Newton the Alchemist

«Following a tradition popularized by the Elizabethan alchemist John Dee and developed further by the Saxon schoolmaster and writer on chymical subjects Andreas Libavius, Newton devised a series of graphic symbols that he used for his own creations in the laboratory.2 Building on the traditional planetary symbols long used by alchemists to depict the respective metals, Newton would attach a small “o” to indicate an ore or mineral of the metal in question.» — los glifos con que Newton anota su laboratorio no son taquigrafía improvisada: continúan la tradición gráfica que popularizó John Dee y desarrolló Andreas Libavius, y sobre los símbolos planetarios de los metales agrega una «o» pequeña para marcar el mineral y no el metal

«The clarity of this system is undercut by the fact that Newton does not restrict the 🜹 symbol to ammonium chloride but employs it from 1680 onward to represent a volatile compound containing sal ammoniac and antimony, which he refers to as “sophic sal ammonic,” “our sal ammoniac,” or even» — el límite del propio sistema: la nitidez se rompe porque Newton no reserva la estrella del sal amoniaco para el cloruro de amonio, sino que desde 1680 la usa también para su «sophic sal ammoniac». Un mismo glifo admite dos lecturas y solo el contexto experimental decide cuál

«my use of the now archaic word “chymistry” is intended to alert the reader to the fact that there was no rigid, commonly accepted distinction between “alchemy” and “chemistry” in the seventeenth century. I need not belabor the point here, for the Oxford English Dictionary has recently affirmed it by recognizing the capacious character of the early modern discipline comprehended under “chymistry.”3 Accordingly, throughout the present book “chymistry” and “alchemy” are synonymous, both having the sense of a field that included the attempt to transmute metals alongside the disciplines that we would today call industrial chemistry and pharmacology.» — declara que en este libro «chymistry» y «alchemy» son sinónimos, y apoya la amplitud del campo en el OED: abarcaba lo que hoy se reparte entre química industrial y farmacología

«I use “adjuvant” to signify something similar to the latter meaning, but in the specific laboratory operation of sublimation, where Newton typically added a more volatile material to a more fixed one in order to induce the latter to sublime. The medieval alchemical author Geber referred to such aids to sublimation as “res iuvantes,” which I have translated elsewhere as “adjuvants” and here employ for Newton as well.» — fija «adjuvant» como término técnico del libro para lo que Newton hacía de continuo en la mesa: agregar a un cuerpo fijo un material más volátil para forzarlo a sublimar. Lo toma del sentido farmacológico moderno y lo empalma con las res iuvantes del Geber medieval — y declara en la misma frase que es convención del historiador, no palabra de Newton

«It is highly likely that Keynes had Frazer in the back of his mind when he unselfconsciously elided the borders between magic and alchemy, two disciplines that Newton for the most part kept rigorously distinct.» — localiza el origen del Newton último de los magos y la maniobra que lo produjo: Keynes leía a Frazer, que agrupaba bajo «magia» toda práctica regida por la simpatía, y con esa categoría borró sin advertirlo la frontera entre magia y alquimia. La objeción no es que despreciara la alquimia, sino que fundió dos campos que el propio Newton mantenía aparte — y él acota con un «for the most part»: la separación es la regla en Newton, no un absoluto

«In the same article, Keynes would add that Newton’s alchemical manuscripts were “wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value.» — el veredicto de Keynes en su propia letra, que es la pieza sobre la que descansa la corrección anterior

«Hence the need that Dobbs and others felt to locate Newton’s motives for studying alchemy in extrascientific areas such as soteriology and the quest for a more primitive Christianity has lost its force. We are now free to study Newton’s alchemy on its own terms and to arrive at a much clearer picture of the field’s relationship to his other scientific pursuits. As I show in Newton the Alchemist, the claims that Westfall (and subsequently Dobbs) made for an alchemical origin to Newton’s theory of gravitational attraction are actually quite weak; in reality, the connection between alchemy and Newton’s better known scientific discoveries lies elsewhere, above all in the realm of optics.» — si la química del XVII era parte normal y progresiva de la agenda científica, se cae la necesidad que sintieron Dobbs y otros de explicar la alquimia de Newton por motivos ajenos a la ciencia. Sobre esa base califica de débil la tesis de Westfall que hace nacer la gravitación de la alquimia, y traslada el vínculo real al otro extremo de la obra: la óptica

