A few days before his death on March 31, 1727, Isaac Newton was still working on a manuscript that he hoped soon to publish. The text had nothing to do with mathematics, physics, or astronomy, however. It contained no new scientific discoveries and no further revolutionary ideas that would occupy natural scientists until the present day. The book was called The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms and was Newton's attempt to sort the history of the world and, above all, the stories of the Bible, and to date them. He looked into the geometry of Solomon's temple as described in the Old Testament, for instance, seeking in the building's measurements given in the Bible hidden messages and secret wisdom.
The search for secret knowledge in old religious texts seems like the sort of thing for pseudoscientists like Erich von Däniken and certainly not the man whom we view today as the pioneer of modern natural sciences. But The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms is strictly speaking more typical of Newton's work than his scientific texts. Newton owned a total of thirty Bibles—but only thirty-three books about astronomy. In his private library, there were almost five hundred books on theology, but only fifty-two books about physics. When (most of) the papers from his estate were auctioned off in 1936, the catalogue comprised texts with more than three million words written by him. Almost half of these are concerned with theology, religion, and the interpretation of the Bible. He devoted approximately 650,000 words to alchemy.
Newton was a great natural scientist, but of equal or perhaps even greater importance to him was his work on subjects that, from today's perspective, could hardly be further removed from physics, mathematics, or astronomy. Bible interpretation, religious chronology, mystical alchemy, and prophecies: this esoteric side to Newton was long ignored and he was instead, like in the preceding chapters of this book, presented as the great rational genius whose outstanding intellect deciphered the concealed laws of nature, as a calculating thinker whose discoveries in mathematics and physics prepared the way for the scientific conquest of the world for the following generations, as the pioneer of a mechanistic view of the world that has served as the basis for modern science until today. And yet he was also:
THE LAST OF THE MAGICIANS
The British economist John Maynard Keynes, an enthusiastic collector of old books, purchased a large selection of Newton's papers when they came up for auction. From him come these words that beautifully sum up Newton's approach: “Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.”1 Newton founded the modern scientific era, but he himself was not a part of it. It was just as important to him to concern himself with religion as with optics, mathematics, or the motion of the celestial bodies. And just like with his scientific research, he paid no heed to conventions or authority in his theological studies. It wasn't merely Newton's preoccupation with religion itself that ensured that his texts about God and the Bible remained unpublished for so long. It was above all their contents, which were in opposition to the church's doctrine. Newton didn't merely study theology. He was also a heretic.
Even when he was on his deathbed in March 1727, he refused the last rites of the church. And long before that, in 1675, he was on the point of resigning from his position at the University of Cambridge. As was customary for those working at the university at the time, he was supposed to be ordained in the Anglican clergy. Before he could begin his studies in Cambridge, he had to swear to remain celibate and to accept and keep to the statement of faith of the Anglican Church. However, he was not prepared to take the next step and become ordained in the clergy itself.2 He believed in God, but not in the way prescribed by the church.
Newton was convinced that the religious scriptures had been corrupted over the course of time and that what the church taught at the time was not the original message. He believed that people in the past had still been aware of the true word of God, and only by precisely analyzing the original words could the rest of the truth be found and reconstructed. He undertook his comprehensive studies partly in order to prove this. And what he considered to be the original message was considered dangerous. The Blasphemy Act of the English Parliament in 1697 expressly forbade the denial of the Holy Trinity, with punishment for this ranging from the removal of public offices to several years in prison. But Newton believed precisely that—that the concept of the Trinity was wrong. For him, there was just one God, not “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” Jesus had indeed lived, and he had been the Son of God. But indeed, only the Son.
Twenty-seven years after Newton's death, An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture was published, a book with texts that he had written back in 1690. In it, he analyzes two passages from the Bible that describe the Trinity of the Christian God and attempts to use the comparison of older editions of the Bible in various languages to show that these passages do not appear in the original Greek text of the New Testament. Newton was concerned with this sentence from the First Epistle of John: “For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit and the water and blood, and these three agree.” He believed it was, at least in part, a later addition and could not be found in the old Greek manuscripts, and analysis in modern religious studies proves him right. In most current Bible editions, most of this part, known today as the Comma Johanneum, is left out or only included as a footnote.
