Three-century-old manuscripts by Isaac Newton calculating the exact date of the apocalypse, detailing the precise dimensions of the ancient temple in Jerusalem and interpreting passages of the Bible -- exhibited this week for the first time -- lay bare the little-known religious intensity of a man many consider history's greatest scientist.
Newton, who died 280 years ago, is known for laying much of the groundwork for modern physics, astronomy, math and optics. But in a new Jerusalem exhibit, he appears as a scholar of deep faith who also found time to write on Jewish law -- even penning a few phrases in careful Hebrew letters -- and combing the Old Testament's Book of Daniel for clues about the world's end.
The documents, purchased by a Jewish scholar at a Sotheby's auction in London in 1936, have been kept in safes at Israel's national library in Jerusalem since 1969. Available for decades only to a small number of scholars, they have never before been shown to the public.
In one manuscript from the early 1700s, Newton used the cryptic Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the apocalypse, reaching the conclusion that the world would end no earlier than 2060.
"It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner," Newton wrote. However, he added, "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."
In another document, Newton interpreted biblical prophecies to mean that the Jews would return to the Holy Land before the world ends. The end of days will see "the ruin of the wicked nations, the end of weeping and of all troubles, the return of the Jews captivity and their setting up a flourishing and everlasting Kingdom," he posited.
This is interesting stuff, although I'm not sure how "unknown" this part of Newton's thinking has been. His penchant for esoterica is well documented. In addition to the title "scientist" you have to add those of "alchemist" and "diviner" to Newton's CV.
It isn't that Newton would have ever rejected what the processes of hypothesis and experimentation told him, he just didn't believe those were the only paths to knowledge. He believed in both the recovery of deliberately hidden ancient thought, and the pseudo-revelatory nature of the world. So scientific experimentation was part and parcel of the same effort. The physical world around us operated, to Newton's mind, through hidden processes that could be uncovered through difficult effort; which is, of course, the entire point of esoterica.
We today are of an entirely different temperament. We are apt to think of our best scientific minds as being creators as opposed to diviners. In some sense it is as if we never quite believe science is telling us how the world really works as much as they are giving us a clever attempt to account for world in a coherent fashion. Part of this comes from our understanding of the incompleteness of the scientific project. We know that any theory that seems rock solid today could be shown to be largely inadequate tomorrow when a different clever creator comes up with a better idea. So the process of science seems less about the world around us and more about the power and limits of the human mind.
This is part of the reason we today have such a difficult time coming to grips with Newton's quasi-religious reflections. His belief that there is something "out there" he has to uncover conflicts so strongly with our belief that everything is created in the "in here" of our minds, we are forced to think of Sir Isaac as at least a partial lunatic. To that end we dismember his life's work into collections of incompatible categories; the acceptable scientific portion from the mystical, the logical from the devout, the understandable from the obscure. In the end, the "whole" of Newton's work is rendered forever inaccessible to us. It becomes, in effect, an esoteric world of its own.
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