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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/18253911-03101004
Nuncius 31 (2016) 50–77
brill.com/nun
“To Improve upon Hints of Things”Illustrating Isaac Newton
Cornelis J. (Kees-Jan) SchiltUniversity of Oxford
Abstract
When Isaac Newton died in 1727 he left a rich legacy in terms of draft manuscripts,encompassing a variety of topics: natural philosophy, mathematics, alchemy, theology,and chronology, as well as papers relating to his career at the Mint. One thing thatimmediately strikes us is the textuality of Newton’s legacy: images are sparse. Regardinghis scholarly endeavours we witness the same practice. Newton’s extensive drafts ontheology and chronology do not contain a single illustration or map. Today we have allof Newton’s draft manuscripts as witnesses of his working methods, as well as accessto a significant number of books from his own library. Drawing parallels betweenNewton’s readingpractices andhis natural philosophical and scholarlywork, this paperseeks to understand Newton’s recondite writing and publishing politics.
Keywords
alchemy – philology – experiments – publication
1 Introduction
There are many historical figures whose legacy has only been preservedthrough theirwritings. Apart froma fewbiographical sketches,mostly based onconjecture, we knowvery little about them.Others have left extensive evidenceof their lives in terms of diaries, drafts, historical records, and imagery. IsaacNewton (1642–1727) definitely belongs to this second category.1 Between Cam-
1 A note on dates. All datesmentioned in this paper are Old Style, following the Julian calendar
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bridge registers, Mint minutes and personal correspondence we have a ratherfirm understanding of where he was and what he occupied himself with. Thisdoes not mean we know each and every detail of his personal life. There arein fact a number of episodes that are shrouded in mystery. Most of the sparsedetails of his childhood come fromNewtonhimself, details that he providedhiscousin-in-law John Conduitt with when he was in his eighties, of which somehave been interpreted by contemporary historians as deliberate attempts tocraft an almost iconic image.2 Unsurprisingly, Newton did not comment uponsome of themore poignant episodes of his life. The exact nature of his relation-ship with the young Swiss prodigy Fatio de Duillier remains a mystery, and soare the circumstances that led him towrite a letter to his friend John Locke say-ing that “you endeavoured to embroil me with weomen […] twere better if youwere dead.”3
Over the course of three centuries our image of Newton has shifted andexpanded. An important reason for this is a change in historiography thatstarted in the early twentieth century, but has only in recent decades devel-oped andmatured. Newton’s own attempts at self-deification notwithstanding,historians have increasingly sought for the man behind the myth. An addi-tional dimension to the historiography of science is a growing interest, not inthe fundamentals of modern science, but in what science consisted of in thepast. A once frowned-upon topic like the history of alchemyhas nowdevelopedinto a full-fledged discipline, which in turn has led to valuable new insightsin the history of chemistry and other related sciences. Whereas eighteenth-
that was in use in England throughout Newton’s life. For example, Newton was born onChristmas Day, 1642, which according to the Gregorian calendar adopted by most of Europeby then refers to 4 January 1643. With the Julian New Year commencing 25 March, all datesbetween and including 1 January and 24 March are given with double years, as was commonpractice in Newton’s days. Thus 15 February 1667/8 refers to our year 1668, whereas it was still1667 in England.
2 SeePatricia Fara,Newton:TheMakingofGenius (London, Basingstoke andOxford:Macmillan,2002); David Boyd Hancock, William Stukeley: Science, Religion, and Archaeology in Eigh-teenth-century England (Martlesham: Boydell &Brewer, 2002), p. 3; Rob Iliffe, “ ‘Is he like othermen?’ TheMeaning of the Principia and the Author as Idol,” in Literature, Culture and Societyin the Stuart Restoration, edited by GerardMaclean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1995), pp. 159–178.
3 Newton to Locke, 16 September 1693, in H.W. Turnbull (ed.), The Correspondence of IsaacNewton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959–1977), Vol. iii, p. 280. See also https://corpusnewtonicum.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/why-you-endeavoured-to-embroil-me-with-woemen/ (accessed 3 December 2015).
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and nineteenth-century biographers tried to reason away Newton’s interestin alchemy and, in some cases, considered his religious writings to be theproducts of old age, a modern reading tries to picture Newton from his ownpoint of view. The scientist took a great interest in alchemy therefore so shouldwe, because apparently it mattered to him and many of his contemporaries.4He likewise wrote an astonishing amount about church history, religion andchronology, so our image of Newton has to take this into account in similarmeasure.
Themost important catalyst for ourmodernunderstandingofNewton stemsfrom the increasing amount of sourcematerial we have access to. Early Newtonbiographers had to work with only a handful of writings compared to what wehave today. In the nineteenth century it took David Brewster decades before hecould finally consult what we now call the Portsmouth papers, which he subse-quently read and interpreted from a contemporary perspective, writing a biog-raphy of Isaac Newton that would remain authoritative for well over a century,until RichardWestfall’s Never at Rest.5 Andwith the non-scientificmanuscriptshaving been scattered all over the globe after a 1936 Sotheby auction, compar-ative research duringmost of the twentieth century was often restricted to justtwoor threemanuscripts. Things changedhowever in the 1980swith the releaseof several microfilm sets of the collections held in Cambridge and Jerusalem,which were re-released in 1991 by Chadwyck-Healey. Suddenly historians allover the world were able to inspect these manuscripts in their local universitylibraries.6
And then came the Internet. It is almost impossible for the young peopleof today to imagine a world without the World Wide Web, and the changes ithas brought to scholarship are profound. The rise of online data collections,with their immediate accessibility, and the emergence of social media, havetransformed theworkingmethods ofmodern-day historians.With the Internetcame the Newton Project, an ongoing research programme that is providing
4 See e.g. William R. Newman, Lawrence M. Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle,and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); WilliamR. Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (Chicago: Uni-versity of Chicago Press, 2004).
5 David Brewster, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, 2 vols.(Edinburgh: Constable and Co., 1855); RichardWestfall, Never at Rest (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1980).
6 See SarahDry,TheNewtonPapers: The StrangeandTrueOdyssey of IsaacNewton’sManuscripts(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) for a full account of the history of Newton’s manu-scripts.
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diplomatic and normalized transcriptions of Newton’s writings, in addition toa wealth of other relatedmaterials. Both the Cambridge University Library andthe National Library of Israel have invested in high-quality images of all theirNewton holdings and published them online, directed linked to the NewtonProject’s transcriptions. Newton’s private writings can now be accessed fromone’s own study, without even having to decipher his hand or reconstructwhat lies hidden beneath a particular deletion. The once private writings of asometimes rather reclusive individual have now become public property. Andit is the combination of digital images of manuscript pages and transcriptionsthat allows us to ask questions and draw forth answers in ways unimaginablein the analog era.
In this paper I retrace some lines that have emerged from Newton’s writtenlegacy. We will start with Newton’s early optical research, and the translationof his work from private experimental note taking to publication. We will thenmove on to a totally different project undertaken by Newton – his study ofancient monarchies and their chronology – and draw some (surprising) par-allels between Newton’s workingmethods in these two areas of research. Fromthis comparison a conjecture arises, which I will explore a little further byreturning to Newton’s Cambridge laboratory, where he performed his alchem-ical experiments. Through all of this I hope to shed light on some of New-ton’s hidden working practices and his attitude towards publication, providingimages of theworkings of Newton’smind as they come to us through the digitalimages of his writings.7
2 Contemporary Images
Imagine sitting in Newton’s study, watching the master at work. What wouldhis study look like? Is it neat, with materials carefully arranged on the desk,or are there books and manuscripts all over the place? A pile of pamphletsover here, some editions of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions over
7 The present article does not include any illustrations. With a few exceptions, each and everymanuscript image and transcription that I refer to can be found online, in a resolution thatcannot be matched in print. I have included full references to the relevant webpages. Inthe spring of 2016, the Newton Project, now based at the University of Sussex, will moveto the University of Oxford, which will mean a change in the url’s of the transcriptions.What will remain unchanged, however, are the exact filenames. I will therefore refer to thesetranscriptions as “Newton Project,” followed by filename, the exact transcription (diplomaticor normalized) and the date of access.
