The Newton Papers

This fascinating book traces the history of Newton's papers since his death in 1727 to the present day. He died intestate, and the first investigators were uneasy when they examined the whole collection, deeming them 'unfit to be printed.' We now know that the main reason was his extensive writings on theology and alchemy (also reflected in the contents of his library), which were in tension with his reputation as a supremely rational scientist. The treatment here is chronological, and includes the questioning of his sanity by Jean-Baptiste Biot and a biographical defence by Sir David Brewster, amounting to over 1,000 pages. William Whewell played a key role in the 19th century, during which time George Stokes and John Adams began their cataloguing, while the papers remained with the Portsmouth family until they were obliged to sell them in 1936.

This is where Keynes comes in. The author gives some fascinating background about how he began to collect valuable books as an undergraduate from Gustave David in the Cambridge market, including a first edition of Newton's Principia for four shillings (the dealer had paid 4p). At the Sotheby's sale, Keynes bought 38 lots for £554 10 shillings, equivalent to £25,000 today. These related mainly to his alchemical work, which led Keynes to describe Newton famously as 'not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.' (usually only the first two phrases are quoted) Here Newton was trying to read the riddle or patterns of the universe at different levels.

Keynes noted that the theological and alchemical manuscripts were marked by 'careful learning, accurate method, and extreme sobriety of statement' - a phrase that reminds me of Swedenborg. Keynes found these manuscripts impossible to discount, but equally impossible to credit, which indicates the limitation of his and indeed the modern imagination, as the author notes in her conclusion: 'our understanding of him will always be conditioned by our expectations of what a scientist is or should be, and these expectations have, in turn, been shaped by our understanding (or misunderstanding) of Newton's own life.' She adds that in searching for the papers, we are also searching for ourselves. It is a captivating story.