Isaac Newton - The Apocalypse and the Occult

Perhaps the most celebrated genius in the history of science is the great Isaac Newton, the man who quite literally revolutionised the world of science through his unification of terrestrial and astronomical physics into the best account of dynamics that the world had ever seen.

Oh, and he invented calculus.

Although science textbooks have often presented Newton as a refined and clear-headed scientific thinker and as the first truly modern scientist, historians of science all agree that Newton’s superstitious beliefs were more important than his scientific ones, or so Newton himself seemed to think. Interestingly, it was Newton’s work on topics like alchemy and the Biblical Apocalypse to which he applied his greatest interest. As a result, Newton held a number of bizarre beliefs from the notion that metal could be alive to his earnest desire to create the mythic “Philosopher’s Stone” which was said to transmute lead into gold.

He also thought that he would become a saint and help to rule the earth for 1,000 years.

It was because of his odd and archaic practices that the great John Maynard Keynes once wrote of him that

“Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians.”

Although many scientists in the 17th century, and even to this day, used religious notions of God and Divine order to explain the predictability and uniformity of nature, Newton took his spiritual quest much farther than most. Not only strange from a modern perspective, alchemical and occult practices were also treated with scorn in 17th century England and so Newton never published his occult writings which have only become known after his death.