«To the mind of Newton, the adepts were tricksters, not because they lacked the ability to carry out their marvelous transmutations, but because they veiled their knowledge under a sophisticated language of metaphor, allusion, and outright doublespeak. Not that they spoke in gibberish; to the contrary, the intelligent and properly trained student could penetrate behind their fuliginous tropes, but only if God willed it. It was Newton’s belief that in his case God did so will. But however much divine assistance might contribute to one’s alchemical success, doing alchemy did not contribute to one’s divinity. Newton’s private belief in the infallibility and elect status of the adepts did not entail that he viewed alchemy as a path to religious salvation. In fact, references to the aurific art in the vast corpus that Newton devoted to religious topics, consisting of about four million words, are vanishingly small. And like his chymical forerunner Joan Baptista Van Helmont, Newton thought that success at chymistry must be “bought with sweat,” the unavoidable, and often mundane labor of the laboratory.» — Newton no dudaba del poder de los adeptos: los tenía por embaucadores porque velaban un saber verdadero bajo metáfora y doblez deliberada. El límite que Newman subraya, y que lo separa de Dobbs, es que creer en el estatus electo de los adeptos no equivale a ver la alquimia como camino de salvación — la máxima que Newton hereda de Van Helmont es que el éxito se compra «with sweat»

«Despite a common scholarly view that holds alchemy to have been uniformly vitalistic, the early modern emphasis on the cyclical life and death of metals was not a monolithic feature of the discipline across the whole of its history, but rather a gift of the miners and metallurgists who worked in shafts and galleries that exhibited to them the marvels of the underground world.» — límite fuerte contra la lectura corriente: la alquimia no fue uniformemente vitalista. El hilozoísmo que llega a Newton no baja del gabinete al pozo, sube del pozo al gabinete

«Employing the common early modern practice of hiding one’s identity behind an anagram, Newton created two columns of alternative pseudonyms based on the Latin form of his name, “Isaacus Neuutonus.” One of these, “Venus ac Jason tuus” conjures up both the classical goddess of love and the Argonaut who circled the globe in search of the golden fleece, a common symbol for the alchemical magnum opus.» — los anagramas de «Isaacus Neuutonus» con que firmaba su trabajo sobre el magnum opus, entre ellos «Venus ac Jason tuus» y el vellocino

«Beginning with Newton’s very early interpretations of the Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius in the manuscripts Babson 925 and Keynes 19, the chapter shows that the brash young Cantabrigian initially thought the secret of chrysopoeia to be attainable by means of two ingredients alone, namely stibnite or crude antimony and lead. Much of his focus on antimony stems from his recent reading of the 1669 text by Philalethes, Secrets Reveal’d, which describes the use of that material in fairly clear terminology. The great significance that Newton idiosyncratically attaches to the metal lead in this early phase, however, has gone unnoticed by previous scholars and adds a hitherto unsuspected dimension to his aurific quest. His subsequent exposure to additional alchemical texts, especially in the extended corpus of Philalethes, soon made him understand that he had oversimplified matters. Other metals were also involved in the processes of Philalethes, especially copper.» — en sus primeras lecturas de Sendivogius, Newton creyó que el secreto de la crisopeya se alcanzaba con dos ingredientes y nada más, estibina y plomo. Newman reclama como aporte propio el papel idiosincrásico del plomo en esa fase, y pone el límite —que además es del propio Newton—: al leer más textos del corpus de Philalethes entendió que había simplificado

«Already as a very young man, even before he had absorbed the chymical knowledge of Boyle, Newton enlisted himself in the school of the adepts. Yet alchemy was not an alternative religion for Newton, nor was it the origin of his theory of gravitation.» — fecha el alistamiento de Newton en la escuela de los adeptos antes de que absorbiera la química de Boyle, y desde ahí niega de un golpe las dos grandes explicaciones que se le han dado a esa adhesión: ni religión alternativa ni origen de la teoría de la gravitación. La afirmación positiva que la reemplaza empieza tras el salto de plana y va citada aparte

«Like many students of chymistry in the early modern period, Newton held an exalted view of the supposed masters of the aurific art, the adepts, or “adeptists” as they were often called in seventeenth-century English. According to a wide variety of sources, these men (for they were almost always men) were thought to hold a privileged position in the world. They made up an elect band of filii doctrinae, or “sons of art,” who had received the philosophers’ stone as a divine dispensation, a donum dei or» — los adeptos como filii doctrinae que reciben la piedra por donum dei — el marco que vuelve infalible al autor y que explica el procedimiento de lectura del pasaje siguiente

