optical investigations. On the basis of this method subsequent generations built thermodynamics, electrodynamics, the theory of relativity, and quantum mechanics. To the Newtonian mode of setting forth “principles” the modern age added a mighty mathematical generalization, examples of which are embodied in the equations of Maxwell, Schrödinger, Dirac, and others. The genius for finding effective “principles,” the subtle art of purposeful quantitative experiment, and mathematical mastery—all this together determined the eternity of Newton’s scientific production.

On the other hand, in contrast to these, if one may put it so, “eternal truths,” Newton’s hypotheses seem at first glance to stand apart. Newton’s distrust, skepticism, and even mocking attitude toward the hypotheses of others and toward his own hypotheses are naturally to be connected above all with Newton’s personal qualities, with his exceptional strictness toward himself and toward his own statements. Of great significance, probably, was also the influence of I. Barrow. In Barrow’s Lectures on Optics and Geometry, as well as in his Lectures on Mathematics, there are many skeptical and ironic remarks by Newton’s teacher concerning physical and mathematical hypotheses, in particular on the question of the nature of light. The famous passage in Barrow’s Lectures on Optics on the cause of colors, always incriminated against Newton as co-editor of the edition, should probably be regarded as a deliberate parody and satire on the optical hypotheses of the peripatetics. It is noteworthy that Newton’s very first major scientific work, his own Lectures on Optics (1669), unlike all its predecessors and in rupture with the established tradition, contains no hypotheses on the nature of light. Meanwhile, unlike Barrow’s lectures, Newton’s lectures have a profoundly physical character. Thus hypotheses non fingo was, if not declared, then in fact fully realized already in Newton’s opus primus.

And yet, despite Newton’s rigor with respect to hypotheses, [[unclear: continuation cut off]]

Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius. Newton undoubtedly read the latter and knew him; a copy of Lucretius was in Newton’s own library^4.

Atomic conceptions reached Newton further through contemporaries, such predecessors as Galileo, Gassendi, Descartes and, probably most effectively, through Newton’s teacher and friend I. Barrow. Barrow’s theological sermons and his Lectures on Mathematics are sprinkled with mentions of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius.

Newton quite clearly expressed his atomistic positions in his youth in the second part of the Lectures on Optics^5, contrasting the Peripatetics, for whom everything was limited to words, with “the Epicureans and other new authors who strove to investigate the nature and cause of colors.” Newton himself, it is true, nowhere explicitly defends the corpuscular theory of light. However, while decisively rejecting the views of Aristotle, Descartes, and Hooke, Newton nowhere in the Lectures on Optics casts doubt on the views of Democritus and Epicurus. Moreover, from certain expressions and words breaking through in Newton’s text of the Lectures, it is easy to guess that, in speaking of “light rays,” Newton had before his mind’s eye the image of flying particles. He writes of light rays that they are “resilicent” (rebounding) or “fluxissent” (flowing), and mentions rays “succesive incidentes” (successively incident).

The hypnosis of traditions and fashionable currents, however, could not be decisive for the independent and critical mind of Newton. There must have existed arguments that truly convinced Newton of the correctness of atomism.

What were the arguments of the Epicurean doctrine that could have convinced Newton? First of all, it is clear that for the young creator of the analysis of infinitely small quantities the erroneousness of the mathematical paradox of the Eleatics, reproduced in the tradition of Democritus and Epicurus by Lucretius, was entirely obvious^6:

“If, then, there will be nothing smallest,
The tiniest body will consist of infinite parts:
One half will always find its own half,
And for division there will nowhere be any limit at all.
What difference then will you make between the smallest thing and the universe?
None, believe me, none. For, although there is no
End to the universe, even the tiniest things
Will nevertheless consist of infinite parts.
Sound, however, sense denies that this should be believed
And can no longer agree that this be recognized as impossible,
The existence of that which is wholly indivisible, being
In essence the smallest. And if it exists,
It must be admitted that the primordial bodies are dense and eternal.”

Barrow devotes several eloquent pages in his Lectiones mathematicae^7 to refuting this paradox.

