Isaac Newton and Oriental Jones on Myth, Ancient History, and the Relative Prestige of Peoples

Isaac Newton’s Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, published in 1728, one year after the great man’s death, unleashed a storm of controversy. And for good reason. The book presents a drastically revised timeline for ancient civilizations, contracting Greek history by five hundred years and Egypt’s by a millennium. This book tells the story of how one of the most celebrated figures in the history of mathematics, optics, and mechanics came to apply his unique ways of thinking to problems of history, theology, and mythology, and of how his radical ideas produced an uproar that reverberated in Europe’s learned circles throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. The book reveals the manner in which Newton strove for nearly half a century to rectify universal history by reading ancient texts through the lens of astronomy, and to create a tight theoretical system for interpreting the evolution of civilization on the basis of population dynamics. It was during Newton’s earliest years at Cambridge that he developed the core of his singular method for generating and working with trustworthy knowledge, which he applied to his study of the past with the same rigor he brought to his work in physics and mathematics. Drawing extensively on Newton’s unpublished papers and a host of other primary sources, the book reconciles Isaac Newton the rational scientist with Newton the natural philosopher, alchemist, theologian, and chronologist of ancient history.

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Troubled Senses

Newton and the Origin of Civilization ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691154787.003.0001 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Jed Z. Buchwald ◽

Mordechai Feingold

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Human History ◽

Ancient History ◽

Historical Knowledge ◽

Isaac Newton ◽

Argumentative Structure

This chapter considers the roots of Isaac Newton’s interest in natural and historical knowledge. In the late seventeenth century, experiment-based knowledge remained suspect. Technical chronologers developed systems of concordances and sequences that located events of human history in time by means of their simultaneous occurrences with particular astronomical events, usually eclipses. It is precisely here that Isaac Newton, as a chronologer, differed programatically from his predecessors: he sought to use astronomical tools to mold singular events into a system for understanding ancient history, indeed for grasping the entire development of civilization—what’s more, a system that shared and exemplified the same evidentiary and argumentative structure deployed in his science.

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Isaac Newton and the Study of Chronology

10.1017/9789048554287 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Cornelis J. Schilt

Keyword(s):

Careful Study ◽

Note Taking ◽

Ancient History ◽

Isaac Newton ◽

Full Analysis ◽

Major Project ◽

Of Greece

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) devoted ample time to the study of ancient chronology, resulting in the posthumously published <i>The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended</i> (1728). Here, Newton attempted to show how the antiquity of Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and other Mediterranean nations could be reinterpreted to fit the timespan allowed for by Scripture. Yet, as the hundreds of books from his library and the thousands of manuscript pages devoted to the topic show, the <i>Chronology</i> was long in the making. This volume provides the first full analysis of the genesis and evolution of Newton's studies of ancient history and demonstrates how these emerged from that other major project of his, the interpretation of the apocalyptic prophecies in Scripture. A careful study of Newton's reading, note-taking, writing, and ordering practices provides the key to unravelling and reconstructing the chronology of Newton's chronological studies, bringing to light writings hitherto hidden in the archives.

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Isaac Newton and the Study of Chronology

10.5117/9789463721165 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Cornelis Schilt

Keyword(s):

Careful Study ◽

Note Taking ◽

Ancient History ◽

Isaac Newton ◽

Full Analysis ◽

Major Project ◽

Of Greece

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) devoted ample time to the study of ancient chronology, resulting in the posthumously published The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728). Here, Newton attempted to show how the antiquity of Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and other Mediterranean nations could be reinterpreted to fit the timespan allowed for by Scripture. Yet as the hundreds of books from his library and the thousands of manuscript pages devoted to the topic show, the Chronology was long in the making. This volume provides the first full analysis of the genesis and evolution of Newton’s studies of ancient history and demonstrates how these emerged from that other major project of his, the interpretation of the apocalyptic prophecies in Scripture. A careful study of Newton’s reading, note-taking, writing, and -ordering practices provides the key to unravelling and reconstructing the chronology of Newton’s chronological studies, bringing to light writings hitherto hidden in the archives.

Download Full-text

Text and Testimony

Newton and the Origin of Civilization ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691154787.003.0007 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Jed Z. Buchwald ◽

Mordechai Feingold

Keyword(s):

Ancient History ◽

Isaac Newton ◽

Textual Evidence ◽

History Of

This chapter considers the manner in which Isaac Newton handled textual evidence as he grafted his revised idiosyncratic and exceptionally focused chronology. Three sources particularly exercised Newton as he proceeded to drastically abbreviate ancient history: the Persika of Ctesias of Cnidus, the Aegyptiaca of Manetho, and the Marmor Parium—key sources for the history of, respectively, Assyria, Egypt, and Greece. Before the late 1690s, Newton rarely cited these sources; he certainly did not consider them problematic. Yet as his revised chronology took shape, he engaged critically with them, undermining as much as possible their credibility, and explaining to himself—as well as to others—his reasoning.

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