Newton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature’s "Secret Fire" PDF
Preview Newton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature’s "Secret Fire"
Newton the Alchemist ii ◆ Newton the Alchemist Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature’s “Secret Fire” William R. Newman Princeton University Press Princeton & Oxford Copyright © 2019 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press .princeton .edu All Rights Reserved LCCN 2018953066 ISBN 978- 0- 691- 17487- 7 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available Editorial: Al Bertrand and Kristin Zodrow Production Editorial: Brigitte Pelner Text and Jacket/Cover Design: Pamela Schnitter Jacket/Cover Credit: From the title page of Johann de Monte-Snyders’s Metamorphosis Planetarum, 1964 Production: Jaqueline Poirier Publicity: Alyssa Sanford Copyeditor: Dawn Hall This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro Printed on acid- free paper ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Marleen, Emily, Ben, Marie, and Callie Contents Acknowledgments ix Symbols and Conventions xi Abbreviations for Works Cited xix One ◆ The Enigma of Newton’s Alchemy 1 Two ◆ Problems of Authority and Language in Newton’s Chymistry 20 Three ◆ Religion, Ancient Wisdom, and Newton’s Alchemy 45 Four ◆ Early Modern Alchemical Theory: The Cast of Characters 64 Five ◆ The Young Thaumaturge 88 Six ◆ Optics and Matter: Newton, Boyle, and Scholastic Mixture Theory 114 Seven ◆ Newton’s Early Alchemical Theoricae: Preliminary Considerations 136 Eight ◆ Toward a General Theory of Vegetability and Mechanism 150 Nine ◆ The Doves of Diana: First Attempts 181 Ten ◆ Flowers of Lead: Newton and the Alchemical Florilegium 209 Eleven ◆ Johann de Monte- Snyders in Newton’s Alchemy 223 Twelve ◆ Attempts at a Unified Practice: Keynes 58 246 Thirteen ◆ The Fortunes of Raymundus: Newton’s Late Florilegia 261 Fourteen ◆ The Shadow of a Noble Experiment: Newton’s Laboratory Records to 1696 296 Fifteen ◆ The Quest for Sophic Sal Ammoniac 319 Sixteen ◆ Extracting Our Venus 347 Seventeen ◆ Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, Alchemical Collaborator 367 Eighteen ◆ Praxis: Delusions of a Disordered Mind? 396 Nineteen ◆ The Warden of the Mint and His Alchemical Associates 415 Twenty ◆ Public and Private: Newton’s Chrysopoeia and the Republic of Chymistry 434 Twenty- One ◆ The Ghost of Sendivogius: Niter, Sulfur, Fermentation, and Affinity 452 Twenty- Two ◆ A Final Interlude: Newton and Boyle 482 Epilogue 497 Appendix One ◆ The Origin of Newton’s Chymical Dictionaries 501 Appendix Two ◆ Newton’s “Key to Snyders” 504 Appendix Three ◆ “Three Mysterious Fires” 509 Appendix Four ◆ Newton’s Interview with William Yworth 517 Index 521 viii ◆ Contents Acknowledgments Any book with a gestation period of fifteen years must necessarily owe many debts. Needless to say, human memory will fail to capture every obligation, but here I list the major contributors, beginning with the agencies that funded my research, and then passing to the individu- als who have helped make Newton the Alchemist possible. It is impossible to separate the research that went into Newton the Al- chemist from the editorial work that undergirds the online Chymistry of Isaac Newton project (www. chymistry .org) at Indiana University, since the book could not have been written without the thorough acquaintance with Newton’s chymical Nachlass that editing the texts has engendered. Begin- ning in 2003, the National Science Foundation has supported the CIN with four multiyear grants, NSF Awards 0324310, 0620868, 0924983, and 1556864. During this period the National Endowment for the Humanities also awarded a multiyear grant to the project. Beyond this support for the CIN, the immediate process of writing Newton the Alchemist was made pos- sible by the following grants and fellowships, which allowed me to devote two successive academic years (2014– 16) almost exclusively to research and writing: a National Humanities Center Fellowship, a Caltech/Huntington Library Searle Professorship, a Cain Fellowship at the Science History Insti- tute in Philadelphia, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, an American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant, an Indiana University New Frontiers Exploratory Travel Fellowship, and an Indiana University College Arts and Humanities Institute Research Travel Grant. The present team of the Chymistry of Isaac Newton project, to whom I owe a heavy and ongoing debt, includes John A. Walsh, technical editor; Wallace Hooper, project manager and programmer/analyst; James R. Voelkel, senior consulting editor; Michelle Dalmau, head, digital collections services, In- diana University– Bloomington Libraries; William Cowan, head, software development (library technologies), IUB Libraries; Meagan Allen, editorial assistant and chemistry lab assistant; Meridith Beck Mink, consultant; and Cathrine Reck, consultant in chemistry. Indiana Libraries Technology Col- laborators include Kara Alexander, digital media specialist; Nianli Ma, pro- grammer/analyst, digital repository infrastructure; and Brian Wheeler, sys- tem administrator. Among the past participants in the project whose work included preliminary transcribing and encoding of the digital editions of Newton’s work are Tawrin Baker, Nicolás Bamballi, Nick Best, Neil Chase, Archie Fields III, John Johnson, Joel Klein, Cesare Pastorino, Evan Ragland,
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