Slashdot Mirror
Sir Isaac Newton, Alchemist
Hugh Pickens writes "Natalie Angier writes in The Hindu that it is now becoming clear that Newton spent thirty years of his life slaving over a furnace in search of the power to transmute one chemical element into another. Angier writes, 'How could the ultimate scientist have been seemingly hornswoggled by a totemic pseudoscience like alchemy, which in its commonest rendering is described as the desire to transform lead into gold?' Now new historical research describes how alchemy yielded a bounty of valuable spinoffs, including new drugs, brighter paints, stronger soaps and better booze. 'Alchemy was synonymous with chemistry,' says Dr. William Newman, 'and chemistry was much bigger than transmutation.' Newman adds that Newton's alchemical investigations helped yield one of his fundamental breakthroughs in physics: his discovery that white light is a mixture of colored rays that can be recombined with a lens. 'I would go so far as to say that alchemy was crucial to Newton's breakthroughs in optics,' says Newman. 'He's not just passing light through a prism — he's resynthesizing it.'"
Science is not a field of study it is the approach.
Even in Newton's time, science hadn't really fully evolved. Certainly the methodological underpinnings were well on the way, but it was really another 50-100 years after Newton that we saw science blossom. Guys like Galileo and Newton stand on the threshold, and Newton took some big steps in the right direction, but there was still a lot of mumbo-jumbo out there, some of which persisted in some sciences into the late Victorian era (take Victorian racial "theory", for instance).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Most people are unaware that the alchemists created a fairly accurate periodic chart of the elements before the science of chemistry took over. Obviously they did not know about the more exotic nuclear elements which are still being discovered from time to time.
And we all know how silly that is to-day.
if there ever was one.
there are exactly 10 kinds of people who don't know about newton's alchemy involvement -- those who never read a highschool physics book and have forgotten about it.
This has literally been known .. well, since Newton. Hardly a secret he spent more time on alchemy than on what's subsequently been regarded as real science.
Many 'scientists' before science-as-we-know it dabbled in pseudoscience and nonsense, e.g. Kepler did astrology as well as astronomy.
Newton heralded the modern age of science, but he _wasn't_ the first scientist in the modern sense, he was 'the last magician', as James Gleick put it.
Falling Apple Alchemist.
I've got your sig, right here.
Why do people try to apply discrete epochs to human history? I guess its ok to define them, but to actually apply it as a discontinuity is dumb. Just look at current events. Hell, when Hubble was discovering galaxies some dude was writing papers about insect migrations on the moon.
Also, it certainly isn't pseudoscience to turn elements into other elements. Nuclear reactions can do this, just not in large quantities. Their methods were incorrect, but the idea itself is not ridiculous.
Working with "totemic psuedoscience like alchemy" in the 17th century is completly different than doing the same thing today. He used the "knowledge" that was at his disposal at the time. Non story here, since Newton has done more work one the "mystical things" than Physics.
I mean, Bill Bryson talks about it at some length in his eminently readable Short History Of Nearly Everything. As well as being into alchemy, he "spent endless hours studying the floor plan of the lost temple of King Solomon in Jerusalem (teaching himself Hebrew in the process, the better to scan original texts) in the belief that it held mathematical clues to the second coming of Christ and the end of the world."
Bryson also reports that John Maynard Keynes bought a load of his papers at auction, only to find that the great majority of them were about alchemy, rather than optics or astronomy.
PBS did an episode of NOVA on this several years ago.
They can convert atoms into other atoms in the right conditions. He was simply limited by the tools of his day.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/newton/about.html He seemed by no means to be the sort of founding fathers-esque square-head, as he is often depicted (eg. portrait in linked article). Not only did it describe his alchemical endeavors, but also that he was seeking physical proofs for things written in the bible. Interesting how true geniuses are frequently true eccentrics.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
If I recall, according to his assistant's writings, the night that Newton gave his final edition of The Principia to the messenger to go out for printing, he immediately went back into his lab and fired up his alchemy furnace. Alchemy was one of his passions, and he was sincerely attempting to discover the philosopher's stone, and even an "elixir of life". Sounds silly now, but chemistry was so young at that time, nobody knew its potential. He was also passionate about biblical passages. He thought that one could extract important scientific information from the bible, ancient texts and architecture, allowing him to predict the apocalypse and other "insights". Supposedly he wrote more about this than science (in fact I remember hearing 90% was on the occult, 10% "scientific. No reference for that, though).
