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.'"
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.
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.
Why was it crazy?
The atomic theory of matter wasn't even remotely experimentally provable. The periodic table was unknown and the idea of nuclei completely absent.
Chemistry then was very empirical and without significant systematic reasoning. Here Newton was very right that there was in fact something substantially scientific which could be discovered.
Unfortunately, experimental knowledge and technical ability wasn't available at the time to succeed in his quest, and it didn't happen for a hundred fifty to 200 more years.
There was no scientific reason known at the time why lead (or anything else) couldn't be turned into gold with chemical reactions.
Just imagine if Newton could have done spectroscopy or IR scattering experiments.
Error 1404: Lead to gold transformation not found.
The facts you state make me feel he really was a little off, at least in this field.
Usually scientists try to achieve things that are one or two steps above where they are now. Something that has at least a bit of theory behind it. The fact that Newton was attempting something that was so obviously beyond reach, something that there wasn't even a theory for, points to a problem.
It would be like physicists of today actually trying to make anti-gravitons so we could fly around and repell stuff. Or biologists trying to raise the dead. Stuff so obviously impossible today as to be almost unimagninable.
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.
Math genius though he was, there is nothing scientific about much of what Newton did with his life. In Martin Gardner's delightful book "Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?", we are introduced to not only the Newton the Alchemist, but also Newton the Protestant fundamentalist who was obsessed with Bible codes and thought the Pope was the anti-christ. Funny that you should mention spectroscopy, though. Newton was the one who pass white light through a prism and demonstrate it was composed of a mixture of colors. A bit more rational investigation on his part and he may very well have developed the principles of spectroscopy.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
"US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years."
6 2,00.html?name=otherside
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15739502-137
Douglas P. Price
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?
Yeah, that sort of lore is something I'd like to promote at the nearby "Isaac Newton Christian Academy." I don't know how they picked Newton as the guiding spirit for their little christian indoctrination school, but I'd like to go there and give the little K-8 kiddies a REAL lesson in what Newton was into.
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.
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
I find your reasoning quite narrow-minded. Essentially, what you are suggesting is that scientists should be aware of their ignorance and try to stay within a certain scope of possibilities.
I have news for you. If this was an accepted method in the scientific community, we'd still be banging rocks against each other to make fire.
Carrying out experiments in the direction of what seems obvioiusly unattainable often yields unexpected results, and that's how progress is made.
I find it interesting that you should mention the ability to fly. Think about all those poor schmucks who rolled their own wings and attempted to fly off of high altitude cliffs. They failed, but humans always strived to fly one way or another. Leonardo Da Vinci drew up prototypes of various flying mechanisms, which it can be argued, somewhat influenced modern flight technologies. Choppers, parachutes, etc. Was he over-reaching? Sure. But in many such instances, you have to think ahead by a mile to make any progress, even if what you're imagining is completely out of the realm of modern possibilities.
Don't give them ideas!
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'.....
Isn't banging rocks together to make fire a quintessential example of what you're talking about?
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
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?
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.
You got modded for Ballmer being a troll
Linux "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.", Steve Ballmer
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
You could tell the kiddies that Newton rejected the Trinity, which would make him a heretic in the eyes of most Christian denominations. :-)
Um... How is this interesting if it was posted on /. a few days back?
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.
Newton was not a protestant but a secret catolic - from a ultraconservative sect (something like Mel Gibsons' father) that has been persecuted by the authorities.
Most of his writings are dedicated to his theologic thoughts and alchemy. He was very off, autistic most likely, and had a pretty disagreeable vindicative personality. Which does not take away from his contributions in math and physics.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
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.
> Usually scientists try to achieve things that are > one or two steps above where they are now
Newton *acheived* things many steps beyond where things were, he was not a usual man. The term "scientist" as we understand it did not exist back then and Newton probably did more to bring modern science into existence than any man before or since. Also, lead into gold or was not *obviously* beyond reach at all. The fact that he attained a theory that produced a decent understanding of everything from canonballs to planetary motion was far more amazing than if he had turned lead into gold.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
His experience did make him very rich and powerful. Not by turning lead into gold but by obtaining the Master of the Mint post. He took charge of England's great recoining and was knighted for his efforts.
It is interesting that he was great at coming up with new concepts that they never came up with the concept of legal tender.
His alchemist work really shows what happens when there is no exchange of information between people performing the same work or for the society to view. His work in optics and mechanics was not done overnight. There was a lot of debate and contribution from his peers before he could write down principia.
Perhaps if his alchemist work was done in the open it could have help chemistry flourish and/or people could have applied the techniques he developed into less grandious pursuits.
