Abstract
The unity of Sir Isaac Newton’s various esoteric and exoteric studies, the fundamental intersection—even convergence—of what we would regard now as discordant discourses, and the grounding in religion of Newton’s singular vision of Word and nature are foundational assumptions of much recent and revisionist Newtonian scholarship. This essay embraces the general spirit of the late Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs’s remarks in the above epigraph, while offering them for two strategic reasons. First, as an assurance to the reader that the subject of this paper does have some pertinence to Newton, even if its focus (and the limits of my scholarly horizons and competence) situates him on the periphery of the essay’s field of vision: for the Word of God and the Book of Nature do define metaphoric contexts for the narrative expression of Newton’s “vision,” or cultural project. Second, to suggest that certain specific features contributing to the general spirit of Dobbs’s portrait of Newton need to stand out in sharper relief: what meanings might “the assumption of the unity of Truth” have for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? How, and to what extent, was such “Truth” accessible to humans? What were the relationships between God, His Word, and nature? In what senses were God and His Word seen to be “reflected” in nature? And finally, how was theological meaning encoded in nature and “retrieved” by human interpreters?
I do not assume the irrelevancy of Newton’s pursuit of an ancient, occult wisdom to those great syntheses of his that mark the foundation of modem science. The Janus-like faces of Isaac Newton were after all the production of a single mind, and their very bifurcation may be more of a modem optical illusion than an actuality. Newton’s mind was equipped with a certain fundamental assumption, common to his age, from which his various lines of investigation flowed naturally: the assumption of the unity of Truth. True knowledge was all in some sense a knowledge of God; Truth was one, its unity guaranteed by the unity of God. Reason and revelation were not in conflict but were supplementary. God’s attributes were recorded in the written Word but were also directly reflected in the nature of nature. Natural philosophy thus had immediate theological meaning for Newton and he deemed it capable of revealing to him those aspects of the divine never recorded in the Bible or the record of which had been corrupted by time and human error.1
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References
Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Face of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 5–6.
William B. Ashworth, Jr., “Natural History and the Emblematic World View,” in David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman, eds., Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 303–32.
Ashworth, “Emblematic World View,” p. 305.
Ashworth, “Emblematic World View,” pp. 317–8. Joannes Jonston, Historia Naturalis 6 vols. (Frankfurt, 1650–1653).
Ashworth, “Emblematic World View,” p. 318.
See Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993).
Ashworth, “Emblematic World View,” pp. 319–22.
Ashworth, “Emblematic World View,” p. 321.
Ibid. On early-modem museums, collecting, natural history, and scientific culture, see Bruce T. Moran, ed., Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technology, and Medicine at the European Court, 1500–1750 (Rochester: The Boydell Press, 1991), especially Paula Findlen, “The Economy of Scientific Exchange in Early Modem Italy,” pp. 5–24; Paula Findlen, “The Museum: Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Genealogy,” Journal of the History of Collections 1 (1989), pp. 59–78; Paula Findlen, “Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy,” Ph.D. diss., University of Califomia, Berkeley, 1989; Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, eds., The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); and Adalgisa Lugli, Naturalia et mirablia. Il collezionsimo enciclopedico nelle Wunderkammern d’Europa (Milan, 1983).
See John Francis Eros, “Diachronic Linguistics in Seventeenth-Century England, with Special Attention to the Theories of Meric Casaubon,” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1972.
Ashworth, “Emblematic World View,” p. 323.
On Fernel, see James J. Bono, “Reform and the Languages of Renaissance Theoretical Medicine: Harvey versus Fernel,” Journal of the History of Biology 23 (1990), pp. 341–87; and Bono, The Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and Medicine, vol. I, Ficino to Descartes (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), Chap. 4.
have discussed `abstract symbolism’ and `symbolic literalism’ in James J. Bono, “Medical Spirits and the Medieval Language of Life,” Traditio 40 (1984), pp. 91–130, esp. pp. 100–01. This distinction is applied to the metaphorical discourse of Renaissance medicine and its tendency toward slippage from the metaphorical to the literal in Bono, “Harvey versus Fernel,” and The Word of God,Chap. 4.
