newton and alchemy--11/6/24

06 Nov 2024

newton and alchemy--11/6/24

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Today's selection-- from Mendeleyev's Dream by Paul Strathern. Sir Isaac Newton’s adventures in alchemy:

“By the time Boyle died in 1691, at the age of sixty-four, Newton had already published the Principia, his revolutionary work on gravity. This produced the first comprehensive explanation of how the mechanical-corpuscular world worked, the forces chat held it together. But gravity dealt only with the physical properties of matter. Newton was well aware of this, and sought to remedy the lack. In his work on light, Opticks, he appended a number of queries relating to a wider range of scientific topics. These pointed the way forward by suggesting future lines of inquiry for science, including chemistry. 'Have not the small Particles of Bodies certain Powers, Virtues, or Forces, by which they act at a distance ... upon one another for producing a great Part of the Phaenomena of Nature?' These 'attractive Powers' appeared to be more than the forces by which 'Bodies act upon one another by the Attractions of Gravity, Magnetism and Electricity'.

“The trouble was, Newton's ground-breaking scientific vision of the world had set a new standard for science. Any scientific advances were expected to incorporate the mechanical rigour and mathematical exactitude of Newtonian physics. Yee Newton was dealing with the world of quantity, rather than the world of quality to which chemistry still belonged. And even in its fundamental concepts chemistry still remained largely unquantified. Boyle's idea of the chemical element had only just emerged, and was far from being fully understood. Under such circumstances one couldn't expect exact. quantitative analysis of the complex chemical reactions these elements underwent.

“So much for Newton's orthodox approach to chemistry, whose import still lay in the future. His other approach to the qualitative problems of matter was a complete and utter disaster. It is no exaggeration to say that this was probably the greatest waste of a great mind in the history of science.

Engraving of Portrait of Newton by John Vanderbank

“Newton plunged into alchemy. Unlike Boyle, whose alchemical pursuits had a smidgeon of theoretical scientific justification, Newton's had none. His headlong descent into the nether world of alchemy was metaphysical from start to finish. From inspiration to desired outcome, the aim was never scientific. Like Boyle, Newton too was obsessed with religion. His particular field of interest was the Holy Trinity, which he believed to be a misconception. This was serious heresy. (Though it also had its less serious side. Newton belonged to Trinity College, Cambridge. As a fellow of Trinity he was required to swear on oath that he would uphold the college and what it stood for. Newton tactfully chose to swear his belief in the existence of his employers.)

“At least half of Newton's intellectual life was wasted on nonscientific pursuits. Along with his heretical ideas about the Holy Trinity, Newton spent years on abstruse mathematical calculations concerning the Old Testament and mythology — coming up with precise dates for such events as the creation, Noah's ark and the voyage of the Argonauts. He also learned Hebrew so that he could read through Ezekiel verse by verse in order to reconstruct an exact blueprint of the Temple at Jerusalem. (Though he was willing to switch to Latin or Greek translations when these suited his purposes.) Then, using the symbolism embedded in the Temple, and descriptions in the Book of Revelation, he found he was able to prophesy the exact dates of such events as the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world. One of the transcendent mathematical minds of all time was convinced that this was the major intellectual work for which he would be remembered by a grateful posterity.

“All this was intimately connected to Newton's somewhat lesser alchemical aspirations. Alchemy was where the 'Magick' of the spiritual realm entered the world; to understand this was to understand the workings of the spiritual world. Beside the enormity of his prophecies, Newton's alchemy might seem a mere peccadillo. Until the facts emerge, that is. Newton possessed no fewer than 138 books on alchemy, and was to write over 650,000 words on the subject. This was evidently no mere hobby. His experimental involvement was similarly gargantuan. Despite his secretive approach to the subject, Newton went so far as to construct his own furnace in the garden of his college rooms, in order to proceed with his alchemical investigations. According to his despairing assistant, he was 'so serious upon his studies that he ate very sparingly, he often forgot to eat at all ... very rarely went to bed, till three or four of the clock, sometimes not till five or six ... he used to employ about six weeks in his laboratory, the fire scarcely going out either night or day, he sitting up one night, as I did another until he had finished his chemical experiments ... What his aim might be I was unable to penetrate into.' Judging from Newton's notebooks, his motives for these experiments were wholly metaphysical. Even the transmuting of base metals into gold was regarded from the metaphysical angle. This was not chemistry, it was sorcery.

“And yet. Newton was convinced that some kind of structure lay at the heart of matter. There had to be ultimate laws governing this substance, the very stuff of the world we inhabit. But as we have seen, the science of chemistry was in fact not yet sufficiently advanced to tackle such questions — unlike physics, where Newton had succeeded as no other. And of course Newton's chemical motives were unscientific, his mental approach questionable to say the least. Newton's mental stability was precarious at the best of times, but it was the failure of his alchemical investigations, combined with an unadmitted infatuation with a young Swiss mathematician, which finally drove him over the edge. In 1693, at the age of fifty, Newton suffered from 'a distemper that much seized his head, and left him awake for about five nights altogether', according to a Cambridge colleague. He then fled from Cambridge and vanished altogether for several months. The next that was heard of him was a scrawled, ink-blotched letter written at the Bull Tavern in Shoreditch, east London, to his friend the philosopher John Locke. In it he apologizes for 'being of opinion that you endeavoured to embroil me with woemen'. Such an endeavour would have particularly vexed Newton, who lived a life of strictest celibacy, thus ensuring that he didn't have to admit his repressed homosexual inclinations even to himself.

“All this had its effect on the scientific world at large. Newton's presidency of the Royal Society ensured that misogyny was enshrined in this venerable scientific institution. This tendency had already been encouraged by Hooke, the secretary of the society, who had taken a vow that he would never marry. It seems that for members of this august institution even the slightest prospect of being embroiled with a woman was intolerable. As the modern historian of science Londa Schiebinger observed: 'For nearly three hundred years the only female presence at the Royal Society was a skeleton preserved in the society's anatomical collection.'

“The path of alchemy led to lunacy — not only for chemistry. The elements which Boyle had defined would now have to be discovered in a strictly literal sense.”