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there, prisms, instruments, a forgottenmeal on the corner of a table …we don’tknow for sure. We do have biographical sketches and anecdotes of Newton’slife and habits by some of his contemporaries that shed a light on Newton’sworking methods. Humphrey Newton (not related), who served as Newton’samanuensis, recalls that Newton was:
[s]o intent, so serious upon his Studies, that he eat very sparingly, nay,oftimes he has forget to eat at all, so that going into his Chamber, I havefound his Mess untouch’d, of which when I have reminded him, wouldreply, Have I; & thenmaking to the Table, would eat a bit or two standing[…].8
Humphrey worked as Newton’s assistant between 1683 and 1689, and thuswitnessed Newton writing and publishing the Philosophiae Naturalis PrincipiaMathematica, more commonly known as the Principia, in 1687. He remembershow Newton ordered him to make a copy of that “stupendous work” beforeit was sent to the press.9 One can never be too cautious, and copying outmanuscripts before sending them out was common practice, but as we willsee later, with Newton copying attained a whole new dimension. WhereasHumphrey did not always understand what Newton was working on, and alsohad to rely on his memory relating to episodes that were forty years past,there were others who were much more aware of Newton’s studies and madenotes. For instance, the Scottish mathematician John Craig was in Cambridgewhen Newton was composing the Principia and later noted in his copy of thebook that he had suggested a particular mathematical problem to Newton.10This shows that Newton was openly discussing his work with others. In May1694 David Gregory, another Scottish mathematician wrote a memorandum,saying:
He [i.e. Newton] has composed a tract on the origin of nations. Religionis the same at all times, but religion which they received pure from Noahand the first men, the nations debased by their own inventions. Mosesbegan a reformation but retained the indifferent elements of the Egyp-
8 HumphreyNewton to JohnConduitt, January 17, 1727/8, KeynesMs. 135, f. 2 (King’s CollegeLibrary, Cambridge), Newton Project: them00033 (normalized, accessed 10 September2015).
9 Ibid., f. 2.10 Westfall, Never at Rest (cit. note 5), p. 437.
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tians (it was the Egyptians whomost of all debased religionwith supersti-tion and from them it spread to the other peoples). Christ reformed thereligion of Moses.11
The tract that this memorandum refers to is almost certainly the so-calledTheologia Gentiles Origines Philosophiae, a heavily edited Latin treatise of over40,000words,whichhas exactly the content thatGregory sonicely summarizes.This suggests that Newton allowed Gregory to read the manuscript, or that heat least discussed it with him in extenso. The notes of both Craig and Gregoryshow that Newton was not secretive when it came to his ideas and writings, atleast not with everyone.
When it comes to Newton’s working methods, our major witnesses are hisdraft manuscripts and the works themselves. Not in the least because we haveso many drafts, and so few works. Newton’s output in terms of publicationwas not exactly prodigious: two papers, two books. The papers, published inthe Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1672 and 1675, reflect hisearly work in optics, which we will discuss below. Besides the already men-tioned Principia the only other book he published, in 1704, was a more matureversion of his optical theories, simply called Opticks. This list pales when com-pared to the output of contemporaries like Robert Boyle and Christiaan Huy-gens. There are two other books that bear Newton’s name: the Chronology ofAncient Kingdoms Amended, and Observations upon the Prophesies of Danieland the Apocalypse of St. John, but these were both published posthumouslyfrom manuscripts found among Newton’s papers. I do not count the Chronol-ogy andObservations among his publications, even thoughNewtonwas indeedpreparing a work on chronology for the press when he passed away. For now,let us first turn to some of Newton’s early work on optics.
3 Optics
At the end of the 1660s, Isaac Newton was still a relatively unknown natu-ral philosopher. He had just taken over the Lucasian chair in Mathematicsat Trinity College, Cambridge, from Isaac Barrow, who recognised the youngman’s extraordinary mathematical talent. He had also been experimentingwith alchemy and optics, and chose the latter topic for his Lucasian lectures,
11 Memoranda by David Gregory, 5, 6, 7 May 1694, in Turnbull, Correspondence, Vol. iii (cit.note 3), p. 338.
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commencing in January 1669/70.12 Newton was required to lecture on a weeklybasis and to deposit at least ten of his lectures every year in the UniversityLibrary. In the end Newton delivered a total of thirty-one lectures, which havesurvived in twomanuscripts: theOptica and the Lectiones opticae.13 TheOpticacontains the full set of thirty-one as deposited by Newton in October 1674;the Lectiones opticaewas found among Newton’s personal papers and containseighteen lectures. According to Shapiro, the latter is clearly an earlier versionof the Optica; not only does it contain fewer lectures, but all the changes intro-duced in the Lectiones opticae can be found in the main text of the Optica.14
Two major sources of evidence regarding Newton’s early optical work comefrom his own private notes. In an early notebook, entitledQuestiones quaedamPhilosophiae, we find among a host of other topics several relating to optics.After some queries on reflection and refraction, vision, and colours, Newtondiscusses other topics before we suddenly find, beneath a second heading “Ofcolours,” the suggestion for an experiment “Try if two Prismas the one castingblew upon the other’s red doe not produce a white.”15 While there is no followup to this query, what does follow are the results of experiments with variouslycoloured surfaces (black, white, red, and blue) seen through a prism, with anaccompanying image, and a theoretical discussion of the possible causes. It isa full experimental report: the results are neatly arranged in a table, followedby a systematic discussion. What comes next is demonstrative of Newton’sinquisitorial mindset:
If I presse my eye on the left side (when I looke towards my right hand)as at a, then I see a circle of red as at c but within the red is blew for thecapillamenta are more pressed at n & o & round about the finger thenat a towards the midst of the finger. that parte of the apparition at q ismore languid because the capillamenta at o are duller& if the fingermovetowards e twomuch it vanisheth at q& appeareth semicircular but if I putmy finger at e or {b} the apparition wholly vanisheth. By puting a brasse
12 Alan Shapiro, The Optical Papers of Isaac Newton, Vol. 1, The Optical Lectures 1670–1672(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 13.
13 See Newton Project: natp00306 for both a diplomatic and normalized transcription ofthe Lectiones Opticae, with links to images of the underlying manuscript Keynes Ms. Add.4002, hosted by Cambridge University Library (accessed 3 September 2015).
14 Shapiro,Optical Lectures (cit. note 12), pp. 16–17. See alsoRichardWestfall, “Newton’s Replyto Hooke and the Theory of Colors,” Isis, 1963, 54:82–96.
15 culMs Add. 3996, f. 122r ff. (Cambridge University Library), Newton Project: them00092(normalized, accessed 2 September 2015).
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plate betwixt my eye & the bone nigher to the midst of the {tunica} thanI could put my finger I mad a very vivid impression.16
This evocative description is accompanied by a rudimentary drawing of aneye, with letters illustrating the loci of the various points mentioned in thetext. What is important is that this experiment does not stand alone: it isdirectly related to the previous one through a series of numbered queries andinferences.