S. I. VAVILOV

The proofs of the ancients, however, were by no means limited to the indicated mathematical sophism. The mobility of substance, its continuous changes, discreteness, and capacity for division into very small parts necessarily led to the conclusion that substance consists of particles. Could these particles be arbitrarily small? Against this spoke the remarkable fact of the boundedness of phenomena, their recurrence, renewal, and heredity ^8.

“Since then, finally, firm limits have been set
For each kind of things, for their growth and life,
Since it has been established what, according to the laws of nature,
They can beget and what they absolutely cannot,
Since nothing changes, but all is unaltered,
So that birds always, in their varied plumage,
Preserve on their bodies the markings proper to each breed,
Therefore all matter must remain unchanged
In the body of individual things.”

The reasoning of Lucretius cited here may be interpreted as follows. If bodies consisted of an infinite number of infinitely small or infinitely divisible parts, then the possible combinations would be infinitely varied. The restoration of former forms would be improbable.

It is precisely the fact of the inevitable return of one and the same forms in phenomena of heredity and chemical transformations that necessarily testifies to the finite dimensions of particles. Under this condition the probability of the restoration of former forms becomes finite.

Reasoning further about the forms of atoms and the ways in which they combine, Lucretius also introduces further limitations, based on the boundedness of the forms of natural bodies ^9.

“The first-beginnings of things, as you will now easily be convinced,
Are diverse in their forms only up to certain limits”

and further ^10:

“One must not think, however, that everything can combine
In every possible way.”

These arguments of the ancients, reproduced by Lucretius, are irrefutable and retain their force to this day as an accessible and indisputable proof of atomism. Only at the end of his life, in the last editions of the Opticks, did Newton, as we shall see later, mention precisely this proof of the ancients as also his own chief argument. The argument set forth in essence transformed the hypothesis into a principle. But Newton, to the end of his days, did not venture upon such a transformation.

Newton’s formal neutrality with respect to atomism, expressed in the Lectures on Optics, was preserved also in his later memoirs and letters concerning optical discoveries, and, in particular, in his large “hypothetical” memoir of 1675, read before the Royal Society but not published during Newton’s lifetime:

“One hypothesis explaining the properties of light considered in various of my articles”^11.

In this memoir, dealing chiefly with the ether and its vibrations caused by light, Newton speaks of the atomistic conception as something self-evident. In many places, without any explanations, he mentions “parts,” “particles,” “corpuscles” of matter. He writes, for example:^12

“In liquids one should not imagine the surfaces of all their parts as plane, nor the planes of the surface parts as always directed in the same way, despite their continuous motion.”

The most important part for clarifying Newton’s views in these years is the last part of the memoir, which offers an explanation of the natural coloration of bodies. This “hypothesis” later became for Newton a “theory,” as may be judged from the fact that it was transferred practically without alteration into the main text of the Opticks of 1704. Newton, as is well known, placed the hypothetical views in this book among the “Queries” located at the end. With Newton’s extreme caution in this respect, such an arrangement, repeated in all editions of the Opticks, could not have been accidental.

If modern physical terminology is applied, Newton uses interference phenomena to explain the natural colors of bodies. He starts from a model of the structure of matter analogous to the structure of the developed layer in a Lippmann photograph.^13

“The smallest parts of natural bodies are to some degree transparent, and the darkness of these bodies arises from the multitude of reflections occurring in their internal parts.”

“Between the parts of dark or colored bodies there are many interstices filled with media of other densities.”

“The parts of bodies and the interstices between them must not be less than a certain definite thickness in order that they be dark and colored.”

“The transparent parts of bodies, according to their different sizes, must reflect rays of one color and transmit rays of another color.”

“The parts of bodies on which their colors depend are denser than the medium filling the interstices between them.”

“The thickness of the constituent parts of material bodies can be estimated from their colors.”

