The "Chymistry" of Isaac Newton

艾萨克·牛顿的“化学”

• 批准号: 0620868
• 负责人: William Newman
• 金额: $ 36.47万
• 依托单位: Indiana University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-01 至 2009-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0620868&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Chymistry; Isaac; Newton; Chymistry; Isaac; Newton

The "chymical" papers of Isaac Newton remain enigmatic despite the pioneering studies of B.J.T. Dobbs, R. Westfall, K. Figala, and others. Although Newton wrote about a million words on the subject, only a tiny fraction of this had been examined seriously and even less had been edited before the first phase of the current NSFfunded project (2003-2006). In the second phase (2006-2009), the remainder of Newton's chymical papers will be edited, and a systematic attempt will be made to determine the chronology of the manuscripts and to examine their sources in an exhaustive and critical manner. Previous historians have been unreliable in determining such basic issues as which of the manuscripts are actually Newtonian compositions as opposed to being mere transcriptions or patchwork mosaics of other authors' words. Because of these and other problems, historians are only now beginning to determine what Newton's ultimate goals for his chymistry were, despite previous strong claims that he found his concept of attractive forces there or that he saw his chymistry as part of a quest to discover the vitalistic principles that underlie the cosmos. The intellectual merit of the project will lie in rectifying these problems. The PI, William R. Newman, is researching Newton's chymistry with the goal of composing a new book on the subject, while at the same time overseeing a project to digitize Newton's chymical papers for an online edition (under the general direction of The Newton Project (www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk) at Imperial College London). In order to facilitate our understanding of Newton's chymistry, Newman will continue to carry out research on Newton's laboratory notebooks and manuscripts with the help of Cathrine Reck of the Indiana University Chemistry Department (a number of Newton's experiments have already been replicated by Newman for the recent NOVA documentary, "Newton's Dark Secrets" and for the earlier BBC production, "Newton: the Dark Heretic"). The second phase of the project for editing the chymical papers will be carried out at Indiana University under Newman's direction, with the aid of John Walsh, Associate Librarian (Digital Library Program) at Indiana University. Lawrence M. Principe of Johns Hopkins University will also collaborate on the project, as a consultant in the editing, deciphering, and annotating of Newton's manuscripts. The broader impacts of this project will be multiple. First, Newman's new study will not consider Newton's interests in alchemy merely as ancillary to his physics but will place them within the history of chemistry broadly construed, which will give a new and undistorted picture of the subject. The interest of NOVA and BBC in this project shows that the public will also be eager for the results of this research. The electronic edition will vastly aid Newman and other scholars in studying the development of Newton's chymical project, since the word-searchability of the electronic edition will provide a powerful new tool for helping to determine the relative chronology of the manuscripts by means of source criticism and related techniques. At the same time, employing sophisticated techniques of electronic editing already being implemented at Indiana University (http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/newton), the editors are producing a web-based edition of great accessibility to the public. In the second phase, the electronic edition will enable end-users to navigate through text using a search and retrieval mechanism that will link transcript in one window to an image of the autograph text in a corresponding frame. Using on-screen windows, it will be possible to manipulate the high-resolution images and juxtapose them in ways not possible with the bound originals. The advanced user interface will also allow a user to label, group, sequence, re-sequence, and annotate discrete sections of text, effectively allowing the user to create his or her own "edition." The result of this project will be a resource that is available not only to professional historians and other scholars, but to anyone with an interest in the fascinating subject of Newton's chymistry, including public schools and other institutions.

尽管B.J.T.开创性的研究，艾萨克·牛顿的“辣椒”论文仍然神秘。 Dobbs，R。Westfall，K。Figala等。尽管牛顿写了大约一百万个关于该主题的单词，但在当前NSFFUND项目的第一阶段（2003-2006）的第一阶段之前，对其中的一小部分进行了认真的检查，甚至还没有编辑。在第二阶段（2006- 2009年）中，将编辑牛顿的剩余片，并进行系统的尝试来确定手稿的年表，并以详尽而关键的方式检查其来源。以前的历史学家在确定哪些手稿实际上是牛顿作品的基本问题方面并不可靠，而不是仅仅是其他作者词的抄写或拼凑的马赛克。由于这些问题和其他问题，历史学家直到现在才开始确定牛顿的最终目标是什么，尽管他以前有强有力的声称他在那里找到了自己的有吸引力的力量的概念，或者他认为他的Chymistry是发现Cosmos构成的活力原则的一部分。该项目的智力优点在于纠正这些问题。 PI威廉·纽曼（William R. Newman）正在研究牛顿的省力，目的是撰写有关该主题的新书，同时监督一个项目，以数字化牛顿的辣椒杂费在线版本（在牛顿项目的一般指导下（www.newtonproject.ic.ac.ac.uk））。为了促进我们对牛顿的奇迹的理解，纽曼将继续在印第安纳大学化学系的Cathrine Reck的帮助下对牛顿的实验室笔记本和手稿进行​​研究（纽曼的许多实验已经被纽曼（Newman）复制了，纽曼（Newman）已被最近的Nova纪录片《纽顿纪录片》（Nova Docordmentary）的《牛顿的黑暗秘密》（Dark Sertos）和新的BBC制作（Neva）的作品，以及新的作品（News bbc bbc bbc），新的新顿（News）编辑Chymical论文项目的第二阶段将在纽曼大学的指导下在印第安纳大学的指导下在印第安纳大学的副图书馆员（数字图书馆计划）的帮助下在印第安纳大学进行。约翰·霍普金斯大学（Johns Hopkins University）的劳伦斯·M·普林斯皮（Lawrence M.该项目的更广泛影响将是多重的。首先，纽曼的新研究不会将牛顿在炼金术中的利益仅仅是其物理学的辅助，而是将它们置于化学史的广泛解释之内，这将为该主题提供新的且未发生的图片。 Nova和BBC对该项目的兴趣表明，公众也渴望获得这项研究的结果。电子版将极大地帮助纽曼和其他学者研究牛顿的Chymical项目的开发，因为电子版的单词搜索性将为通过来源批评和相关技术提供有效的新工具，以帮助确定手稿的相对时间顺序。同时，采用印第安纳大学（http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/newton）已经实施的电子编辑技术精致技术，编辑正在制作基于网络的基于网络的公众访问性。在第二阶段，电子版将使最终用户能够使用搜索和检索机制在文本中导航，该机制将在一个窗口中将转录本链接到相应框架中的签名文本图像。使用屏幕上的窗户，可以通过不可能的方式来操纵高分辨率图像并将其并列。高级用户界面还将允许用户标记，组，序列，重新序列和注释文本的离散部分，从而有效地允许用户创建其自己的“版本”。该项目的结果将是一种资源，不仅可用于专业历史学家和其他学者，而且还可以对任何对牛顿省的迷人主题感兴趣的人，包括公立学校和其他机构。