Cheers, Aldo
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
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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
Perhaps it is merely that you imply there is a difference between genius and crazy. The intelligent but sane are also known as mediocre.
Well, it certainly wasn't a stretch back then, because they didn't know that lead and gold were atomically different and could not be changed to each other via chemical means.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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
Usually scientists try to achieve things that are one or two steps above where they are now. Something that has at least a bit of theory behind it.
You do realise that one of the most common reasons for creating a theory is to explain experimental observations, don't you? In other words, the experiment often comes first...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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.
eh, sorry. I forgot where I saw it, and subsequently googled for it. Wasn't going for easy karma.
Douglas P. Price
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
If this was an accepted method in the scientific community, we'd still be banging rocks against each other to make fire.
This is the accepted method in the scientific community. You have to walk before you can fly. You have to crawl before you can walk. The guy who came to my lab with a proposal for a tachyon converter wasn't a visionary, he was a nut who should have known today's limitations.
And your example of flying is flawed. Da Vinci saw things fly. He could see somewhat how they did it. It wasn't as unimaginable thing as converting lead to gold.
He had actually gotten modded up. I think my comment got him modded down, at the expense of some karma. Oh well. :)
zosxavius photography
No, most of the time there is some theory first. After some experiments the theory is modified, but it is hardly ever the case in modern physics where a whole theory has to be developed after an experiment.
Maybe in Newton's day it was the other way around, or more recently with Einstein's explanation of Brownian motion. But today, uh uh.
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?
Usually scientists try to achieve things that are one or two steps above where they are now.
Indeed, mediocre, garden-variety scientists do try to look only a step or two ahead. And that, I think, precisely illustrates why Newton was (and is) truly a giant in the world of science.
Progress in science is generally slow and tedious. Occasionally, someone like Newton or Einstein comes along and turns everything on it's head, precisely because they were thinking many steps outside the box. Sure, they were off in crackpot territory, but they came back with something useful that dramatically advanced the scientific domain.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
> The fact that Newton was attempting something that was so obviously beyond reach
That's always easy said afterwards, but please try to explain to me why lead cannot be transformed in gold. Oh, I almost forgot: you cannot use the concept of atoms in your explanation.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Then why not try changing rocks into wine? Or chickens into hamsters? There was no theory saying those couldn't be done either. But you didn't see scientists trying to do it.
Just because no one can currently explain to me why I can't make tachyons out of Higgs particles doesn't mean I should waste my time trying.
Lead into gold was just some magic dream left over from the dark ages that, unfortunately, Newton wasted some time on.
I might point out that Francis and Roger Bacon were also alchemists (Francis Bacon is usually credited with the scientific method).
The fact is-- Newton seems to have thought that his work in mathematics and kenetics were largely unimportant compared to theology, alchemy, etc. I.e. creating calculus was easy compared to alchemy so of what value was it? I don't think that the Bacon brothers would have disagreed at all.
Furthermore you have to look at the development of "modern science" in a little more of a broad picture to see what was going on.
Prior to the 12th century in Europe, there was nothing that even approximated a structured approach to looking for truth in the cosmos. However, following the failures in the Crusades, the Church began to translate as much material from Arabic as they could. In the process, they reintroduced Europe to the works of Plato and Aristotle, and discovered other philosophers such as Albumassar. From this base, astrology, astronomy, alchemy, the traditions that would later become those of Renaissance occult philosophy, etc. were imported back to Europe (often with a few Arabic embellishments). Also advanced areas of agriculture and medicine were reintroduced as well.
A good thing too because within a couple hundred years and these areas of the search for knowledge became systematically supressed within the Muslim world.
With the development of these concepts, the seeds of the Renaissance were sown in Europe. It would not be too long before these concepts would be corrupted into bloodletting (which many famous physicians of the 16th century such as Nostradamus, Paracelsus, and Agrippa denounced). Indeed, the Renaissance Neoplatonic tradition was characterized by an attitude that nothing was beyond the reach of empirical and logical pursuit. Everything from theology to mathematics was deemed to be connected in this philosophical spirit of empiricism and logical enquiry.
Furthermore, a basic assumption was made that the self and the cosmos were mirrors of eachother. Indeed Paracelsus suggested that Astrology worked because as Mars moved through the heavens, so too an aspect of ourselves (which Mars represented in the external world) would move through various domains of the self. I.e. as others have paraphrased it, the planets are within and there is no need to look for a mechanism whereby a distant object can impact our lives because it merely represents something internal to us.
