Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Isaac Newton: The World's Most Famous Alchemist

Starting point is 00:00:00 Most people know of Isaac Newton as one of the world's foremost mathematicians and physicists. Listeners of this podcast might also know that he was inadvertently responsible for the creation of the gold standard. Yet there is another part of Isaac Newton that most people are not aware of, a part of him that was very much not a scientist. Learn more about Isaac Newton and his fascination with alchemy on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR.

Starting point is 00:01:03 It is hard to express just how important Isaac Newton was. He single-handedly developed the basics of modern physics. He put the entire field of science on a firm footing by describing how motion, light, and gravity all work. And on top of that, he developed an entire branch of mathematics, on which pretty much every other advanced science is dependent. Almost the entire discipline of engineering uses calculus for the creation of almost everything that we use. If you remember back to my episode on the gold standard, it was inadvertently created when Isaac Newton was the head of the royal mint, so he also had a major impact on the global economy. Several years ago, I once came across a book that attempted to rank the most important people in the history of the world.

Starting point is 00:01:48 As you would suspect, there were tons of philosophers and political and religious leaders on the list. However, the person they ranked number one was Isaac Newton. I previously also did an episode on how many fantasy Nobel Prizes Newton would have won if Nobel Prizes had been given out when he was alive. I came up with 10, which is 8.000. more than anyone else has ever won. And if you remember back to my episode on the Brickista Crone problem, some of Europe's greatest mathematicians took months to solve the problem that Newton figured out in a single evening. So in summary, Isaac Newton was a really smart guy who laid the foundation for all of modern science and mathematics. But here's the thing.

Starting point is 00:02:30 Much of the stuff which made Newton famous, he did before the age of 30. While he did work on science his whole life, most of his time was spent doing something else. Isaac Newton spent most of his life studying alchemy and trying to find hidden codes in the Bible. This isn't something that's often talked about, but it's absolutely true. Before I get into these specifics of Newton, I should probably discuss just what alchemy was. Alchemy, if I'm being generous, was the ancient version of chemistry. Almost every country in the ancient world had its own version of alchemy. India and China had their own alchemy traditions, which were separate from Western alchemy. Western alchemy developed in Greece and Alexandria, later shifted to the Islamic world, and then came back to Western Europe.

Starting point is 00:03:16 What most alchemists had in common was trying to understand matter and substances. They would conduct what to all outward appearances looked like chemistry experiments. They would heat substances, mix substances, grind them into powders, and do other chemistry one-on-one type exercises. The problem was that the alchemist didn't have a correct understanding of what matter was. They developed theories as to the makeup of the physical world. A common belief was that everything was made up of four elements. Earth, air, fire, and water.

Starting point is 00:03:45 These had the attributes of heat and moisture. Fire was hot and dry. Earth was cold and dry. Water was cold and moist. And air was warm and moist. Alchemists weren't just experimenting for the sake of experimenting. There were certain objectives that alchemists had been trying to achieve for centuries. One was an elixir of immortality or the creation of something called apiece.

Starting point is 00:04:06 panacea, which could cure any disease. But the big thing was trying to develop something known as the Philosopher's Stone. Yes, the very same thing from the Harry Potter books. And just as an aside that has nothing to do with this episode, the title of the book was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, but they actually changed the title of the book for the American audience to Harry Potter and the Sosser Stone because they thought that American audiences might not get it. When they filmed the movie, the actors had to shoot every scene twice, once saying, philosopher's stone and another time saying Sawsever's Stone. Anyways, back to the alchemist.

Starting point is 00:04:42 The philosopher's stone wasn't necessarily a stone per se. Rather, it was a substance that could convert base metals such as iron, lead, tin, zinc, and mercury, into noble metals such as silver or gold. In other words, they were seeking the transmutation of elements. Something that we really wouldn't know until the 20th century was that it was impossible to transmute elements through simple chemistry. experiments. The only way to transmute elements is through the atomic nuclei, but alchemists at the time had no clue that such a thing existed. The philosopher's stone was also, according to some alchemists,

Starting point is 00:05:18 the same thing as the elixir of life or the panacea. And it was known by other names such as the Materia prima or the tincture. The philosopher's stone was basically the Holy Grail in alchemy. The pursuit of this substance took up the time and attention of some of the smartest people in Europe for centuries. And it might be considered crackpot pseudoscience now, but at the time, it was considered totally legitimate research. There were always rumors of some researcher in some distant land having discovered the philosopher's stone, so there was always this idea that the alchemists were tantalizingly close to rediscovering it. And this brings us back to Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton worked on alchemy studies and his pursuit of the philosopher's stone for over 30 years.