In these “propositions” the foundation of Newton’s theory is set forth. He concludes it with words that testify to the complete concreteness of Newton’s ideas with respect to the hypothesis he proposed.^14

“It is not impossible that, with time, as microscopes are improved, it may be possible to discover the particles of bodies on which their color depends*). For if these instruments are improved, or can be improved, so much as to present with sufficient distinctness objects five hundred or six hundred times larger than they appear to our unaided eye, then I hope that we shall be able to discover some, the largest of

) It is noteworthy that, reproducing these words in the Opticks*, Newton added: “if indeed microscopes have not already attained such a degree of perfection.”

these corpuscles. With the aid of a microscope magnifying three or four thousand times, perhaps all the particles will be revealed, except those that produce black.”

In these words the consistency of the experimental physicist is especially clear. Apparently, for the first time in the history of science Newton drew from the atomistic conception a conclusion in principle accessible to experimental verification, and pointed to it as the future “experimentum crucis” of atomism. We now know well that Newton was mistaken in his quantitative estimate by approximately two orders of magnitude. But in principle he proved to be right: the electron microscope has now made at least very large molecules accessible to observation by the eye.

In the memoir under discussion Newton puts forward a very large number of diverse hypotheses, having at the beginning of the memoir disclaimed responsibility for them[^15]:

“I myself shall accept neither this nor any other hypothesis, believing that they are not obligatory for me... However, in describing them, I shall sometimes, for brevity of speech and for a more convenient exposition, speak of them as though I had accepted them and believed in them.”

While showing his mastery in the application of the atomistic hypothesis, Newton nevertheless nowhere declares himself its adherent.

At the time the memoir was written, Newton’s physical positions were still very unclear. The spirit of Descartes is felt to a considerable degree in the memoir. Here one can read, for example, and not at all in a critical sense, of the “ether in the vortices of the Sun and the planets”[^16]. In these years Newton was apparently still wavering between Descartes’s matter-filled space and the void of Epicurus–Lucretius.

Investigations in mechanics and astronomy, the discovery of the law of gravitation, of which the world learned from the Principia, radically, however, changed Newton’s views. In place of Descartes’s purely mechanical conception of direct contacts and impacts between bodies as the sole cause of their accelerations, Newton’s formal dynamical scheme appears. In it bodies are considered as centers of forces acting upon one another at a distance. The mechanical ether—the intermediary between bodies—is eliminated by Newton as an obstacle to the regular motion of the heavenly bodies. The picture of the world, at least on its formal side, is that of empty space in which bodies move, interacting at a distance. The atoms of Epicurus–Lucretius become the living embodiment of Newton’s world. Only, unlike the ancients, the particles are endowed with forces acting between them.

In the Principia itself the question of atoms is deliberately bypassed by the author. Speaking, for example, of attractive and repulsive forces between particles in a liquid, Newton prefers to remain on the ground of mathematical formalism[^17]:

“But whether elastic fluids really consist of particles repelling one another is a question of physics. Here we have proved mathematically the property of a fluid consisting of particles of such a kind, so that the philosophers may have an occasion to examine this question.”

Newton even provides a drawing illustrating the arrangement of particles in a liquid1, again, however, without abandoning his formal position.

Meanwhile, behind these strict mathematical scenes of the Principia, Newton’s “hypothetical” thought was undoubtedly at work. There is no doubt that he constantly reflected on questions of the structure of bodies and of atomism, especially in connection with the continual experiments in his chemical laboratory, which for many years occupied one of the most important places in his allocation of time. Unfortunately, to this day we know very little about these chemical works of Newton.

It may, however, be asserted with complete certainty that during these years Newton, as a result of the conclusions to which mechanics and astronomy and an immense body of experimental physicochemical material led him, arrived at a remarkably profound, far-sighted, and correct picture of the microstructure of matter.

This picture, in fragments from which one must reconstruct the whole, was set forth by Newton in various editions of the Opticks and in the short memoir “On the Nature of Acids,” written around 1692 and published in English translation in 1710 as an appendix to the well-known encyclopedic Technical Dictionary of John Harris.