The wikipedia page is actually pretty insightful.
If you ever have a chance to read even a chapter or two of The Principia, you should. It's an amazingly different perspective on what we now know as "Newtonian Mechanics". Geometry was clearly the tool of scientists as the time...
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
You can transmute one element to another. It's called nuclear chemistry.
This is extensively cover by Morris Berman in "El reencantamiento del mundo". Long ago.
There is no civilization as we know it without currency. If people start debasing the currency, they are robbing from the rest of the populace - everyone has to work that bit harder to support them. Make enough to never have to work again, and you have effectively caused the rest of the society to chip in a lifetime worth of slavery just so you can sit on your ass. The crime is not really any different to counterfeiting, and every country takes that very seriously for that reason. So meh.
Newton may or may not have been personable, but it is difficult to argue that he contributed far more to the world than he took from it, and from that perspective he was one of the nicest guys to have ever lived.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
...
Why are most scientists Catholic
What the fuck are you smoking?
What the fuck are you smoking?
Some holy shit!
By the modern standards of today, "alchemy" is considered a pseudoscience. Why do new "researchers" (and I use the term VERY liberally) continue to apply modern context to historical figures? Newton was a pioneer of his day. Alchemy was considered a real science, one he spent quite a bit of time furthering, and to condemn 30 years of his life for searching for a way to turn lead into gold is insulting to his memory and legacy as well as insulting to researchers and historians who actually understand that modern opinions, ideas, and knowledge don't always apply in the past.
/.), and a total failure to understand basic statistics (most 'shocking' studies posted on /.). These idiots give the rest of us researchers a bad name.
I am getting very tired of "researchers" making claims with unpublished data that cannot be verified for accuracy (Gliese 581 g possibly a hoax), making 'groundbreaking' claims about history without even considering historical context (this and about 50% of similar posts on
Congrats on finally getting your submission posted after going halfway around the world to find a copy not at the New York Times. Seriously.
Of course, when you know science as we do today, it's easy to say that this was an obvious dead end. However, imagine how much was known about anything such a long time ago. How could he have known that these experiments would not lead to success? Many other experiments were done at the same time (and much later) that seem much more esoteric, and which ultimately lead to scientific breakthroughs. What comes to my mind right now are Faraday's electrical experiments with frog legs...
So from that point of view, there's absolutely nothing wrong with Newton trying to "cook" some chemical elements seeking for new insights.
When a Scientist observes a thing in motion, or even the EFFECTS of a thing in motion, then they only derive an answer as to it's existance.
What the parent was asserting is that the existance of something immeasurable will only allow a Science to perceive the effects and not the Origin.
Science can only trace the Origin of something, not ask any question greater than the knowledge of it's Existance.
Hence: we perceive Light, we can find the source, we can perceive the effects of the Light on our skin because that's all we can perceive it by when we are blind; therefore we can derive questions for further testing to slowly progress techniques to give more accurate measurements about the Light without assuming the existance and origin and decay and peek of it's source; we only can discern the present nature, not make conclusions because time is immeasurable to decide the full range of behaviour of a thing in motion.
Science is originally Cautious only by gentele people, never by inquisitors that want to cause Societal problems.
here are some references for other perspectives on alchemy
Masquerade of the dream walkers: prophetic theology from the Cartesians to Hegel
By Peter A. Redpath
http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=VIBS+73
Chapter 1 talks about Newton and alchemy
Restoring Paradise: Western Esotericism, Literature, Art, and Consciousness
By Arthur Versluis
http://www.sunypress.edu/p-3958-restoring-paradise.aspx
Alchemy and more
The journalist assuming that interest in alchemy is tantamount to being hornswaggled in that time period is ignorant of the history of science. Alchemy is the root of modern chemistry.
42? I think that's right. Let me double check my math.... yup!
Lets see - a person surrounded by intolerant people who's main focus in life is money... So "saying" you were doing all these "weird" experiments (to produce gold from a worthless substance) would be the perfect cover for carrying out studies that might be looked at as heresy. Just as someone who knows nothing about programming sees you code and, maybe, lets say a vision of a malicious hacker comes into their mind - you are demonized. This, of course, is parallel to Mark Twain's adage - "Better to say nothing and have people assume you are a fool than open your mouth and confirm it."
