The value of the papers Newton left behind has always depended on how - and whether - to link them together. There is precious little to be found in the papers on the vexed issue of his methods of discovery and how, for example, he might have ranked the analytical tools he used for his scientific studies against those he used for historical, theological, or alchemical questions. The catalogers facing this unassigned legacy confronted questions that have excited and bedeviled Newton scholars ever since: How could one man have pursued so many, and such disparate, interests? What bearing, if any, did his theological and alchemical investigations have on his scientific work, and vice versa? What was the relationship between Newton’s science and his faith? Newton himself was not much help. This private material showed that he had devoted much of his long life not only to mathematics, physics, and optics, and to the administration of the Royal Mint that he undertook for three decades in London, but also to theological, historical, and alchemical subjects. The rest was known only to Newton himself. Only a few people had seen just a small portion of it. Newton had always been wary of sharing his scientific work, but he had kept this non-scientific material more private still. Similarly prodigious reading notes and experimental records showed how much time Newton had spent on alchemical investigation - years, and even decades, from the looks of the notes, rather than only days or months. Newton had, the papers revealed, spent hours and hours on an extremely detailed history of the early Church. But here too were less predictable (and, on closer inspection, less orthodox) writings on the nature of prophecy, on the Apocalypse, and on God. ![]() Here were the expected notes on natural philosophy and mathematics. ![]() ![]() There were “reams of loose and foul papers,” as their first inheritor put it, on a bewildering variety of topics. The Book of Nature, the Book of ScriptureĮven without a list, it was clear that not only the form but the contents of the papers were a mix.
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