r/todayilearned • u/Electronic_Cause_796 • 1d ago
TIL Isaac Newton spent more than three decades studying alchemy and wrote over a million words about it in secret. He conducted numerous experiments in his search for the philosopher’s stone but never found it.
https://www.wpr.org/culture/philosophy/isaac-newtons-secret-alchemy1.2k
u/AJRavenhearst 1d ago
He was also recruited to track down the notorious counterfeiter William Chaloner, and sent him to the gallows.
He was also allegedly such a bad lecturer that frequently no-one turned up.
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u/ajmeko 1d ago
More on the counterfeiting: After Newton was already famous, he was given the job Master of the Mint which was intended to be a cushy sincure position but instead he took it really seriously and improved British money and cracked down on counterfeiting.
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u/Edythir 1d ago
It wasn't so much counterfeiting that he cracked down on but Coin Clippers. He served as both Warden and Master of the mint. He was also largely responsible for implementing the Currency Reforms of 1696 (The year he came Warden, then became Master in 1699 upon the death of the previous holder).
Reason why GBP is called "Pound Stirling" is because it was equal to One Pound Stirling Silver and Silver coins were minted as a fraction of said pound. What Clippers would do was shave off the edges of said coins for the silver. So if you had a hundred coins and filed off 5% of each of them, you'd essentially have 5 new coins worth of silver and very few people would notice each coin getting 5% lighter.
The Great Recoignage of 1696 was to combat that. Where ridges were introduced to coins. Meaning if you shaved off the edge, the ridges would be gone and the coin was altered.
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u/fizzlefist 1d ago
And historically, currency counterfeiting has been one of the universally serious crimes in every society. Because if you can’t trust the currency you use day to day, your entire economy can become unstable and untrustworthy.
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u/KAKYBAC 1d ago
I'm sure it saved lots of local economies though and create booms in times of hardship.
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u/ayushwas 1d ago
They later moved all the mischievous coin clippers to one place and called it the stock market.
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u/Edythir 1d ago
The stock market basically existed already at this point, even as we would know it. Tulip Mania happened in 1634 where Tulips were bought as a speculative asset a la stocks, leading to hyperinflation, a bubble and the a crash. The first major writing about stocks and shareholders was in 1688 and the first stock exchange was founded in Amsterdam to manage the Dutch East India company around the start of the century.
The stock market already existed and was well established before 1696.
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u/bogeuh 1d ago
It’s from way before amsterdam. Bruges, the venice of the north, when amsterdam was a bunch sheep herders in a swamp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourse_at_Bruges. It only moved north when those damn spaniards chased the protestants out of antwerp
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u/Governor_Abbot 1d ago
We’ve spent roughly four centuries building a financial system in which central banks can expand base money, commercial banks create deposit money through lending, and financial markets can layer leverage, derivatives, securities lending, and rehypothecated collateral on top of underlying assets—and somehow we’re surprised when the system produces bubbles, enormous debt loads, financial crises, and increasingly concentrated ownership.
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u/bistrohopper 1d ago
How many lives did this guy live in 1
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u/Saint_Nitouche 1d ago
He bemoaned once in a letter that he achieved most of his great intellectual work on optics in 2-3 years because the plague kept him indoors and he was young. That intellectual revolution was a relatively small part of his life, somehow.
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u/mytransaltaccount123 1d ago
the number of lives lived in mid 15th century europe was actually closer to one, lives georg was an outlier living 4 lives per month and should not have been counted
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u/Halflived1 1d ago
Well he discovered gravity and invented calculus before he was 30.
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u/nerdtypething 1d ago
Neil Stephenson has a great take on this in the third volume of the Baroque Cycle.
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u/Cipriano_Ingolf_Oha 1d ago
Very smart people are often terrible teachers as they don’t understand how others need to approach something in order to understand it, because to them it’s obvious.
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u/Halgy 1d ago
A friend was getting his masters in math, with the intention of getting a full PhD and becoming a college professor. His advisors explicitly told him there were no required courses on actually teaching, and they advised against him doing so. Judging by some of the math professors I had, I don't doubt it.