A couple of things:
1. Alchemy has little to do with chemistry. It's about the purification of the soul through repeated heatings and coolings, and as Newton was learning Hebrew, I'd guess he'd probably figured out some of the fundamentals in play re Gnostic Christianity and similar. "Lead into Gold" is a metaphor, as was much else about alchemy. But I don't know much about Newton, so whatever. Maybe he really was trying to generate a money mill.
2. Not knowing something isn't a crime. Exploration of ideas and the world should never be punished if the person searching is doing so out of an honest desire to learn and isn't hurting anybody in the process. People are far too hard on each other for being ignorant, and too defensive when their ignorance is pointed out. Learning shouldn't be a punishable offense.
-FL
The majority of Newton's papers were actually on the subject of Christian theology rather than science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_religious_views#Biblical_studies
He smokes Marlboro(tm),
You smoke Cock(sm).
When you use Science as a noun, then it derives itself the full-effect of a religion in it's self to progress it's techniques for determining the proof of a matter. Regardless of what people perceive, the science of a matter truly is unknown until there are tests to isolate existance of a matter.
The only difference between religion and science is that religion secures the full knowledge of the Original subject that conclusions can be made to direct the course of events that brought the Origin into existance.
It is a tactical disadvantage to publish the knowledge of the Origin, so often a religion of Science will re-create the Effects of that Existance so as to indirectly preserve the evidence of a matter without giving disclosure of the absolute procedures to measure the matter.
Where the preservation of such Societal body would aim to move the bodies in motion under it's guidance, it would implement proprietary tokens as the effects of it's evidence; some societies synthesize tokens by a scarce measure so as to regulate and assure their Society will progress without competition while retaining all it's motives in retinue.
Does this explain why Science, Religion, and Country are almost indistinguishable except when they are directed by Objectors to compete with one another on unrelated subject matter? The Token of Christianity is love in nature, of Science is cred-ability to subject things, and money to the rhyme of whose?
I that to break it to you but this was discussed back in my college chemistry classes. This was back in the early 70's. Maybe they are rediscovering something that was known then but forgotten?
From the contents of his post, I'd wager DMT.
Eat sleep die
Yet another attempt by chemists to claim part of physics.
First it's a chapter on "Nuclear chemistry" in chem texts, and now it's "Newton's experiments with light were chemistry."
Some things may wrongly appear to be mumbo jumbo, because we have not researched them properly yet.
How could the ultimate scientist have been seemingly hornswoggled by a totemic pseudoscience like alchemy [...]
There's an amazing amount of sensationalism and cluelessness tightly packed in that one clause.
First of all, Newton was hardly "the ultimate scientist". He was a very good scientist and a brilliant mathematician, but his achievements and fame have a lot to do with being one of the first modern scientists. He wasn't the only early scientist working on the problems of optics or, for that matter, gravity, and Leibniz developed calculus independently around the same time. Had Newton decided to go into alchemy full-time, someone else would have discovered the same things before long. Calling him the ultimate scientist is just pseudo-journalistic puffery.
And secondly, alchemy wasn't obvious bullshit when Newton was working on it. It's only obviously bullshit now that we have an understanding of real chemistry and -- even more recently -- nuclear physics. More to the point, one of the most important bullshit detectors in the arsenal of science is modern statistics, which rests upon a foundation of calculus, which Newton (along with Leibniz) invented! To stand today on the shoulders of Newton and complain about his lack of perspective pushes the outer limits of irony.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
His most famous invention, the Fig Newton may have been a recipe from his girlfriend's mom.
We need a "-1, Schizophrenic" moderation option.
Older than alchemy and almost as fake.
people on Slashdot, yet many of them are Space Nutters, a fantasy not based in science just like alchemy. And, like Newton, they are also virgins. Hmmmmmm....
+1 insightful for skelterjohn imho
I am sure Neal Stephenson did all the same research.
Only he presented his findings in a far more entertaining way via The Baroque Cycle books.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Which part of this isn't blindingly obvious to anyone having taken even cursory introductions to History of the Sciences? *sigh*
"The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again."