In a second notebookwe find another section titled “Of Colours”, containingextensive notes from Robert Boyle’s Touching Colours, to which Newton addedhis ownexperiments andobservations. Interestinglywe also find a repetition ofthe experiment on coloured surfaces, againwith an image, but this time there isno table of experimental results. Instead,Newton is presentinghis observationsin prose, interpreting what he sees through the eyes of contemporary opticaltheory.17 It also contains a famous entry showing again how far Newton wasprepared to go when it came to experimenting:
I tooke a bodkin gh & put it betwixt my eye & the bone as neare to theBackside of my eye as I could: & pressingmy eye with the end of it (soe asto make the curvature a, bcdef in my eye) there appeared severall whitedarke & coloured circles r, s, t, &c. Which circles were plainest when Icontinued to rub my eye with the point of the bodkin, but if I held myeye & the bodkin still, though I continued to presse my eye with it yetthe circles would grow faint & often disappeare untill I renewed them bymoving my eye or the bodkin.18
As the text suggests, it was again accompanied by an image indicating thepoints and circles that Newton mentions. He repeated the same experimentunder varied circumstances, taking detailed notes of his observations, anddrawing conclusions about the physiology of the eye and its relation to thebrain. “Of Colours” has traditionally been dated between 1664 and early 1665,as it does not contain any references to Robert Hooke’s Micrographia whichNewton definitely read as soon as it was published. However, it appears thatNewton did return to the notebook on at least one occasion in the 1670s, forthere is a reference to another work by Robert Boyle:
16 Ibid., f. 123v.17 Keynes Ms. Add 3975 f. 3–4 (Cambridge University Library), Newton Project: natp00004
(normalized, accessed 1 September 2015).18 Ibid., f. 15.
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Mr Boyle mentions one that by sickness became so tender sighted asin the dark night to see & distinguish plainly the colours of ribband (&other objects) on purpose pinned on the inside of his curtains against heawaked.Of thedeterminatenature of Effluviumsp26,Andof another thatby a feaver became of so tender hearing as to hear plainly soft whispers ata distance which others could not at all perceive, but when he grew wellhis hearing became but like that of other men.19
The book that Newton mentions, On the Determinate Nature of Effluviums, waspublished in 1673 as part of a larger collection of essays, and Newton received acopy from Boyle via Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society. Thatcopy is now in the Memorial Library of the University of Wisconsin-Madison,and has two deliberate dog-ears indicating both passages that Newton men-tions in his notes. A close inspection of the image of themanuscript page showsthat the above reference was indeed added at a later date: it is in the samehand, but the letters are smaller, there is less space between the lines, and theink seems different. The fact that Newton returned to a college notebook andadded to notes he had written down almost a decade earlier tells us somethingabout his working methods. The notes Newton took were not one-off observa-tions on literature and experiments, but formed part of a categorized index oftopics he was interested in. Those early notes and observations did apparentlystill matter when Newton had already developed a full-fledged theory of hisown on light and colours.
When we glance over the notebooks, the Lectiones opticae and the Optica,we immediately notice Newton’s abundant use of schematic images. They arenot merely illustrations, but an integral part of the text and serve to explainthe experiments. For example, the very first prism experiment recorded in OfColours starts with
On a black peice of paper I drew a line opq, whereof one halfe op was agood blew the other pq a good deepe red […] And looking on it throughthe Prisme adf, it appeared broken in two twixt the colours, as at rst, theblew parte rs being nearer the vertex ab of the Prisme than the red partest.20
19 Ibid., f. 21.20 Ibid., f. 2.
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The accompanying image shows the two lines, the prism and an eye indi-cating fromwhich direction Newtonwas looking through the prism andwherethe lines were drawn. Similarly, the eighteen lectures in the Lectiones opticaecontain eighty-two images, illustrating both basic and rather complex set-ups.
Remembering that Newton was lecturing on optics from January 1669/70onwards, the fact that the topic of his first publication involved optics does notcome as a surprise. The New Theory of Light and Colours was sent to the RoyalSociety on 6 February 1671/2, and caused quite a stir. In it, Newton stated thatlight consisted of differently coloured rays, each with its own refrangibility. Ini-tially well received by all but one of the members of the Royal Society, Newtonwas immediately dragged into a fierce and sometimes rather vicious debatewith Robert Hooke and various European Jesuit scholars. Within a year and ahalf Newtonbecame so agitated that he decided to resign hismembership fromtheRoyal Society, a requestwhich its secretary, HenryOldenburg, subsequentlychose to ignore. Part of the controversy surrounding the New Theory had to dowith Newton’s style of presentation.
Newton started off with a now famous narrative that was not so mucha presentation of factual truth faithfully describing the path that led to hisdiscoveries; it was instead designed to serve as an introduction to what wasto come:
I shall without further ceremony acquaint you, that in the beginning ofthe Year 1666 (at which time I applyed my self to the grinding of Optickglasses of other figures than Spherical,) I procured me a Triangular glass-Prisme, to try therewith the celebrated Phænomena of Colours. And inorder thereto having darkened my chamber, and made a small hole inmy window-shuts, to let in a convenient quantity of the Suns light, Iplaced my Prisme at his entrance, that it might be thereby refracted tothe opposite wall. It was at first a very pleasing divertisement, to view thevivid and intense colours produced thereby; but after awhile applyingmyself to consider themmore circumspectly, I became surprised to see themin an oblong form; which, according to the received laws of Refraction, Iexpected should have been circular.21
21 Isaac Newton, “A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton […] containing his New Theory about Lightand Colors,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 19 February 1671/72, No.80:3075–3087, pp. 3075–3076; Newton Project: natp00006 (normalized, accessed 1 Sep-tember 2015).
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Newtonwasmost likely already engaged in optical experiments with prismsin 1664, as the earliest entries on colours in the Questiones quaedam Philoso-phiae show. Instead of following the example of his contemporaries anddescribing various experiments that built upon and strengthened each other,either by design or through trial and error, Newton bluntly claimed that oneexperiment, which he labelled Experimentum Crucis, should be enough todemonstrate the validity of his claims. It was a term he had taken directlyfrom Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, who in his turn had derived it from Fran-cis Bacon’s instantia crucis. Neither Hooke nor Bacon represented their crucialinstance or experiment as sufficient in itself, however; Hooke referred to hisexperimentum crucis as “a Guide or Land-mark, by which to direct our coursein the search after the true cause of Colours.”22 In contrast, Newton presentedhis experimentum crucis as sufficient proof for at least part of his theory. Afterdescribing the experiment, which involved a ray of light that, after passingthrough a prism, a hole in a board, a second hole, and then another prism, pro-jected an oblong image on a wall, Newton stated:
And so the true cause of the length of that Image was detected to beno other, then that Light consists of Rays differently refrangible, which,without any respect to a difference in their incidence, were, accordingto their degrees of refrangibility, transmitted towards divers parts of thewall.23
As I describe elsewhere, this idiosyncratic interpretation and usage of theterm experimentum crucis led to much misunderstanding.24 But even if hisopponents had accepted Newton’s claim about the experiment’s status, theyhad another hurdle to overcome: to try and repeat it. Newton’s descriptionof the experiment was very concise, and did not include any quantitativedata. And in contrast to the experiments in his optical lectures, Newton hadnot included any image of the experimental setup. Earlier in the New TheoryNewtondid describe another experiment, providing a detailed and very preciseset of measurements. And at the end of the paper we find an image accompa-
22 Robert Hooke, Micrographia (London: 1665), p. 54.23 Newton, “A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton […] containing his New Theory about Light and
Colors” (cit. note 21), p. 3079.24 Cornelis J. Schilt, “ ‘Tired with this subject …’: Isaac Newton on Publishing and the Ideal
Natural Philosopher,” in The Silences of Science, edited by Felicity Mellor (Farnham: Ash-gate, 2016), forthcoming.
