The "Chymistry" of Isaac Newton: A Proposal for STS 01-159 and International Digital Libraries 02-085

项目摘要印第安纳大学威廉·纽曼“艾萨克·牛顿的‘化学’”艾萨克·牛顿的“化学”论文仍然是一个谜，尽管B.J.T.多布斯、理查德·韦斯特福尔、卡琳·菲加拉和其他学者进行了开创性的研究。尽管牛顿在这个主题上写了大约一百万字--130多份手稿--但其中只有一小部分得到了认真的审查：编辑的更少。没有系统的尝试来确定牛顿化学论文的年表，也没有对他的来源进行详尽和批判性的审查。因此，历史学家在确定哪些手稿实际上是牛顿作品，而不是仅仅是转录或拼凑其他作者的文字等基本问题上一直是出了名的不可靠。由于这些和其他问题，历史学家还无法确定牛顿的合力的最终目标是什么，尽管有人声称，牛顿在那里找到了吸引力的概念，或者他认为自己的合力是探索宇宙背后的生命论原理的一部分。本提案旨在通过一种具有相当智力价值的创新、综合方法来解决这些问题。PI将对牛顿的化学进行研究，目标是撰写一本关于这一主题的新书，同时监督一个项目，将牛顿的化学论文数字化为网络版(在伦敦帝国理工学院牛顿项目的总体指导下)。为了促进我们对牛顿化学的了解，国际和平研究所将在印第安纳大学化学系的帮助下对牛顿的实验室笔记本和手稿进行研究(研究团队已经为即将播出的Nova-BBC联合纪录片复制了牛顿的一些实验)。编辑化学论文的项目将在印第安纳大学的PI的指导下进行。该项目的更广泛影响将是多方面的。首先，这项新的研究将不会把牛顿对炼金术的兴趣仅仅视为他的物理学的辅助，而是将它们放在广泛解释的化学史中，这将给这个主题提供一个新的、不扭曲的图景。Nova和BBC对这一项目的兴趣表明，公众也会渴望这项研究的结果。电子版将极大地帮助纽曼和其他学者研究牛顿化学项目的发展，因为电子版的单词可搜索性将提供一个强大的新工具，通过来源批评和相关技术来帮助确定手稿的相对年代。与此同时，利用帝国理工学院牛顿计划已经实施的复杂的电子编辑技术，编辑们将制作一个非常便于公众访问的基于网络的版本。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，该机制将一个窗口中的文字记录链接到相应框架中的签名文本的图像。使用屏幕上的窗口，可以操纵高分辨率的图像，并以与装订原件不同的方式将它们并列在一起。高级用户界面还将允许用户对文本的离散部分进行标记、分组、排序、重新排序和注释，从而有效地允许用户创建他或她自己的“版本”。这个项目的结果将是一个资源，不仅可供专业历史学家和其他学者使用，还可供任何对牛顿化学这一迷人主题感兴趣的人使用，包括公立学校和其他机构。

Project AbstractSES 0324310William Newman, Indiana University"The 'Chymistry' of Isaac Newton"The "chymical" papers of Isaac Newton remain an enigma despite the pioneering studies of B.J.T. Dobbs, Richard Westfall, Karin Figala, and other scholars. Although Newton wrote about a million words--over 130 manuscripts--on the subject, only a tiny fraction of this has been examined seriously: even less has been edited. No systematic attempt has been made to determine the chronology of Newton's chymical papers, nor have his sources been examined in an exhaustive and critical manner. As a result, historians have been notoriously 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 in no position yet to determine what Newton's ultimate goals for his chymistry were, despite 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 present proposal aims to remedy these problems by means of an innovative, integrated approach of considerable intellectual merit. The PI will do research on 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 at Imperial College London). In order to facilitate our understanding of Newton's chymistry, the PI will carry out research on Newton's laboratory notebooks and manuscripts with the help of Indiana University Chemistry Department (a number of Newton's experiments have already been replicated by the research team for an upcoming NOVA-BBC joint documentary). The project for editing the chymical papers will be carried out at Indiana University under the PI's direction. The broader impacts of this project will be multiple. First, the 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 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 by The Newton Project at Imperial College, the editors will produce a web-based edition of great accessibility to the public. 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.