Youtube: Why did Isaac Newton believe in Alchemy?

Post Reply New Topic

I just got done watching this, thought it was neat.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUhL1cli4ug[/youtube]

Newton lived right on the cusp between alchemy/astrology and genuine physical science. He, Kepler and Galileo brought about the ascendancy of natural science. Newton himself was a master alchemist. The hitherto unpublished papers of Newton bought at auction by John Maynard Keynes show that Newton wrote four times as much on alchemy, mysticism and religion as he did on physics and optiks.

ruveyn

In Newton's time, alchemy was actually the precursor to chemistry. Lot's of scientists in the past had held beliefs that were wrong, even when they themselves had contributed something useful.

What confuses the topic is that there's two: Alchemy and alchemy. The former was a processes that mystery initiates employed as outlined in the Hermetic Emerald Tablet where the belief was that they could over time give themselves powers by constantly working with their own energy in about twelve different ways/processes - apparently they were impressed enough by the result to write a lot on it in code and write it in such metaphors to give the unaware reader the impression that they were turning literal lead into gold.

I'm not sure which came first - whether the chemistry aspect was spawned by a confusion over the veiled writings of the Hermetic art called Alchemy or whether the Hermetic art and writings regarding it's results were written in chemistry-alchemy terms because they found the chemical-alchemy a good communicative cipher for sharing their results without getting DeMolayed by the church.

Well, I find it interesting that Newton even looked into Alchemy to begin with. I didn't know that until now.

This sounds pretty interesting....... ya learn something new every day.

I'm an atheist but if being a GOd freak would make me an Isaac Newton, I'd be a God freak. You could be a lot worse in life (say a Congressman or Senator)!

they didn't have the periodic table in Newton's day. That didn't come until much later with Dmitri Mendeleev.

Without understanding the electronic configuration of the elements its difficult to understand the folly of alchemy.

Newton wasnt anymore a "God-freak" than anyone else of his time. He was unique in the style, but not in the degree, of his theism.

In his 17th centurey Europe was being bathed in blood by the wars of religion being waged in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. In some parts of Europe you could be broken on the rack for announcing that you ate meat on Fridays, and in other parts could be put on the rack for NOT eating meat on Fridays.

But he was a free thinker- about God- as well as about physics. And he was indeed a non-trinitarian precursor of the Diests, and of the Unitarians, of the coming centuries.

He even took a stab at decoding the prophecies of the Bible.

During the year of Mayan/Nostrodamous hype on the History Channel they did a piece about Newton's End-of-the-world predictions based on his own Biblical arthmetic ( the Mayans supposibly said the world would end last year- but newton said it would end in 2060- so were not out of the woods yet!).

The Bible predicts that the ancient Jewish kingdom will reappear as one of the road signs pointing to the apocalypse.


Newton calculated that this revived Jewish state would appear at a particular date in the late 1940's. Sure enough -the modern state of Israel was founded in 1947 [twilight zone music here].

Did he really predict that or is that merely coincidence? His interpretation also seems to predict that the Apocalypse will come at around no earlier than 2060. I have serious doubt that it will happen but we'll see.

About Isreal- thats just it. Could be the stopped clock being right twice a day, or not!



These dates were from a work that he wrote at the end of his life that was never published, but was unearthed in the 1990's, and then got media attention in the 2000's.

From googling different articles just now- it looks like his purpose was the opposite of what the modern hype is all about. He was saying "dont be silly. The world isnt about to come to an end, and even if the biblical prophecies are true its not gonna happen BEFORE 2060 (if it happens at all). So we in 1705 have nothing to worry about (my paraphrasing of him)". He expounded upon his conclusions to quell millenialism-not to promote it. But ofcouse cable TV sells the recently found documents as "Newton said the world will end in 2060!".

I really object to Newton being turned into another Nostradamus.

Newton invented calculus and physics as we have come to know it. Everything else is bloody nonsense. Newton wasted 3/4 of his precious time with alchemy and theology. I suppose we must be grateful for the 1/4 of his time

ruveyn

My thinking on this is like yours. Being very religious is not an offense to me considering that he knew what science was and could separate the two things. I know I've said this before, but if the laws of motion were written today the atheists would be trying to use it to prove there's no god and the theists would be saying, see that's god moving things. Newton stuck to the physics.

Alchemy was a two fold thing though - you had some people trying to take the physical metal lead and turn it into gold and you also had people using it as a metaphor to sneak Eastern and Hermetic mysticism below the radar of the Catholic church - in a lot of ways it was the cipher-speak of the later that confused the former and inspired them to try their hand at chemistry. Alchemy in the mystic sense goes back to 100 to 200 BC (Gnostic and Hermetic sects) perhaps even farther as well as being something that the Arabs played with while Islam was in it's pro-science and discovery days for a couple centuries prior to that impulse collapsing back in on itself and seeing complete backwardness from that corner of the world up to the present.

The word "alchemy" itsself is an Arabic word.

Like "algebra", and the star "alderberan". "algorithem", and all the those other scientific and math words that start with "al" (which means 'the' in Arabic).

Lots of Hermeticists claim Kemi refers to Egypt or the land of black dirt, fertile soil, etc.. If Al is a prefix it wouldn't be too surprising.