In the Opticks—a work of a physical character—Newton generally speaks much more definitely and concretely about the particles of bodies than in the Principia, and not only in the appendix, in the famous “Queries,” but also in the main text. Already in the first edition of the Opticks of 1704, Newton, proceeding from the transparency of bodies and from their other properties, asserts that bodies must be extremely porous, that, for example, “in water there are forty times more pores than parts”2. In the second English edition of the Opticks of 1717, the following very important lines were added to this3:

“It is very difficult, although perhaps not altogether impossible, to understand what kind of images of bodies can be sufficiently numerous for this... Let us imagine that these particles of bodies are arranged so that the intervals or empty spaces between them are equal in magnitude to them all taken together, that the particles can be composed of other particles, smaller ones, the empty space between which is equal in magnitude to all these smaller particles, and that in a similar manner these smaller particles are again composed of still smaller ones, which all together in magnitude are equal to all the pores or empty spaces between them, and so on until we reach solid particles having no pores or void within them... but what their internal structure is, we do not yet know.”

Ahead of the age and of many generations of investigators—physicists and chemists—Newton thus arrives at a “hierarchical” system of the structure of matter, at the summit of which stand truly indivisible elementary particles. The higher the number of the member of the hierarchy, the broader and more porous the system. In the concrete example of a hierarchical system considered by Newton, the ratio of the volume of pores \(V\) to the volume of solid particles \(v\) at \(n\) stages is

\[ V : v = 2^n - 1. \]

One may, naturally, ask why Newton proposes a “hierarchical” system, and does not take as if it were a simpler lattice structure (analogous to the modern crystalline lattice). Such a lattice could quite well have explained the porosity of matter. We shall see that the decisive argument in favor of the “hierarchical” system for Newton was provided by chemical phenomena.

Instead of the various solid, absolutely indestructible “first principles” of the ancient atomists, Newton advances the brilliant concept of a hierarchy of systems of successively decreasing strength. Only at the summit of the hierarchy are there (perhaps) genuinely indestructible “elementary particles.” It is possible that Newton considered them always identical, assuming a single primary matter and transferring the diversity of atoms to the subsequent systems. However, no definite statements by Newton on this question have been preserved.

It is easy to see that the possibility of the “hierarchical” conception of particles was determined for Newton by the idea of central forces that had captivated him. There is hardly any need to point out that the modern images of molecules, atoms, atomic nuclei, and elementary particles, in their fundamental aspect, correspond quite fully to Newton’s scheme.

The obscurities of the lines cited from various editions of the Opticks are substantially supplemented by the small memoir “On the Nature of Acids.” This memoir is remarkable already in its form. It is an extremely compressed outline, apparently written in haste, perhaps for an entire book. It sets forth thoughts of extraordinary importance. First of all, the chemical actions of acids are explained by the great attractive force of their action[^21]:

“By means of this attractive force they (the acids) envelop the particles of bodies, whether of metallic or stony nature, and adhere closely to them in all bodies.”

Newton, repeating an idea already expressed by Bacon, speaks of the motion of particles, connecting it with thermal phenomena[^21]:

“The particles of bodies move the liquid and excite heat... Heat is the motion of a particle.”

Most remarkable, however, are Newton’s thoughts on chemical transformations. Basing himself on the “hierarchical” scheme of the structure of matter just discussed, Newton writes the following[^21]:

“We shall call the particles of gold which mutually attract one another in the smallest quantity particles of the first composition, the sum of such particles particles of the second composition, and so on. Mercury and aqua regia can penetrate only into the pores of the last composition, but not into the others.”

Immediately after this come the most important lines, in which not without justification one may see the first general hint at the existence of a system analogous to the atomic nucleus, not subject to destruction by ordinary chemical agents[^22]:

“If a certain solvent could penetrate into the pores of particles of the least complexity, or if it were possible to divide particles of the first and second complexity, then gold would become liquid, or at least soft, and if it could be made to ferment, it would turn into some other body.”

If we correctly understand the quoted lines of Newton, they contain a principled explanation of the alchemists’ failure to transform gold into other elements. Even such powerful reagents as mercury and aqua regia destroy only higher compounds (in modern language, intramolecular bonds between atoms). In a substance there are particles of the second complexity (chemical atoms in the modern understanding), for whose destruction known chemical reagents are insufficient. The first complexity (the atomic nucleus in our understanding) possesses still greater strength and stability. Newton mentions the fundamental possibility of making gold (its atom and nucleus) “ferment.” We now know what sort of extraordinary agents (mesotrons, neutrons, etc.) are needed for this. Newton only anticipated the possibility of the existence of these agents.