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage, 1973). For criticism of Foucault’s view of the Renaissance, see George Ruppert, “’Divinatio et Eruditio’: Thoughts on Foucault,” History and Theory 13 (1974), pp. 191–207. See also Wolfgang Harms, “On Natural History and Emblematics in the Sixteenth Century,” in Allan Ellenius, ed. The Natural Sciences and the Arts, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Figura Nova, vol. 22 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1985), pp. 67–83; and Harms, “Bedeutung als Teil der Sache in zoologischen Standardwerken der frühen Neuzeit (Konrad Gesner, Ulisse Aldrovandi),” in Lebenslehren und Weltenwürfe in Übergang von Mittelalter zur Neuzeit (Gottengen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), pp. 352–69.
The following discussion of Paracelsus is from Bono The Word of God, pp. 130–7, where original texts and references are cited in full.
Paracelsus, Die 9 Bucher De Natura Rerum [1537], in Samtliche Werke,vol. 11, ed. Karl Sudhoff (München; Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1928), p. 378. The translation is from Paracelsus, The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, Called Paracelsus the Great, ed. Arthur Edward Waite, 2 vols. (Boulder: Shambhala, 1976), 1:174. Where necessary, I have modified this English version with my own translation from the original German found in Sudhoff’s text.
Paracelsus, De natura rerum, p. 378.
Paracelsus, De natura rerum, p. 397: “die kunst signata leret die rechten namen geben allen dingen.” Hermetic and Alchemical Writings, p. 188.
Ibid. I have substantially modified the English version provided in Waite’s edition.
Paracelsus, De natura rerum, pp. 397–8.
Paracelsus, De natura rerum, p. 378. Paracelsus contrasts the wise man to the bestial man (einen viehischen menschen). One rules the stars, the other is ruled by them. Implicit in this passage is the notion that postlapsarian man, even though he has lost Adam’s free, easy, and immediate dominion over nature, nonetheless may win back some measure of his lost control. To do so, he must revive and master the Adamic kunst signata.
Kurt Goldammer, “La conception paracelsienne de l’homme entre la tradition théologique, la mythologie et la science de la nature,” in Sciences de la renaissance, viiie Congrès International de Tours (Paris: Vrin, 1973), p. 248.
Goldammer, “La conception paracelsienne,” provides a complex understanding of Paracelsus’s divided and tension-filled view of man, at once limited and filled with possibilities. See especially, pp. 248–51 and 258.
On the new Adam, Christ, God’s Word, and the light of nature, see Paracelsus’s Astronomia Magna, oder die ganze Philosophia Sagax der grossen und kleinen Welt [1537–38], in Samtfiche Werke,vol. 12, ed. Karl Sudhoff (Munich; Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1929), p. 398. On Paracelsus and theology also see Hartmut Rudolph, “Kosmosspekulation und Trinitätslehre, Weltbild und Theologie bei Paracelsus,” in Paracelsus in der Tradition, in Salzb. Beitr. Paracelsus- Forschung,ed. S. Domandl, 21 (1980), pp. 3247; and Hartmut Rudolph, “Einige Gesichtspunkte zum Thema `Paracelsus und Luther’,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 72 (1981), pp. 34–54.
Paracelsus, Paragranum [1529–1530], in Samtfiche Werke, vol. 8, ed. Karl Sudhoff (Munchen: Otto Wilhelm Barth, 1924), p. 97: “Allein die eussern ding geben die erkantnus des inneren, sonst mag kein inner ding erkant werden.”
Paracelsus, Von Den Naturlichen Dingen [1525?],in Samtliche Werke, vol. 2, ed. Karl Sudhoff (Munich; Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1930), p. 86.
Paracelsus, Astronomia Magna, p. 173.
See Massimo Luigi Bianchi, Signatura rerum. Segni, magia e conoscenza da Paracelso a Leibniz (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1987), p. 62.
Paracelsus, Astronomia magna, p. 177.
Paracelsus, Astronomia magna, p. 396: “Also ist die speis und das leben nicht von der erden, sondern von got durch sein wort;” and, p. 397, “So das ist, so ist das natürliche liecht nichts, sondern es muss aus got gehen, dan so ist es genug.”
Paracelsus, Labyrinthus medicorum errantium [1537–381, in Samtliche Werke, vol. 11, ed. Karl Sudhoff (Munich; Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1928), p. 169.
Paracelsus, Labyrinthus medicorum, p. 170: “Was concordirt in das liecht der natur, das bestet und hat kraft. was aber in das nit concordirt, das ist ein labyrinthus der kein gewissen eingang noch ausgang hat.”
For details see Bono The Word of God, especially Chap. 3.
The following discussion is from Bono, The Word of God, pp. 179–92.
