The Digital Index Chemicus: toward a digital tool for studying
Isaac Newton’s Index Chemicus
By
Cesare Pastorino, Indiana University
Tamara Lopez, CCH King's College London
John Walsh, Indiana University
Introduction
In the decade of the 1680s, Isaac Newton composed a remarkable alchemical
reference work, which he called the Index Chemicus (or ‘Chemical Index’).
Newton left behind multiple versions of the Index. In its final form, the work
acquired features both of an alchemical dictionary and thesaurus, and of an
annotated bibliography to the literature of early modern alchemy.
The extant versions of the Index Chemicus have recently been edited and
published for the first time as a part of the digital humanities project The
Chymistry of Isaac Newton, based at Indiana University-Bloomington. The
purpose of this project is to transcribe, digitize, edit, and annotate all of Newton’s
alchemical manuscripts. While transcribing and editing the Index Chemicus, we
realized that the specific features this work possesses, and in particular its
alphabetically organized entries, could be presented to scholars and students in
a more useable form than the representation of the manuscript within the main
edition. This was the starting point for the development of a newly designed,
edited, and formatted digital edition of the Index Chemicus. In previous work, we
have devised several strategies for the development of a Digital Index, among
which was its use as a reference and an entry point (in terms of access via
subjects and keywords) to the related content in The Chymistry of Isaac Newton.
This year, the NEH awarded the project a grant that will integrate the Digital
Index into the Chymstry of Isaac Newton, alongside newly developed
visualization and annotation tools for the collection.
The research presented here, explores the features of a digital tool conceived for
the study and understanding of the Index Chemicus as an independent resource.
In particular, we demonstrate that the Index Chemicus presents research issues
and questions that cannot fully be explored and exploited within a more
traditional (if digital) published edition. The development of a separate and
specific form of publication for the Index Chemicus responds to the exigency of
dealing with research questions that traditional formats for manuscript
publications -both in paper and digital form- can only address with difficulty.
In the following sections of this paper, we present other research that has been
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done on the Index Chemicus, and situate Newton's own work within the context
of Early Modern reading practices. Next we broadly describe the content and
organization of the extant versions of the Index, and give some insights into the
practices Newton followed in creating them. Following, we develop our research
questions, and provide a deeper content and data analysis of the manuscripts.
We conclude this discussion with some ideas about the direction to take in the
technical implementation.
Past and Present Research
In the past, the Index Chemicus has primarily been studied by the late Richard
Westfall, a prominent Newtonian scholar and professor of history of science at
Indiana University. In the most comprehensive analysis of the work to-date,
Westfall (1975) addressed the dating of the manuscripts, and the Index’s
intellectual role and purpose in connection with Newton’s alchemical studies.
However, for Westfall, the Index Chemicus primarily represented the smoking
gun of Newton’s alchemical interest: the sheer bulk and amount of detail in the
manuscript constituted incontrovertible evidence of Newton’s efforts in alchemical
matters. This fact was an uneasy novelty for the Newtonian scholarship of the
time, and it is largely based on the merit of scholars like Westfall that it now is an
accepted aspect of Newtonian scholarship.
Beyond the work done by Westfall, one can approach the analysis of Newton’s
Indexes by considering more recent scholarship of early modern scholarly
reading practices (Blair 2003; Blair, 2004; Burke, 2000; Yeo, 2001; Yeo, 2003).
Though alphabetical indexes came into practice as a way to organize information
as early as the 13th century, they became more commonly employed by
individual scholars in the early modern period as a note-taking technique to
facilitate ‘reading for action’. This reading strategy was necessitated not only by
the increased production of books, but also by their greater availability and the
consequent growth in size of personal libraries. As personal libraries grew, so did
the numbers of books read. In addition to diligent reading of volumes, scholars
came to relying on published reference materials, and to using other shortcuts
such as reading books in bits and pieces, paying close attention to passages of
particular relevance to their direction of inquiry and less so to others.
Ann Blair (2003) has recently suggested that the ‘best evidence’ for such
’consultation reading’ is in the high incidence of indexing among scholars, both
on their own, or as a way to correct, improve upon or add to indexes provided by
publishers. So used, marginal annotations in books became finding aids for
readers, helping them return to items of interest after the passage of time.
In the case of Newton, much of the evidence for his reading strategies was put
together by John Harrison (1978), in his seminal research on Newton’s personal
library. As well as developing a comprehensive catalogue of the books and
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particular editions held by Newton, Harrison made careful note of the nature of
marginal notations as well as their content.
