Reassessing Newton's Alchemy

In the course of the last generation, Isaac Newton’s involvement in alchemy has passed from almost total obscurity to the state of being relatively well known.  Popular and scholarly accounts based on the scholarship of Richard Westfall and Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs assert that Newton’s alchemy provided the basis for his theory of gravitational attraction and that his alchemical project was closely linked to his heterodox quest to rediscover the primitive religion of mankind.  The present paper will explore the viability of these claims and also discuss Newton’s alchemy in relation to the mechanical philosophy, optics, and Newton’s early “theory of everything” expressed in several documents of the 1670’s.