Newton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature's "Secret Fire"
- ISBN-10
- 0691174873
- ISBN-13
- 9780691174877
- Category
- Science
- Pages
- 560
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2018-12-11
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Author
- William R. Newman
Description
A book that finally demystifies Newton’s experiments in alchemy When Isaac Newton’s alchemical papers surfaced at a Sotheby’s auction in 1936, the quantity and seeming incoherence of the manuscripts were shocking. No longer the exemplar of Enlightenment rationality, the legendary physicist suddenly became “the last of the magicians.” Newton the Alchemist unlocks the secrets of Newton’s alchemical quest, providing a radically new understanding of the uncommon genius who probed nature at its deepest levels in pursuit of empirical knowledge. In this evocative and superbly written book, William Newman blends in-depth analysis of newly available texts with laboratory replications of Newton’s actual experiments in alchemy. He does not justify Newton’s alchemical research as part of a religious search for God in the physical world, nor does he argue that Newton studied alchemy to learn about gravitational attraction. Newman traces the evolution of Newton’s alchemical ideas and practices over a span of more than three decades, showing how they proved fruitful in diverse scientific fields. A precise experimenter in the realm of “chymistry,” Newton put the riddles of alchemy to the test in his lab. He also used ideas drawn from the alchemical texts to great effect in his optical experimentation. In his hands, alchemy was a tool for attaining the material benefits associated with the philosopher’s stone and an instrument for acquiring scientific knowledge of the most sophisticated kind. Newton the Alchemist provides rare insights into a man who was neither Enlightenment rationalist nor irrational magus, but rather an alchemist who sought through experiment and empiricism to alter nature at its very heart.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2018-12-11
- 537 pages
- Ebook
- Princeton University Press
Similar books
-
Isaac the Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal'd
By Mary LosureAs a young genius living in a time before science as we know it existed, Isaac studied the few books he could get his hands on, built handmade machines, and experimented with alchemy—a process of chemical reactions that seemed, at the ...
-
Isaac Newton and the Transmutation of Alchemy: An Alternative View of the Scientific Revolution
By Philip Ashley FanningIn Isaac Newton and the Transmutation of Alchemy, Fanning reveals the surprisingly profound influence that Newton’s study of this hermetic art had in shaping his widely adopted scientific concepts.
-
Isaac Newton's Freemasonry: The Alchemy of Science and Mysticism
By Alain BauerThis book reveals the connections of Rosslyn Chapel, Henry Sinclair, and the Invisible College to Newton’s role in 17th-century Freemasonry and opens unexplored trails into the history of Freemasonry in Europe.
-
Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer
By Michael WhiteSympathetic yet balanced, Michael White's Isaac Newton offers a revelatory picture of Newton as a genius who stood at the point in history where magic ended and science began.
-
The Metaphysical World of Isaac Newton: Alchemy, Prophecy, and the Search for Lost Knowledge
By John ChambersJowett noted that the story rested on the authority of the Egyptian priests and that historically the Egyptian priests took pleasure in deceiving the Greeks. What we never seem able to to realize, he tells us, is that “there is a ...
-
The Alchemy Reader: From Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton
By Stanton J. Linden31 This diverse group of treatises is thought to date roughly from between the first centuries BC and AD . ... of this mysterious and oft - quoted tablet came to be a major preoccupation for alchemists through the ages and was vital in ...
-
The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy
By B. J. T. DobbsThis book sets the foundations of Newton's alchemy in their historical context in Restoration England.
-
Newton and the Origin of Civilization
By Jed Z. Buchwald, Mordechai Feingold... in subsequent reiterations, Newton's command of the historical record broadened and deepened considerably. ... to the duration of world history since the Deluge constrained Newton in his accounting for the rise of civilizations, ...
-
Isaac Newton and Natural Philosophy
By Niccolò GuicciardiniNewton’s pivotal work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which sets out his laws of universal gravitation and motion, is regarded as one of the most important works in the history of science.
-
Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature
By William R. Newman(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909–1940). Bacon, Roger. The “Opus Majus” of Roger Bacon, ed. John Henry Bridges, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1964). Bacon,Roger.SaniorismedicinaemagistriD.RogeriBaconis(Frankfurt:JohannSchoenwetter, 1603).