«The absolute authority of the adepts was both abetted by their practice of secrecy and diluted thereby. Apparent mistakes or outdated technologies could be written off as misleading Decknamen, a practice that Newton himself employed in his interpretation of Geber’s Summa perfectionis, where he creatively transforms the medieval alchemist’s mineral “marchasita” into bismuth and “magnesia” into antimony.13 While this practice excused the adepts of any potential error or obsolescence, however, it also meant that their original meaning could easily be lost.» — el secreto sostiene la autoridad de los adeptos y a la vez la vacía: como un adepto no puede equivocarse, todo error aparente se relee como Deckname puesto adrede. El límite está en la misma frase y es el precio del procedimiento — blindar al autor contra el error hace que se pierda lo que quiso decir, y eso, dice, es lo que ocurre una y otra vez en las interpretaciones de Newton

«It was once thought by Newton scholars that the “Clavis” (Latin for “Key”) was an original composition by Newton, and that it could therefore serve as an Ariadne’s thread into his laboratory practice.15 Although we now know that to be false, Starkey’s letter to Boyle is tremendously valuable all the same for the clear way in which it decodes the works that he wrote under the sobriquet of Philalethes into replicable chymical practice.» — corrección de atribución: la «Clavis» que se tuvo por composición original de Newton es la traducción latina que copió de una carta de George Starkey a Boyle de 1651. Acota con precisión qué se pierde y qué queda — deja de valer como testimonio de su banco de trabajo, pero conserva su valor porque descodifica en operaciones replicables lo que Starkey escribió como Philalethes

«One of the traditional techniques Philalethes made use of is the twofold expansion and compression of language that I have elsewhere given the Greek names parathesis and syncope. The first of these practices involved stuffing one’s speech with unnecessary synonyms for the same materials or processes, whereas the second consists of the opposite, namely, deliberate suppression of information.» — define parathesis y syncope como las dos técnicas de ocultación que Philalethes hereda

«its hidden sulfur), stibnite, and quicksilver. He has intentionally left the essential ingredient silver, which must be alloyed with the star regulus in order to make the quicksilver amalgamate, out of his description.» — la syncope medida sobre un caso: Philalethes omite la plata a propósito de su descripción

«Echoing the Latin of Geber, the practice of “dispersion of knowledge” came to be known as dispersa intentio. It has even been shown that Newton’s correspondent Robert Boyle, that seemingly modern proponent of open speech, used dispersa intentio when writing about the higher secrets of chymistry such as the sophic mercury and the marvelous dissolvent or alkahest of Paracelsus and Van Helmont.» — la dispersión del saber —partir una receta y repartir sus trozos por capítulos distintos— se practicaba en árabe como tabdīd al-ʿilm en los escritos de Jābir, pasó al latín como dispersa intentio, y Newman mide su alcance donde no se la esperaría: Boyle, aparente campeón del habla abierta, la empleó al escribir sobre los arcana mayores. La ocultación no marcaba un bando; atravesaba también al que la denunciaba

«Since this technique involves repeated use of the same term at different stages in the progress toward the alchemical magnum opus, an appropriate term for it is “graduated iteration.” At an early stage of the operations aiming for the philosophers’ stone, namely, the preparation of the sophic mercury, the terms “Luna” or “Moon,” “Diana’s doves,” and “Venus” have an entirely different sense from the one that they acquire after the sophic mercury has been sealed up with gold for its long digestion in a gentle heat» — «graduated iteration» es el nombre que le pone a una técnica que no cifra sino reutiliza: el mismo término reaparece en etapas sucesivas y su referente cambia con el grado alcanzado. La consecuencia práctica, y el límite de todo desciframiento, es que traducir un Deckname no basta — hay que saber en qué punto del proceso está el texto

«Despite his private acceptance of extravagant “authorities” such as Edwardus Generosus and the author of Manna, Newton remained wedded to the most stringent methods of the “experimental philosophy” and refused to believe that he had succeeded at the aurific art until experiment might tell him otherwise.» — Newton daba entrada en sus cuadernos a autoridades disparatadas sin que eso aflojara el criterio con que juzgaba sus propios resultados. Es el contraste que Newman propone como lo más notable del corpus químico y su acotación contra el Newton crédulo: la credulidad está en la lectura de las fuentes, no en la evaluación de la mesa de trabajo