It would seem that Newton had no (known to us) grounds for differentiating the nucleus and the atom as a whole. However, as though foreseeing the future, Newton reserves for the chemical atom two degrees of complexity: the first and the second, with the first complexity (the nucleus) having a considerably smaller volume. If one takes into account Newton’s extraordinary caution in words and terms, then such a division can truly be considered providential.

Thus, with sufficient justification, one may discern in Newton a clear idea of the complexity of the chemical atom and a conjecture about the existence of an extremely strong small atomic nucleus. In this sense Newton was Rutherford’s forerunner.

Newton’s corpuscular views are set forth in greater detail and more clearly by him in the later editions of the Opticks: in the first Latin edition (1706) and in the second Latin edition (1717). In the 28th Query of the Opticks, Newton, for the second time in his works after the early Lectures on Optics, recalls as his allies the Greek atomists[^22]:

“Moreover, in order to reject such a medium (ether), we have the authority of those most ancient and most celebrated philosophers of Greece and Phoenicia, who accepted the void, atoms, and the gravity of atoms as the first principles of their philosophy.”

The famous, lengthy 31st “Query” is wholly devoted to the corpuscular view. Newton firmly professes an atomistic outlook, passing from the skeptical language of an opponent of hypotheses to the language of a convinced believer[^23]:

“It seems probable to me that God in the beginning gave matter the form of solid, massive, impenetrable, movable particles of such sizes and figures, and with such properties and proportions to ...”

to the space which would best suit the purpose for which he created them. These first-class particles, being solid, incomparably harder than any porous body composed of them, are so hard that they never wear out and never break into pieces. No ordinary force is capable of dividing what God himself created at the first creation. Since the particles continue to remain whole, they may compose bodies of the same nature and structure for ever.”

Further, Newton essentially repeats the main and most important argument of Epicurus–Lucretius in favor of the existence of indestructible atoms of finite dimensions, which was discussed above. Newton writes:

“If they (the particles) were to wear out, or be broken into pieces, then the nature of things depending on them would change. Water and earth, composed of old worn particles and their fragments, would not have the same nature and structure as water and earth composed of whole particles at the beginning. Therefore their nature must be constant; the changes of corporeal things must manifest themselves only in the various separations and new combinations and motions of such constant particles.”

The main subject discussed in the 31st question is the forces of interaction between particles. Newton considers different kinds of forces, mentioning, for example, a special kind of attraction[^24]:

“... extending to such small distances that they have hitherto eluded observation, and, perhaps, electrical attraction extends to such small distances even without excitation by friction.”

In these words Newton again reveals his extraordinary intuition in divining the fundamental features of natural phenomena, passing over details and complexities.

In the 31st question, more concretely than before, the idea of the hierarchical structure of matter is again repeated[^25]:

“The smallest particles of matter may cohere by means of the strongest attractions, composing larger particles, but weaker ones; many of these may also cohere and compose still larger particles with still weaker force—and so on in a series of successions, until the progression ends with the largest particles, on which the chemical actions and the colors of natural bodies depend: by the cohesion of such particles, bodies of sensible magnitude are formed.”

These words, completely without any changes, could be placed as an epigraph to any modern book on the structure of matter.

The 31st question was Newton’s last word on the structure of matter. Over the course of almost half a century, as we have seen, Newton spoke many times, but in an extremely fragmentary, sparing, and reluctant manner, on the question of the discrete structure of matter.

However, from these splinters and fragments of thought, whose true breadth and grandeur are forever concealed from us behind the severe strictness of Newton’s official physics, we nevertheless recognize

a brilliant conception, far in advance not only of his contemporaries, but also of many generations of Newton’s descendants.

Newton’s principal conclusions (always based on experiment) may be expressed in the following propositions:

1. Matter is discrete and has an extremely porous structure.

2. At the basis of this structure there are dense, perhaps absolutely dense, and immutable elementary particles.

3. These particles are bound to one another by special forces, forming first of all exceedingly strong compact systems of very small dimensions. These systems, in turn, are joined into new, less strong and more voluminous formations, and so on, up to the large bodies familiar to us. Interparticle forces may sometimes be of an electrical nature.

