Isaac Newton The Last Sorcerer

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Isaac Newton

A new biography of Isaac Newton that reveals the extraordinary influence that the study of alchemy had on the greatest Early Modern scientific discoveries. In this 'ground breaking biography' Michael White destroys the myths of the life of Isaac Newton and reveals a portrait of the scientist as the last sorcerer. According to traditional accounts, Newton was the first modern scientist . As creator of the theory of gravity, calculus, modern theories of light and devisor of the three laws of mechanics, his methods are perceived as the genesis of modern science. Yet the traditional version of his life fails to tell, by some considerable margin, the full story. How for example could Newton's apparent empiricism be married with his interest in alchemy and magic? What had inspired him in his discoveries? How did he reconcile his scientific discoveries with his religious faith? And, most of all, who was this man who, historians tell us, remained a virgin all his life and who seemed to be an argumentative ego maniac on the one hand and a kindly old man on the other? In this revelatory biography, White paints an original picture of Isaac Newton completely at variance with the traditional portrait.
Isaac Newton

Recounts Newton's life as an alchemist and describes him as a tortured, obsessive individual who would risk his own health in his quest for an understanding of the universe
Isaac Newton and the Transmutation of Alchemy

Author: Philip Ashley Fanning
language: en
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Release Date: 2009-07-07
Isaac Newton was a dedicated alchemist, a fact usually obscured as unsuited to his stature as a leader of the scientific revolution. Author Philip Ashley Fanning has diligently examined the evidence and concludes that the two major aspects of Newton’s research—conventional science and alchemy—were actually inseparable. In Isaac Newton and the Transmutation of Alchemy, Fanning reveals the surprisingly profound influence that Newton’s study of this hermetic art had in shaping his widely adopted scientific concepts. Alchemy was an ancient tradition of speculative philosophy that promised miraculous powers, such as the ability to change base metals into gold and the possibility of a universal solvent or elixir of life. Fanning compellingly describes this carefully tended esoteric institution, which may have found its greatest advocate in the career of the father of modern science. Relegated to the fringes of discourse until its twentieth-century revival by innovative thinkers such as psychiatrist Carl Jung, alchemy offers a key to understanding both the foundations of modern knowledge and important avenues in which we may yet discover wisdom.