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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Alpha and beta radiation doesn't feel warm.
Yes it does. Or more precisely, it warms the material itself. You feel the heat by old-fashion convection. That's why Pu238 (an Alpha emitter) is warm to the touch and can be used as a power source inside RTGs.
In either case, the theory is that these alchemists created a critical mass of a radioactive material. It would have begun fissioning, thus producing all kinds of radiation; including thermal, infrared, gamma, neutron, and others.
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"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!!
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.
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.
.....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'.....
If you read the literature on DIY Fission Bombs you'll find it is rather difficult to get an efficient explosion. It's quite a trick, learned by a few military organisations over long repetitive testing, to get the material all together in one lump at criticality. The GP talked about "warm rocks". The rocks in which radium and uranium are usually found will naturally prevent criticality, otherwise the remnants of this planet would be barren and cratered. If you try to amass lumps of concentrated ore the rocks will still moderate the reaction enough that you will get plenty of warning that this is no ordinary furnace.
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.
Perhaps you'd like to check out CRITICALITY ACCIDENTS from 1943-1970. Plenty of people saw large fission reactions first-hand and lived a day or two afterwards.
:
From about three quarters of the way down the page
At that time, the screwdriver apparently slipped and the upper shell fell into position around the fissionable material. Of the eight people in the room, two were directly engaged in the work leading to this incident.
The "blue glow" was observed, a heat wave felt, and immediately the top shell was slipped off and everyone left the room. The scientist who was demonstrating the experiment received sufficient dosage to result in injuries from which he died nine days later. The scientist assisting received sufficient radiation dosage to cause serious injuries and some permanent partial disability.
"er, Whoops."
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
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
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?
Perhaps it is merely that you imply there is a difference between genius and crazy. The intelligent but sane are also known as mediocre.
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.
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.
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.
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
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