Hi! I am dying of illness. Luckily I did not actually have any seriously awesome content planned for today because if I did you can go to hell. Dying has the odd side effect of everyone romping along on $IMofchoice and asking how you are so you wind up with two million chat windows open and your fingers moving in a blur and despair.

Enough foreplay. The post for today is a mutated medieval meme that has been doing the rounds. It is a perverted variant of one of those LOOKITMEE memes you see from time to time. The rules are thus:

1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) List 7 random/weird things about your favorite historical figure.
3) Tag seven more people at the end of your blog and link to theirs.
4) Let the person know they have been tagged by leaving a note on their blog.

The person who tagged me was the delicious Jennifer Lyn Superhero from Per Omnia Saecula (also on Elle Jaye as blackbuttoneyes). Go and read her and feast on her tasty, medieval goodness.

My favourite historical figure is probably...um... King Alfred? Charles Darwin? I don't know. But the most recent biographical essay I had to do was a nightmare piece on Sir Isaac Newton which took me far too damn long and for which my devious Belgian lecturer gave me a mark far in excess of what I deserved. Holy run-on sentence batman.

So, anyway. Because the last of the magicians, first of the scientists dwelled in my brain-space for a good million weeks, let us do the survey on him. I realise that this is not medieval in the slightest and is barely even 'Early' Modern, but Newton was the chap who put the medieval mindset to the natural world to sleep forever. So it's close enough. Besides, that hideous essay was done in a class called 'medieval cosmology' so whatever.

Stand back, now. I'm going to try SCIENCE!

1) Keynes once characterised Newton has not being the "first of the age of reason," but the "last of the magicians." He was both, and if you want to claim otherwise I have a four thousand word paper right here I will shove at you. Not to mention the extensive work done on Newton's alchemy by the late and brilliant Betty Jo Dobbs, in The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy and The Janus Faces of Genius.

2) Newton's library dealt far more with alchemy as opposed to chemistry. John Harrison has done a study of Newton's library, noting that 138 of the 1752 titles were on alchemy, contrasted with 31 on chemistry. It has to be noted that alchemy and chemistry are pretty closely tied in this period, but this is using modern definitions. In other words, Newton's 'woo count' more than tripled his 'hard science' count when it came to chemical science.

3) Richard Westfall has analysed Newton's writings, and the scientist wrote over a million words on alchemy. Alchemical treatises, annotations, and a massive number of experiments. A million words. That's a lot.

Amongst this work, Newton compiled the Index chemicus, a one hundred page guide that makes more than five thousand references to over one hundred fifty works. It is the most comprehensive guide to alchemy ever seen.

4) Some key features of modern science (the first of the age of reason) are: a willingness to depart from accepted authority where they disagree with experimental results and careful note-taking for the purposes of repeating one's own procedure. While alchemy is a secret art, preventing peer review, much of Newton's experimentation would not go amiss in the modern world. Take the paper "The Key" for example:

Some cast the nitre into the crucible, but this is not recommended, for, firstly, the fusion is as a result prolonged and the regulus is not without some loss of itself by exhalation. Secondly, nitre thrown in this way stays on the surface and in time cools the regulus. And since nitre flows easily, it may flow at first and [...] the best part of the regulus cools in the conflagration.

In other papers he gives explicit details on what happens if ratios are even slightly misaligned and gives exact quantities to use to purify various metals. I am not going to quote the papers here because it is not exciting reading. See the appendices in Dobbs, Foundations.

5) This is important, so pay attention: Newton's systematic study of alchemy provided him with the concepts allowing him to develop his theories of force. Previously the best science stated that matter was passive, and that it had been clock-work started at the beginning of time by the creator god and simply moved passively from there. Being a devout Christian type, Newton did not like this thing Sam I am, and looked to see what he could change. More importantly, this system of thought did not match experimental results. Our Hero demanded that the scholars who claimed this produce the experimental data showing it to be so.

[Oh, isn't he the best?]

Alchemy, on the other hand, proclaimed that matter was formed of various active principles that worked against each other. This filled the gaps in the previous mechanical philosophy and helped explain the experimental data.

6) Moving away from alchemy, Newton fought crime. While working for the Royal Mint he went undercover, lurked in seedy bars and conducted cross-examinations and allied with Batman to defeat evil counterfeiters. No, really.

7) Sir Newton had an alchemical pseudonym. Jeova sanctus unus, an anagram of Isaacus Neuutonus. Isn't that awesome? It is awesome.

SPECIAL BONUS ANSWER: The apple did not hit Newton on the head. Get over it already.

Now, I don't know many medievalists that have not already been tagged. So, the handful of Elle Jaye medievalists not already done: decken, kuffy and I'm not sure but just in case: ajodasso.

Now I want this meme to spread it's mutated wings and fly beyond the medieval blogosphere. Let us see if we cannot hook us some philosophers and scientists. I would dearly love to flag down P.Z. Myers but I am too pathetic to fall into his radar. Doctor Wilkins, would you care to be tagged? You can do someone significant from any of the fields you have interest in! I ask in all fear and awe of your glory. Perhaps through you, this medievalist mutation can populate the realms of the scientific and philosophical.

Also anyone else who wants to do it should do so. Because.

That's all, folks! Good night! Tune in Another Time when I am not dying!