- Title Pages
- Maps
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Symbols and Conventions
- Abbreviations for Works Cited
- One The Enigma of Newton’s Alchemy
- Two Problems of Authority and Language in Newton’s Chymistry
- Three Religion, Ancient Wisdom, and Newton’s Alchemy
- Four Early Modern Alchemical Theory
- Five The Young Thaumaturge
- Six Optics and Matter: Newton, Boyle, and Scholastic Mixture Theory
- Seven Newton’s Early Alchemical Theoricae
- Eight Toward a General Theory of Vegetability and Mechanism
- Nine The Doves of Diana
- Ten Flowers of Lead
- Eleven Johann de Monte-Snyders in Newton’s Alchemy
- Twelve Attempts at a Unified Practice
- Thirteen The Fortunes of Raymundus
- Fourteen The Shadow of a Noble Experiment
- Fifteen The Quest for Sophic Sal Ammoniac
- Sixteen Extracting Our Venus
- Seventeen Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, Alchemical Collaborator
- Eighteen Praxis
- Nineteen The Warden of the Mint and His Alchemical Associates
- Twenty Public and Private
- Twenty-One The Ghost of Sendivogius
- Twenty-Two A Final Interlude
- Epilogue
- Appendix One The Origin of Newton’s Chymical Dictionaries
- Appendix Two Newton’s “Key to Snyders”
- Appendix Three “Three Mysterious Fires”
- Appendix Four Newton’s Interview with William Yworth
- Index
A Final Interlude
A Final Interlude
Newton and Boyle
- Chapter:
- (p.482) Twenty-Two A Final Interlude
- Source:
- Newton the Alchemist
- Author(s):
William R. Newman
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
Robert Boyle was one of the most famous scientists in Britain, known for his experimental expertise and for his prominent role in the Royal Society, and also a semicloseted seeker of the philosophers' stone. This chapter considers Newton's relationship with Boyle in the light of both men's attempts to arrive at a “sophic mercury” that would in principle dissolve gold into its primordial constituents and make it possible for the noble metal to “ferment,” as Newton says in his short text of 1692, De natura acidorum. The two major English representatives of public science in the seventeenth century had very different ideas about the path to chrysopoeia, though both, in the end, were alchemists in the fullest sense of the term.
Keywords: Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, alchemy, sophic mercury, gold, alchemists, chrysopoeia
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- Title Pages
- Maps
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Symbols and Conventions
- Abbreviations for Works Cited
- One The Enigma of Newton’s Alchemy
- Two Problems of Authority and Language in Newton’s Chymistry
- Three Religion, Ancient Wisdom, and Newton’s Alchemy
- Four Early Modern Alchemical Theory
- Five The Young Thaumaturge
- Six Optics and Matter: Newton, Boyle, and Scholastic Mixture Theory
- Seven Newton’s Early Alchemical Theoricae
- Eight Toward a General Theory of Vegetability and Mechanism
- Nine The Doves of Diana
- Ten Flowers of Lead
- Eleven Johann de Monte-Snyders in Newton’s Alchemy
- Twelve Attempts at a Unified Practice
- Thirteen The Fortunes of Raymundus
- Fourteen The Shadow of a Noble Experiment
- Fifteen The Quest for Sophic Sal Ammoniac
- Sixteen Extracting Our Venus
- Seventeen Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, Alchemical Collaborator
- Eighteen Praxis
- Nineteen The Warden of the Mint and His Alchemical Associates
- Twenty Public and Private
- Twenty-One The Ghost of Sendivogius
- Twenty-Two A Final Interlude
- Epilogue
- Appendix One The Origin of Newton’s Chymical Dictionaries
- Appendix Two Newton’s “Key to Snyders”
- Appendix Three “Three Mysterious Fires”
- Appendix Four Newton’s Interview with William Yworth
- Index