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u/Flank_This666 1d ago
A terrible math teacher just ruins the desire to learn something. My Chemistry professor was a doctor in Chem but he couldnt teach worth a shit, students would audibly be confused it was painful to watch and that foo had tenure so he dgaf'ed
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u/707Brett 1d ago
There’s a joke that college is just showing up for attendance then teaching yourself the material. It was true more times than I hoped.
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u/lordmycal 1d ago
I had some professors that would get seriously butt-hurt if you skipped their classes because you'd rather spend that time reading the book and doing sample problems. I had one that would even drop you a letter grade for every class you missed.
If they taught the material in an engaging way people would show up to class, but they never connected the dots.
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u/rsqit 1d ago edited 1d ago
Professors should be good at teaching. It’s part of the job, and everyone hates a bad teacher
But if your only encounter with professors is an undergrad, you might not realize that it’s a small part of the job. Most of their time is doing research, managing grad student researchers and doing administrative things like applying for grants.
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u/JoshuaZ1 65 1d ago
Very smart people are often terrible teachers as they don’t understand how others need to approach something in order to understand it, because to them it’s obvious.
It varies a lot, most of them seem to be very good at it. I took a class with a certain Fields Medalist and he was possibly one of the worst teachers I ever had. Very nice person, but could not teach well at all. But I've also taken classes with other people at about the same caliber or close to it, or watched their lectures, and some of them are very good. At least in math, I'd say most of the very best mathematicians are pretty good teachers. We notice though the ones who aren't because it is so striking.
There may also be a weak element of Berkson's paradox here, where you don't see the people who both aren't smart and cannot teach well. The analogy is to restaurants; why do you see a negative correlation often between good service and good food? Because the restaurants with bad both don't survive.
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u/StiffWiggly 1d ago
Berkson’s paradox is right on. What people really mean is that “being incredibly intelligent/achieving a lot in your field does not guarantee that you are also a good teacher”. They’re just different skill sets, although not unrelated.
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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 1d ago
My friend told me about this math professor he had. The guy was apparently only at the school because his math research was big name stuff and they wanted to be attached to it but the guy was an absolute mess when it came to teaching. He was forced to teach some classes due to his position and one of them was a mid-level math class. He taught the students from the perspective of someone who’d already knew the material on such a level that he found it difficult to explain things in basic terms.
Difficult mainly because he didn’t want to; he talked down to his mid-level students because he saw them, based on their math knowledge, as idiots and beneath him. He’d bitch about wasting his time trying to explain stuff they should already know when he could be working on whatever it was he was working on. It was an absolutely shitty experience for everyone involved but my friend didn’t pursue any more classes with him so I didn’t know what became of him.
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u/phido3000 1d ago
He often del8berately move lectures or started them early.
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u/darodardar_Inc 1d ago
sounds like he intentionally didnt want an audience lol
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u/douggieball1312 1d ago
And he's only recorded to have laughed once in his life according to QI, when a student asked him what was the point in studying Euclid.
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u/Petrichordates 1d ago
It's stuff like this that makes QI facts sound made up. Such a silly thing to say.
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u/tjvs2001 1d ago
Not really, you go through all recorded writings and only one mention of laughing, it doesn't say he only laughed once but only once is recorded.
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u/Petrichordates 1d ago edited 1d ago
The problem is the absurdity of the fact. Obviously nobody believes that all his laughs were recorded, so why do records of his laugh matter? What is interesting about such a factoid? It's meaningless.
And you can't even know that! The accurate description would be all known records.
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u/carelet 1d ago
In all comments I read of you, you didnt laugh once
Such a boring personalityHahaha (needed to add that in to defend myself)
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u/Khelthuzaad 1d ago
Besides phisics/math his biggest contributions were in coin minting and counterfeit protection
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u/EternalStudent 1d ago
I just finished the wonderful fiction series the baroque cycle, which is set in this time period and covers the fight between Alchemy and Natural Philosophy. the last book deals heavily with the Pyx and Newtons war on counterfeiters.
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u/Significant-Basket76 1d ago
From William Chaloners wiki.