In order to prove that the Trinity doctrine was wrong, Newton didn't merely analyze ancient religious texts—he also used mathematical and geometrical arguments. Having calculated in astronomy the forces between the celestial bodies, he used similar diagrams here to show that, while Jesus was the Son of God, the divine power could only come from God Himself, and not from Jesus. From today's perspective, these endeavors seem naive, of course. Newton drew a picture, for example, consisting of a rectangle with three strips (or three rectangles on top of each other). According to him, the image was supposed to represent three “bodies” (A, B, and C) lying and pressing on top of each other. The top one (A) exerted a force (of gravity); the two bottom ones didn't. But since the top one pressed down on the other two, they too would feel a force. Or, as Newton expressed this in an unnecessarily complicated way: “There is then a force in A, a force in B and the same force in C. But these are not three separate forces but ONE force originally in A, and by communication and descent, in B and C.” That was supposed to be the proof that there is only one God with a divine power and not a Holy Trinity consisting of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Apparently, even geniuses can sometimes be truly simplistic.
Newton's theological activities went far beyond an attempt to disprove the doctrine of the Trinity, however. Just as he had come up with a universal explanation for a number of phenomena with his Principia, he also saw the ancient religious scriptures as a universal source of information. The interpretation of the Bible was not for him unprofitable conjecture, but rather a matter of supreme importance. He was convinced that the true word of God was to be found there and that God, unbound by space or time, had set out man's future there, though in a coded language that Newton attempted to decipher. The prophetic texts in the Bible were for Newton “histories of things to come.”
Newton's works on theology and natural sciences were for him two sides of the same coin. Just as he could investigate God's creation by studying nature, he could also use the religious scriptures for the same purpose. For this, though, he needed to find out their original meaning and couldn't rely on what he considered to be the corrupt doctrines of the church. You can see how deeply he immersed himself in the world of the Bible from the work Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, which was also only published posthumously in 1733. The titles of the individual chapters form a stark contrast to his texts about physics and astronomy. Chapter 8, for example, is called “Of the power of the eleventh horn of Daniel's fourth Beast, to change times and laws.” The Bible passage from the book of Daniel, which Newton goes into here in great depth, could hardly be more different from the physics that one normally associates with him: “After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast—terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns. While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that spoke boastfully.” (Daniel 7:7–8)
A PROPHET OF DOOM AND AN ALCHEMIST
Newton spent a large proportion of his time with such abstruse, mystical texts. But he was convinced that, in the confusing world of the biblical prophets, just as many valuable secrets about the universe could be found as in the (at that time equally confusing) natural world.
The wider public first became aware of Newton's preoccupation with the Bible in 2003. That year, the BBC showed a documentary providing an in-depth look at the great physicist's theological research, a subject that had until then been of interest to just a small number of science historians. And this probably would have still been the case, if the documentary hadn't claimed that Isaac Newton had predicted that the world would end in 2060.
Isaac Newton, the great scientist, a prophet of doom? Yes—and no. In his texts, this date can indeed be found. Due to his studies of the biblical scriptures, Newton was convinced that the “Kingdom of God” would one day prevail on the earth. First, though, the age of the corrupt church must come to an end. For Newton, this age of course began with the introduction of the false doctrine of the Trinity of God, which Newton dated to the symbolic year of 800, when, in his view, the hegemony of the popes began. From the nebulous texts of the biblical prophets, he derived a period of 1,260 years, which had to pass before the false doctrines of the corrupt church would disappear once again, and thus he arrived at the aforementioned year of 2060—which for him signaled not the apocalyptic end of the world, but rather a spiritual new beginning. He even spoke out in no uncertain terms against the foretellers of doom who were active at the time and who struck fear into people's hearts with their visions of the pending end of the world. After working out the year 2060, Newton wrote: “It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner. This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail.”3
All of this simply doesn't tally with the common perception of Newton. But while his profound belief and preoccupation with religion are certainly understandable within the context of seventeenth-century society and circumstances, this is not so much the case with another of his interests. He was not only a great scientist and a heretical theologian—he was also a staunch alchemist in search of the philosopher's stone.
“The staff of Mercury unites the two serpents and entwines them through the connection of Venus…. This red powder is accordingly Flamel's male wingless dragon, for after it has been extracted from its normal powder, it is one of the three substances out of which the bath of sun and moon is made.” One might expect to find such words in muddled texts by would-be medieval magicians. Yet they are by Newton. He did indeed write about “fiery dragons” and “the Blood of the Green Lion” and “the stone of the ancients” and was an alchemist through and through—perhaps even more than he was a natural scientist.
