The last of the magicians
Alchemy, astrology and occult learning paved the way for modern philosophy and science, argues the author of this superb life of Newton
Newton the Alchemist
Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature’s “Secret Fire”
William R Newman
Princeton University Press 2019 Hb, 537pp, illus, ind, refs, £30.00, ISBN 9780691174877
For some hardened rationalists, Isaac Newton’s interest in alchemy seems to be a rather shameful secret, best ignored. Yet he wrote about a million words on alchemy, and even more on biblical prophecy, sacred architecture, interpreting the Holy Trinity and other religious topics.
John Maynard Keynes famously called Newton the “last of the magicians” and “the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance” in Babylon and Sumer. Keynes dismissed Newton’s alchemical manuscripts as “wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value”. Yet alchemy isn’t intrinsically unscientific. Its theories differ from those of modern chemistry, but many serious alchemists approached their investigations with experimental and intellectual stringency. In this landmark book, Newman points out that Newton employed “elaborate speculation” when deciphering seemingly impenetrable alchemical tracts, but his alchemical experiments were characterised by “extraordinary rigor”.
Along with the inevitable confidence tricksters and charlatans, alchemy attracted towering intellects including Robert Boyle, Gottfried Leibnitz and John Locke. As Peter Marshall noted in The Mercurial Emperor, alchemy and astrology helped lay the foundations of the 17th century scientific revolution. Occult learning and the pursuit of truth sowed the seeds of modern philosophy and science.
Essentially, alchemists believed that metals consisted of three “principles”, the tria prima: salt, sulphur and mercury. These correspond, Marshall comments, to the body, soul and spirit and “constitute the world, underlay all phenomena and are to be found in all substances”. Alchemical processes could resolve metals into their principles, each of which consists of minute ‘corpuscles’ – analogous to atoms – that aggregate and separate during alchemical reactions. Geber, a mediaeval writer on alchemy, proposed that elementary corpuscles combined, forming particles of sulphur and mercury. (Paracelsus added salt to the tria prima in the 16th century.) These recombined to form minute corpuscles of metals.
Alchemists sought more than to transmute lead into gold: they wanted insights into the nature of reality and its “hidden operations”. Discovering the “material soule [sic] of all matter” guided Newton’s alchemical experiments for decades. Certainly, he picked the “practical fruits” of his experiments: he devoted considerable energy to developing chemical medicines, for instance. But he routinely considered “the implications [..] for natural philosophy more broadly”. Discussing one experiment, Newman points out that Newton “typically [..] tries to employ his [alchemical] knowledge to arrive at the most fundamental level of the problem”.
Newton brought the same desire to understand the “fundamental level” of a problem to his scientific work. Some historians and biographers suggest that Newton’s alchemical interests contributed to his theory of gravity. Alchemy and the principle of sympathetic magic may have stimulated Newton to consider the idea of hidden cosmic forces and action at a distance.
Newman, however, argues for a stronger connection between alchemy and Newton’s optical investigations than with gravity. Paracelsus called alchemy the ‘spagyric’ art – from the Greek for ‘tear apart and gather together’. A prism resolves white light into the colours of the spectrum, which can be recombined. So, at the risk of oversimplifying Newman’s eloquent argument, to an alchemical mind, white light is transmuted into the spectrum in the same way that base metals are transmuted into gold.
Newman mentions other alchemists who influenced Newton, such as Michael Sendivogius, who was probably born a Polish peasant but became a counsellor of two Holy Roman Emperors and also worked as a mineralogical expert. Sendivogius transmuted metals using a ‘red powder’ originally developed by the Scottish alchemist Alexander Seton for the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Rudolf analysed the powder to see if it contained gold. It didn’t. But Sendivogius couldn’t repeat the feat and, Marshall recounts, claimed Seton hadn’t given him the right formula before he died. Newton also “pored over” books written by Johann de Monte-Synders – an itinerant alchemist who’d disappear after demonstrating a “transmutation or two” – for decades. Other intellectuals, including Boyle and Benedict Spinoza, investigated such tales to see if there a kernel of truth.
I’d have to be a literary alchemist to distil this book into a review. Newton the Alchemist is a volume to savour. The 15 years of work behind the book are clear: it’s a remarkable achievement, the definitive work on Newton’s alchemical research and essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the occult or science.
Mark Greener
★★★★★