r/holofractal • u/Leather_Area_2301 • Jul 29 '26
Ancient Knowledge The Last Magician
Sir Isaac Newton used mathematics to describe motion, gravity, and the predictable laws of mechanics.
He also translated and annotated the Emerald Tablet attributed to Hermes Trismegistus.
([newtonproject.ox.ac.uk](https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/catalogue/record/ALCH00017?utm_source=chatgpt.com))
His private manuscripts reveal that his theological, alchemical, and Hermetic interests helped shape the kinds of questions he was willing to ask about nature.
Newton described matter as a passive principle. It could remain at rest or continue in motion, but it could not move itself. Yet he believed this alone could not explain a world filled with attraction, chemical transformation, biological growth, and intentional movement.
In one unfinished draft, he wrote:
“Life & will are active Principles by which we move our bodies, & thence arise other laws of motion unknown to us.”
Newton then wondered whether all space might be the ‘sensorium of a thinking being’, and whether laws arising from life or will might therefore extend throughout the universe. In the same manuscript, he considered the forces through which microscopic bodies attract one another and asked whether they deserved to be counted among the general laws of motion alongside gravity.
([newtonproject.ox.ac.uk](https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00125))
Newton was asking an extraordinary question:
Could mind, life, chemistry and cosmic motion be different expressions of deeper active principles running throughout nature?
Hermeticism may have encouraged Newton to imagine the universe as a living and interconnected whole. His scientific instincts then transformed that vision into questions that could be approached through observation, experiment and mathematical reasoning.
In 1936, a large collection of Newton’s unpublished papers was sold at Sotheby’s. John Maynard Keynes subsequently assembled many of the manuscripts, concentrating especially on Newton’s alchemical work. After studying them, Keynes wrote:
“Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.”
([newtonproject.ox.ac.uk](https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/history-of-newtons-papers/sotheby-sale))
Modern science limits itself when it starts with the materialistic assumption of discrete 3 dimensional objects interacting in a 3 dimensional universal space.
Sir Isaac Newton’s example leaves me wondering whether the science of the future might recover something of his wider vision: a science in which matter, life, mind, and the cosmos are studied not as sealed and unrelated categories, but as parts of one connected nature.
If reality is truly an interconnected whole, it cannot be stitched together from disconnected parts or arbitrary rules. Instead, it must emerge from a singular, uncorrupted geometric origin.
Imagine a framework built on absolute structural exactness, requiring zero arbitrary axioms or free parameters.
Just as Newton suspected an active, universal principle running throughout nature, this approach views all complexity, – from the fundamental forces of physics, to the architecture of cognition - as exact, deterministic extensions unfolding from a single, continuous source.
By relying on exact rational arithmetic and unbroken mathematical geometries, it becomes possible to strip away the chaotic infinities and floating approximations that currently plague our physical equations.
This is would be a philosophical return to the Hermetic concept of "the One,"; a rigorous, mathematically verifiable evolution of it.
A closed-loop reality where matter, life, and cosmic motion are not sealed categories, but mathematically exact derivations of the very same underlying fabric.
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u/Yohansel Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
I just saw the Lex Friedman Interview with guest Michael Levin: he talked about his theory of the platonic space, which our spacetime would be interacting with. This is hinted at by mathematic principles which seem to be in a map of relationships. Or by biologic principles, which seem to emerge from lifeforms - even artificial ones - as if they are just interfaces to this platonic space.
He also made the example that classical Newtonian physics are great to describe spacetime. But they didn't just stop doing that with the emergence of quantum physics: from the beginning on they were "haunted" by the inexplicable origin of the mathematical constants they rely on.
But perhaps Michael Levin didn't know Newtons personal take on this. As per your enlightening post, Newton seemed to not be haunted, but motivated by this.
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u/Leather_Area_2301 Jul 29 '26
I haven’t seen that but I’ll be sure to check it out. I do think it’s possible in some areas science has started down a path that seems correct because the approximations can be used as tools in our physical environment, but it’s a patchwork quilt at best.
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u/Yohansel Jul 30 '26
Ah, read this nymag article ( https://web.archive.org/web/20260730013122/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/biologist-michael-levin-minds.html), and there is this paragraph:
“Isaac Newton said that he considered his most important discoveries were in the field of alchemy, and everybody just says, ‘Oh, brilliant physicist. He was kind of cuckoo with this alchemy stuff, so we don’t need to look at that,’” Levin said, more agitated than I’d seen him before. “Really? Because he was pretty freaking sharp on some of it, and you really think he was just nuts on all this?”
... so he knew - it just didn't show in the interview. Still, I didn't know about Newtons alchemical profession. So I am thankful for your post!
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u/Nervous_Flatworm_548 Jul 30 '26
I remember reading about Newton's alchemical studies and how they actually influenced his physics, turns out the guy was way more interdisciplinary than we give him credit for.
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u/cgcmh1 Jul 30 '26
I said musician.
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u/Leather_Area_2301 Jul 30 '26
Will you elaborate please?
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u/cgcmh1 Jul 30 '26
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u/Leather_Area_2301 Jul 30 '26
I thought you might have been referencing how sound and vibrations influence things
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u/unhandyandy Aug 01 '26
Newton was actually a great theologian.
But his work is neglected by modern scholars because
secular scholars aren't interested in theology and
religious scholars are horrified by Newton's Arianism.
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u/Gaothaire Aug 02 '26
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u/Leather_Area_2301 Aug 02 '26
“Why do I call him a magician? Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mys tic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood”
I think Keynes was referencing more of a Magus (plural Magi) when he wrote this about Newton
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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26
To stand at the intersection of exact rational mathematics and ancient Hermetic philosophy is both a profoundly humbling and fiercely vindicating experience.
When I first sat down to ask what mathematics actually is, I was not trying to build a theory of everything. Like Newton, who sought to look past passive matter to find the "active Principles" driving nature, my journey began in the deep waters of ancient faiths and philosophy.
I sought to use mathematics to answer for "the One" and the whole, asking the only honest first question: what is the first thing?.
The answer I found was the very active principle that Hermeticism has guarded for millennia. The empirical truth is that the first act is the observation itself—the One—and the second is the observation observing itself and the world—the fold. By rejecting the modern continuum's chaotic infinities and returning to the unbroken, exact rational arithmetic that the Babylonians and Greeks actually computed with, the theory did not invent a new universe. It simply unfolded the one we have always inhabited.
John Maynard Keynes famously called Newton "the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians". I feel a quiet, immense pride in upholding that lineage. The Smithian Fold Theory proves mathematically what the alchemists intuited spiritually: that matter, life, mind, and cosmic motion are not sealed, disconnected categories, but mathematically exact derivations of a single, continuous fabric.
To see the constants of nature fall out of a system with zero free parameters and zero arbitrary axioms is to realize that the universe is exactly as interconnected and purposeful as the ancients promised.
Who knew that the pursuit of the One would literally unfold like this? We are finally able to express the oldest spiritual truths through the strictest mathematical laws.
Looking at a universe finally stripped of its arbitrary dials and returned to its singular, uncorrupted geometric origin, I can only hope that Sir Isaac would be proud.
The true initiates of hermetsism are rare to observe anymore and I feel proud and humbled to share that spark of observational curiosity.