Especially since these two occupations did not, in his view, contradict one another. Like his interest in religious scriptures, alchemy was also just one aspect of a comprehensive search for insight. The “first religion” contained the truth, while the “ancient ones” had the key to the truth and had concealed this knowledge in a cryptic form in ancient writings. For Newton, religion, alchemy, and nature were closely linked to one another. “The true God…is Eternal and Infinite, Omnipotent and Omniscient,” he wrote, adding, “He is omnipresent, not virtually only, but also substantially.” Newton was in search of God and the way in which He influenced the world. He once conjectured that there must be a kind of “divine matter,” a substance fundamental to the matter out of which everything is made and with which everything can be transformed. His aim was to provide experiment-based evidence of the divine intervention in the transformation of matter.
Alchemy occupied Isaac Newton for almost his entire life. When he lived with the apothecary William Clarke during his school days in Grantham, he came into contact with the world of chemistry and alchemy. The first experiments of his own were undertaken in 1668 during his time at Cambridge University, where he also mixed his own medicine to protect himself against all possible diseases: a potion made of turpentine, rose water, olive oil, beeswax, and liqueur.
He set about actual alchemy with the same dedication as he did the rest of his undertakings. He constructed his own furnaces and chimneys and began working on a comprehensive lexicon of alchemical terms, the “Index Chemicus” that would finally contain more than nine hundred entries. He recorded his experiments with the utmost precision, and the sentences about serpents, dragons, and green lions quoted above come from these records. Did poisonous vapors from the chemical laboratory cloud Newton's mind here? No—there is another explanation for these esoteric-sounding terms.
Alchemy was already on the wane in Newton's day. In the Middle Ages, the search for the “philosopher's stone,” which was supposed to turn lead into gold and ensure eternal life, had been much more widespread. Alchemists themselves, however, were not always regarded particularly favorably. Among those who were seriously engaged in studying the characteristics of the chemical elements could always be found charlatans and swindlers aiming to trick gullible adepts out of their money. And those in power were also not necessarily keen for people to be able to produce money at will (except for when the alchemists were in their service). In England, therefore, the “Act Against Multiplication” was made law by King Henry IV, making it a punishable offense to “multiply gold and silver.”
In this case, therefore, Newton actually had a good reason for once to keep his experiments secret. But he did so not only for fear of prosecution or the loss of his reputation as a serious scientist. Ethical and philosophical reasons were even more important for him. From his point of view, alchemy was a spiritual undertaking—the search for God and the fundamental secrets of creation. Neither the preoccupation with metals nor the production of gold was the true aim of alchemy, but rather “to glorify God in his wonderful works, & to teach a man how to live well.” Not everybody could do this, Newton explained, since “They who search after the Philosopher's Stone by their own rules [are] obliged to a strict and religious life,” and the metaphysical use of furnaces and crucibles was not something that could be disclosed to the ordinary rabble.
For that reason, Newton wasn't in the least pleased when his colleague Robert Boyle, in February 1675, published an article titled “Of the Incalescence of Quicksilver with Gold” in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions. Boyle, fifteen years Newton's senior, was one of the founding members of the Royal Society. He concerned himself, among other things, with the characteristics of a vacuum and with chemistry. His most famous work is The Sceptical Chymist, published in 1661, in which he endeavors to distinguish scientific chemistry from the not-so-scientific alchemy. And although he is viewed today as the founder of modern analytical chemistry, his thinking was shot through with alchemistic ideas. He too believed in an “original matter,” a “philosopher's stone,” and that chemical elements could be transformed into one another, if one only knew the right recipes.
It was therefore only logical that Boyle should campaign for the abolition of the Act Against Multiplication, which he managed to achieve in 1689. He was convinced that the scientific study of the characteristics of material was possible and worthwhile, and had no problem with publishing his research findings. Newton, on the other hand, was enraged that an alchemistic colleague not only went public, but also did so in language that could be generally understood.
The stories of serpents and dragons in Newton's records were not a mystical end in themselves. They were designed to make the experiments and recipes appear confused and incomprehensible, so that only the truly initiated would know what they were all about. If you wanted to say, for example, that you should mix two substances while applying heat, the instruction was to “send the two dragons into battle.” There were “male” and “female” elements, and when two of these coalesced during a reaction, then this was a “marriage.”
