Psychopath and genius, visionary and misanthrope, revered scientist and lonely old man. ibid.
Newton was convinced that he’d uncovered a secret Biblical puzzle that had been concealed in sacred texts and that he alone understood when Armageddon would come. Nostradamus Effect: The Apocalypse Code, History 2009
According to interpreters Newton’s papers show that his first step into Biblical decoding involved passages that described the Temple of Solomon. The temple prophecies are a critical clue to all of Newton’s doomsday calculations, and how he arrived at 2060 for the date of Armageddon. ibid.
A temple of geometric precision and symmetry built in one of the holiest places on Earth. For many this reconstruction of an ancient monument is the fulfilment of a prophecy. Its location is Israel. The year 2060. The prophet who foresaw this is one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. He forewarned that completion of this great temple would herald the arrival of the Anti-Christ and the end of the world ... Isaac Newton was one of the world’s greatest scientific geniuses and the father of Psychics. ibid.
And Newton believed other Biblical prophecies also identified Jerusalem as the centre of the universe. ibid.
He [Isaac Newton] also scoured the Bible looking for supposedly hidden formulas to explain alchemy, the mythical process that turns base metals such as lead into gold. By the eighteenth century alchemy had been discredited as mystical folly. Yet Newton, one of the pillars of rational science, irrationally obsessed over it. ibid.
His greatest contribution to science was his discovery of a set of universal laws to describe the cosmos. Great Scientists: Sir Isaac Newton, 2004
He continued his work on optics and even devised the theorem of Calculus. ibid.
Principia Mathematica: The mathematical principles of science. ibid.
Newton’s interest in alchemy was not unusual for its day. ibid.
Newton, childlike sage!
Sagacious reader of the works of God. William Cowper, 1731-1800, The Task, 1785
The statue stood
Of Newton, with his prison, and silent face:
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone. William Wordsworth, The Prelude 1850
A Philosopher’s stone: a legendary source of limitless wealth and eternal life. It’s a popular myth, and for alchemists it was a serious quest. Ancient X Files: Philosopher’s Stone and Lost Ark, National Geographic 2012
It is hoped the manuscript will shed light on Newton’s supposed quest for the Philosopher’s Stone. ibid.
The Philosopher’s Stone is the alchemists’ ultimate hope. ibid.
For around half of Newton’s life the practice of alchemy was illegal and punishable by death. ibid.
Alchemy posed a more earthly threat to monarchy. ibid.
By Newton’s time alchemy was also considered to be a source of forged currency. ibid.
But Newton himself was evidently engaged in work so dangerous or valuable his notes had to be writ in code. ibid.
Did ever poet image aught so fair,
Dreaming in whispering groves, by the hoarse brook!
Or prophet, to whose rapture heaven descends! James Thomson, re Newton's Opticks
He had extremely poor social relationships. He had very low empathy. He was quite suspicious, paranoid, cruel, sadistic. But then he had this enormous capacity to hyper-focus. Professor Michael Fitzgerald, psychiatrist
I am 100% sure that Isaac Newton had Asperger’s Syndrome. Professor Michael Fitzgerald
I don’t think anyone would ever describe Newton as popular, easy-going at any point of his life. He is quite obsessive about his work. Dr Andrew Gregory, University College London
A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding. Isaac Newton
No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess. Isaac Newton
I procured me a [triangular] glass prism to try therewith the celebrated phenomena of colours. Isaac Newton
The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish these properties by experiment, and then to proceed more slowly to hypothesis for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments. Isaac Newton, letter to Ignatius Pardies 1672
There is a vital agent diffused through everything in the Earth, a mercurial spirit extremely subtle and supremely volatile which is dispersed through every place. Isaac Newton, Notes on Alchemy c.1680
This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. Isaac Newton, General Scholium in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687
Gravity explains the motions of planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done. ibid.
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. Isaac Newton, letter to Robert Hooke February 1676
To explain all Nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one Age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty and leave the rest for others that come after you than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing. Isaac Newton
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 sea-shore, musing myself by now and then finding a smoother pebble, a prettier shell than ordinary. While the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Isaac Newton, memoirs [cf. Milton]
O Diamond! O Diamond! Thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done. Isaac Newton, to dog who knocked over candle and set fire to years’ worth of research; anecdote cited St Nicholas magazine 1878
The ancients considered mechanics in a twofold respect; as rational, which proceeds accurately by demonstration, and practical. To practical mechanics all the manual arts belong, from which mechanics took its name. But as artificers do not work with perfect accuracy, it comes to pass that mechanics is so distinguished from geometry, that what is perfectly accurate is called geometrical; what is less so is called mechanical. But the errors are not in the art, but in the artificers. Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica preface
Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn; for it requires that the learner should first be taught to describe these accurately, before he enters upon geometry; then it shows how by these operations problems may be solved. ibid.
We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. ibid. Rule I: Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy
Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. ibid. Laws of Motion I
The alternation of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed. ibid. Laws of Motion II
To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts. ibid. Laws of Motion III
I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. ibid.
Do not Bodies act upon Light at a distance, and by their action bend its Rays; and is not this action (caeteris paribus) strongest at the least distance? Isaac Newton, Opticks, Query I
Are not the Rays of Light in passing by the edges and sides of Bodies, bent several times backwards and forwards, with a motion like that of an Eel? And do not the three Fringes of colour’d Light... arise from three such bendings? ibid. Query III
Do not the Rays of Light which fall upon Bodies, and are reflected or refracted, begin to bend before they arrive at the Bodies; and are they not reflected, refracted, and inflected, by one and the same Principle, acting variously in various Circumstances? ibid. Query IV
Do not Bodies and Light act mutually upon one another; that is to say, Bodies upon Light in emitting, reflecting, refracting and inflecting it, and Light upon Bodies for heating them, and putting their parts into a vibrating motion wherein heat consists? ibid. Query V