Isaac Newton’s name is enshrined in history and science for discovering the basic principles of physics. Everybody knows Newton’s laws, after all. And, for a long time, scientists and science historians liked to pretend that Newton was a hard-nosed, rational guy in a world that believed dragons lived in America and you’d fall off the edge of the Earth if you sailed over the horizon. But we’re finally seeing more of his life’s work, which had nothing to do with physics, or even science in any practical sense.
Newton spent most of his life pursuing alchemy, and not because he was a great chemist. He spent much of his life broke and whoever could find the Philosopher’s Stone would be rich. So in between hunting down counterfeiters, getting the history of the world completely and utterly wrong, and inventing entire branches of mathematical theory, Newton tried to engineer the various ingredients of the Stone. Much of what he did, though, was mysterious, thanks in part to alchemists at the time jealously guarding their work, in part to alchemy being a crime in England, and in part to the fact that Newton couldn’t handle criticism, at all. No, really: He had severe breakdowns whenever he was publicly criticized.
Why would this alchemy be important? It’s often forgotten that failure is a crucial part of science; much of what Newton pioneered was in service to alchemy, so his alchemical texts are more or less a guide to how he stumbled over and explored the scientific work he’s famous for. It’s speculated Newton wrote over a million words about alchemy, but finding these texts, let alone seeing what was in them, was close to impossible. Newton never formally published this work and much of it was owned by private collectors. Only recently have we begun seeing some of it posted online.
Thankfully, the Chemical Heritage Foundation has bought a key manuscript and for the first time, is uploading them for the public to see. It’s essentially Newton’s foundation for his alchemical thought, a recipe for “sophick mercury” and how he planned to “sublimate” lead into gold. It’s not clear how far Newton actually got with this idea, but it’s a key insight into his thought. Besides, if nothing else, it’s an important reminder that no matter how smart you are, sometimes you’re still going to get it wrong.
(via National Geographic)