Fortean Times – September 2019

BOOKS

66 FT383

Making Evil

The Science Behind Humanity’s

Dark Side

Dr Julia Shaw

Canongate Books 2019

Hb, 320pp, £14.99, ind, ISBN 9781786891303

As the subtitle

suggests, this

journey into

evil does not

suppose anything

supernatural is

going on.For

better orfor worse,

people are cause enough.

For DrJulia Shaw, an academic

who has written onfalse

memories (The Memory Illusion,

2017),evil is an all-too-human

condition, more feature than

bug, and more common thanwe

wish to think. Highlyreadable

and disarmingly pleasant,

given the subject matter, Shaw

stresses thatmurder, terrorism,

exploitation and other assorted

human horrors are deeply

complicated issues.Therefore,

employing a tag like “evil” to

describe them is too simple.

Shaw findsevil at play on

individual and social levels,

and dismantles its objectivity

with the tools of neuroscience,

psychology andevolutionary

biology.

The book begins and ends

with Adolf Hitler, first witha

hypotheticalreconstruction

of the dictator’s brain, and

later with a look at the social

compliance aspects of Nazi

ideology. In her investigations,

Shaw gives an important and

interesting twist to Arendt’s

famous banality ofevil concept,

emphasising instead the

normality ofevil.

The case studies lead to the

debatable conclusion thatevil

doesn’t actuallyexist. Or that it

does, but functions more likea

readymade label, a psychological

shield to distance us from our

own worst-case potentialities.

It’s a tricky balancing act to both

explain andexplodeyour subject

at once, but Shaw makes a good

case – and a casefor good.

Her call to stop dehumanising

others and to question shortcuts

in our understanding feels

like a necessary, and timely,

illumination of the dark.Making

Evilis a quickread, but its

effects are long-lasting.

Mike Pursley

HHH

The last of the magicians

Alchemy, astrology and occult learning paved theway for modern

philosophy and science, argues the author of this superb life of Newton

Newton the

Alchemist

Science, Enigma, and the Quest

for Nature’s “Secret Fire”

William R Newman

Princeton University Press 2019

Hb, 537pp, illus, ind, refs, £30.00, ISBN 978069117487 7

For some hardenedrationalists,

Isaac Newton’s interest in

alchemy seems to be arather

shameful secret, best ignored.

Yet he wroteabout a million

words on alchemy, andeven more

on biblical prophecy, sacred

architecture, interpreting the

HolyTrinity and otherreligious

topics.

John MaynardKeynes

famously called Newton the “last

of the magicians” and “the last

great mind which looked out on

the visible and intellectualworld

with the sameeyes as those who

began to build our intellectual

inheritance” in Babylon and

Sumer. Keynes dismissed

Newton’s alchemical manuscripts

as “wholly magical and wholly

devoid of scientificvalue”.

Yet alchemy isn’t intrinsically

unscientific. Its theories

differ from those of modern

chemistry, but many serious

alchemists approached their

investigations withexperimental

and intellectual stringency. In

this landmark book, Newman

points out that Newton employed

“elaborate speculation”

when deciphering seemingly

impenetrable alchemical tracts,

but his alchemicalexperiments

were characterisedby

“extraordinary rigor”.

Along with the inevitable

confidence tricksters and

charlatans, alchemy attracted

towering intellects including

Robert Boyle, Gottfried Leibnitz

andJohn Locke. As Peter

Marshall noted inThe Mercurial

Emperor, alchemy and astrology

helped lay thefoundations

of the 17th century scientific

revo lution. Occult learning and

the pursuit of truth sowed the

seeds of modern philosophy and

science.

Essentially, alchemists

believed that metals consisted

of three “principles”, thetria

prima: salt, sulphur and mercury.

These correspond, Marshall

comments, to the body, soul and

spirit and “constitute theworld,

underlay all phenomena and are

to befound in all substances”.

Alchemical processes could

resolve metals into their

principles, each of which

consists of minute ‘corpuscles’

• analogous to atoms – that
  aggregate and separate during
  alchemicalreactions. Geber, a
  mediæval writer on alchemy,
  proposed that elementary
  corpuscles combined,forming
  particles of sulphur and mercury.
  (Paracelsus added salt to thetria
  primain the 16th century.) These
  recombined toform minute
  corpuscles of metals.
  Alchemists sought more
  than to transmute lead into
  gold: theywanted insights into
  the nature ofreality and its
  “hidden operations”. Discovering
  the “material soule [sic] of
  all matter” guided Newton’s
  alchemicalexperimentsfor
  decades. Certainly, he picked
  the “practical fruits” of his
  experiments: he devoted
  considerable energy to
  developingchemical medicines,
  for instance. But heroutinely
  considered “the implications
  [..] for natural philosophy
  more broadly”. Discussing one
  experiment, Newman points
  out that Newton “typically [..]
  tries to employ his [alchemical]
  knowledge to arrive at the
  most fundamental level of the
  problem”.
  Newton brought the same
  desire to understand the
  “fundamental level” ofa
  problem to his scientificwork.
  Some historians and biographers
  suggest that Newton’s alchemical
  interests contributed to his
  theory ofgravity. Alchemy and
  the principle of sympathetic
  magic may have stimulated
  Newton to consider the idea of
  hidden cosmicforces and action
  at a distance.

Newman, however, arguesfor

a stronger connection between

alchemy and Newton’s optical

investigations than withgravity.

Paracelsus called alchemy the

‘spagyric’ art – from the Greek

for ‘tear apart and gather

together’. A prismresolves

white light into the colours of

the spectrum, which can be

recombined. So, at the risk

of oversimplifying Newman’s

eloquent argument, to an

alchemical mind, white light is

transmuted into the spectrum in

the sameway that base metals

are transmuted into gold.

Newman mentions other

alchemists who influenced

Newton, such as Michael

Sendivogius, whowas probably

born aPolish peasant but

became a counsellor of two

Holy Roman Emperors and

alsoworked as a mineralogical

expert. Sendivogius transmuted

metals using a ‘red powder’

originally developedby the

Scottish alchemist Alexander

Setonfor the Holy Roman

Emperor Rudolf II. Rudolf

analysed the powder to see if

it contained gold. It didn’t. But

Sendivogius couldn’trepeat the

feat and, Marshallrecounts,

claimed Seton hadn’t given him

the rightformula before he

died. Newton also “poredover”

books writtenby Johann de

Monte-Synders – an itinerant

alchemist who’d disappear after

demonstrating a “transmutation

or two” –for decades. Other

intellectuals, including Boyle and

Benedict Spinoza, investigated

such tales to see if there akernel

of truth.

I’d have to be a literary

alchemist to distil this book into

a review.Newton the Alchemist

is a volume to savour. The 15

years ofwork behind the book

are clear: it’s aremarkable

achievement, the definitive work

on Newton’s alchemicalresearch

and essentialreadingfor an yone

interested in the history of the

occult or science.

Mark Greener

HHHHH

REVIEWS /BOOKS