«Whatever Newton actually said to Conduitt, the testimony of his laboratory notebooks and correspondence shows without any possibility of doubt that he himself sought the philosophers’ stone for well over three decades.» — explica las reservas del Newton anciano por la posición pública del personaje —presidente de la Royal Society y maestro de la Casa de Moneda en unos años 1720 en que la crisopeya caía en descrédito—, y pone su jerarquía de fuentes: dijera lo que dijera a su sobrino político, los cuadernos y la correspondencia muestran que buscó la piedra por más de tres décadas

«Few topics in Newton scholarship have led to more misleading claims than the assertion that he viewed his alchemy as part and parcel of his heterodox, Antitrinitarian Christianity. Largely an artifact of the tendentious Jungian view that alchemy over the longue durée was essentially a form of soteriology, the position that Newton’s alchemy was an appendage to his religion or even an alternate form of it reached its apogee in the 1990s, and has since become a received position in the literature.2 In reality, Newton’s writings on prophecy, biblical history, and the iniquity of orthodox Trinitarian doctrine contain virtually no references to chymistry.3 Despite the fact that alchemical writings frequently contain appeals to divinity, Newton’s extracts, synopses, and notes drawn from chrysopoetic writers seldom expand on religious motifs found in his sources. On the rare occasions when Newton does take up a reference to God in his alchemical notes, he makes it clear that what interests him is the hidden, materialist meaning of the text. Newton did not read alchemical authors as a means of acquiring spiritual truths; rather, he extracted experimental meaning from them even when they employed the idiom of divinity.» — da genealogía a lo que considera el error más extendido de la erudición newtoniana —la alquimia como parte de su cristianismo antitrinitario—: procede de la lectura junguiana que hace de la alquimia una soteriología. Contra ella pone dos hechos de archivo antes que argumentos: los escritos religiosos de Newton casi no mencionan la química, y sus extractos de autores crisopéyicos rara vez desarrollan los motivos religiosos que sí traen las fuentes

«The key thing to bear in mind is that Newton’s decades of chymical reading gave him a sophisticated understanding of the differing uses to which his sources put their symbols. He was well aware of the fact that different authors used their Decknamen to mean different things. There was no single “figurative language” of the adepts as Newton believed there to be for the prophets. Instead, Newton correctly understood chymical language to be polysemic in the strict sense—a single term could be used in many different ways, by different authors and also by the same author.» — Newton usaba dos hermenéuticas distintas, y Newman explica de dónde sale la diferencia: décadas de lectura le habían enseñado que cada autor emplea sus Decknamen a su modo, y que no existía un lenguaje figurado único de los adeptos como el que sí atribuía a los profetas. Por eso trató el lenguaje químico como polisémico y sus compilaciones no buscan la solución sino el inventario

«Relying partly on Natale Conti’s sixteenth-century Mythologiae, Newton discusses the seven pitches of the ancient pipes supposedly invented by Pan and notes that each pitch was assigned to a planet. But then he turns the myth to his own purposes by linking the ancient tradition of musica mundana (celestial harmony) to the principle that gravitational attraction between bodies diminishes in proportion to the square of their distance from one another.» — apoyado en Conti, Newton enlaza las siete notas de las flautas de Pan con el principio de que la atracción disminuye con el cuadrado de la distancia. La operación exige una premisa que adopta expresamente: el error de la fuente es deliberado — sabía que la historia de Pitágoras y los martillos es físicamente falsa, y concluyó que los sapientes la habían falseado para despistar a los indignos. Es material de los «Classical Scholia» proyectados para la segunda edición del Principia, no doctrina publicada

«As Jed Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold correctly point out in their recent Newton and the Origin of Civilization, the euhemerist reading of ancient mythology that permeates the Theologiae gentilis origines philosophicae is at odds with the alchemical reading of myth conveyed by Newton’s sources, in particular Michael Maier.37 Maier rejected the claim that Osiris had really been an Egyptian king or deity, whereas Newton in the Theologiae gentilis origines philosophicae and elsewhere accepted his historicity. It is true that Newton’s Index chemicus paraphrases Maier on the subject of the Egyptian king by saying “Osiris, Isis, and Typhon are a fixed salt, white spirit, and red spirit,” but here Newton is trying to get to the bottom of alchemical processes, not reconstruct ancient history.» — contra la lectura de Dobbs, opone una incompatibilidad interna del propio Newton: el euhemerismo de la Theologiae gentilis origines philosophicae, donde los dioses son héroes históricos, choca con la lectura alquímica del mito que le llega de Maier, que negaba la historicidad de Osiris. Newton parafrasea a Maier en el Index chemicus, pero ahí persigue procesos de laboratorio, no reconstruye historia antigua: son dos proyectos separados