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nying an experiment which Newton did not include as proof for his theory, but“for its examination.”25
So why did Newton provide his readers with so little information and so fewinstructions regarding the experiment he considered the fundamental prooffor his new theory? It is important to insert the word ‘initially’ in the abovesentence. In subsequent correspondence about his theory of light and colours,Newtonprovidedmore andmore details regarding his experiments. This seemsto have been directly related to the criticism he received, and the obviousneed to provide further explanation in order to convince others of the valid-ity of his conclusions. In December 1675 he decided to answer a number ofissues in an essay-length letter entitled “An Hypothesis explaining the Prop-erties of Light, discoursed of in my several Papers.”26 The Hypothesis containsa detailed discussion about the supposedly corpuscular nature of light, reflec-tion, refraction, and colour. Contrary to the relative obscurity with which hetreated these topics in the New Theory, Newton now provided his readers withmuch more detail and a number of illustrations demonstrating his observa-tions and explaining his reasoning. The same holds for his much later workOpticks, which contains a similar proportion of illustrations as the Lectionesopticae. It is very likely that, as Robert Iliffe states, “the Optica was at least par-tially rewritten after he received criticisms of his paper on light and colours.”27Iliffe also points toNewton’s changed attitude towards the corroborative natureof experiments, which is apparent in the Lectiones opticae.28 What is impor-tant for our research is that Newton initially decided to present his reader witha very concise version of his optical theories. If we can explain Newton’s laterelaborations as a response to his critics and an attempt to explain his theoryin a more accessible form, how are we to understand his initial condensa-tion?
In order to provide an explanation for Newton’s rationale, let us turn toanother of his projects: his work on the chronology of the ancient world. Thisis apparently completely unrelated to the topic of optics: the latter is a projectin natural philosophy, involving observations, experiments, and their theoret-ical interpretation, while the former is a bookish, scholarly topic dominated
25 Newton, “A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton […] containing his New Theory about Light andColors” (cit. note 21), p. 3085.
26 Newton to Oldenburg, 7 December 1675, in Turnbull, Correspondence, Vol. i (cit. note 3),pp. 362–386.
27 Rob Iliffe, “Abstract Considerations: Disciplines and the Incoherence of Newton’s NaturalPhilosophy,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part a, 2004, 35:427–454, p. 435.
28 Ibid., pp. 435–436.
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by textual and linguistic analysis. But, in addition to the fact that Newton’schronology centred on astronomical observations as well as on texts, we willalso come across some interesting methodological aspects connecting theseareas of research.
4 Hidden Realms
The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended is a somewhat strange book.It is Newton’s majestic attempt to singlehandedly show how all but one ofhis contemporaries were wrong about how old ancient history actually is.Using various methods that we will discuss further on, Newton arrives at theconclusion with which he starts the Chronology:
All Nations, before they began to keep exact accounts of Time, have beenprone to raise their Antiquities; and this humour has been promoted, bythe Contentions between Nations about their Originals.29
The book’s six chapters discuss the ancient Greek, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylo-nian, Median and Persian empires and their duration, all in relation to sacredhistory: the chronologies we find in the Old Testament. Newton considered thelatter to be more reliable than most other sources, but Biblical chronology wasnot sacrosanct. Having discussed the proper order of the Babylonian, Medianand Persian kings, he suggests reordering particular passages in the book ofEzra, based upon the apocryphal book of Esdras, which he considers an earlycopy of Ezra before the pages of both books got mixed up:
[…] if in the book of Ezra you omit the story of Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes,and in that of Esdras you omit the same story of Artaxerxes, and that ofthe three wise men, the two books will agree: and therefore the book ofEsdras, if you except the story of the threewisemen, was originally copiedfrom authentic writings of Sacred Authority […].30
Although Newton does not elaborate on this in the Chronology, in his likewiseposthumously published work (and in the related drafts) on the prophecies inDaniel and Revelations, we find Newton providing a possible explanation as
29 Isaac Newton, Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (London: 1728), p. 43.30 Ibid., p. 369.
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to how the order in Ezra and other books came to be distorted, relating it tothe tumultuous second era b.c.31 But we also come across similar and ratherlengthy explanations in drafts for the Chronology, one of which starts:
First, I consider that the first book of Esdras is nothing else then thegenuine book of Ezra interpoled between the first & second chapterswiththe letter to Artaxerxes & the Kings answer & with the story of the threeyoung men speaking wise sentences & augmented in the beginning withpart of the second book of Chronicles & in the end with a fragment of thebook of Nehemiah […].32
It then goes on to explain how various fragments have been inserted “by somemistake of the scribe in a wrong place” and provides a complete reconstructionof the book of Ezra and other parts of biblical chronology.33 This shows thatNewton was not a biblical literalist, but instead considered several sections ofthe Scriptures to be corrupted, either deliberately or by accident. In a famousletter to John Locke, Newton included a lengthy treatise about “two notablecorruptions of Scripture,” 1 John 5:7 and 1Timothy 3:16, key proof texts forthe doctrine of the Trinity, which Newton disputed.34 With Newton’s consent
31 See IsaacNewton,Observations upon the Prophesies ofDaniel and theApocalypse of St. John(London: 1733), pp. 1–14; YahudaMs. 8.2, ff. 5r–5v, YahudaMs. 10b, ff. 10r–12r (both NationalLibrary of Israel, Jerusalem).
32 YahudaMs. 25.1d, f. 9r (National Library of Israel, Jerusalem), Newton Project: them00396(normalized; accessed 1 September 2015).
33 Ibid., ff. 8r–11v.34 Newton to a Friend [i.e. John Locke], 14 November 1690, in Turnbull, Correspondence,
Vol. iii (cit. note 3), pp. 83–129; see Newton Project Catalogue: them00099 (accessed1 September 2015) for various drafts and copies of this letter. See also Scott Mandelbrote,“ ‘Than this nothing can be plainer’: Isaac Newton reads the Fathers,” in Die Patristik inder Frühen Neuzeit: Die Relektüre der Kirchenväter in den Wissenschaften des 15. bis 18.Jahrhunderts, edited by Günter Frank, Thomas Leinkauf, and Markus Wriedt (Stuttgart:Frommann-Holzboog, 2006), pp. 277–297. With respect to Newton’s anti-Trinitarianismand other non-orthodox components of his religion, noteworthy publications include,but are not limited to, Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1974); James E. Force, Richard H. Popkin, Essays on the Context, Nature,and Influence of Isaac Newton’s Theology (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990) and id. (eds.), NewtonandReligion: Context, Nature, and Influence (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999); ScottMandelbrote,“ ‘A duty of the greatest moment’: Isaac Newton and the Writing of Biblical Criticism,”The British Journal for the History of Science, 1993, 26:281–302. Stephen D. Snobelen, “ ‘Godof Gods and Lord of Lords’: The Theology of Isaac Newton’s General Scholium to the
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Locke sent the letter, duly anonymised, to the Huguenot scholar and Arminiantheologian Jean Le Clerc in Amsterdam, in order to have it translated intoFrench and then published. Soon afterwards Newton insisted on ceasing anyattempt towards publication, possibly afraid that his anonymity had beenbreached: the emergence of such an anti-Trinitarian publication would nothave boded well for Newton.35 Upon receiving the letter, Le Clerc referredNewton (via Locke) to the recently published Critical History of the Text of theNew Testament by Richard Simon, which Newton duly read; he subsequentlymade some alterations to his own text. By that time the name Richard Simonwasundoubtedly familiar toNewton, as he also owneda copyof Simon’sCriticalHistory of theOldTestament. Just asNewtondid not need to rely on Simonwhenwriting his treatise on the notable corruptions in the New Testament, neitherdid he require Simon for his reconstruction of Biblical chronology.36 In fact,while Simon does point out several contradictions in the books of Ezra andNehemiah, he does not provide a possible cause, nor a possible solution, asNewton does.