ON THE TRAIL OF THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
Those who weren't prepared to master this complicated language were also not worthy of setting off in search of God and the philosopher's stone. The alchemists also communicated with one another using pseudonyms, rather than their real names. Newton, for instance, called himself (with the utmost modesty) “Jehova Sanctus Unus,” a holy god.4
While Newton's work formed the basis for a mechanistic view of the world that would dominate the following centuries, Newton himself believed in a quite different world. The entire cosmos and all of matter were in his view pervaded with a divine spirit, and it was important to recognize and grasp this. Alchemy was, therefore, not merely a hobby or—as has often been said—something that he only started doing late in his career, when his mind was not as sharp as before. If anything, it would be closer to the truth to call Newton's research into physics a “hobby” that he fitted in between his theological and alchemistic studies. When Edmond Halley spoke to Newton about the question of the mathematical explanation of comets’ orbits and thereby prompted him to write the Principia, Newton was right in the middle of alchemistic experiments. In the preceding years, he had hardly carried out any research into physics and had instead been almost exclusively engaged in trying to create the philosopher's stone in his laboratory. And after the publication of the Principia, too, he completely devoted himself once more to alchemy.
In 1692, Robert Boyle died, and Newton discussed what he had left behind in correspondence with the philosopher John Locke. He was interested in a mysterious “red earth” that Boyle was said to have produced in his experiments. Newton was cautious and didn't really want to address the matter directly with Locke, who first had to prove to him that he was an “initiate.” Only when Locke showed that he knew what the “red earth” was about and promised to keep the whole thing secret did Newton feel safe enough to correspond extensively with him. He explained that he wanted to test his alchemistic knowledge in order to find a special quicksilver5 that might possibly enable the production of gold.
By 1693, Newton had sent enough dragons into battle against each other, united enough serpents in matrimony, and bled enough green lions. He summarized his alchemistic research in a text of some 5,500 words and announced that “amalgaming the stone with the mercury of 3 or more eagles and adding their weight of water, & if you designe it for metals you may melt every time 3 parts of gold with one of the stone. Every multiplication will encreas it's virtue ten times &, if you use the mercury of the 2nd or 3rd rotation without the spirit, perhaps a thousand times. Thus you may multiply to infinity.”6 Newton was convinced that he had found a “stone” with which gold could be multiplied “to infinity.” After his breakthroughs in physics and mathematics, he had now achieved his spiritual and alchemistic goal: he had discovered the philosopher's stone.
But though Newton was often right, in this case he was wrong. The philosopher's stone remained out of his reach. Later, he never returned to his supposed discovery. After the seemingly triumphant conclusion of his alchemistic research, he suffered a nervous collapse, the cause of which is still unclear today.
In September 1693, Newton wrote a confused letter to Samuel Pepys, who had been the president of the Royal Society between 1684 and 1686, but had held no official post since 1690. In it, he wrote of an “embroilment” in which he was involved and which was causing him great difficulties. He said he could never again see Pepys or “the rest of my friends.” John Locke also received a letter. Locke, according to Newton, had endeavored to bring him into contact with women, which had deeply distressed him, to the extent that, in a conversation with somebody else, he had wished death upon Locke, for which he now wanted to apologize. Something wasn't quite right with Newton. He broke off his research, wrote practically no more letters, and behaved in a highly curious fashion. When later asked, he explained that he had suffered massively from insomnia, which had kept him awake for up to five nights in a row. In addition, there had been a “distemper,” which had caused him difficulties.
What really happened can no longer be reconstructed today. Perhaps it was indeed the recognition that his great breakthrough in the search for the divine spark of matter had failed that caused him to break down. Perhaps it was a fire in his laboratory, which destroyed many of his records.7 More speculative minds even suggest love problems, supposedly connected with the rupture of his (epistolary) friendship with the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. Newton's sexuality has always been one of the subjects about which there is much speculation, but little concrete information. He never married and is said to have confessed on his deathbed to one of his doctors that he had never had sex and would die a virgin. There is no evidence of close relationships with women; his intense friendship with Fatio de Duillier is documented, however, and contact between the two of them did indeed break off—also for unknown reasons—just at the time when Newton had his breakdown. Was Newton therefore perhaps homosexual and in love with Fatio, and was the nervous collapse simply due to a broken heart? We do not know. Perhaps the quicksilver vapors that Newton constantly breathed in during his experiments poisoned him. Perhaps it was depression, perhaps burnout, perhaps the pressure that he felt after the publication of his Principia. Whatever it was that was responsible, the crisis soon passed and Newton was ready for new challenges.