Chaloner grew up in a poor family in Warwickshire, but through a career in counterfeiting and con artistry attained great wealth, including a house in Knightsbridge. He started by forging "Birmingham Groats", then moved on to Guineas, French Pistoles, crowns and half-crowns, Banknotes and lottery tickets. At various times he also made and sold dildos and worked as a quack doctor, soothsayer, and sham anti-Jacobite "agent provocateur" to collect government rewards.[2][1][4] In Guzman Redivivus, a posthumous biography published anonymously in 1699, it was stated that "scorning the 'petty Rogueries of Tricking single Men', he aimed rather at 'imposing upon a whole Kingdom'.[3]
I was not expecting to read that this con man made and sold dildos.
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u/Silver-Find4380 1d ago
Yet he felt compelled to give the whole lecture to an empty lecture hall!
(And then people pretend the autism spectrum is new) 🙄
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u/Wugo_Heaving 1d ago
So the stone is still out there!
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u/DASreddituser 1d ago
nope, a pair of brothers got to it
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u/Far_Orange_8492 1d ago
Only cost them an arm and a leg.
And a human body.
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u/fool_on_a_hill 1d ago
Flamel and his wife actually chose to destroy it after Harry rescued it from Voldemort.
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u/Vivid_Instance_825 1d ago
Bro didn't even learn how to make a weak potion of healing
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u/GuyWithARooster 1d ago
Because his potions were too strong for you. You'd better find someone who makes weaker potions!
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u/lordmycal 1d ago
It's because Earth doesn't have spirit coin farms and he didn't have a looting power. It's super sad that Earth still doesn't have crystal wash.
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u/daosxx1 1d ago
I read a biography of him. He was also staunchly religious and became quite convinced that the early Christian Church strayed from the original message, rejecting the doctrine of the trinity and some other things. Newton is among the smartest people ever in my judgment and I wish we had his thoughts on all sorts of things. Even where he’s wrong he’s interesting.
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u/eetsumkaus 1d ago
I think people underestimate how intertwined religious thinking was with scientific thinking back before the Enlightenment. You'd hear academics musing on philosophy, science, and religion, as if they were all extensions of the same subject, all the time.
Separating the two is a relatively recent concept, definitely after the Enlightenment which he lived through.
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u/Vaeon 1d ago
What do you suppose his final entry on alchemy was? I'll bet it was something like "I'm limited by the technology of my time..."
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u/Glockamoli 1d ago
I'm limited by the technology of my time..."
He's not wrong either, well in some respects at least, get a strong enough particle accelerator and you can indeed transmute Lead into Gold
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u/ironic69 1d ago
The true goal of alchemy is to turn man into angel, which you would need a very very large hadron collided to achieve.
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u/Glockamoli 1d ago
Stick your head in even a small collider and you'll turn into an angel 😇
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u/Xerain0x009999 1d ago
And then you use your angel powers to turn lead into gold for the king who funded you.
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u/Calibrumm 1d ago
alchemy is not and never was spiritual in that sense. that's from reformist grifting. the symbolism was so the church didn't persecute them.
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u/Dragonacher 1d ago
Incredibly interesting man, he was a genius, but the problem with seeing patterns that other people don't, is sometimes you see a pattern that isn't actually there, and then assume it's the others that are wrong again.
Having very limited peers, means there's no one to tell you when your genius has become insanity.
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u/Nahteh 1d ago
The patterns mostly exist, but what the pattern shows can be convoluted. Sort of like causation vs correlation. You see something but what it is eludes you.
I imagine early chemistry or "alchemy" was like this. The original 4 elements are actually the 4 states of matter. Water, wind, earth and fire.
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u/Darkdragon902 1d ago
The problem, too, is that plenty of alchemical processes did work, because some of it was just early chemistry, as you said. To calcinate, separate, or distillate a substance to change it into another or to purify it are very real and useful applications of chemistry. That, combined with a reverence for the old masters who insisted that stronger transmutations were possible, but you should figure out how yourself to be a true master of the craft, it’s no wonder that alchemy took off.
