NEWTON, ISAAC | TWO HIGHLY IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS RELATING TO NEWTON’S HISTORICAL RESEARCHES

NEWTON, ISAAC
Two Highly Important Documents relating to Newton’s historical researches

Autograph Manuscript of notes from ancient historians. Circa 1670. 2 pages in Latin on a single leaf; a horizontal tear to the leaf expertly mended.

[TOGETHER WITH] Contemporary Manuscript Copy of Newton’s “A Short Chronicle from the first memory of things in Europe to the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great.” Circa 1720. 24 pp in English; horizontal crease mark across the center.

NEWTON TRANSFORMS HISTORY INTO A SCIENCE.

Isaac Newton pioneered the scientific study of history. Drawing on the physics of the Principia, Newton founded a new science of chronology based on celestial mechanics – a paradigm shift enabling the objective measurement and quantification of the often vague datings of history. Using the astronomical clockwork of the heavens as an objective measuring device, Newton’s chronology applies the precession of the equinoxes to the exact dating of historical events. The central astronomical argument of Newton’s Chronology is that if the exact quantitative positioning of the equinoctial points can be determined for one ancient historical event, comparative analysis and the principle of recession enables the deduction of the exact dating of other known historical events. Newton professed to have found such an exact positioning of the stars for Jason’s expedition with the Argonauts, and he himself had explained and quantified the precession of the equinoxes in Book III of the Principia (prop XXXIX, prob XX).

Newton wrote both a long treatise on chronology and an abridged version. The longer work was published only posthumously in 1727 as The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, but the shorter treatise found its way into public hands as a manuscript beginning in 1717. Newton himself records that his “particular friend” Princess Caroline – the Princess of Wales and (later) the wife of King George II – expressed a wish to see his Chronology, and he accordingly presented her with an abstract of it, “thinking it in that shape the properest for Her Perusal.” Titled “A Short Chronicle from the first memory of things in Europe to the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great,” Newton’s abstract addresses events dating from 1120 BCE to 331 BCE. “A Short Chronicle” is its own distinct creation, differing markedly in style and content from Newton’s longer Chronology. Sparse in form, the work has been compared to “a businessman’s ledger”: the text of Newton’s “Short Chronicle” consists of a brief introduction followed by a catalogue of chronologically arranged historical events (with some of the listings having varying degrees of explanatory comment). Very little is known about the actual writing process which brought this text into being; it is not even known whether Newton had worked at composing such a text prior to Princess Caroline’s request. Some scholars think that the method by which Newton deduced his particular historical datings bears resemblance to the way he revised Kepler’s Rudolphine Tables (for the purpose of revising the Gregorian calendar). The text was published in 1727 as the opening section of the longer work The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended.

The manuscript leaf offered here contains Newton’s notes and transcriptions from ancient historical and geographical sources, including: two lengthy citations from Procopius’ Secret History (relating to Justinian and the Vandal War fought in Africa); a lengthy citation from Eunapius’ Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists (relating to the destruction of the Serapeum, the Alexandrian Temple which housed a portion of the Library of Alexandria); together with notes on geography from two other unidentified sources. Newton apparently culled this particular manuscript for use in at least three of his writings: the Eunapius text is cited both in his posthumously published work on prophecy (Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John) and also in his unpublished and long-nurtured opus on The History of the Church; while some of the Procopius text is found cited in Newton's unpublished work on the Apocalypse, Tuba Quarta.

The present manuscript copy of the “Short Chronicle” is thought to have belonged to the antiquary Maurice Johnson, and it was very possibly a presentation copy from Newton himself. The manuscript tradition of the “Short Chronicle” has not been formally studied, and no formal census of existing copies has been undertaken. Some very small number of copies — perhaps 3 or 4 — are known to have been distributed by Newton, and some small number were further illicitly copied in France. As Oxford MS 361(1)A evidences, Newton is known to have himself written out copies of the text, but it is uncertain whether Newton himself wrote out any of the distributed copies. Newton and Johnson were correspondents; and given their mutual interest in history and antiquities — Newton was in fact an honorary member of the...