“Mummy, did you know it’s really easy to make an element?”
“Pardon, Darling?” I queried politely, playing for time at this unseasonably early hour.
“It’s really easy to make an element”, my ten-year old daughter continued with sparkling eyes, warming to her subject. “All you do is this: you take two protons. When you stick two protons together one of them should become a neutron, and then you have the simplest element.”
My dazed intellect appeared from under the duvet. I urged it to reunite itself with me post-haste. It does not do to be groggy when one is trying to understand highly technical monologues spouted by one’s daughter. I realised with growing concern that I had absolutely no idea whether Maddie was right or wrong.
“And then,” she ploughed happily on, “if you get two neutrons and two protons, you get helium: which is the lightest gas, the second most simple gas, and my favourite.”
I gulped and said: “So one can make gold then?”
With no-nonsense practicality she despatched my query. “Mummy, she said, “gold is not an element.”
She is leaving me behind, stepping out in wellingtons into an area of knowledge into which I dared not even dip a big toe. I’m excited. I love knowledge, and anyone who can wade in where I can’t can be my foreign correspondent. I’m up for that.
Just for a moment, though, all that talk of creating elements went right to my head.
The search to change the chemistry of a material, to turn base metals into gold, is woven into the history of early chemistry like a vein through a marble. Chemistry won; alchemy was proved old enchanted poppycock.
I am on the side of alchemy, my daughter a product of the age of reason. And there is a man who spanned both.
His name was Newton; Isaac Newton.
He ushered in the dawn of the Age of Reason. But according to a man in the twentieth century, he was also the last of the alchemists.
John Maynard Keynes is known to posterity as a hugely influential economist. But for our purposes we must see him as even more: as a member of that group of intellectuals, the Bloomsbury set. As a patron of the arts, and as the man who grew to know Newton.
When Newton died, an icon in his own time, there was a box of papers which troubled those who dealt with his estate. It has become known as The Portsmouth Papers. It contained 329 separate papers deemed ‘unfit to publish’: about a third of which were concerned with turning base metals into gold.
A few glanced into the box over the next three hundred years. After his death a bishop took a quick look and, Keynes alleged, slammed the top back down on the box in horror.
Others since looked into the box and attempted a cover-up. It passed to Newton’s descendants until Gerard Wallop, 9th Earl of Portsmouth put them up for a spot of cash at Sotheby’s in 1936.
Where Keynes snapped many of them up.
A lifelong collector of Newton’s alchemical writings, Keynes was asked finally to present a paper on this neglected and slightly sensational area of the great man’s life.
The three hundredth anniversary of Newton’s birth was in 1942. But the war made it necessary to wait until 1946 to present his speech. And in April 1946, Keynes, that intellectual giant, died.
But he did leave the script behind him, for his brother to read in his place.
If you read anything in the next week, read this: an insightful pen portrait, the result of poring over the very papers Newton covered in thoughts, some prescient, some revolutionary, some crackpot.
Keynes wrote: “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 mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher’s treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood.
“He believed that these clues were to be found partly in the evidence of the heavens and in the constitution of elements ….. but also partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation in Babylonia.
“He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty – just as he himself wrapt the discovery of the calculus in a cryptogram when he communicated with Leibniz. By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate.”
We rarely know the worth of our own ideas. Only time will classify them mundane, prescient, revolutionary or crackpot.
Newton showed us there is room for all of them.
The full text of Keynes’ speech can be found here
Kate Shrewsday 
Love this post . . . thank Maddie for us, will you?
BTW: I just left this link for you on Cin’s post when the post man announced the arrival of Alchemistic:
http://nrhatch.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/fun-with-food-kids-lunches/
Tell Maddie she can thank me later. 😉
Thanks Nancy 🙂 We’ll have a detailed read together and negotiate lunch tomorrow!
In defense of alchemy: This science went far beyond what we think it was. We ridicule the “lead to gold” attempts. But with that example we can understand that alchemy had at its roots in the idea that all elements are connected, interact and are of forms that complement and interact with each other. The magic of alchemy is in that it allows the practitioner to connect physical, spiritual, and mental forces as a force to influence outcomes. It is the oldest version of the “just get connected” protocols proffered by all kinds of self help gurus They are all actually proponents of turning lead into gold in a metaphoric sense and there are legions of success stories illustrating the strength of the philosophies. It is not about lead to gold. It is about turning what is erroneously thought of as impossible to the possible as a paradigm for living.
Just beautifully put, Carl, thanks. Keyne makes the point in his text that Newton would take a problem and just reason his way through to a solution. Turning the seemingly impossible into the possible.
This feeling that the child is better informed that the parent only increases, Kate, I can assure you. I have been unable to help with maths for years now…. (and several other subjects, akershally. )
Your Maddie is pretty amazing: I wonder what she’ll do with her brains? Any inklings yet?
She fancies falconry, Pseu 🙂
🙂 Lovely!
I wonder if she’ll stay with this?
I have no idea. I find her totally baffling already!
Another good read. First of all: impressed with your daughter!
Second: I think people forget that he was a man of his time. Yes, he made one of the greatest scientific discoveries – or made us all aware of something that already existed, anyway; but alchemy was still a ‘science’ in his day, wasn’t it? It wasn’t crazy for him to believe in it; it just hadn’t been disproved yet. Doctors don’t bleed patients any more, that would be crazy…uh…well, actually, leeches are used in some treatments again. We are always hearing in the media that this is good for you no wait bad for you no wait some parts are good bits are bad. Knowledge grows, expands, discards, sees possibilities…
The real problem is labels.
I did enjoy this post; can you tell?
Brilliant point, Tilly. Lead and gold are so very closely related, we now find. Each idea is a possibility which may or may not be a dead end. And even now old ideas are being re-evaluated.
Yep: I could tell 😀 Thanks!
What a wonderful read and insight, Kate, but, I’m more in awe of Maddie. Wow! I remember those moments when it occurred to me, time and again, that our daughters were waaaaaaaay ahead of me at early ages. (they still are, but, I never let them know I know. ha!)
Clever people, kids:-) Very, very useful walking reference libraries! And now you are watching a cycle repeat itself with Kezzie. Isn’t life grand, Penny? Enjoy that first birthday. I’m so looking forward to the Birthday post when it comes!
Where was Maddie when I was struggling through Chem 11? I could have used her as a tutor. Between Maddie pondering protons, and Felix teaching maths to your puppy, I’d say you have a smart little family all around you! 🙂
Makes one humble, Maura 😀 I’m a thorn between so may roses. Except that I will add that the dog can’t do calculus yet, so Felix can’t be that talented.
The alchemists were just a bit ahead of their time (technologically speaking), One day we will be able to convert stuff by fiddling with atomic structures. But it will just be scientific toys, too costly to become a manufacturing basis.
(Howzat! I’m a futurologist)
Ta-da! You turned the post into the future by juggling a few isotopes! Sidey, you are an asset. A verbal alchemist in every way.
As your beautiful angel stories show.
Gold isn’t an element? Cor, your lass is a brainy one.
She has a penchant for this stuff 🙂
Helium is my daughter’s favorite gas as well, ever since she found what happens when you suck it out of a balloon and talk. Our girls should get together for a helium-assisted chat sometime.
It is sure to be a high point for both of them, Patti 😀
Clever Maddie – this is a lovely post, Kate! I can remember the feeling of trying to focus and concentrate as one of my sons spouted forth a profound truth before I had woken up (nothing to do with elements or gases, not the kind you talk about anyway) …
Sunshine xx