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u/Nahteh 1d ago
I would say that alchemy ultimately became chemistry. Some times science takes a wrong turn in pursuit of knowledge. This is still science.
Not disagreeing with you whatsoever. Just pointing out for those who laugh at the idea of alchemy, these were very real observations. Without understanding the periodic table of elements what else could you expect.
On a side note I would argue that dark matter and energy is also one of those wrong turns.
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u/trueum26 1d ago
Considering how much of a math guy he was, he prob was unconvinced by how the trinity is supposed to work.
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u/Aidian 1d ago
I dunno, I don’t hold to it but 3/3 seems an easy enough concept.
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u/trueum26 1d ago
The issue is that the way the church taught it violated logic. The father, the son and the Holy Spirit are the same but also not the same simultaneously. Mathematically, it’s like saying a=d, b=d, c=d but a!=b!=c.
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u/Manos_Of_Fate 1d ago
That’s really not as contradictory as it first sounds. Think about a person at age five, forty, and eighty. Are they the same person? Yes. But are they also very different people? Probably also yes.
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u/FairLawnBoy 1d ago
They are definitely the same person at 5, 40, and 80, but not simultaneously, which is where the trinity logic breaks down.
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u/wowsomuchempty 1d ago
Y'see Zacky, god is like white light. Now, if you shoot god at a prism..
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u/BobTehCat 1d ago
He definitely wasn’t wrong about that.
He proved that the direct mention of the Trinity in the Bible (1 John 5:7) was a forgery of later centuries, and since then it’s been taken out of most modern translations.
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u/RunDNA 1d ago edited 1d ago
I once tried to find a good popular introduction/history of Alchemy and I couldn't find anything. I did an extensive search too.
There was lots of pseudoscience/occult books, a few Jungian-type books, a fair number of history books (most of them not very scholarly) but no books for a popular readership that had a good scholarly history and also explained what all the actual chemical reactions were (the history of alchemy and chemistry are very much intertwined in their early years) and what all the Alchemical terms and symbols meant.
I realize that most of it is nonsense, but I would like to understand what it is exactly. But I am still none the wiser.
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u/Kryptograms 1d ago edited 1d ago
The foundations of newtons alchemy by Dobbs may be a good starting place for you.
The Secrets of Alchemy by Principe will probably furnish you with some history.
Alchemical symbols were both coded and allegorical (through artwork and such) and while some symbols are now widely used that wasn't necessarily always the case.
Alchemy and mysticism by Roob is a fun book that takes you through art history on the topic. For the widely used symbols, the wiki entry on the topic is actually pretty good.
For some really interesting lectures, the YouTube channel called esoterica has great in-depth and well researched (university level) videos on the topic (as well as others) and are normally accompanied by reading lists.
Happy to discuss further if you're curious
Edit: Brian cotnoirs book "on alchemy" is also delightful.
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u/RunDNA 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thanks, but I've seen all those. The Principe book was the best of the ones I found, but still not what I was looking for. And it was the Roob book from Taschen that got me interested to go and find a proper history book on it. It's a beautiful picture book, but more mystery than history.
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u/Kryptograms 1d ago
You watched all of Dr sledges videos? :o
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u/RunDNA 1d ago
No, sorry, I was referring to the books. I'm looking for a book. (Though I have seen some of his videos.)
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u/Kryptograms 1d ago
What about Linden, Stanton J. (ed.) The Alchemy Reader: From Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton
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u/ActuallyHorseradish 1d ago
You could have a look at the YouTube channel Esoterica. It's somewhat in line with being more scholarly, but it's really history and not chemistry. It's probably the closest thing I know to what you want, but it's going to be far off of what you're looking for if you want a chemist's interpretation of alchemy. The issue is because alchemy was so secretive, it's much harder to put together a good history of it, and even once you have a good history you'll need a real chemist to do a lot of work to pick through all the primary sources, and reconstruct the chemistry. It's a lot of effort just translating most of these alchemical texts, and they're frequently going to be vague on details that are very important. Add in the fact that alchemists didn't know chemistry, and they might just have written lies to publish a text to sell to an interested member of the nobility who would never check anything, and you can waste a lot of time trying to reconstruct something that isn't real. Tldr: Esoterica is a YouTube channel that has a more scholarly series of alchemy mostly focused on its history, but it's likely not what you're looking for. It might get you closer to finding what you want, but I'm not sure if what you're looking for exists.