Pairing this study of Harrison’s with her own study of 17th century reading and
note-taking practices, Blair (2004: 423) has developed an initial assessment of
Newton’s own reading habits, suggesting that, like his contemporaries, Newton
corrected problems and provided cross-references, but did not include marginal
summaries or keywords. Similarly, Newton’s use of dog-earing was unique, but
his inclusion of marginal annotations unrelated to the main body of the text was
common among 17th century readers. However, Blair concludes that while many
early modern note-takers tracked topics in the margins of books, and created
indexes of topics and page references on their fly-leaves, Newton did not.
Given the nature of the Index Chemicus and the clear relation its contents share
with the marginal notations catalogued by Harrison, it is clear that, at least in the
case of Newton’s alchemical readings, Blair’s initial analysis of Newton’s reading
practices is not comprehensive. In order to give a fuller evaluation of these
practices, Newton’s creation of a reading reference tool like the Index Chemicus
must be taken into account1.
The Manuscript, the Text
The heading Index Chemicus was assigned by Newton to several texts, which
constitute different stages of a single reference project.
The version of the Index assumed to be the first, MS Keynes 30/3, is simply a list
of headings on a single sheet of paper. It consists of 115 terms, annotated in
alphabetical groups. This version includes no bibliographical citations within the
text.
The likely candidate for the second version of the Index, MS Keynes 30/2, is
developed over 8 pages. The entries in this version number 258 and, most
significantly, Newton begins to annotate references to books. Mostly, the
references are very simple, comprised of a jotted work and/or author and the
referenced page. However, a few entries show an early evolution of the text
toward the construction of a thesaurus. So, for instance, in the item ‘Eclipsis’,
Newton notes that ‘Eclipse” represents “putrefaction’. Very few entries are
developed beyond this level, like in the case of ‘Calais et Zete’, which is
constructed as a one sentence summary and interpretation of a mythological
episode described in alchemical terms (folio 1v).
This fact is further suggested by the relative paucity of Newton’s direct
annotations on his own books, compared with the abundance of bibliographic
references in a work like the Index.
1
3
It is possible that, when the eight pages of MS Keynes 30/2 were too full to
accommodate new entries, Newton started a new version, MS Keynes 30/5.
Developed over 12 folios, it comprises 24 pages. In this manuscript, the total
number of entries is around 730. Almost all entries of Keynes 30/5 are now
developed at least into a sentence, with larger and more extensive references to
authors and specific texts given than in the case of Keynes 30/2. Some entries
extend beyond a single sentence, giving a more detailed and structured
description. Items are sometimes repeated to describe different semantic
contexts. A constant feature of entries is also given by the enumeration of
synonyms and related concepts.
In his final version, catalogued as Keynes MS 30/1, the Index Chemicus
extended over 98 folios. The entries here number around 920, while the
manuscript includes around 30,000 words. Within this version, Newton
composed the main alphabetical listing on the rectos of the manuscript, reserving
versos for the annotation of subsequent insertions. If the entries on the versos
are included, Keynes MS 30/1 comprises 126 pages.
Again, the definition of a particular alchemical concept, compound, procedure, or
mythological term is regularly followed by a list of authors and texts that refer to
it, including precise references to volumes and pages; frequently, the initial
definition is integrated with a list of synonyms. A remarkable case is found in the
entry ‘Materia Prima’, where about 50 synonyms for the term are present.
However, in this version of the Index, the size of the items can vary considerably,
from a simple annotation, to the length of a short essay.
The most impressive feature of this version lies in the richness of its source
apparatus. Overall in Keynes 30/1, the number of distinct authors and works
cited by Newton runs in the hundreds, and there are references to thousands of
different pages and passages of specific alchemical texts.
Research Directions
From this overview, it is possible to develop a group of research issues. A broad
and general question regards the intellectual role that the Index Chemicus played
for Newton. To properly investigate this issue, one must tackle several different
and more concrete points, namely the Index’s composition, its content and
structure, and its evolution through the various known versions. As we have
shown, a different but related area of investigation is given by the context of early
modern reading strategies, of which the Index is a clear example.
The Intellectual Role
In his work on the Index Chemicus, Westfall (1980: 359) suggested that this work
was initially conceived as Newton’s personal entry point to the literature of
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alchemy, and that subsequently it was developed into a ‘general guide to the Art’.
