NEWTON, THE LAST OF THE MAGICIANS

N E W T O N A N D A L C H E M Y

In 1936, the world of Isaac Newton scholarship received a rude shock. In that year the venerable auction house of Sotheby's released a catalogue describing three hundred twenty-nine lots of Newton's manuscripts, mostly in his own handwriting, of which over a third were filled with content that was undeniably alchemical.

These manuscripts, which had been labeled "not fit to be printed" upon Newton's death in 1727, raised a host of interesting questions in 1936 as they do even today. Was the founder of classical physics an alchemist? And if so, what does this mean? Did he pursue his alchemical interests for scientific reasons, or simply because he was swept up by the old dream of transmuting base metals into gold? Did Newton discover a secret theological meaning in alchemical texts, which often describe the transmutational secret as a special gift revealed by God to his chosen sons? Or was Newton perhaps attracted to the graphic and mysterious imagery of alchemy, with its illustrations of hermaphrodites, couples copulating within flasks, poisonous dragons, green lions, and dying toads? None of these questions are made easier by the fact that Newton's laboratory notebooks, even the one containing the first full description of his brilliant discovery that white light is really a mixture of immutable spectral colors, are filled with recipes patently elaborated from the very alchemical sources that overflow the manuscripts sold by Sotheby's in 1936.

Here too, alongside sober explanations of optical and physical phenomena such as freezing and boiling, we find "Neptune's Trident," "Mercury's Caducean Rod," and of course the "Green Lyon," all symbolizing substances derived from Newton's alchemical readings. Whatever the ultimate purpose of Newton's alchemical investigations may have been, it is clear that we cannot erect a watertight dam separating them from his other scientific endeavors.