And it was out of these circles that a famous alchemist, Francis Bacon, essentially devised the Scientific Method.
But a series of political changes were sweeping Europe, from the Reformation to the reaction to the fall of Constantinople, and there was eventually a reaction against the Neoplatonic tradition. This was then replaced with the tradition of the Enlightenment which differentiated itself from the Neoplatonic tradition by assuming that the self and the world were inherently different entities. Thereby if Astrology is assumed to work, it can't do so on the mere idea that the planets and their motions are representations of aspects of ourselves, and one must find a causal force connecting the planets to ourselves.
And regarding alchemy, these ideas did not die either. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan in his commentary in "Sepher Ytzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and Practice" discusses briefly a Hassidic tradition whereby it was believed that one could turn, say, a shoe into a shoe in any other form (say, made of gold) through a process which largely equated to meditation. Again the idea is that if you can reduce the show to its ultimate abstract Platonic Form, you can remanifest that form in any other way. Because alchemy was primarily a spiritual path (and was acknowledged as such during its heyday), it does not assume reproduceability. I.e. it depends on the mind and the spirit of the alchemist, not on the deterministic reactions that occur in the lab.
For this reason, many such as myself consider Alchemy as someth
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
'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
> Then why not try changing rocks into wine? Or chickens into hamsters?
Pick your dream:
I spent twenty years doing experiments in the basement and now I can turn chickens into hamsters
- OR -
I spent twenty years doing experiments in the basement and now I can turn lead into gold
Besides, turning lead into gold is much more probable than the things you mentioned: they both already are soft, heavy metals, so they must be very similar stuff. only the color is a bit different.
If you haven't already done so, you should really read "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson, it tells about some other amazing things Newton spent his time on, and it really shows you how scientists have struggled to uncover what we now consider to be basic knowledge. The things our ancestors did for science are really mindblowing.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
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.
... 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.
No worries
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)
I find it odd that so many posts in reply to mine stands to defend Newton against unfavourable opinions. True, his other pursuits does not take away from his contributions in math and physics, but neither does it add to it, nor does his achievements in math and physics excuse what amounts to absurdity of the human spirit. It is as if all great accomplishments buys one credit to do things one would ordinarily frown upon. Seriously now, in today's society, would you be inclined to look the other way if a person of great fame and accomplishment decides to disgrace himself with acts of shame or stupidity? (Let's remain in the realm of science and technology, less someone bring up Michael Jackson.) Probably not. More often than not, we hold those individual to be role models for others to follow. Unless you're some kind of rabidly bizzare nerd groupie, it is *NOT* an all-or-nothing preposition. We celebrate Newton for his positive contributions to civilization. We are not obliged to honor the aspects of his personal life which does not.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
You forgot the indians. Do people just spout the stuff they're told or do they actually try and learn and verify?
I am not saying that the Indians had nothing to do with alchemy, astrology, etc. Indeed, I suspect that during the Muslim invasions of India, a fair bit of material was brought back to the major intellectual cities of Bagdad, etc. This is fairly well documented. Some of this material was obviously translated into Latin as well during the run up to the Renaissance.
Note that Henry Agrippa and others actually discuss Hinduism to some degree in their search for a universal theory of the divine.
But I actually think that the Indian influence on Alchemy and astrology was likely to be tangental rather than central. Which is why I omitted it.
Also, if you look at astrology systems in Europe and the neighboring continents of Africa and Asia, you see something else which I don't think historians of these areas take seriously:
Ancient Greek/Roman Astrology is far more similar to Vedic astrology than either is to Sumerian, Egyptian, etc. omitting for the moment the differences between tropical and siderial astrology. Even here, it is worth noting that Ptolomy discusses the controversy in his day about tropical vs. siderial astrology and makes his arguments for a tropical system (Vedic astrology is siderial). But this is a minor difference and the rest of the system is largely structurally identical (suggesting divergent evolution of the systems). Comparing this with what is known of Sumerian or Egyptian strology shows how different these systems were from the systems of Greece and India.
Indeed Chinese astrology is structurally based on Vedic astrology and so one can largely argue that the Chinese borrowed it from the Indians. But aside from that, one only has two possibilities:
1) A 12-sign astrology system was spread by the Indo-Europeans to places like Greece and India or
2) India borrowed astrology from Greece (perhaps in the time of Alexander the Great?) or perhaps indirectly via the Persians.
However, I do not hold with the idea that these are all divergent systems from Sumeria. The structural differences are simply too striking and point to independent implimentations. Any surface similarities are likely based on practical requirements.
Presumably Alchemy has a similar tale, but I am not entirely sure.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP