Behind the Lost Symbol by Tim Collins

Author:Tim Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2009-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

See also: Bacon, Francis; Franklin, Benjamin; The Great Seal of the United States; The Rosicrucians; Washington, George; Washington, D.C.

Newton, Isaac

In Chapter 30 of The Lost Symbol, it’s mentioned that private papers belonging to Sir Isaac Newton, discovered in 1936, revealed his interest in alchemy and ancient wisdom. As regular Dan Brown readers will know, these aren’t the first references to the great scientist in the Robert Langdon series. In The Da Vinci Code, one of the clues on the cryptex led Langdon and Sophie Neveu to Newton’s tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Born in 1642 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, Isaac Newton was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer and alchemist and is regarded as one of the most influential scientists in history. The law of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion outlined in his book Principia Mathematica laid the foundation of classical mechanics and are among the most famous theories in the history of science.

In 1936, a collection of Newton’s papers was auctioned at Sotheby’s on behalf of the Earl of Portsmouth. The “Portsmouth Papers” included unpublished manuscripts relating to subjects that would now be classed as “occult.” They showed that Newton was interested in alchemy, and had a particular fascination with the Philosopher’s Stone, the legendary substance that was supposedly capable of turning base metals into gold. It was believed in Newton’s day that all metals were compounds of sulfur and mercury, and that you could change one metal into another by changing the balance of these components. The Philosopher’s Stone was said to be the catalyst needed for this transformation.

Authors who’ve studied the Newton manuscripts, such as Frank E. Manuel, describe the hundreds of pages of notes that Newton made from works about alchemy such as Elias Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum and Michael Maier’s Symbola Aureae Mensae Duodecim Nationum.

Newton kept his interest in alchemy under wraps during his lifetime, as the making of gold and silver had been outlawed in England since the early fifteenth century. In Dan Brown’s fictional account, the real reason for Newton’s “high silence” was because the true secret of alchemy is that man is capable of godlike power, and this power would be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Robert Langdon declares Newton a Rosicrucian in Chapter 85 of The Lost Symbol. Although there’s no evidence that Newton was ever a member of the society, he was certainly interested in it, and a copy of an English translation of The Rosicrucian Manifestos by Thomas Vaughan, entitled The Fame and Confessions of the Fraternity R.C., was found in his library after his death. This story of a secret group of sages who were about to transform the landscape of Europe did much to inspire the popular fascination with alchemy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was a major influence on the works of Elias Ashmole and Michael Maier.

Newton’s interest in subjects that we now class as “occult” will come as a surprise to those who associate him purely with scientific rationalism. His manuscripts on subjects like al -

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