The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy (Cambridge Paperback Library) [Paperback]

B. J. T. Dobbs (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521273811 | ISBN-13: 978-0521273817 | Publication Date: April 29, 1983

Sir Isaac Newton left at his death a large collection of papers on alchemy, mostly in his own handwriting; the importance of this legacy has been debated ever since. When it first appeared, Professor Dobb's detailed analysis of the foundations of Newton's alchemical pursuits further stimulated interest in the subject by firmly establishing the importance of alchemy in Newton's thought. This book sets the foundations of Newton's alchemy in their historical context in Restoration England. It is shown that alchemical modes of thought and particularly those of a Neoplatonic kind, were quite strong in many of those who provided the dynamism for the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and that these modes of thought had important relationships with general movements for reform in the same period: reform of religion, philosophy, learning, society and of man himself. Newton's alchemy is thus seen as a critical link between Renaissance Hermeticism and the rational chemistry and mechanics of the eighteenth century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Not every first book suffices to establish a reputation. Mrs Dobb's superb achievement does just that ... No one interested in seventeenth century science should allow himself to miss the work.' Journal of the History of Medicine

'Dobbs's book should be read not only by scholars of Newton: it should be basic reading for students of the enlightenment as well as for historians interested in the connection between Renaissance Neoplatonism, broadly interpreted and the origins of modern thought.' The Eighteenth Century

Book Description

This book sets the foundations of Newton's alchemy in their historical context in Restoration England. It is shown that alchemical modes of thought were quite strong in many of those who provided the dynamism for the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and that these modes of thought had important relationships with general movements for reform in the same period.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (April 29, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521273811
• ISBN-13: 978-0521273817
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,154,261 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent! Phenomenal scholarship, clearly written., October 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy (Cambridge Paperback Library) (Paperback)

Was Newton an alchemist?

When John Maynard Keynes purchased a trunkful of Sir Isaac Newton's private papers at a Sotheby's auction early in this century, he was shocked to find out how much time and effort Newton had spent in alchemical pursuits. This book explores why Newton did so.

Keynes' reaction after reading Newton's alchemical notes was to label him "the last of the magicians".

Similarly embarrassed by alchemical writings in Sir Isaac's own hand they found among his papers, Newton's Enlightenment-era biographers had suppressed mention of his work in alchemy--or dismissed it as a recreation, pursued as a diversion from his "real" work in establishing the foundations of modern mathematical physics.

They all missed the point of Newton's alchemical work, because they only saw it through the lenses of their own eras. They projected the effects of the great man's discoveries backward into the years before the discoveries, when he and his contemporaries struggled to find ANY conceptual keys that would fit the locks of physical reality. Keynes and the biographers simply forgot that "the past is a different country: they do things differently there."

Dr. Dobbs' carefully researched study goes a long way toward correcting these misunderstandings of Newton. She explores Newton's extensive alchemical experiments in the historical context of his own era, and shows how this research influenced key elements in his discovery of testable physical laws.

In the last lecture of his 1964 series on "The Character of Physical Law", Caltech physicist Richard Feynman described what it takes to seek new such laws:

"...The truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought. What we need is imagination, but imagination in a terrible strait-jacket. We have to find a new view of the world that has to agree with everything that is known, but disagree in its predictions somewhere. . . . And in that disagreement it must agree with nature. If you can find any other view of the world which agrees over the entire range where things have already been observed, but disagrees somewhere else, you have made a great discovery. ...A new idea is extremely difficult to think of. It takes a fantastic imagination."

Newton had both that fantastic imagination and the incredible discipline it took to put it into Feynman's strait-jacket. As Dr. Dobbs shows in her book, his fine-grained experimental investigation of the claims of alchemy developed both his amazing powers of concentration and the broad range of ideas to try that he could bring to bear on a problem.

While Newton may well have been disappointed by his years of intense alchemical research, it was still an important part of the rigorous intellectual regimen he set for himself in pursuing verifiable truths. His alchemical studies fed his imagination fruitful ideas to be tried in his other areas of research. He tested some of these ideas mathematically against accurate observations and experimental results reported by Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei, and changed the way we view the world forever. Read this book carefully, and you'll have a better understanding of how--and why--he did it.

-dubhghall

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great window onto an extraordinary scientist's methods., October 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy (Cambridge Paperback Library) (Paperback)

This is a very important book, and a reprint edition would be welcome indeed. I have found it to be fascinating.

Take the following passage (pp. 168-169) from the chapter titled "Methodology", for example:

'Many of the annotations in Keynes MS 58 and at least some of the processes derive from John de Monte Snyders' "The Metamorphosis of the Planets". Snyders wrote other works, and apparently all of them were published in Latin or in German, but "The Metamorphosis of the Planets" had only German editions and seems to have existed in English translation only in manuscript. Newton somewhere acquired a copy of it and made a complete, carefully written transcript of it which included an elaborate title-page and a detailed symbolic frontispiece. Newton also numbered the pages and even the lines, for easy reference. By handwriting, Newton's transcript probably dates from early in the 1670s.

'Newton's autograph transcript of Snyder's work was one of the items that so horrified Sir David Brewster when he went through Newton's papers in the middle of the nineteenth century, it will be recalled. And truly it is a distressing document to read, being a complicated allegory that rambles on through thirty-one chapters. The whole comprises sixty-four pages, and in Newton's small early handwriting that is a substantial amount of material. Very little of it is couched in rationalistic language.

'Nevertheless, Brewster would perhaps not have been so horrified had he looked a litle further and seen what Newton did with the material. For the essence of Newton's approach to Snyders was exactly the same as that which he used in the interpretation of prophecy: a rational, matter-of-fact analysis aimed at finding the true "significations" of Snyders' allegorical figures and their actions. The only variation in method in the case of this alchemical study was that Newton, instead of checking his "significations" against actual historical events as in the case of prophecy, in alchemy checked them against experimental results.

'So that it may be seen just how great a distance Newton had to travel to get from Snyders to the laboratory, one passage in which Snyders treats of the eagle and scepter of Jupiter (or Jove) will be given here. . .'

If you have any interest in Sir Isaac Newton or in the early history of experimental chemistry, Dr. Dobbs' study is an essential part of your reading, well worth tracking down.