On Dec 27, 10:08*am, Mike Marotta wrote:
On Dec 23, 12:21*pm, wrote:

For a fictional account of this part of Newton's life, I recommend the
last volume of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle of novels,
"The System of the World." *It features Newton on the trail ...

Thanks for the pointer to that! *I knew only of Philip Kerr's _Dark
Matter_, another fictionalized account of Newton's life.

Oly wrote:

"Newton was a very devout and studious Christian. *He spent a lot of
time at Bible study. *He would be appalled at any idolatry.
He was also very interested in alchemy, one of the last great minds
to
give it as much consideration as he did."

Actually, neither assertion may be completely correct. *I went through
quite a lot of biographical material before writing my own article for
The Numismatist (November 2001). *We would have to dig into what
"original" archives still exist at Cambridge. *Even then we would have
the problem that Supreme Court scholars face today:
textualist (or strict constructionist), originalist,doctrinalist,
contextualist, or structuralist. *In other words: Even where we have
Newton's own words, was he telling us the truth about himself or
leaving a record? *Then, over time, meanings change. *("Silly" once
meant "soul-ly" i.e., pious.) *Newton made a pun about his studies
being "luciferous" meaning -- we think -- only that they bore light.

Be all that as it may, most biographers today -- and this may be our
own conceit -- accept that he was a Unitarian and an Arian and he
denied orthodox Christianity, including the Trinity, if not the
divinity of Jesus.

Also, while, he did work for himself as a chemist, the language of
that was "alchemical" by necessity. *Newton was born in 1642, Boyle
published his "Skeptical Chymist" in 1651. *So, Newton certainly had
opportunity to know of the work, but the extent to which it affected
Newton's "alchemy" is not clear. We believe that Newtwon concocted his
own remedies for his illnesses. *Again, was this "alchemy" or merely
folk medicine? *(And then: folk medicine tended to work... which the
university kind tended not to...) *Again, the fact is that an analysis
of his hair showed no mercury and when he died, he had lost but one
tooth. *So, either he was very healthy, or did not actually do a lot
of "alchemy" or something else.

That said, I agree with you 100% that Newton himself -- like Lincoln,
for that matter or most truly "great" people -- would only blush at
the honors we toss at his name today.

I'm gonna have to dig for the reference, but I distinctly recall
another American (or Canadian-American) liberal throwing **** on
Newton's memory for spending too much time on bible studies (and
alchemy - and by alchemy, I mean transmuting "base" materials into
gold, not folk remedies). Might have been Galbraith in his book "The
Age of Uncertainty".

oly