Newton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature’s "Secret Fire"

568 Pages·2018·9.4 MB·English

by  William R. Newman

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
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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,