Starting point is 00:06:02 While he studied alchemy for several decades, most of his research occurred in the 1670s when he withdrew from public debate after receiving criticism from the scientist Robert Hook. In addition to his own original research, he also copied many texts on alchemy writing by other people. One of the reasons why so few people knew about his alchemy research is that he never talked about it. He basically kept his research secret, unlike his work with math and physics, for which he published books. And there were several reasons for the secrecy. The first is that the practice of alchemy was actually illegal in England for several years why Newton was alive. It was made illegal because there were so many self-proclaimed alchemists who were defrauding people. Even though he was Isaac Newton, he didn't want to broadcast the fact that he was basically breaking the law.

Starting point is 00:06:49 The other reason why he never told anyone might have been the same reason he never published his work on calculus right away. Newton actually believed that he made progress in creating the philosopher's stone. As with his work on calculus, he kept it to himself because he didn't want other researchers to get credit for his discovery. He had also heard that the chemist Robert Boyle was an alchemist and was also working on the philosopher's stone. An additional concern was his own personal protection. There were cases in continental Europe of alchemists being arrested by various kings. If Newton had actually figured out how to transmute metals into gold, that would be a very valuable technology to have. Potentially, something worth killing for.

Starting point is 00:07:27 Another reason probably had to do with the fact that much of his writing on alchemy was also heavily interlaced with religious writing. He referred to himself in writing as Jehovah Sanctus Unis, which is Latin for Jehovah the Holy One. Much of his writing was in code, so even when other people found his writings, there was much that nobody understood. It really wasn't the best look for a man who was considered one of the top thinkers of the Enlightenment. For all of these reasons, Newton never went public with his alchemy research in his lifetime. Knowledge about his alchemy writing didn't really come to light until he died and his writings were found. His scientific work overshadowed his unpublished writings on alchemy, but his alchemy work was always known within a small circle. As science advanced over the next few centuries, later generations of scientists scratched their heads at this part of Newton's life.

Starting point is 00:08:17 One of Newton's biographers, Sir David Brewster, wrote about Newton and alchemy in 1855. He said, quote, Insofar as Newton's inquiries were limited to the transmutation and multiple cases, of metals, and even to the discovery of the universal tincture, we may find some apology for his researchers. But we cannot understand how a mind of such power, and so nobly occupied with the abstractions of geometry in the study of the material world, could stoop to even be the copiest of the most contemptible alchemal poetry and the annotator of a work, the obvious production of a fool and a knave. End quote. In 1936, most of the works that Newton wrote on alchemy went up

Starting point is 00:08:56 for auction. Of the estimated 10 million words which Newton wrote in his lifetime on all subjects combined, an estimated one million of those words were about alchemy. The books were purchased by the noted economist John Maynard Keynes, who later said of Newton, quote, he was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the age of magicians. Keynes kept on acquiring Newton's alchemy papers from other people throughout the years trying to assemble as much as he could in one place. He eventually donated his entire collection of Newton's alchemy writing back to Cambridge in 1946. There is currently an effort to digitize all of Newton's alchemy work and have it available online, which is being spearheaded by the University of Indiana.

Starting point is 00:09:37 What we think of Isaac Newton as one of the world's greatest scientists, and he was, he also had a sight of him that was very different from what most people assume. Then again, Newton probably didn't think of his alchemy research as being unscientific, While Newton was responsible for great advances in science and mathematics, there was still a lot about the natural world, which was still unknown in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. So even despite his dabbling and alchemy, Isaac Newton's accomplishments are enough to retain his spot as the world's greatest scientist. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon.

Starting point is 00:10:24 If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Isaac Newton: The World's Most Famous Alchemist

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.