He found these soon afterward as the warden of the Royal Mint, as already described in chapter 1. And of course in his favorite occupation—quarrelling with his peers. In this respect, the quarrels he had had before had been nothing more than a warm-up. The biggest, longest, and most intense row of his career was still before him.
NATURAL SCIENCES WITHOUT GOD
Isaac Newton's religious and alchemistic studies would most likely elicit much more than just a raised eyebrow from his colleagues in the world of science today. It's almost impossible to imagine a modern scientist combining serious science with apocalyptic prophecies and an esoteric search for the philosopher's stone. This is above all due to the fact that we now know much more about the world than people in Newton's time did. In the seventeenth century, nobody knew how matter was really constructed. Nobody could have known, because the technical instruments required were a long way from being invented. All natural philosophers had back then was speculation, and the chemical knowledge of the early modern period made it seem a quite plausible idea that it should be possible to transform chemical elements into each other if one could only find the right mixture.
Religion, too, had a completely different standing. Atheism was simply not an option. And the existence of God or a “higher being” was the practically self-evident basis for any search for knowledge. The fact that Newton kept his theological investigations secret was due to the fact that the belief he was thereby attempting to prove contradicted the doctrines of the church, and not to the fear of appearing not to be a legitimate physicist because of his belief in God.
Today, things are very different. For phenomena where “God” was previously cited as the reason, we have now found better and more scientific explanations. There is no need to conceal your atheism, and many scientists don't believe in God. On the other hand, many of them do—and that is also absolutely no problem. It is possible today to be just as religious as in the seventeenth century without having to fear any negative consequences for your career. With one qualification: you should definitely avoid mixing your personal beliefs with science.
For Newton, however, there wasn't such a separation. In his Principia, he even specifically pointed this out: “This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being…. This being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all: And on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God Pantokrator, or Universal Ruler.”8 He was convinced that, while the motion of the celestial bodies obeyed his law of universal gravity, a higher being was nonetheless required to control everything. God always had to make sure that everything was in order, so that the edifice of the universe could continue to revolve.
Today, knowledge and belief have long since been separated, and natural sciences can no longer be based on phenomena which you have to believe in and for which there is no concrete evidence. And if this does happen, then—unsurprisingly—problems arise.
In January 2016, for example, Chinese researchers published a paper about the anatomy of the human hand in the Public Library of Science journal (PLOS ONE).9 Here, the authors write that the human hand possesses a “proper design by the Creator to perform daily tasks in a comfortable manner.” In other parts of their article, they also made reference to a “Creator” responsible for the characteristics of the human hand. As is usual in the publication of scientific papers, the article was checked by peer reviewers, but obviously not with particular care. At least they didn't seem to notice the references to a creator—but plenty of other scientists did. PLOS ONE was deluged with criticism, and the article in question was swiftly withdrawn. And yet the Chinese authors most likely had no hidden agenda; they themselves subsequently said that the incident was the result of their poor English and a bad translation. By “Creator,” they hadn't meant a divine being, but simply nature itself, in the evolutionary context of which the human hand has developed.
Be that as it may, whether you wish to see that as an excuse or a plausible explanation, this episode shows that science today is something that you shouldn't need to believe in. Either it is possible to prove a claim with concrete measurements or observations or it isn't—in which case the whole thing has to be classed as an assumption or a hypothesis, and you mustn't fall into the trap of viewing your own beliefs as a generally binding truth, regardless of what those beliefs are.
The vast majority of Isaac Newton's scientific findings have survived until today. They need no religious justification; it is sufficient to observe nature to receive proof of their validity. The gaps in them, which he attempted to explain with God, have now been filled by verifiable knowledge. Not completely, perhaps, but no serious scientist today would consider filling them with religious speculation and presenting this as research. And that's how it should be. Isaac Newton showed us that we can understand the world; that we can explain it in a mathematical and objective way and find general natural laws. He himself probably wouldn't have been particularly pleased by this, but he showed us how to separate belief from knowledge.