«Osiris could either have meant an actual king to the ancients or a fixed salt: one could not simultaneously follow Maier’s interpretation, which denied the historicity of the Egyptian pantheon in favor of a materialist reading, while also accepting the history» — la disyuntiva que impide leer el mito a la vez en clave cronológica y química

«In practically every case in which Newton read ancient myth alchemically, he was simply interpreting early modern sources such as Maier rather than returning to the antique sources themselves. Hence Newton’s references to classical mythology in an alchemical context almost always derive from other early modern alchemists, not from original ancient authors or even from compilations such as Natale Conti’s Mythologiae.» — cuando Newton lee el mito en clave alquímica casi siempre está interpretando a un alquimista moderno y no volviendo a la fuente antigua. Lo establece por procedencia, y la acotación es lo que da fuerza al dato: no se trata de ignorancia, porque conocía los repertorios mitográficos y los usó en los Classical Scholia — simplemente no hizo ese esfuerzo para entender a los alquimistas

«In a private notebook devoted to chymical and physical topics, he entered the revelation that the globe of the earth resembles a “great animall” or rather an “inanimate vegetable” that breathes in ether for its “refreshment” and the maintenance of its life. When it exhales its subtle, ethereal breath, the material is transformed and condensed, whereupon it must rise up again to be replenished in the higher regions.1 Here Newton paints an unforgettable picture of our planet as a biological organism, inhaling a material ether for its breath and exhaling it continually over the entire course of its lifespan. Although deprived of an animal soul, Newton’s earth is a living being in a far more literal sense than the self-regulating system of modern Gaia hypothesists.» — por los mismos meses en que anunciaba que la luz blanca es mezcla de colores inalterados, Newton anotó que el globo terrestre se parece a un gran animal, o más bien a un vegetal inanimado que inhala éter y lo exhala transformado. Newman insiste en que lo de vivo va en sentido fuerte y marca la distancia con la analogía que el lector moderno tendría a mano: la Tierra de Newton es un ser vivo mucho más literalmente que el sistema autorregulado de los partidarios de Gaia

«This expulsion is due to the fact that at the center of the earth there exist a sol centralis and a luna centralis, another sun and moon, which have a force driving matter outward toward the earth’s surface, just as the celestial sun and moon project their own rays down to the earth.8 Thus the elemental sperm after digestion is driven upward through the pores of the earth in the form of a vapor; there it combines with a philosophical sulfur resident in the soil. Depending on the impurities and the degree of heat encountered there, different metals and minerals are formed: the less impurities, the nobler the metal.» — el mecanismo que Sendivogius pone bajo tierra y que Newton hereda: un sol y una luna centrales cuya fuerza empuja la materia hacia la superficie, donde el esperma de los elementos se une al azufre residente en el suelo. Qué metal resulte depende de las impurezas y del grado de calor, con regla de proporcionalidad inversa

«All of these figures provide evidence that European alchemy underwent a major transformation between the Middle Ages and the early modern period, culminating in the hylozoist picture of a restless chthonic kingdom growing, maturing, evolving, and dying beneath our feet.» — la transformación de la alquimia europea entre el Medievo y la modernidad hacia un reino ctónico hilozoísta bajo nuestros pies

«We should pay attention to the fact that Maier explicitly ascribes the belief that minerals die to miners—metallarii—rather than to alchemists. In the Viatorium, he even gives his precise sources: “Mathesius in his Sarepta and Solea in his Septuriae.» — la creencia de que los minerales mueren bajo tierra Maier la atribuye a los mineros, no a los alquimistas, y da sus fuentes con nombre. Newman apoya en ese detalle de atribución la inversión que sostiene el capítulo: la doctrina hilozoísta que llega a Newton sube del pozo al gabinete

