HPRC School, CHED/History Public Seminar Series, Reassessing Newton’s Alchemy presented by William R. Newman (Indiana University)

Event Details

Date:

Thursday, 04 September 2014

Time:

4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Room:

Seminar room level 4 Forgan Smith Building (1)

UQ Location:

Forgan Smith Building (St Lucia)

Event category(s):

Full Description:: In the course of the last generation, Isaac Newton’s involvement in alchemy has passed from almost total obscurity to the state of being relatively well known. Popular accounts based on the scholarship of Richard Westfall and Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs assert that Newton’s alchemy provided the basis for his theory of gravitational attraction and that his alchemical project was closely linked to his heterodox quest to rediscover the primitive religion of mankind. The present talk will explore the viability of these claims and also discuss Newton’s alchemy in relation to the mechanical philosophy, optics, and Newton’s early “theory of everything” expressed in several documents of the 1670’s.
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William R. Newman is a Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University. He has written numerous books on the history of alchemy, including Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (2004) and Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution (2006).