Before we return to the Chronology, it is important to state that thoughNewton was not a Biblical literalist, he did believe the original, uncorruptedwords of the Bible to be divinely inspired. This is not the time and place for alengthy exposition, but in another famous exchange of letters, Newton rebukedThomas Burnet, the author of the soon to be published Telluris Theoria Sacra,for his loose reading of the creation account in the first chapters of Genesis.WhenBurnet explicitly stated that “this draught of the creation [is not] physicalbut ideal, or if you will, morall,” Newton, referring to Burnet’s denial of theliteracy of the six days of creation and subsequent Sabbath, replied:
Principia,” Osiris, 2001, 16:169–208, and id., “To Discourse of God: Isaac Newton’s Hetero-dox Theology and his Natural Philosophy,” in Science and dissent in England, 1688–1945,edited by Paul B. Wood (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 39–65; Rob Iliffe, “ProsecutingAthanasius: Protestant Forensics and the Mirrors of Persecution,” in Newton and Newto-nianism: New Studies, edited by James E. Force, Sarah Hutton (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004),and id., “Church, Heresy, and Pure Religion,” The New Atlantis, 2015, 44:50–64, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/church-heresy-and-pure-religion (accessed 2 Septem-ber 2015).
35 And rightly so, asWestfall writes: “Le Clerc knewwho the author was, and fifty years later,when his manuscript was found in the Remonstrants Library in Amsterdam where hedeposited it, it was published under Newton’s name.” Westfall, Never at Rest (cit. note 5),p. 491.
36 Nor for his reading of the prophetic language of the Bible, as Mandelbrote, “Newton readsthe Fathers” (cit. note 34, pp. 293–294) points out.
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[B]e it as it will, me thinks one of the tenn commandments given by Godin mount Sina, prest by divers of the prophets observed by our Saviour,his Apostles & first Christians for 300 years &with a day’s alteration by allChristians to this day, should not be grounded on a fiction.37
However, the chronological books of the Bible differed from the account ofcreation in Genesis in one important aspect: they were not original writings.They cite various other works that are now unknown to us, and Newton liststhem all:
[…] the book of Samuel the Seer, the book of Nathan the Prophet, andthe book of Gad the Seer, for the Acts of David; the book of Nathan theProphet, the Prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and the visions of Iddo theSeer, for the Acts of Solomon; the book of Shemajah the Prophet, and thebook of Iddo the Seer concerning genealogies, for the Acts of Rehoboamand Abijah; the book of the Kings of Judah and Israel for the Acts of Asa,Joash, Amaziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah,Manasseh, and Josiah; the bookof Hanani the Seer, for the Acts of Jehosaphat; and the visions of Isaiah forthe Acts of Uzziah and Hezekiah. These books were therefore collectedout of the historical writings of the antient Seers and Prophets.38
Thus, Newton felt at ease in interfering with the order of the book of Ezra: thiswas not sacred writ, like the prophecies or the gospels, but demonstrably ahuman construction, and likewise prone to error.
Returning to Chronology, its structure seems rather unbalanced: the firstchapter, “Of the chronology of the first ages of the Greeks,” takes up almosthalf of the book, followed by five chapters that grow shorter and shorter. Thatis, until we realise that Newton uses the first chapter to set up his argument
37 Burnet to Newton, 13 January 1680/81, in Turnbull, Correspondence, Vol. ii (cit. note 3),p. 334; Newton to Burnet, January 1680/81, in ibid., p. 334. See Rienk Vermij, “The Floodand the Scientific Revolution: Thomas Burnet’s System of Natural Providence,” in Inter-pretations of the Flood, Themes in Biblical Narrative: Jewish and Christian Traditions, editedby F.G. Martinez and G.P. Luttikhuizen, Vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1999); J.E. Force, “The God ofAbraham and Isaac (Newton),” in The Books of Nature and Scripture, edited by J.H. Force,R.H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), pp. 179–200. See also Mandelbrote, “Isaac Newtonand the Writing of Biblical Criticism” (cit. note 34), p. 293.
38 Newton, Observations (cit. note 31), pp. 8–9. See also ibid., p. 1 ff., Yahuda 8.1 f. 6r (NationalLibrary of Israel, Jerusalem), KeynesMs. 3, f. 28 ff. (King’s College Library, Cambridge), nclMs. 361.2 f. 132r–133r (New College Library, Oxford).
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and demonstrate his methodology, and that the other chapters build upon thisframework. Of particular interest is the fifth chapter, “A description of the Tem-ple of Solomon,” which seems out of place in a book on ancient monarchies,until we realise that the Temple plays an important role in the other chaptersof the Chronology.39 On a not unimportant side note, it is also the only illus-trated chapter in the book: three rather impressive maps of the architecture ofthe Temple. They are meant to be studied alongside the text, where Newtonprovides accurate measurements of themain Temple complex and all its otherbuildings.
In contrast to Newton’s optics, it is much more difficult to assign firm datestoNewton’s chronologicalwritings. TheChronology ofAncientKingdomsAmen-dedwaspublishedposthumously in 1728, and although themanuscript selectedby John Conduitt was indeed a fair copy, and not altogether incidentally thesingle manuscript that Pellet, who was also one of the editors of the Chronol-ogy, thought fit for publication, there is no evidence that this was indeed themanuscript that Newton himself intended to publish. We have at least oneother copy that could have likewise qualified as copy-text for the Chronology,and many, many drafts for paragraphs and chapters that can be reliably datedto 1726 and 1727.40 They reflect what seems to have been a practice that Newtonbrought to all of his scholarly endeavours: the search for perfection in writing.We quite often find pages with three, four or five versions of the same para-graph, one after another, or even multiple versions of the same page. Theyclearly show how Newton drafted and redrafted entire sections, replacing cer-tain pages but keeping others, thereby constructing newdocuments using bothexisting and newly written pages. This means that the entire concept of ‘docu-ment’ becomes rather abstrusewithNewton, and likewise the concept of order.Fortunately, we can groupNewton’s chronological writings in three broad cate-gories, basedupon their relation to threemajor anchorpoints in the chronology
39 I amvery grateful to Stephen Snobelen for pointing out tome that theChronology containsmany references and allusions to the Jerusalem Temple, outside of chapter five. A quickcount gives: chapter one (7); chapter two (6); chapter three (5); chapter four (9); chaptersix (19). Although Newton’s studies of the Temple of Solomon have been researched, therelationship between these Temple studies and his chronological studies has so far beenneglected. See also Raquel Delgado Moreira, “ ‘What Ezekiel says’: Newton as a TempleScholar,” History of Science, 2010, 48/2:153–180; Matt Goldish, Judaism in the Theology ofIsaac Newton (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998).
40 The Chronologywas printed from culMs. Add 3988, with a number of editorial interven-tions; the editorsmight aswell have chosen culMsAdd 3987 (both CambridgeUniversityLibrary).
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of his chronology: the Theologia Gentilis, the Original of Monarchies, and theChronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended. This will allow us to draw compar-isons between Newton’s optical and chronological compositions further on.
Newton’s chronological writings in Latin can all be linked to the TheologiaGentilis, and hence point to a date of composition before early 1694, as thequote from David Gregory’s memorandum proves. Since some drafts bear thehandofHumphreyNewtonwecan conclude that hewas involved in chronolog-ical research by the end of the 1680s. It is highly unclear whenNewton’s interestin this matter started. So far all historians of Newton’s work tend to assign arather late date to Newton’s chronological writings in general, with all of thematerials written in English dated as post-1700. Buchwald and Feingold assumethat Newton only started to write a second major piece, called The Original ofMonarchies, in the summer of 1702, but it might have been as late as early 1714,since Newton mentions a list of English kings, noting that “[t]he 28 Kings ofEngland (William theConqueror&his successors) [reigned] 635½yearswhichis 22 2/3 years a piece.”41 Adding these years to 1066 gives 1702 as a terminuspost quem, and likewise 1714 as a terminus ante, since the 29th King, or ratherQueen, Anne, was apparently still reigning. But we also come across a myste-rious date in another English manuscript, mentioned by Frank Manuel, whereNewton writes “now in the year 1680.” As the manuscript shows, Newton firstadded this above the line, but later deleted the entire passage. The fact remainsthat Newton was actively engaging with chronological materials in the 1680s,and had written a coherent chronological narrative by the time he set eyes onLondon. This is also confirmed by Newton’s own account. In November 1725 hewrites:
When I lived atCambridge, I us’d sometimes to refreshmyselfwith historyand chronology for a while, when I was weary with other studies […].42
41 Jed Z. Buchwald andMordechai Feingold, Newton and theOrigin of Civilization (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2012), p. 195; Keynes Ms. 146 f. 15r (King’s College Library,Cambridge); ncl Ms. 361.1.b4 f. 105r (New College Library, Oxford) mentions 29 kings andhence was written after the death of Queen Anne in 1714.
