Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's
Thought ( 1991). Others have begun to analyse Newton's vast collec-
tion of writings on biblical prophecy and his ideas on a range of
subjects from astrology to numerology. ⁷ But for the lay reader there
remains the added difficulty of understanding the mental processes
behind seventeenth-century alchemy. It is not easy to empathise with
a mentality that is, on so many levels, quite alien to the late-twentieth-
century mind.

In the following pages I will discuss both sides of the argument,
for and against alchemical influence upon Newton's scientific work.
But, based upon the evidence available, my conclusion is unequivo-
cal: the influence of Newton's researches in alchemy was the key to
his world-changing discoveries in science. His alchemical work and
his science were inextricably linked.

Newton himself said, 'A man may imagine things that are false,
but he can only understand things that are true.' ⁸ The no man's land
between imagining and understanding is, at times, the natural home
of the biographer; but by demythologising truths that have long been
veiled in secrecy this no man's land becomes narrower. Newton the
towering intellect, the pioneer and father of modern science, can
now stand alongside Newton the mystic, the emotionally desiccated
obsessive and the self-proclaimed, but deluded, discoverer of the
philosophers' stone -- divested but undiminished.

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