As Marian Rothstein reminds us, “the very word `etymology’ [is]… from etumos; true, real…,” “Etymology, Genealogy, and the Immutability of Origins,” Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990), p. 332.
Ashworth, “Emblematic World View,” pp. 322–3.
Edward Topsell, A Historie of Four footed Beastes (London, 1607).
Ashworth, “Emblematic World View,” p. 316.
Topsell, “Beastes,” sig. A3.
Thus, note Topsell’s insistent tone in setting forth, near the end of his “Epistle Dedicatory,” the claims of the Book of Nature for bringing the counsel of God to his people: “For how shall we be able to speake the whole Counsell of God unto his people, if we read unto them but one of his bookes, when he hath another in the worlde, which wee never study past the title or outside; although the great God have made them an Epistle Dedicatory to the whole race of mankind,” no pagination.
Topsell, Beastes, in “The Epistle Dedicatory,” no pagination.
Topsell, Beastes, in “The Epistle Dedicatory,” no pagination. Topsell, Beastes, in “The Epistle Dedicatory,” no pagination.
Topsell, Beastes, in “The Epistle Dedicatory,” no pagination. Ashworth, “Emblematic World View,” quotes this passage on p. 316.
See Bono, The Word of God, for discussion of symbolic exegesis.
Paula Findlen, “Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe,” Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990), p. 325.
See Jean Céard, La Nature et les Prodiges: l’insolite au seizième siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1977).
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte: la transformation du mythe de la confusion des langues au XVIe siècle,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 42 (1980), pp. 577–94.
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” p. 578 ff. See also Bono, The Word of God.
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” p. 581.
Konrad Gesner, Mithridates. De Differentiis Linguarum,ed. Manfred Peters (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1974), reprint of 1555 Zurich edition.
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” p. 581.
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” p. 583, and pp. 581–84 for this discussion in general.
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” p. 583.
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” p. 581.
C, „eard, De Babel à la Pentecôte,“ p. 585.
Claude Duret, Thresor de l’histoire des langues de test univers (1613) (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1972), original publication: Cologny, 1613; Claude Duret, Histoire admirable des plantes et herbes (Paris, 1605).
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” p. 585.
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” see pp. 585 ff.
Ambroise Paré, Le livre des animavx et de l’excellence de l’homme, ed. J. F. Malgaigne, in vol. 3 of Oeuvres complètes d’Ambroise Paré, 735–69 (Paris: J. B. Baillière, 1841), as quoted by Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” p. 589.
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” p. 589.
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” pp. 589–90.
Ashworth, “Emblematic World View,” pp. 304–5.
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” p. 592.
Céard, “De Babel à la Pentecôte,” p. 593.
Bono, The Word of God p. 274.
On Boyle, see two recent works: Rose-Mary Sargent, The Diffident Naturalist: Robert Boyle and the Philosophy of Experiment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), especially Chap. 5, “Biblical Hermeneutics”; and Robert Markley, Fallen Languages: Crises of Representation in Newtonian England, 1660–1740 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993).
For example, see Kenneth J. Knoespel, “Newton in the School of Time: The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended and the Crisis of Seventeenth-Century Historiography,” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 30 (1989), pp. 19–41; and, James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin, Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton’s Theology (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), and Force and Popkin, eds., The Books of Nature and Scripture (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994).
This quotation from Yahuda Newton MS 1 is taken from Sarah Hutton, “More, Newton, and the Language of Biblical Prophecy,” in Force and Popkin, Books of Nature and Scripture,p. 46.
Hutton, “More, Newton, and the Language of Biblical Prophecy,” p. 46.
I am indebted to James Force for allowing me to see page proofs of his now published essay, “Samuel Clarke’s Four categories of Deism, Isaac Newton, and the Bible,” in Richard H. Popkin, ed., Scepticism in the History of Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996), p. 58.
See Bono, The Word of God, pp. 140–66, for discussion of Croll’s Calvinist Paracelsianism.
Markley, Fallen Languages, esp. Chap. 4, pp. 131–77; p. 144.
See works by Knoespel and Markley cited earlier and their essays infra.
Dobbs, Janus Faces of Genius, pp. 87–8, quoting Yahuda MS. Var. 1, Newton MS 21, ff. 2–3.
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Bono, J.J. (1999). From Paracelsus to Newton: The Word of God, the Book of Nature, and the Eclipse of the “Emblematic World View”. In: Force, J.E., Popkin, R.H. (eds) Newton and Religion. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées, vol 161. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2426-5_3
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