Isaac Newton's Occult Studies
Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), the noted English scientist and mathematician, wrote many works that would now be classified as occult studies. These occult works explored chronology, alchemy, and Biblical interpretation (especially of the Apocalypse). Newton's scientific work may have been of lesser personal importance to him, as he placed emphasis on rediscovering the occult wisdom of the ancients. In this sense, some have commented that the common reference a "Newtonian Worldview" as being purely mechanistic is somewhat inaccurate.
After purchasing and studying Newton's alchemical works in 1942, economist John Maynard Keynes, for example, opined that "Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians". In the pre-Modern Era of Newton's lifetime, the educated embraced a world view different from that of later centuries. Distinctions between science, superstition, and pseudoscience were still being formulated, and a devoutly Christian Biblical perspective permeated Western culture.
Read more about Isaac Newton's Occult Studies: Alchemical Research, Writings, Biblical Studies, Newton's Chronology, Newton and Secret Societies
Famous quotes containing the words isaac newton, isaac, newton, occult and/or studies:
“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
—Isaac Newton (16421727)
“My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: So? Did you learn anything today? But not my mother. Izzy, she would say, did you ask a good question today? That differenceasking good questionsmade me become a scientist.”
—Isidor Isaac Rabi (20th century)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Pauls, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (17171797)
“There is no more foul or relentless enemy of man in the occult world than this dead-alive creature spewed up from the grave.”
—Guy Endore, and Tod Browning. Prof. Zelenn (Lionel Barrymore)
“Possibly the Creator did not make the world chiefly for the purpose of providing studies for gifted novelists; but if he had done so, we can scarcely imagine that He could have offered anything much better in the way of material ...”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (18441911)