In 1687 one the most important scientific book every written, The Principia, by Isaac Newton, was published. It was a dramatic development in science and moved scientific thought from the medieval era into the modern era. Newton was haled as a genius and the greatest scientist in history and his reputation was jealously guarded. However, at an auction in 1936, the famous British economist, John Maynard Keynes, bought a large proportion of a collection of Newton’s unpublished manuscripts, which had remained in a private collection in the 200 years since Newton death. Keynes later bequeathed these papers to Kings Collage Library, Cambridge. Babson College, Massachusetts and the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem also purchased a significant part of the collection. Other items were scatted all over the world, into private and public collections. There were over a million words on alchemy and the largest bulk of Newton’s unpublished papers; several million words are on theology, many written in Latin. Many of these papers remain un-translated. In these manuscripts it was discovered that there were many sides to Newton, his alchemy and his deeply held (and in the 17th century heretical) religious beliefs would have seen a very different fate for Newton if they were made public as he would have been disgraced and his works shunned. Keynes called him the last sorcerer. This paper examines one aspect of Newton’s sorcerer persona - that of the prophet.

Isaac Newton remains a subject of primary interest in the history of science, as recent scholarship redefines our understanding of the boundaries between disciplines of knowing in the early modern world. Newton's alchemy—or chymistry—together with his interpretations of chronology and biblical prophecy continue to be debated in their relationship to his innovations in science—or natural philosophy. This article reviews the recent shifts of this debate to a focus on Newton's erudition, to how Newton employed the tools of the university‐educated scholar, both humanist and scholastic, in his search for truth within his various intellectual pursuits. Newton's massive legacy of remaining source documents provides rich insight into what was, in many ways, a form of scholarship quite common in his historical context.

More than any other scientist in history, Isaac Newton has been both deified and defied. In this article, I wish to summarize several aspects of the revised historiography on Newton. I will note in particular Newton's debt to the prisca sapientia and prisca theologia for his natural philosophy. I argue that Newton's natural philosophy cannot be separated from his theology. In the process, however, Newton had radically altered traditional Christian beliefs. And, in so doing, Newton ironically perpetuated the conflict he wished to avoid.

[This is a preliminary draft for a section to appear in the Bloomsbury Cultural History of Mathematics, Volume 4, please do not cite without approval] Isaac Newton’s Principia rocked the intellectual world right from its first appearance in 1687 and attained an iconic status in the eighteenth century. Newton’s mathematico-experimental approach to the natural world was saluted as an examplary method for scientific investigation by most and was the primary target for those who wished to restrict the domain of mathematics. Through Newton, ‘mathematics’ turned into one of the buzzwords of eighteenth-century intellectual culture. As an icon, however, Newton stood for much more than just a particular scientific methodology. A mention of Newton or the ‘Newtonian philosophy’ could, depending on the context, also indicate certain cosmological, theological, and even political positions. Furthermore, a diverse range of mathematicians, philosophers, and entrepreneurs in the eighteenth century adopted ‘Newton’ as brand name without necessarily having much in common with the man himself.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) is widely considered to be one of the archetypal scientists of our time. Many of his scientific contributions are world-renowned and some of them are still taught in classrooms around the world to this day, for instance the theory of universal gravitation. Because of the general familiarity with these select parts of Newton’s work, one easily gets the impression that he was doing modern science. In this chapter, however, I question that impression by focussing on Newton’s notion of truth. By doing so, I intend to provoke questions about our own contemporary notion(s) of truth.

Newton had a dark side that has been suppressed by history. Only a few scholars know the true historical truth about this but most people do not search out such sources. I myself have also gone through several disappointments as more and more of my earlier heroes have fallen off their prior pantheon as I have researched their real biographies. I now wish to share this research with others to show that most popular images are deliberate acts of iconography reflecting implicit agendas. Young people should know that they themselves do not have to be perfect to make significant contributions to the growing knowledge base of humanity. This essay shows that even Top Scientists, like Isaac Newton, have a dark shadow to their personality and that the Founder of Modern Science had deep roots in older modes of thinking, such as Alchemy and esoteric Religion, which many modern rationalists refuse to acknowledge. These old commitments were critical to his revolutionary innovations, which were more philosophical than utilitarian. His major ideas in optics and gravity demonstrate that he was an empirical scientist, not just an abstract mathematician. Newton's scientific failures still resonate today but I remain impressed with his physical and philosophical intuitions.