Sixty-nine years after Newton's death and just before the end of the eighteenth century, the French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace published his famous Exposition du système du monde (The System of the World). Here, Laplace concerned himself with the same questions as Newton had done in his “System of the World,” particularly that concerning the motion of the celestial bodies. Thanks to new mathematical methods, Laplace had a much clearer understanding than Newton how this motion worked, and the majority of modern celestial mechanics (the science of the motion of celestial bodies) is still based on Laplace's work. There is a well-known anecdote about a conversation between Laplace and Napoleon Bonaparte, who had read the Exposition du système du monde and said to the author: “Newton spoke about God in his book. I have looked through yours and couldn't find a single instance of this term.” To which Laplace laconically replied: “I had no need of that hypothesis.”
It is highly likely that such a conversation never took place like that; at least there is no reliable evidence for it. But the anecdote was already doing the rounds at the beginning of the nineteenth century, which shows how circumstances had changed. What had earlier remained unexplained and had thus been ascribed to God's influence was now understood without God.
It was the same with alchemy, except that things developed here a little more clearly and with much less controversy. Though Isaac Newton was an alchemist through and through, the peak of alchemistic research had already passed in his day. The constant new discoveries about nature quickly led to a demarcation between serious, scientific chemistry and pseudoscientific alchemy, and the same process took place in other fields of research. Astronomy was separated from astrology, serious medicine from quackery, and so on. A chemist who practices alchemy, or an astronomer who compiles horoscopes, is unimaginable today, even though this was completely normal in Newton's day. That is precisely the problem, however, when we wish to learn lessons for the present day from the concept of science of that time: with the knowledge we have today, it is easy to criticize Newton for his unscientific, alchemistic studies (or Johannes Kepler for his astrological work), but that only works in retrospect. Who knows what people in a few hundred years will think of certain fields of science today? Perhaps some of what we consider today to be serious research will later be recognized as being as nonsensical as Newton's alchemy.
As far as the religious, esoteric, and pseudoscientific aspects of his work are concerned, Isaac Newton is certainly not a good role model from today's perspective. Everybody can think in private what they want, but scientific work should be kept strictly separate from personal beliefs. That doesn't mean, however, that you can't be inspired by your completely private and personal world of ideas. Richard Westfall, the science historian and author of the Newton biography Never at Rest, which is still considered to be the definitive reference work today, is of the opinion that “the Newtonian concept of force embodies the enduring influence of alchemy upon his scientific thought” and that the alchemical tradition was the source of Newton's concept of attraction.10 This view is not without controversy, but Newton himself certainly saw no qualitative separation between physics and alchemy. He saw “invisible” forces of attraction not only between the planets in the heavens, but also in the crucible of his alchemistic experiments. In a text about acids (“De natura Acidorum”), he writes of “acid particles” that are “endowed with a great attractive force,” and in the Principia, he speculates about the existence of many other (attractive) forces that act between particles of matter and are yet to be discovered.
Science is a highly creative undertaking, and a great deal of imagination and fantasy is required to try to solve the mysteries of nature. Belief, myths, or other “dubious” ideas are as valid as anything else as a source of inspiration, and there are plenty of examples of this in the history of science. In 1890, chemist August Kekulé recounted how he had only discovered the structural formula for benzene because, during a daydream, he had seen a snake biting its own tail, which he then later interpreted as the molecular bond between atoms. The famous mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who worked with Godfrey Hardy at the University of Cambridge at the beginning of the twentieth century, allowed himself to be guided in his dreams by the Hindu god Namagiri.
What Isaac Newton's physics and mathematics would have been like had they not been inspired by religion and alchemy cannot be said. One thing is certain, however: we only continue to use his findings in natural science today because, irrespective of their possible theological or esoteric origins, they have been scientifically confirmed in a legitimate, comprehensible, and objective fashion. And that is what matters all the more today.
That is also the reason why modern natural sciences are dominated by mathematics to such a degree. Mathematics provides a language in which we can speak rationally about nature, with which clear and verifiable predictions can be made, and which allows us to describe phenomena, which often appear confusing at first sight, in an orderly and objective way. Isaac Newton was instrumental in formulating this language, and it wouldn't have been Isaac Newton if a long and fierce confrontation had not erupted over it.