42 Isaac Newton, “Remarks upon the Observations Made upon a Chronological Index of SirIsaac Newton, Translated into French by the Observator, and Publish’d at Paris,” Philo-sophical Transactions, 1724–1725, 33:315–321, p. 320. See also Frank Manuel, Isaac Newton:Historian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 17; nclMs. 361.3 f. 252v (NewCollege Library, Oxford).
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Witnessing the density of the Theologia Gentilis and the related draft mate-rials, Newton was doing far more than “refreshing himself for a while” withhistory and chronology. TheTheologia seems to be the product of intense study,drawing upon numerous ancient sources, and already containing the founda-tions upon which Newton built the Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended.The fact that Newton askedHumphrey tomake a copy of his work, andGregoryreferring to it as a tract, might suggest he was already contemplating having itpublished.
The later materials are much easier to date. Newton’s hand became lesssteady with age, and can be clearly distinguished from his mature hand. Moreoften than not he also reused materials: Mint-related papers, drafts for letters,and envelopes and letters he received himself. All of these are either datedor can be dated with some certainty, at least providing reliable termini postquem. For example, at some moment Newton used an envelope addressed to“The Right Worshipfull Sr Isack Newton, Mr of ye Mint, At Albutton Buildingin Kinsington.”43 The envelope is covered with two distinct sets of calculations,some of which are clearly related to astronomy, and a number of paragraphson various chronological topics. On the inside of the envelope we find sixparagraphs, of which five are variant versions of the same text. We know thatin late January or early February 1724/25, Newton moved to Orbell’s Buildingsin Kensington, which were later known as Pitt’s Buildings, the last two ofwhich were demolished in 1894. Though none of the existing records mentionan Albutton Building, one of Pitt’s Buildings was known as Newton House,whichmight originally have been namedAlbutton.44 Therefore, all of Newton’swritings on this folio can be dated to 1725 or later. In conjunction with other
43 ncl Ms. 361.2 f. 107v, New College Library, Oxford.44 Westfall, Never at Rest (cit. note 5), p. 866; “The Pitt Estate,” in Survey of London, Vol. 37,
Northern Kensington, edited by F.H.W. Sheppard (London: London County Council, 1973),pp. 49–57, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol37/pp49-57 (accessed 1September 2015). The exact history of the estate seems rather unclear: “The names givento these houses at this time were BullinghamHouse (most confusingly, for a house whichhad at one time borne that name was then still standing on a nearby site in KensingtonChurch Street) and Newton House […] Bullingham House had its main front facing westand from surviving illustrations of the façade appears to have dated from the early tomid-eighteenth century, although only a refronting may have taken place at this time. NewtonHouse appears to have been slightly older and it is possible that it basically consisted oftwo or more of Orbell’s five houses joined together. It was named after Sir Isaac Newton,who had lived at Orbell’s Buildings for the last two years of his life. Traditionally, however,the claims of BullinghamHouse as his place of residence anddeath in 1727 have beenmorestrongly advanced […],” ibid.
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evidence it tells us howNewtonwas frantically drafting and redrafting sectionsof material that he had readily available, but also that he was either redoingearlier astronomical calculations or adding new ones, perhaps based on newobservations. It also shows us Newton’s eye for the minutiae of composition:each and every word mattered.
This datemakes complete sensewhenwe realise that an illegal French trans-lation of a chronological abstract, written by Newton almost a decade earlier,was published in the autumn of that year. At the behest of Princess Caroline,whohadbecomeawareofNewton’s chronological studies through theirmutualfriend, the Venetian Abbé Conti, Newton spent time in 1717 drafting the ShortChronicle, essentially a list of dates corresponding to historical events.45 Butthese dates differed significantly from those establishedby contemporary chro-nologists, both inEngland andFrance, andNewtonwas severely rebuked for hissupposed errors.
I have drawn up the following chronological table so as to make Chronol-ogy suit with the course of nature, with Astronomy, with sacred history,with Herodotus the father of history, & with it self […].46
The above quote serves as a nice summary of Newton’s entire chronologicalproject: by drawing upon ancient sources, trying to harmonise these withsacred Scripture, then returning to these sources to establish their relativevalidity, and interpreting them in a rather idiosyncratic way, Newton set upa framework in which each of Ovid’s four ages of men lasts for no longerthan a generation. It is this framework that forms the heart of the TheologiaGentilis. In the Original of Monarchies Newton adds a second argument, whichhe calls ‘the course of nature’, where he recalculates the length of ancientmonarchies based on the average reign of Scriptural and modern kings. Oneking could reign for sixty years, but not numerous kings on end. Assigning afigure between 18 and 20 years per reign, he ascribes much later dates to thereigns of Egyptian and Greek kings, and therefore to historical episodes likethe voyage of Jason and the Argonauts, and the Trojan War. In the publishedChronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amendedwe find Newton’s third and perhapsmost sophisticated argument: based on his knowledge and understanding ofastronomy he recalculates when particular observations of the heavens were
45 See Buchwald and Feingold, Newtonand theOrigin of Civilization (cit. note 41), pp. 307–330for a full account of the Conti story.
46 Newton, Chronology (cit. note 29), p. 8.
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made, and consequently when their authorsmust have lived. The introductionfrom which the above quote is taken might have been written in 1717, but itclearly shows that all the elements that were to go into the Chronology werealready present at that time. Presumably Newton spent the last decade ofhis life editing the materials he had collected earlier. This would also explainwhy Zachary Pearce, who spoke with Newton about his chronology just a fewmonths prior to Newton’s death, remembered him saying that he had beenperforming chronological studies for “thirty years at intervals,” andhad recentlystarted to arrange the materials.47
One thing that strikes us when we look at the images of all those pages onchronology is their sheer abundance. Research that eventually led to a workof 120 folios, the Chronology with the attached Short Chronicle, covers tensof thousands of sheets, totalling close to a million words. When we take arandom sample sheet, the first thing we notice is the great number of editorialinterventions. Many of these are in exactly the same hand and ink as themain text, which suggests that they were made straightaway. Others wereclearly added at a later moment, but exactly when is unclear. What we alsonotice are Newton’s practices in terms of note taking. Many pages containreferences to primary and secondary sources, both inline and in the margin orbelow a paragraph. Some notes seem to have been added immediately duringthe course of writing, while others show Newton leaving space for an inlinereference or marginal note to be added later. And likewise we encounter manyinstances where Newton has indeed added the inline reference, and it is onlythe leftover space that betrays this practice.
When I started analysing these notes, which have all been marked up bythe Newton Project in their transcriptions, I noticed something peculiar whichat first glance had escaped me. Knowing that Newton made extensive use ofthe works of John Marsham (1602–1685), in particular the Canon Chronicus,I was not surprised to frequently come across his name in the drafts. Thepublished Chronology, though, mentions his name only once, and almost inpassing: “Our great Chronologer, Sir John Marsham, was also of opinion thatSesostris was Sesac […].” However, it turns out that this identification of thehistorical Egyptian king Sesostris with the biblical pharaoh Sesac is of pivotalimportance for Newton’s chronological studies and – as the early drafts show –clearly taken from Marsham. As his manuscript legacy shows, Newton drewinspiration frommany sources. Let us focus on another example.