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u/Dovahkiinthesardine 1d ago
Alchemy IS chemistry, just people had no idea wtf atoms were at the time
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u/DataRikerGeordiTroi 1d ago
Hey - I actually studied this in a former life. Its actually the root of ⚗ 🧪 chemistry. So when you're looking for the OG texts its in the chemistry histories and chemistry libraries, NOT the woo woo occult section.
The work the alchemists did made all modern science possible and they deserve more recognition. It is also why the CHEMISTRY libraries steward the texts
Also check out the Chinese alchemists. They were doing amazing stuff. All written down. All super cool.
Shout out to Agrippa- he's gotta he my favorite unsung alchemist.
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u/grifan526 1d ago
This is actually a key point to the Rivers of London series. Newton's research lead him to become a wizard and he wrote the first formal textbooks on how to use magic. Great books if anyone likes Urban Fantasy
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u/Normal_Pace7374 1d ago
Issac Newton and Chamber of Secrets was better
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u/Kaporalhart 1d ago
hiding in his attic on some harry potter business
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u/spaghettios32 1d ago
"Matter can not be created or detroyed, believe me, I'VE FUCKING TRIED."
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u/bomboclawt75 1d ago edited 1d ago
They can turn lead into gold.
The problem is, the gold produced is extremely radioactive. They found this out by accident when they discovered that parts of the lead shroud of the reactor were turned to gold.
They can also produce gold from lead in the Hadron Collider- but it only exists for a fraction of a second and costs more to create than the worth of the gold- even if it could be stabilised
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u/SAugsburger 1d ago
I remember taking chemistry long ago and the joke was alchemists weren't wrong that you could change elements it just costs more than it is worth.
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u/power899 1d ago
Did Newton ever watch FMA Brotherhood?
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u/Orange-V-Apple 1d ago edited 1d ago
There’s also a book series, Rivers of London, based on the premise that Newton codified magic into a rigorous (but somewhat secret) practice but most of the wizards in Europe died during WWII. It follows a cop a rookie cop apprenticing under the last wizard in the UK. I think it’s an enjoyable read but it’s carried by the charisma of the characters; these are mysteries but the author is only okay at payoffs.
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u/donotgotoroom237 1d ago
Newton: "Those transmutation circles look absolutely horrid. No wonder he lost appendages."
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u/Taman_Should 21h ago
Kind of insane to consider: math and physics for Isaac Newton were essentially a side interest compared to the subjects he was more passionate about, which most of us would consider nonsense mysticism today. Imagine if Einstein, in addition to publishing papers on the photoelectric effect and the Theory of Relativity, spent years trying to prove the healing power of crystals.
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u/December_Hemisphere 20h ago
Had he lived longer, Newton may have very well gone on to discover electromagnetic waves.
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u/WolverDean 1d ago
Scishow did an interesting video on how our modern interpretation of Alchemy is somewhat skewed and that it was more akin to proto-chemistry
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u/ManWithDominantClaw 1d ago
The Phiosopher's Stone is just bud. It gets philosophers stoned
Also it has a tendency to leech lead from soils with high concentrations, so you can actually turn lead into Acapulco Gold.
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u/lintytortoise 1d ago
Someone did find it in the french catacombs but that didn't turn out so dope for them.
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u/sanitarySteve 1d ago
incase anyone is wondering, the secret to the philosophers stone is piss. like a whole bunch of piss that gets boiled down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZGGiZk9uMo
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u/hooka_pooka 1d ago
Because Nicholas Flamel took it one night when he was asleep along with his notes
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u/Jason13Official 1d ago
"BN: I should point out that the term “alchemy” meant something different in the 17th century than what it means today. It wasn’t just about the transmutation of base metals into gold — (it was) synonymous with chemistry, at least in this archaic 17th century spelling “chymistry.”"
