Apples & Alchemy

Sir Isaac Newton and His Obsession with Magic

Key Takeaways

1. Sir Isaac Newton was a brilliant mind who repeatedly revolutionized science with multiple earth-shattering discoveries.

2. Newton was also a bit of a weirdo; he was fascinated by Jesus Christ and devoted considerable time and effort to alchemy, which was informed by the same Greek philosophy that influenced early Christianity.

3. Renaissance magic, such as alchemy, evolved into a Scientific Revolution that undermined and then replaced the authority of the Church; the life of Isaac Newton vividly illustrates the point.

Newton the Scientist

There is no more titanic figure in the history of modern science than Sir Isaac Newton. In 1687, he published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (or the Principia for short). The book laid out his Three Laws of Motion, which are the foundation of classical physics.

The Principia also defined the mathematical formula for gravity. According to a common legend, Newton conceptualized it after being struck by a falling apple while sitting under a tree outside his home in England. In the early 1850s, British artist Robert Hannah immortalized the moment. His painting serves as the Title Card of this essay.

Classical physics and gravity are Newton’s two most famous achievements. But he also discovered prisms and the light spectrum, among other breakthroughs. No single individual contributed more to the advancement of the Scientific Revolution than Newton. That’s what makes his obsession with the occult so odd. Newton was heavily involved with alchemy and esoteric interpretations of the Bible.

Newton the Alchemist

Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day in 1642, in the same year that Galileo died in Florence. He may have been somewhere on the autism spectrum. Newton kept to himself, had few friends, and he remained a virgin until his dying day, possibly in emulation of Jesus Christ, who was also supposed to have been born on December 25th.

But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Isaac Newton was his obsession with alchemy. He secretly wrote over a million words on the subject, a larger body of work than all his writings on physics and mathematics combined. The most significant contributor to the Scientific Revolution took magic very seriously. To understand why, one must understand a little bit about the history of Platonism.

In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Plato insisted that ideas exist independently of the thinker, in a place he called the “Realm of Ideals”. He claimed that the universe that we observe with our senses is a shadow, or an illusion, emanating from that hidden realm. This two-tiered cosmology is the hallmark of Platonism.

Hundreds of years after Plato’s death, the gloomy inhabitants of a collapsing Roman Empire lapsed into pessimism. As their world crumbled around them, Gnostic thinkers began to suspect they were trapped in a world created by an evil god. They adopted Plato’s signature two-tiered cosmology as their roadmap to escape from it.

A counter-movement soon sprang up in response; Neoplatonists were horrified by the Gnostic insistence that god is evil. Instead of proximity to an evil god, they proposed that it’s our distance from a benevolent God that causes all the misery and injustice in our world. St. Augustine was a devoted Neoplatonist before he adapted this way of thinking into Christianity.

Many centuries later, Isaac Newton considered himself a devout Christian. But he understood that the Church of England peddled a narrow conception of his faith, and that there had been many versions of both Platonism and Christianity swirling around the Roman Empire during its decay. Newton was searching for prisca theologia, or "ancient wisdom," which he believed God had revealed to humanity in antiquity and which had since been corrupted.

Like the Medici of Florence, he focused on Hermeticism. This Platonic school of thought concerned itself not with the benevolence or malevolence of God, but with becoming god-like through mastery over the illusory Platonic realm we inhabit.

According to St. Augustine, the archetypal ascent between Platonic realms is to be achieved through moral improvement (a concept well-preserved within Christianity). According to the Gnostics, escape was achieved by acquiring secret knowledge. But according to Hermeticism, the Platonic ascent is achieved through a great work, or a magnum opus. This became the ancient theory behind the Renaissance practice of alchemy, and it’s what aroused the curiosity of Isaac Newton.

The Scientific Revolution

Plato’s brightest student, Aristotle, didn’t buy into Platonism. To Aristotle, that which he could see and touch was not an emanation from some hidden realm; it was bedrock reality. The study of the material world (without reference to two-tiered cosmology) goes by the name “empiricism”, and it’s closely associated with Aristotle. Where Platonism is a top-down philosophy, empiricism is its mirror image: a bottom-up philosophy.

The Scientific Revolution is considered a triumph of empiricism. But, to a surprising degree, it has its roots in Platonism. The study of alchemy informed the field of chemistry, while astrology evolved into astronomy. Modern science is predicated on Renaissance magic, as Newton’s biography emphatically illustrates.

Astronomers like Galileo punched the most famous holes in the credibility of the Church. That institution vigorously endorsed the notion of a geocentric solar system, known as the Aristotelian model. But Galileo and his fellow astronomers proved that the Earth is actually in orbit around the sun, not vice-versa.

The authority of the Church never recovered from these and other revelations arising out of the Scientific Revolution. Today, scientists rather than priests sort out heresy from fact on behalf of the people. But like the Church of the late Middle Ages, science today has largely moved on from its Platonic roots and fully embraced empiricism. This is how most modern people conceive of science.

The Hermetic aspiration to become god-like sounds like a heresy to any good Christian. Comparing oneself to God is the opposite of humility. Indeed, this aspect of Hermeticism explains why Isaac Newton felt compelled to keep his voluminous writings on alchemy a secret. But the Scientific Revolution he helped unleash greatly expanded our understanding of the natural world, giving rise to technologies that would have undoubtedly seemed god-like to Newton’s contemporaries in the late 17th century.

Conclusion

The apple that supposedly fell on Newton’s head and the alchemist's crucible he heated in secret were part of the same quest. His life’s story shows that the Scientific Revolution wasn’t born in opposition to Platonism and magic, as it might appear today, but as its direct descendant. Newton secretly pursued a Hermetic goal of achieving god-like mastery over our world. The question of just how successful he was in creating this magnum opus is best answered by Newton’s most significant contribution to the modern world, calculus, which will be the subject of next week’s essay.

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Further Materials

[Newton] made many experiments, mainly in alchemy, “the transmuting of metals being his chief design”; but also he was interested in the “elixir of life” and the “philosopher's stone.” He continued his alchemist studies from 1661 to 1692, and even while writing the Principia; left unpublished manuscripts on alchemy totaling 100,000 words or more…Boyle and other members of the Royal Society were feverishly engaged in the same quest for manufacturing gold. Newton's aim was not clearly commercial; he never showed any eagerness for material gains; probably he was seeking some law or process by which the elements could be interpreted as transmutable variations of one basic substance. We cannot be sure that he was wrong.
Will & Ariel Durant, The Age of Louis XIV, 1963, page 531