Some people are mentally wedded to a certain philosophical overview, and reject technology which use different philosophical overviews a-priori.
The person you responded to has deduced that there is no merit whatsoever to chiropractic or accupuncture or homeopathy based on his experiences. Others have different experiences, and find value (some a little, some a lot) to these modalities.
Plenty of research has been done on acupuncture. Most of it is positive... But it's easy to be selective about the research one pays attention to...
HTH.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Because the Pope shits in the woods. Q.E.D.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Somewhere I also read (maybe in the same book) that when Newton went to work at the mint, his knowledge of metals from his alchemical experiments helped him a lot in that job.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
...well. The original idea of the missing link doesn't come from Evolution, but from a mythological belief in the continuity of the world. A missing link between man and ape was assumed because a spectrum of intermediary forms was believed to exist as an expression of the completeness of God's creation. Evolution then is a temporalization of this idea. I think it's ironic so much conflict between science and Americanized religion is built around evolution, when historically evolution signifies a continuity between the two.
It does a better job of explaining stuff than does "bearded sky man says so".
I've got on order this video, which I saw once two years ago and want to see again.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Transmutation of a cheap material into one, for whatever reason, valuable in society is a worthwhile pursuit. It was not impossible in Newton's era and it is possible/practical today - think of U238 to Pu239 breeder reactors. To say that he should have envisioned that he should have given up and left the work to future generations is very unscientific. As it is he made important discoveries while working onto ultimately unsuccessful project.
Issac was the best, I hear he even battled several personifications of deadly sins and tried creating life which led him to trouble as he had to get a replacement arm and leg built for him.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
"The ultimate scientist?" Is anyone really not aware of how much mystical bullshit he wrote?
This was the thesis put forward in Issac Newton: the Last Sorcerer.
The idea we sometimes get of these "first scientists" ushering in an era of rational thinking in an age of superstition is revisionist history. Science and reason as we know it today did not exist back then. If you looked at 'scientific' work of the day, you'll find a lot of odd ideas and theories that would strike us as superstitious or mystical. Isaac Newton was an occultist, and alchemist, and dabbled in all kinds of esoteric things. That he made great contributions to math and physics is more or less a bonus for us. Advancing the human body of knowledge or understanding the world through reason was not his project. He was a mystic and an occultist. Science and progress are modern-day inventions.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
alchemy is laughable, in 2010
alchemy is respectable, in 1710
what exactly is the point of applying 2010 standards to 1710?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"The Eight" novel , by Katherine Neville, told about this question :-)
[...] wherever there are no Catholics to spread those methods they are Freemasons in their place, and wherever the Freemasons have no standing then you see Jews importing muslims to induce the native population to join a club that eventually gets absorbed into Freemasonry?
Why is there no moderation -1, Batshit Crazy?
elements can be transmuted. We do it every day . Air is an element . Water is an element . Earth is an element and fire is an element . Today we know what atoms are. We are today searching for the same things. How do i turn junk into money . How do i live forever . What is the truth about reality ? alchemy is just science by another name .
'How could the ultimate scientist have been seemingly hornswoggled by a totemic pseudoscience like alchemy, which in its commonest rendering is described as the desire to transform lead into gold?'
No such thing as science as we know it today existed at the time. The Principia Mathematica now seen as his greatest work has as a full title: 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica'. And that's because science at the time was more like a philosophy of nature.
Newton was 'discovering the nature of reality' without our hind-side knowledge of the 'real' nature of reality. Its like complaining Newton didn't had the knowledge we have today. No that's because he was discovering the knowledge we have today with an unique and inquisitive mind without the constraints of conventional wisdom at the time.
And, as a side note, it is possible to transform lead into gold.
J.
Church incense. Hey, it contains THC :-)
Obligatory Karl Marx quote:
"Newman adds that Newton's alchemical investigations helped yield one of his fundamental breakthroughs in physics: his discovery that white light is a mixture of colored rays that can be recombined with a lens. 'I would go so far as to say that alchemy was crucial to Newton's breakthroughs in optics"
Sir Isaac Newton did A TON of crazy shit. Two events in particular led to his famous paper, "Opticks":
1. He stuck a letter opener in his eye socket next to his eyeball and would turn it to put pressure on his eye to change its shape. This gave him some insight about lenses.