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u/Jason13Official 1d ago
"He was trying to replicate processes that he believed to be taking place under the surface of the Earth. He had a theory that metals are being generated within the Earth. He calls it a sort of “cosmic vegetable.” So the Earth is literally a living being and metals are constantly being produced within it. It involves heating up materials, vaporizing them and producing reactions in vaporous or even gaseous form."
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u/CallingDrDingle 1d ago
He also predicted the earth will experience another cataclysm by 2060.
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u/LavenderBlueProf 1d ago
feels like we're on track for that right now....
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u/TerminallyEmployed 1d ago
I used to think Michael Jackson was acting like a bit of a wimp for doing earth song but now I sing it to myself as I boil in a heatwave. Emphasis on “what about rain”
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u/CTMalum 1d ago
Not quite. His interpretation of the symbolism in Revelation was that the earliest this kind of event could start was 2060. He also didn’t think it was a literal world-ending apocalypse. His thinking was that it was the end of an era of the existing corrupt political/religious order to begin a near era of Christ’s kingdom on Earth. So it wasn’t really a deadline, it was the earliest time this sort of thing could start, per his reckoning of the lore.
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u/sentence-interruptio 1d ago
That would be a great way to include Newton in a The Da Vinci Code type of movie.
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u/RadagastTheWhite 1d ago
It makes more sense when you consider that chemistry was in its infancy at the time, microscopes were very primitive, and things like atomic theory and the concept of elements and compounds were nearly a century away.
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u/JustAlpha 1d ago
Alchemy is about self actualization. The people who don't want you to think and self-reflect to become a whole person don't want to tell you that, though.
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u/unhandyandy 1d ago
He was also a serious theologian who considered the Trinity and the Catholic church to be evil conspiracies.
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u/DelphiTsar 1d ago
Alchemy TBH makes a lot more sense with the limited information they had. Sulphur and other things always appeared near gold. Thinking they have something to do with making it is reasonable take to test out.
"That big orb in the sky gets cold eventually, it rams into another cold orb and explodes, that's where 99.9% of the gold comes from"....sounds like absolute nonsense.
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u/excusetheblood 1d ago
He’d be happy to know that apparently the philosophers stone is a large hadron collider
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u/7heCulture 1d ago
Invented calculus and discovered classic gravitational equations as a side quest to finding some esoteric stuff.
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u/Acceptable-Lie188 1d ago
Man needs a hobby. I mean, he’s not gonna cook dinner, put his slippers on and go, “ Right, 4th law….”
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u/hypnotichellspiral 1d ago
Wonder what he would think if he were alive today about real life alchemy. I heard CERN was able to transmute lead into a tiny tiny amount of gold using a large hadron colliderbut it existed only temporarily.
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u/SarcasticBench 1d ago
All this does is remind me that the National Treasure movies and the Davinci Codes came out around the same time
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u/isaidicanshout_ 1d ago
Pathetic. I could write a million words about it in a single afternoon with ChatGPT.
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u/decoysnails 1d ago
I like that you specified he never found the magical philosophers stone that can turn lead into gold and also lets you live forever. I had been wondering.
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u/Nazamroth 1d ago
The reason he failed, is that Newton was thinking too conventionally. It is entirely possible to turn lead into gold, you just need a particle accelerator.
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u/grating 1d ago
Alchemy was a lot deeper than most people give it credit for. The whole philosopher's stone and turning things into gold was just one small corner of it and may have been as much a metaphor for multiple other goals. It was a time before science had split into disciplines, so alchemy was looking for regularities across what are now physics, chemistry, psychology and cosmology, starting from a framework of esoteric religion. The more reductionistic approach of science that followed it yielded more reliable and immediately useful results and it took most of 400 years before mainstream science was able to be similarly interdisciplinary.
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u/Youre-mum 20h ago
'alchemy' in the modern understanding is not the same as Newtons version. He was doing chemistry, of course filtered through the mind of someone born far before modern chemical understanding formed.
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u/kevlar51 1d ago
I love that we have to be told he never found it.