Westfall’s first interpretation is echoed by the work of researchers like Blair
(2003) and Yeo (2001; 2003), who note that, during this time, a shift in reading
strategies occurred from close, deep consultation of a single or few sources to
“reading for action” of a larger number of texts. Within the publishing world, this
period also marked the beginning of the development of a market for selective,
authoritative sources for knowledge, which reached their apex in the scientific
reference works that were to follow in the 18th century. Given these two early
modern trends, is it possible that Newton intended his later version of the Index
to be read by others, as Westfall suggested?
More broadly still, the reference to the umbrella term ‘alchemy’ for the content of
the Index is generic, as alchemical practices of the seventeenth century
constituted a variegated set of often rather dissimilar traditions. What kind of
material is referenced in the Index Chemicus? Which selections Newton made
over time, and why?
Composition, content and evolution
These general theoretical questions on the intellectual role of the Index can be
approached from a more practical standpoint, as it is clear that Newton’s goals
and aims are embedded within the various versions as represented in the text
and the methods used to select, arrange and organize it.
In general, the study of Newton’s compositional strategies requires close
comparison of the structure and content of the various texts: the entries and the
representational features that were included over time. In this analysis,
identification and marking of the regularities and variations in the texts is
essential. Given the different organizational techniques employed within the
5
Index, it is also possible to think of different levels of analysis: one targeting the
single entry; a second examining the groups of entries belonging to clusters of
similar or like terms; and the third by considering the full entry list.
Structure and content: Entry variations
The first analytical entry point is to examine all entries beginning with a specific
letter, with particular emphasis on their variation in the different versions of the
Index. Though a simple example of a textual feature, it allows the researcher to
follow a macro-level aspect of the manuscript’s structure and evolution,
enlightening some of Newton’s compositional choices and strategies. In the
example below, the list in the first column shows Newton’s initial choice for terms
belonging to the letter ‘A’. It is reasonable to think that these entries represented
Newton’s best choice, that is to say the nucleus of concepts that, according to
him, were most relevant and important. The list of Keynes 30/3 is arranged into
groupings by letter, but is not strictly ordered alphabetically, as for instance
‘Aurum’ (‘gold’) precedes Argentum (‘silver’). This seems to indicate that Newton
wrote the terms down in a rough order of importance, perhaps as they came to
his mind. Almost all items of this initial list were retained in the second version,
but for instance the item ‘Aqua’ (‘water’) was expanded into in a cluster of
semantically related terms (‘Aqua ardens’, ‘Aqua mercurialis’, ‘Aqua Saturni’,
‘Aqua Maris’).
Letter “A”, Keynes 30/3
TOT: 18
Aurum
Argentum
Æs,
aqua
Aer
Apollo
aqua fætida
Arsenicum
Anguis
Aquila
Aqua sicca
Aqua vitæ
Adonis
Amphion & Zetus
Ambrosia
Anser Hermogenis
Anubis
Apis
Letter “A”, Keynes 30/2
TOT: 37
Ablutio.
Abyssus tenebrosus vid <illeg.> Chaos
Acetum acerrimum
Adonis
Adroy
Aesculapius
Aer v. Boream
Alæ
Alkahest
Aes
Altitude latitude & profundity
Amphion & Zetus
Ambrosia
Anguis
Anser
Antimonium
Anubis
Aper
Apis v. Bos
Apollo
Aqua ardens
Aqua mercurialis
Aqua sicca
Aqua Saturni
Aqua <Mar>is
Aqua <fæ>tida
Aquilæ clangor
Argentum
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Arsenicum
Astra
Aves
Aurum
Aurum potabile
Auripigmentum
Avis Hermetis
Azock
Azoc
Structure and content: term clusters
This evolution of terms clusters in the various versions of the Index invites a
different type of analysis. Building on the previous example, it is possible to list
and describe the items developed around the concept ‘Aqua’. In particular, the
entry ‘Aqua sicca’ (‘dry water’) appears to have had an interesting evolution over
time. Newton introduced the concept in Keynes 30/3, and developed it in depth in
Keynes 30/5, where four different entries for the term are present, each referring
to semantically different alchemical entities. In the passage from Keynes 30/5 to
Keynes 30/1 (the Index final version), these entries are again collapsed in a
single one. Also notice that In Keynes 30/5 Newton introduced the terms ‘Aqua
salis nitri’ and ‘Aqua vegetabilis’, which disappear as distinct entries in Keynes
30/1 (and are actually combined in the item ‘Aqua maris’, ‘Sea water’).