2. He stared into the sun so long one time that he had to remain locked in his completely blacked-out room for 3 days for his retina to recover. He was nearly rendered permanently blind from this stunt.
This isn't some info that just came to light.
People have known about Newtons Alchemy and Religious ties for ages.
I did a 6th grade term paper on how alchemy was the precursor to modern chemistry (and other sciences), and decades later this is front page news?
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
...will soon be here: http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/Outreach/Public_Lectures/View_Past_Public_Lectures/
I have to admit it's one of the more tiresome aspects of today's discourse that most people can't be bothered to try to understand historical context before they pass judgement on historical personalities.
It's terrifically naive to say that someone pursuing Alchemy was a wierdo, or that trying to prove physics based on the bible was goofy, or that examining the floorplan of the Temple of Solomon for mathematical insights was silly. Yes, it's silly to US, in the 21st century, with our (nearly) universal understanding of biology, chemistry, physics, etc. that were all complete mysteries to people of that time. They didn't KNOW about germs, about atoms, electricity, or even what stars were.
Alchemy was AT LEAST as valid a 'science' as any other in Newton's time. It's through their brilliance and insight that we are able to separate actual science from fantasy today.
"Ubi sunt", indeed. :\
-Styopa
I actually have a Slashdot comment in my bugzilla quips file:
Alchemists became chemists when they stopped keeping secrets. -Tom Felker
It ought to be in the Hall of Fame.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And Keynes was the last economic magician.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
As opposed to having it mentioned in classes 35-40 years ago. And in most books and encyclopedia articles about Newton, where this is mentioned.
The ignorance of most Americans (or rather USans, not to be confused with Canadians or Mexicans, who are also Americans....)
Then, of course, there's the almost complete lack of understanding of alchemy: it only drifted to chemistry during the Age of Enliightenment (which, given the Tea Partiers, show us that we've abandoned it); before then, it was mystical. Any actual research into it shows that the real, hidden purpose was not lead into gold, but rather that all of that was a metaphor for "perfecting the soul", which could be rephrased as become enlightened, or an avatar, or, at least in Europe, becoming the New Messiah, or a demiurge.
Oh, sorry, this is slashdot, that's all too complicated. I'll just go back to the hoodeck and play the Matrix VW....
mark
Another good one is Greg Keyes' Age of Unreason series (written as J. Gregory Keyes, but newer editions use the shorter version of his name). It starts out with Newton succeeding in making alchemy work, which leads to a very different kind of industrial revolution in the late 17th/early 18th century. A young Benjamin Franklin is one of the main characters in the four-book series.
He would have made more gold with Jewelcrafting.
The uneducated think that alchemy is about transmuting elements. The initiated understand that alchemy was about finding the Philosophers Stone, which is the achievement of true enlightenment leading to nirvana. The alchemists hid their esoteric knowledge with secret codes that made the clueless christian fundamentalists think they were just trying to make gold. It is certain that Newton was a member of one of the secret societies such as the Golden Dawn or Masons who were privy to the sacred knowledge. Looks like they fooled most of you idiots!
Frankincense and myrrh?
This article unfortunately distorted the question by misquoting Natalie Angier. The question was not by Natalie as Hugh stated.but was instead a quote from Dr. Newman which he asked rhetorically only to answer it. Nothing in the article criticized alchemy. Doesn't anyone read sources. It is amazing how much hot air slashdot can generate over a simple misquote, taken out of context..
White light splits into colors because of dispersion in the prism. Passing dispersed rays through another prism just disperses them more, it does not recombine them. This fallacy is famously repeated in public school science textbook diagrams of paired prisms. Newton never performed any such demonstration. He was able to demonstrate recombination in Opticks, but with something much more complicated than a pair of prisms.
And why aren't you SHARING?
Thanks! Added to my cart as well. (By the way, used to wanna kill all humans back in high school; these days, I still want to take everyone with me, but into the Singularity/nanotechnology future where we only die when we want to. Strange how things change, and thanks for reminding me of it! :)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
This is old news. Newton described himself as an alchemist.
A valid way of interpreting this is that his brand of alchemy paved
the way for "natural philosophy" that we know and love as physics
and chemistry.
Sorry I can't remember the credit for the distinguished historian of
science whom I heard lecture this point in the '70's.