Symbolic Visualization of the Chymistry of Isaac Newton

Name and contact info

John A. Walsh, 812-856-0707, jawalsh@indiana.edu

Brief description of project goal and scientific/practical value

Isaac Newton wrote and transcribed about a million words on the subject of alchemy, or chymistry, of which only a tiny fraction has today been published. Newton's alchemical manuscripts are graphically and visually rich, full of alchemical symbols; Newton's own illustrations; difficult scribal, editorial, and representational challenges; and complex graphic organizational schemes. The Chymistry of Isaac Newton http://www.chymistry.org/ is a project, funded by the NSF and NEH, to digitize and edit Newton's alchemical manuscripts. The goal of the proposed visualization project is to exploit Newton's use of graphic symbols to visualize the content of the collection. The symbols typically represent substances or ingredients—e.g., mercury, sulfur, iron, aqua fortis, etc.—used in alchemical processes and recipes. These substances and recipes are some of the most important content, or data, in the collection, and the symbols are graphically interesting features that should enable informative and aesthetically pleasing data visualizations. The visualization(s) would allow scholars to see, at a glance, manuscripts that highlight particular substances and to cluster documents based on the symbolic representations of particular substances.
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Figure 1. A sample page from one of Newton's alchemical texts. This page comes from Ms. 416 from The Babson College Grace K. Babson Collection of the Works of Sir Isaac Newton, Huntington Library, San Marino, California
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Figure 2. A screen shot from the Chymistry of Isaac Newton project. The transcription of the text is represented in HTML alongside a facsimile page image of the original manuscript.
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Figure 3. Basil Valentine. “A Table of Chymicall & Philosophicall Charecters with their signs.” The Last Will and Testament of Basil Valentine, 1671. These and other symbols are commonly found in Newton.

Pointers to relevant publications, online sites, etc.