47 Zachary Pearce to Dr. Hunt, 10 August 1754, printed in Anonymous, The Lives of Dr. EdwardPocock, Vol. 1 (London: 1816), pp. 430–438, quotes taken from p. 431; see also Buchwald andFeingold, Origin of Civilization (cit. note 41), pp. 307–308.
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The manuscript known as Yahuda Ms. 28e contains notes from works by acertain Johann Buxtorf, abbreviated by Newton as “de Abbrevatur Hebr.” and“Vindic. Verit. Hebr.”48 The first book is De Abbreviaturis Hebraicis, publishedin 1646, and written by Johann Buxtorf the Younger (1599–1664); the secondrefers to Anticritica seu Vindiciae Veritatis Hebraicae, also by Buxtorf, Jr. Now,to the best of our knowledge, Newton did own two works by an author namedJohann Buxtorf, the Lexicon Hebraicum et Chaldaicum and the Epitome gram-maticæHebrææ[…].49 Thesewerewrittenhowever by JohannBuxtorf theElder(1564–1629), the father of the earlier mentioned Buxtorf. One of those works,the Epitome, has not been recovered, but the Lexicon is conserved at King’sCollege, Cambridge. On the blog of the Library and Archives of King’s College,called King’s Treasures, Iman Javadi informs us that eight of the book’s pageshave been dog-eared by Newton, in similar fashion to his copy of Marsham.50Newton however did not own any works by Buxtorf the Younger, although thelist of notes indicates that he had read at least the two works he quotes from.
So we have clear evidence of Newton reading at least three works by oneof the Buxtorfs. But again, references to any work by either Buxtorf in hiswritings are scarce. In YahudaMs. 2.4, which contains draftmaterials about theTemple of Solomon and the sacred cubit, we find “Vide & Buxtorf. Lex. Tal. inםיר ” tucked away in a note.51 We might be easily wrong-footed here, assuming
this is a quote from the above mentioned Lexicon Hebraicum et Chaldaicum,but Newton is actually referring to another book, the Lexicon Chaldaicum,Talmudicum et Rabbinicum, written by Buxtorf the Elder but published byBuxtorf the Younger in 1639. As it turns out, the draft from which this noteis taken served as the basis for a text written by Newton and posthumouslypublished in translation as A Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews
48 Yahuda Ms. 28e (National Library of Israel, Jerusalem), Newton Project: them00275(diplomatic; accessed 3 September 2015).
49 JohnHarrison,TheLibraryof IsaacNewton (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1978),p. 113.
50 https://kcctreasures.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/isaac-newtons-dog-ears/ (accessed 3March 2015). These dog-ears are Newton’s rather idiosyncratic way of marking particularwords and lines. Instead of just folding the tip of a page, Newton folded the entirepage to such an extent that the tip pointed directly at the relevant passage. See alsoNewton’s copy of Marsham’s Canon Chronicus, of which a substantial number of pageshave been digitized by LindaHall Library, Kansas City: http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/philsci/id/139/rec/1 (accessed 3 September 2015).
51 Yahuda Ms. 2.4 (National Library of Israel, Jerusalem), f. 13v note a. Newton Project:them00267 (normalized; accessed 3 March 2015).
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and the Cubits of the several Nations, which no longer contains any referenceto Buxtorf.52 However, the sacred cubit also returns in the Chronology, whereNewtondevotedanentire chapter and threedrawings to theTemple, discussingits layout and measurements in great detail. Alas, there is no reference toBuxtorf, nor to any other source on the Temple or the sacred cubit that Newtonmight have used.53
In general, whatwewitness among the chronology-relatedmaterials is a dis-crepancy between earlier drafts and those materials apparently being readiedfor publication. Apart from Marsham and the one contemporary chronologistwhose name consistently occurs in the draft materials and the Chronology –Samuel Bochart – it is highly unclear which contemporary chronologists New-tonwas following. From theChronology itwould appear that hismain focuswason the original sources themselves, but from his drafts, his note taking and hisreading practices we knowhe consulted theworks ofmany other chronologistswho provided him with ample materials. In similar fashion, when it comes toNewton’s genealogical and astronomical calculations, the Chronology providesus with the results of decades of analysing, computing and adjusting. Many ofthe drafts show Newton deleting, recalculating, and adjusting figures to matchhis other calculations. For instance, a line taken from the earliermentioneddis-cussion of the average reigns of kings in the Original of Monarchies continues“But if the Generations proceed by the eldest sons they are shorter so that four\three/ of them may be recconed to an hundred \eighty/ years,” clearly show-ing how Newton adjusted his figure for the length of one generation from 25 to23 1/3 years.54 Therefore, in order to properly understand Newton’s chronolog-ical reasoning, we need to return to his draft writings, his notes, and his books.This is a luxury that was not allowed to Newton’s contemporaries: Newton onlyprovided themwith the results of his research, not the process that led up to it.
52 John Greaves, Miscellaneous Works of Mr. John Greaves, Professor of Astronomy in theUniversity of Oxford, Vol. 2 (London: 1737), pp. 405–433. See DelgadoMoreira,What Ezekielsays (cit. note 39), pp. 161–162; see also Westfall, Never at Rest (cit. note 5), p. 348.
53 For instance, Newton’s copy of Thomas Godwin’s Moses and Aaron, which is now in theHuntington Library in San Marino, ca, contains a small leaf of paper with notes takenfrom the book. The notes concern two different topics: the difference between peace andcovenants among the Jews, and the various kinds of cubits that were in use.While it is notentirely clear whether the hand is Newton’s, he did own and likewise read the book, as iswitnessed by 31 dog-ears. Thomas Godwin, Moses and Aaron. Civil and ecclesiastical rites,used by the ancient Hebrewes; observed, and at large opened […] (London: 4th ed., 1658).See Harrison, Library (cit. note 49), p. 150.
54 Keynes Ms. 146 f. 15r (King’s College Library, Cambridge), Newton Project: them00040(diplomatic, accessed 10 March 2015).
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The obvious question, which has been in the air for some time now, is whyNewton resorted to such a practice of obscuring his sources. It would be tempt-ing to blame him for copyright infringement, if such a thing had existed in hisdays. But that would assume that he did so deliberately, and we have to becareful before entertaining such an explanation. After all, when working on aproject for so long, it is easy to lose track of where a particular idea came from,or how a particular source was brought to one’s attention. Similarly, there wereno set rules for how to deal with the works of others. One duly paid respectto primary sources, as they often formed part of the evidence for an author’spremises, but one might not do so in the case of the work of colleagues. Whenwe inspect the works of other seventeenth-century chronologists, we some-times find abundant references to contemporaries, such as Samuel Bochart inhisGeographia Sacrae (1646), butwe find hardly any such references in ThomasBurnet’s Archaelogiae Philosophicae (1692). However, when we inspect New-ton’s own copies of both volumes, we find that Newton read both with extremecare. By my count there are 175 dog-ears in Newton’s copy of Bochart, and 77 inhis copy of Burnet’s Archaeologiae. Yet in the published Chronology there arebut seven references to Bochart, and none to Burnet. And there aremanymoreauthors in Newton’s library whose works he read extensively and from whichhe took notes, yet their names do not appear in any of the manuscripts thatNewton seems to have prepared for publication. Indeed, there is ample reasonto believe that Newton removed certain references on purpose. In an autobi-ographical note, Zachary Pearce recalls his conversations with Newton shortlybefore the latter’s death:
Sir Isaac […] informed me, that he had […] at the end of thirty years, laidtogether all his materials, and composed from thence his Chronology ofAncientKingdoms; and that hehadwritten it over several times (it appearsafterwards, I think, sixteen times) making few alterations in it, but whatwere for the sake of shortening it (as I gathered from his discourse) andleaving out in every later copy some of the authorities and referencesupon which had grounded his opinions. It’s a pity, that he took so muchof the samemethod in his Chronology which he took in his Principia, &c.concealing his proofs, and leaving it to the sagacity of others to discoverthem. For want of these, in some instances, what he says on Chronologydoes not sufficiently appear at present to rest upon any thing but hisassertions […].55
55 Zachary Pearce to Dr. Hunt, 10 August 1754, printed in Anonymous, The Lives of Dr. Edward
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Now this is obviously not a factual statement, but a memoir, and has to beconsidered as such. All the same, in similar fashion Pearce also informs usthat the editors of the Chronology added some references where they foundthem lacking.56 And indeed, when we compare the original manuscript fromwhich the Chronology was printed with the work itself, we find several addi-tional notes in places in the text where Newton, according to Pearce, appar-ently “chose to conceal […] proofs he may have had […].”57 Again, this doesnot mean that Newton deliberately removed certain references. He might nothave thought it necessary to add notes in these places. But the fact that the edi-tors, Thomas Pellet and Martin Folkes, considered it necessary to add ‘proofs’to some of Newton’s unreferenced statements is telling. Future research willhopefully reveal to what extent Newton was indebted to other authors. But fornow let us return to Newton’s optics.
