Newton 1 from bookish, a weblog by George Girton

Newton 1 . . . . . apr 24 2005 — bookish121.dat

Unusual weekend visit to the Huntington Library in San Marino, to see Isaac Newton's books and journals on display. It was definitely well worth the trip just to see Hooke's and Descartes' own drawings. Newton's journals in his own handwriting were in English and Latin, with plenty of diagrams.

In his review of the exhibit when it was in NYC, James Gleick, one of Newton's many present-day biographers, complained that Newton's dark and lonely side was left out, and his interest in alchemy not even alluded to in the exhibit. Well, at the Huntington they made room for some alchemical books and drawings. They were in another room, so either Gleick missed it or they simply added the new texts.

In fact, a fascinating page showing five or six staves of musical notes was displayed, from a book on alchemical music that Newton was known to have read. Irene was with me, she said it was a chant and was kind enough to hum a few bars of this 450-year-old music. Exactly what it was that made the music alchemical remains to be discovered by me. I can tell you this much. In the gift shop they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

The exhibit was curated by Mordechai Feingold, a professor of history at CalTech, and the exhibit book is available on amazon. A really fun thing to do would be to read a copy of the exhibit book and then hop over to the Huntington Library before the first half of the show is over in June. he Newtonian Moment: Isaac Newton and the Making of Modern Culture [buy at amazon] . by Mordechai Feingold

Index of Previous Journal Entries

If you like what you read, click here to sign up for our mailing list and we'll notify you when we post new book reviews