4. The chemical and optical actions of bodies are determined by the mutual actions of complex systems that are internally bound together relatively weakly. The failures in the mutual transformation of chemical elements show that the basic, elementary particles of matter are bound together extremely strongly and that, in order to destroy them (whereby transformations of elements might occur), special agents are required.

5. The particles that undergo chemical change and determine chemical properties, according to Newton, have dimensions of the order of \(10^{-5}\) cm.

6. Heat corresponds to the motion of particles of varying degrees of complexity.

In considering these “propositions,” we become convinced that Newton foresaw everything in the field of atomism that was possible in his time, on the basis of the experimental material available to him. He was not mistaken in anything essential. With his eagle eye he discerned, from chemical and optical data, the outlines of that theory of the structure of matter on the basis of which the new physics is developing.

The author of the Principia, who, as we have said, in fact from the earliest years of his work advanced the slogan “hypotheses non fingo,” was, as we see despite this, the greatest master of physical hypothesis. Only in our time, when the atom has become an indisputable fact, when humanity is beginning to take possession of the atom and its depths, can the gift of Newton’s hypothetical intuition be fully appreciated. Much in this sphere of his activity remained incomprehensible and inaccessible to his contemporaries and descendants, and did not exert the influence it deserved on the development of science.

But there is no doubt that Newton’s atomistic conception makes the image of Newton, in our eyes, still loftier, still more attractive and unrepeatable. It may be said without exaggeration that Newton perceived “classical physics” to its very end, to its ultimate depths, and that only the non-classical, relativistic and quantum features of nature remained beyond the bounds of his intuition.

S. I. VAVILOV

APPENDIX

NOTE ON I. NEWTON’S MEMOIR

“On the Nature of Acids”

It has been shown in the text that certain passages of the memoir “On the Nature of Acids” are of great importance for understanding Newton’s corpuscular conception and his views on alchemical attempts at transmutation.

Meanwhile, it is precisely with this memoir that certain circumstances, still not clarified to this day, are connected.

The memoir was undoubtedly not intended for publication; it is probably notes from Newton’s scientific diary. John Harris, who first published the memoir in 1710 in an appendix to the introduction at the beginning of the second volume of the Technical Dictionary in Latin and in his own English translation, reports the following:

“With his (Newton’s) consent, I have placed at the end of this introduction his Latin article ‘On Acids’ with my translation. This article, not previously published, was given by him to a friend about 1692. If the article had come into my hands earlier, I would have placed it in the dictionary under the heading ‘Acids.’”

The Latin text and Harris’s English translation are accompanied by the following note of his:

“The small difference between the translation and the Latin text arose from the fact that the translation was made from another copy, slightly different from this Latin article. And since that copy was reviewed and approved by the famous author, I did not change the translation.”

When the Latin and English texts are compared, however, a substantial difference is found, and moreover in the most important passage (from our point of view). I give, for comparison:

1) the Latin text,
2) Harris’s English “translation,”
3) my translation of the Latin original,
4) my translation of Harris’s English text.

Original Text

Aurum particulas habet se mutuo trahentes, minimarum summae vocentur primae compositionis, horum summarum summae secundae compositionis, etc. Potest Mercuris, potest Aqua Regia poros pervadere, qui particulas ultimae Compositionis interjacent et non alios.

Si posset menstruum alios pervadere vel si Auri partes primae et secundae compositionis possent separari fieret aurum, vel fluidum vel slatem magis molleabile. Si Aurum fermentescere posset in aliud quodvis corpus possit transformari.

Harris’s Translation

All bodies have particles which do mutually attract one another; the sums of the least of which may be called particles of the first composition and the collections and aggregates arising from the primary sums, or the sums of these sums may be called particles of the second composition, etc. Mercury and Aqua Regis can pervade those pores of Gold or Tin, which lye between the particles of its last composition, but they can’t get any further into it, for if any menstruum could do that, or if the particles of the first or perhaps of the second composition of Gold could be separated; that metal might be made to become a fluid, or at least more soft. And if Gold could be brought once to ferment and putrify, it might be turned into any other body whatsoever. And so of Tin, or any other bodies; as common nourishment is turned of animals and vegetables.

