John Chambers - The Metaphysical World of Isaac Newton: Alchemy, Prophecy, and the Search for Lost Knowledge

To my sister-in-law, Bonnie Balas (19452012), who made this book possible, and my wife, Judy, who makes everything possible

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their help in supplying me with valuable information and/or invaluable moral support, I would particularly like to thank the following: Arthur Davis, Roger Doyle, Martin Ebon, Terry Helbick, Brian Johnston, Cat Karell, Guyon Neutze, Henry Roper, Robert Ryan, Steven Sittenreich, and, of course, J.C.

CHAPTER ONE

A HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE SOUL OF MAN

Epitaph

Intended for Sir Isaac Newton

In Westminster Abbey

ISAACUS NEWTONIUS:

Quem Immortalem

Testantur, Tempus, Natura, Coelum:

Mortalem

Hoc marmor fatetur.

Nature and Natures Laws lay hid in Night:
GOD said, Let Newton be! and all was light.

ALEXANDER POPE, 1730

Not long after the publication in 1687 of Isaac Newtons Principia Mathematica (Principles of Mathematics), the great work of science that completely changed the way we perceive the world around us, the Marquis de lHpital, a prominent French mathematician, was shown a copy. He read a little, then cried out with admiration, Good god, what a fund of knowledge there is in that book! He then asked the Doctor [who had shown him the book] every particular about Sir Isaac, even to the color of his hair, [and] said, Does he eat and drink and sleep? Is he like other men?

Edmund Halley, the comet-chasing astronomer who edited the Principia, added to the book an ode that ended with the line Nearer the Gods no mortal may approach. When he presented Queen Anne with a copy, Halley told her: All science can be divided into two halves. The first is everything up to Newton. The second is Newton. And Newton had the better half.

It has been almost three hundred years since Isaac Newton died, and he is still regarded by the worldAlbert Einstein and Stephen Hawking affirmed this viewas the greatest scientist who ever lived. His achievements are astonishing, and, if we tend to forget this, it is only because they have become the background noise of the world in which we live.

His mathematical physics have, in the words of physicist Hermann Bondi, entered the marrow of what we know without knowing how we know it. The world from which Newton departed in 1727 was substantially different from the world into which he was born, and he himself accounted for much of the difference. Ninety percent of the physics and math we learn in high school comes from Isaac Newton. He invented calculus, discovered the binomial theorem, introduced polar coordinates, proved that white light was a mixture of colors, explained the rainbow, was the first to build a reflecting telescope, and demonstrated that one force, that of gravity, is responsible for pulling objects to the ground, guiding every celestial body in its orbit, and generating the tides.

These are only the main headings of Newtons work, which first broke upon a totally unprepared public in the Principia Mathematica of 1687. Innumerable individual discoveries and penetrating observations flow from these overarching categories. The Principia is universally considered to be the greatest work of science ever written. Newton published an adjunct work, On Optics, in 1702. It is considered to illustrate in exemplary fashion how to write a science textbook. But these epochal texts are only one-half of Newtons literary achievement. We know today that he spent almost his entire life writing a whole other book. This work consists of many separate but interlocked parts. If we were to give it a single title, it might be History of the Corruption of the Soul of Man. It is five million words longperhaps the minimum number of words required to cover the all-encompassing subject of mankinds troubled relationship to goodness and God.

This History consists of hundreds of glittering treatises and fragments of treatises on alchemy, chronology, mythology, the history of Christianity, the interpretation of biblical prophecy, and much more. We find in it none of the astonishingly brave and astute overturning of paradigms that characterize the Principia Mathematica. Newton was a pious Christian who believed the Bible was the word of God; that Noah and the Flood were real; and that the world began in 6000 BCand he never goes beyond those boundaries. But his concept of Christs relationship to God was heretical for his times. That is why, when Newton was alive, almost no one knew that he was writing this second book. Newton made sure they didnt know.

The thousands of pages of this treasure trove of nonscientific writings were packed into two metal trunks that were hardly ever opened during the two centuries that they remained stored away on the estate of Newtons descendants. Suddenly, in 1936, the papers were auctioned off to the public at Sothebys in London. Now we know that, however astonishingly diverse their contents seem, a single thread runs through them all: Everywhere, Newton is charting the descent of mans soul from perfection through constant falling-off and fretful renewals until, not far in our own future (Newton suggests 2060), everything ends with an apocalypse followed by a radically transformed world. Everywhere, Newton seems to be asking: What happened to us? We were once perfect; why are we now so far from that? How can we reclaim our birthright? What form did it take?

During the two centuries that these writings lay hidden away, a myth was fostered of Newton as a genius of incandescent brilliance when he formulated his equations during the day, and an exhausted, doddering fool when he scribbled away at his nonscientific observations during the night. This rumor may have originated in part with orthodox Christian theologians shaken to the core by the fear that Newtons unimpeachably towering intellect might have proved some of their basic assumptions to be wrong. Rivals and envious friends may have contributed to these rumors. And Newton himself my have found it advantageous to encourage them as much as he could.

The 1936 auction at Sothebys was the first step in a lengthy process that would see the scholarly world only very gradually awaken to the realization that Newton had made a whole other statement to the world. Slowly, this new Summa Theologica made its way into some of the great libraries of the world; over the past eighty years, scholars have read its treatises with escalating attention. In 1998, Cambridges Newton Project, currently based at Oxford University, began to make these documents available online; as of June 2016, 6.4 million words had been posted.

Scholars now see that Newton deployed his genius just as powerfully over his nonscientific writings as he did over his scientific discoveries. In the words of Steven Snobelen, that only now are scholars beginning to study Newtons manuscript corpus... to reconstruct a holistic view of the man in which his theology and natural philosophy are seen as equally important elements of the same grand unified project, the restoration of mans original pristine knowledge of God and the world.

There is still reluctance to outright call this second book of Isaac Newtons a Principia Theologica or a Principia Ethica, and to think of it as a companion, even a corrective, volume to the