes in to gold
Few would defend a small view of Alchemy as 'Mother of Chemistry',
and confuse its true goal with those external metal arts. Alchemy
is an erotic science, involved in buried aspects of reality,
aimed at purifying and transforming all being and matter.
Not to suggest that material operations are ever abandoned.
The adept holds to both the mystical and physical work.
They can picture love affairs of chemicals and stars, a romance of stones,
or the fertility of fire. Stange, fertile correspondences the alchemists
sensed in unlikely orders of being. Between men and planets, plants and
gestures, words and weather.
(Jim Morrison, The Lords: Notes on Vision; 1969)
... in the time of Newton it would be highly likely you would have been religious too. People keep forgetting people are children of the times and ages in which they are born. A coherent theory of evolution wasn't formulated until the 18th century and even then it's competitors were myths so it's not like it takes a genius to disbelieve in creationism when you have an inkling of knowledge regarding cosmology or the massive geological timescales of death and disease in the animal kingdom over billions of years.