«Under the supposed authorship of Basilius Valentinus, a macaronic pseudonym that literally means “Mighty King” but which may combine the given names of Thölde’s grandfather and brother Valtin or Valentin and his father Bastin, the Frankenhausen Pfannenherr published a number of works in the first decade of the seventeenth century.» — atribución consignada con su propia cautela: «Basilius Valentinus» es seudónimo de Johann Thölde, y el propio Newman lo enuncia en potencial

«What Solea is leading up to, of course, is a comprehensive discussion of mineral exhalations, the Witterungen that fascinated early modern German miners and mineralogists. Such Witterungen or vapors were thought by many to glow and emit light of various colors that depended on the particular metal that was growing beneath the ground; they therefore provided one of the tools that prospectors could use to find ore deposits.» — lo que sostiene la prospección minera centroeuropea son las Witterungen, exhalaciones minerales que se creía brillaban con color distinto según el metal que estuviera creciendo bajo el suelo. Es la bisagra por la que el saber de los Bergleute entra en la literatura alquímica que Newton leerá — con el límite de que Newton conoce a Solea por una versión inglesa de 1657 que Newman señala como a menudo inexacta

«In the meantime, Starkey had managed to establish himself in London as an essential middleman with special access to the New England adept but without having made the overt and perhaps dangerous claim that he could prepare the great transmutational elixir himself.» — la posición que Starkey se construye en Londres es la de intermediario indispensable: acceso privilegiado a un adepto de Nueva Inglaterra que él mismo había inventado, sin haber reclamado nunca el poder de preparar el gran elixir. Newman lee ahí un cálculo de riesgo y generaliza con cautela expresa, como sospecha: cuántos seudónimos de la historia de la alquimia nacieron de esa conveniencia

«The interest of Arnauld, if in fact he was the pseudepigrapher behind the Exposition fostered on Flamel, seems to have resided more in the creation of the Flamel legend than in actual work in the laboratory.» — atribución con su condicional intacto: la Exposition de Flamel sería obra de un pseudoepígrafe interesado en la leyenda y no en el laboratorio

«Although Sendivogius here mentions two subterranean luminaries, the central moon plays practically no part in his further discussion. The central sun, on the other hand, reappears at pp. 39, 40, 42, and elsewhere. Throughout the present book, I rely mainly on Albineus’s edition of Sendivogius rather than the editio princeps, since Newton himself employed Albineus extensively.» — nota de método con dos decisiones: cita a Sendivogius por la edición que Newton usó y no por la editio princeps —la elección textual sigue al lector histórico, no al mejor testimonio filológico—, y acota su propia exposición, porque de los dos luminares subterráneos la luna central casi no vuelve a intervenir. La pareja es simétrica en el enunciado y muy asimétrica en el uso

«As for Newton, Westfall counted an astonishing 302 references to Philalethes and his works in the forty-six longest entries of Keynes 30/1, the largest version of Newton’s Index chemicus. By contrast, he found only 140 references to the next runner-up, Michael Maier, in the same entries.» — la jerarquía de autoridades en la lectura alquímica de Newton se puede contar, y el conteo da un primer lugar aplastante para Philalethes. El dato viene con su límite —está medido sobre las entradas largas de un solo manuscrito— y la atribución es de Westfall, no recuento propio de Newman

«In passing, Stukely points out that Newton lodged “at Mr Clarks house, an apothecary,” but makes little of the fact that this would no doubt have exposed young Isaac to at least some of the paraphernalia and operations of seventeenth-century chymistry. Perhaps this omission stems from Stukely’s own rather low regard for contemporary chymists, and his desire to present the budding scientist as a child prodigy.» — la fuente principal sobre la infancia de Newton menciona de pasada que se alojaba en casa de un boticario y no saca de ahí ninguna consecuencia, pese a que ese domicilio lo habría puesto en contacto con el instrumental de la química del XVII. Newman explica la omisión por el interés del biógrafo, y el límite es que la exposición se infiere del alojamiento: no hay testimonio de que el joven Newton trabajara ahí

«In a later draft of his memoir, Stukely would fall victim to an unwitting irony when he tried to disabuse Newton of any interest in chrysopoeia, saying that chymistry “had need enough of his masterly skill, to rescue it from superstition, from vanity, & imposture; and from the fond inquiry of alchymy» — Stukely queriendo rescatar a Newton de la alquimia y la transmutación — la misma operación de limpieza que Newman rastrea hasta Keynes

Keynes (1936) llamó a Newton «the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians» y juzgó sus manuscritos alquímicos «wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value».