5 Elected by God
When we compare Newton’s Chronology and his first optical publications, wecan see a pattern emerging. Newton’s optical notes and lectures provide verydetailed instructions on how to perform the experiments he describes, accom-panied by clear images of both the setup and results. Yet, as we have witnessed,the description of the principal experiment in his maiden publication was notcharacterized by a similar amount of detail and clarity. That same experimen-tum crucis, which as a result turned out to be very difficult to reproduce, wasfurthermore ascribed by the author with great epistemological relevance, aview that was not shared by his contemporaries. In other words, Newton wasobscuring the pathway that led to his new theory of light and colours, whilstat the same time changing the rules of the game when it came to providingevidence for his claims. Returning to his chronological works, we find a simi-lar dual pattern. The Chronology contains a story not unlike the introductionto his first optical paper: a narrative, not meant to convey factual truth, butdeliberately adding a mythological component to Newton’s own idiosyncraticresearchmethods. In both caseswe need his drafts in order to understandwhatit actually is that he was doing, and how he accomplished it. But then again,
Pocock (cit. note 47), pp. 430–438, quotes taken from pp. 431–432; see also Buchwald andFeingold, Newton and the Origin of Civilization (cit. note 41), pp. 307–308.
56 Ibid., p. 432.57 Ibid.
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Newton’s readers didnothave access to thosedrafts. Theywere confrontedwithyet another publication whose mysteries would only be revealed to those whoworked hard to understand them. I think this was done byNewton deliberately.
During those early years at Cambridge, Newton also developed a keen inter-est in alchemy that lasted his entire life. As his notebooks show, in April 1669 hepurchased not only a copy of Lazarus Zetzner’s Theatrum Chemicum, but alsoa wealth of alchemical equipment and materials: glassware, furnaces, fine sil-ver, antimony, white lead, salt of tartar, and the list goes on.58 By the end of hislife his personal library alone contained over a hundred and sixty alchemicalbooks and tracts, and as his extensive alchemical notes show, hemust have hadaccess tomanymore.59 During his timewith Newton, Humphrey often assistedhim with his alchemical experiments. After Newton’s death, Humphrey recallsthe following scene:
[…] he siting up one Night, as I did another till he had finished hisChymical Experiments, in the Performances of which he was the mostaccurate, strict, exact: What his Aimmight be, I was not able to penetrateinto but his Paine, his Diligence at those sett times, made me think, heaim’d at somthing beyond the Reach of humane Art & Industry.60
Leafing through some of the alchemical books Newton owned, we find thesame dog-ears that we encountered in his books on chronology. Reconstruct-ingwhichpassagesNewtonhighlighted canbe quite laborious, especiallywhenthe dog-ears have been unfolded by later owners or librarians, but in gen-eral it seems that Newton’s alchemical interest was twofold: on the one handmaterial culture and processes, on the other the dissemination of alchemicalknowledge. For instance, in his copy of a small alchemical book by JohannFriedrich Helvetius, which describes a meeting between an alchemist and aneager student, Newton dog-eared the following passage: while the student wasstill speaking, the alchemist:
58 Fitzwilliam Notebook ff. 8r–v (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), Newton Project:alch000069 (normalized, accessed 11 March 2015).
59 Harrison, Library (cit. note 49), pp. 58–59; cf. The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, www.chymistry.com, for an entire Newton Project section headed by William R. Newmandevoted solely to Newton’s alchemical manuscripts.
60 Humphrey Newton to John Conduitt, Jan. 1727–1728, KeynesMs. 135, ff. 3–4 (King’s CollegeLibrary, Cambridge), Newton Project: them00033 (normalized, accessed 2 September2015).
76 schilt
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[…]pulledout of his pocket an ivorybox, inwhichhehad threeponderousfragments, in magnitude scarcely equalizing a small walnut; these wereglass-like, of the colour of pale sulphur, to which the interior scales ofthat crucible did adhere, inwhich thismost noble substancewas liquefied[…].61
In between references to similar passages, we also find dog-ears that highlightpassages on how to obtain knowledge of these hidden practices. Alchemicalbooks are renowned for their obscure and metaphorical language, the use ofwhich was quite deliberate. As Helvetius’ adept tells us:
[…] touching the Time they would write nothing certain; yea, I say, noLover of this Art, can find the Art of preparing this Mystery in his wholeLife, without the Communication of some true Adept Man.62
And from another of Newton’s alchemical books:
These are but a few things which I have said of thematter; which tho’ it bevery secret, yet the operation of it ismore secret which nevertheless inmyfollowing discourse I will reveal, so that its occult may be made manifestonly to men elected by God.63
It is striking that in this last passage, the dog-ear seems to point directlyat the words “men elected by God,” which must have appealed greatly toNewton. More importantly, these passages might provide an explanation forNewton’s idiosyncratic publication practices. The alchemical adept had spentday and night with his furnaces and crucibles in his laboratory, attempting topenetrate the veils of hidden knowledge that God had left in nature, and hewould not easily give away his secrets. This was for the benefit of his students,and not because he was unwilling to part with his newfound insights. Truealchemical knowledge should only be gained through personal experience andexperiments. The process of acquiring knowledge and gaining insights was
61 Johann Friedrich Helvetius, The golden calf which the world adores, and desires: in whichis handled the most rare and incomparable wonder of nature, in transmuting metals […](London: 1670), p. 49. Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
62 Ibid., pp. 67–68.63 Anonimus [i.e. C. Grummet], Sanguis naturæ, or, A manifest declaration of the sanguine
and solar congealed liquor of nature (London: 1696), pp. 14–15. Memorial Library, Univer-sity of Wisconsin-Madison.
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as important as the knowledge itself, perhaps even more important. We canalmost describe this as a Bildungsideal, and I think it is a Bildungsideal towhichNewton adhered. Instead of providing his readers with all the details, it seemsto me that Newton wanted them to diligently study the materials he providedthem with, and form their own opinions under his tutelage.
A few days after submitting his New Theory, Newton sent a letter to HenryOldenburg to express his gratitude for the positive reception of his exposition.In reply to Oldenburg’s request for permission to print the letter in the Philo-sophical Transactions, Newton answered:
As to ye printing of that letter I am satisfyed in their judgment, or else Ishould have thought it too straight & narrow for publick view. I designedit onely to those that know how to improve upon hints of things […].64
At the same time, Robert Hooke was preparing his vicious reply to Newton,and in the years to comemanymore criticismswould follow,much toNewton’schagrin. But I think Newton maintained his ideal of providing his readers with“hints of things,” so that they might “improve upon” these themselves.
64 Newton to Oldenburg, 10 February 1671/2, Turnbull, Correspondence, Vol. ii (cit. note 3),p. 109, my italics. See also Schilt, Tired with this Subject (cit. note 24).
