Cosmic Religionwas the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and
Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible
and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began
to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000
years ago,’ declared John Maynard Keynes, who saved many of
Newton’s alchemic manuscripts from destruction.
The evolution of the iconography of Newton, which Patricia
Fara charts in her book Newton: the Making of Genius, is simul-
taneously a refl ection of changing attitudes to science. That
Newton’s image varies so much, and on occasion is so fi ercely
contested, is indicative of the way the meaning of science
has itself been contested in the 300 years since his death. Not
unlike the fi gure of Socrates, there are, on the one hand, the
rational materialists for whom any rehearsal of Newton’s her-
metic ‘superstitions’ is broadly irrelevant and vaguely offensive.
Then, on the other hand, there are the romantic New Ageists in
whose mouths the same rehearsal is meant as a condemnation
of science as it has become.
But why, specifi cally, was Newton so interested in alchemy?
What purpose did it serve in relation to his undoubted aston-
ishing achievements? Why did one of the greats of mathemat-
ics think of himself in ‘the noble Companie of true Students in
holy Alchimie’?
The dark glass
There are those who would say it was extraneous. Perhaps like
Schopenhauer’s long walks, Glenn Gould’s tuneless humming, or
Van Gogh’s self-mutilation, alchemy was for Newton the excess
of genius, a forgivable indulgence, a means of relaxation. There
are others who say it was instrumental. For them, Newton’s
alchemy was in the service of his work at the Royal Mint. It was
the way that research into metallurgy was done in those days;
for ‘alchemy’ one should really read ‘coin milling technology’.
However, the most recent scholarship demonstrates substantial
links between Newton’s alchemic experiments and theoretical