How the Occult Gave Birth to Science
In 1936, the financial expert John Maynard Keynes acquired a chest of Isaac Newton's unpublished notes. These consisted of more than 100,000 words on the fantastic physicist's secret alchemical experiments. Keynes, surprised and blown away, called them "entirely wonderful and entirely without clinical worth." This unanticipated discovery, coupled with things like Newton's fixation with looking for encrypted messages in the Bible's Book of David, revealed that Newton "was not the very first of the age of factor," Keynes concluded. "He was the last of the magicians."
When it pertained to fascination with the occult, Newton was barely alone. Lots of modern researchers might cast aspersions on spells, legendary tales, and powers of prophecy. Not so for a number of the early contempo...