Translation of the Latin Text

We shall call the particles of gold, which attract one another, in the smallest sum, particles of the first composition, and the sum of such particles particles of the second composition. Mercury and aqua regia can penetrate only into the pores of the last composition, and no others.

If some solvent could penetrate into the pores of particles of the smallest composition, or if the particles of the first and second composition could be separated, then gold would become liquid, or

Translation of Harris’s English Translation

In all bodies there exist particles which attract one another; the smallest sum of such particles may be called particles of the first composition, while the union and aggregate arising from the first sums, or the sum of these sums, may be called particles of the second composition, and so on. Mercury and aqua regia can penetrate into the pores of gold and tin located between their particles of the last composition, but they cannot pass further inward. For if some—

at least soft. If gold could be made to ferment, it would turn into some other body.

If any solvent were capable of this, i.e., if particles of gold of the first complexity and, perhaps, of the second could separate, then the metal would become liquid, or at least soft. And if gold could be made to ferment, then it could turn into some other body.

Likewise with tin and other bodies, just as ordinary food is transformed into the bodies of animals and plants.

From a comparison of the texts it is clear that in Harris the passage indicated by me acquires an unclear meaning as a result of the addition, in the English translation, of the last phrase. The likening of the transformation of gold and tin to the transformation of food into animal and plant tissues makes it possible to suppose that, perhaps, in the preceding text the discussion was not of the transmutation of gold, but of certain chemical reactions with gold.

If, on the contrary, one thinks that it is precisely the transmutation of gold that is being compared with the transformation of food into living tissues, then it would follow from this that Newton regarded transmutation as a task entirely possible and easily realizable. In the Latin text the last phrase is absent; the meaning of the preceding text is therefore unambiguous, and the text as a whole better corresponds to Newton’s cautious position on alchemical problems.

Harris does not indicate the provenance of the second Latin text that he used for his translation. In any case, it is natural to suppose that the approbation by Newton, which Harris mentions, was given without a careful reading of the translation. The changes in the second Latin text from which Harris translated may have been introduced by a copyist who allowed himself to “explain” Newton, to make the text more comprehensible.

In any case, one must deeply regret that Newton’s witty and extraordinarily farsighted idea of a stable and practically indestructible “first complexity” in the structure of matter remained incomprehensible to his contemporaries and descendants.

LITERATURE

1. Delambre, Notice sur la vie et le travail de M. Lagrange. Mémoires de la classe des sc. math. et phys. de l’Institut de France 13, p. 46. Histoire de classe mathem. (1812).

2. Sir Isaac Newton, Optics. Translation from the third English edition of 1721. S. I. Vavilov, 1927, p. 312.

1. S. I. Vavilov, “Newton’s Lectures on Optics” (in I. Newton, Lectures on Optics. 1946, p. 260).
2. R. de Vellamil, Newton: The Man, p. 84.
3. I. Newton, Opuscula, Lausanne et Genevae (1744), t. II, p. 182.
4. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, I, trans. F. A. Petrovsky, 1946, p. 41.
5. Barrow, The Mathematical Works, Cambridge, 1860, p. 145.
6. Lucretius, ib., p. 41.
7. Lucretius, ib., p. 101.
8. Lucretius, ib., p. 113.
9. Th. Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London, vol. III (1757), p. 248.
10. Th. Birch, ib., p. 259.
11. Th. Birch, ib., p. 297.
12. Th. Birch, ib., p. 308.
13. Th. Birch, ib., p. 249.
14. Th. Birch, ib., p. 253.
15. Sir Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. A. N. Krylov.
16. Ibidem.
17. Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks, p. 209.
18. Ib., p. 210.
19. The translation cited is made from the Latin original (cf. Appendix). I used the edition: Lexicon Technicum by John Harris D. D. and FRS., the Second Edition vol. II, London, 1723.
20. Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks, p. 287.
21. Ib., p. 311.
22. Ib., p. 292.
23. Ib., p. 306.