Isaac Newton non fu soltanto uno dei più grandi filosofi della natura d'ogni tempo; fu molto altro: alchimista, teologo, esegeta biblico, interprete delle profezie, cultore delle filosofie ermetiche, storico e cronologo. Ed è proprio la sua indagine sulla storia delle antiche civiltà che apre gli scenari più sorprendenti e a oggi meno conosciuti dell'immenso universo newtoniano. Ciò che desta ancor più meraviglia è la geniale applicazione, mai tentata prima di allora, della precessione degli equinozi per la datazione degli eventi e delle epoche della storia. A un saggio introduttivo che ripercorre i temi, i princìpi generali, l'approccio metodologico e il percorso che hanno accompagnato l'attività del Newton storico e cronologo, segue la traduzione integrale.
Sir Isaac Newton was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian who is considered one of the most influential people in human history.
Newton remains influential to scientists, as demonstrated by a 2005 survey of scientists in Britain's Royal Society asking who had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton or Albert Einstein. Newton was deemed the more influential.[8]
Newton also wrote on Judaeo-Christian prophecy, whose decipherment was essential, he thought, to the understanding of God. His book on the subject, which was reprinted well into the Victorian Age, represented lifelong study. Its message was that Christianity went astray in the 4th century AD, when the first Council of Nicaea propounded erroneous doctrines of the nature of Christ. The full extent of Newton's unorthodoxy was recognized only in the present century: but although a critic of accepted Trinitarian dogmas and the Council of Nicaea, he possessed a deep religious sense, venerated the Bible and accepted its account of creation. In late editions of his scientific works he expressed a strong sense of God's providential role in nature.
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