Keynes 30/3
Keynes 30/2
Keynes 30/5
Keynes 30/1
aqua
Aqua sicca
aqua fætida
Aqua vitæ
Aqua ardens
Aqua mercurialis
Aqua sicca
Aqua Saturni
Aqua <Mar>is
Aqua <fæ>tida
Aqua ardens
Aqua Dianæ
Aqua fætida
Aqua mercurialis
Aqua salis nitri
Aqua permanens
Aqua Saturni
Aqua sicca (1)
Aqua sicca (2)
Aqua sicca (3)
Aqua sicca (4)
Aqua vegetabilis
Aqua roris Maij
Aqua viridis
Aqua vitæ (1)
Aqua vitæ (2)
Aqua vitæ (3)
Aqua vitæ (4)
Aqua ardens
Aqua Dianæ
Aqua Draconis
Aqua fætida
Aqua fætida(2)
Aqua foliata
Aqua fortis
Aqua regalis,
Aqua mercurialis
aqua argenti vivi
Aqua permanens
Aqua maris
Aqua Saturni
Aqua sicca
Aqua pluvialis
Aqua roris Maij
Aqua vitæ
Aqua viridis
Structure and content: bibliometric analysis
Another angle for analysis is bibliometric, examining in detail the scale and scope
of the Index references and sources. Again, an example can be given
considering the evolution of the references cited in the entries ‘Aqua sicca’. In
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this case, Newton’s sources expanded over time, together with the number of
pages referenced. However, the process was not simply cumulative, as for
instance Newton eliminated from the last version of the Index the reference to
Eireneus Philalethes’ Fons chymicae philosophiae, which he introduced in
Keynes 30/5.
Keynes 30/2
Keynes 30/5
Keynes 30/1
Rosar p 231 l 14
Rosar p. 231 l 14
Theodor. Mund. p 182.
Rosar p. 231. l. 14.
Mundanus p. 182, 183, 184,
185, 186, 187.
Augurel p. 25.
Philal. Metall. Metamorph. p.
43
Snyders Pharm. Cath. p. 7.
Augurel. p. 25.
Philal de Metal. Metamorph. p.
43
Philal. in Fons. Chem. Philos.
p. 97.
Instruct. patris ad fil. c 4.
Nov. Lumen p. 73, 88
As we have emphasized, the early modern culture of scholarly indexes and
reference works represents the intellectual context to which the Index Chemicus
itself belongs. We have stressed the idea that Newton’s reading strategies, at
least in the case of alchemical material, suggest an integration between two
different types of activities: on one hand, direct book annotation and crossreferencing, and on the other, the compilation of a standalone reference work. In
this context, bibliometric analysis invites an examination of the extent to which
volumes from Newton’s library are represented within Newtonian manuscripts.
The Digital Index: toward a digital tool for understanding the
Index Chemicus
From the research questions and entry analyses given before, we can begin to
develop a model of the Index Chemicus from an informational perspective, as the
first step toward implementing its digital incarnation.
Though the intellectual and spatial arrangement of the Index evolves between
subsequent versions, Newton's base unit of organization is consistently the entry.
An entry always has a term and belongs to a version. Sometimes it possesses a
textual description that can include synonyms, and one or more references.
These features can be schematized in the following way:
8
As this diagram shows, references may be one of two types: cross references, or
bibliographical references, and our analysis indicates that cross references relate
to other terms within the same manuscript version. This relationship, too is easily
modeled:
Similarly, using Harrison's seminal analysis of Newton’s library as a starting
point, we can build an authoritative bibliographic database of alchemical sources
to which individual references within entries can be linked, represented in this
expanded model:
9
At this stage, we have delineated a clear information model that captures the
salient aspects of Newton's own structure, and links to authoritative data sources
to normalize variants in bibliographic data. Furthermore, we have developed an
information model that can be easily represented using the descriptive and
linking capabilities of a language like the Text Encoding Initiative. In fact, the
model depicted in the first figure above largely represents the digital form of the
Index Chemicus as it exists today.
Within The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, five of the Index Chemicus manuscripts
have been transcribed and edited. Marked up using the Text Encoding Initiative
(TEI) P4, Newton’s individual entries have been tagged as list items, and editorial
judgments have been made to structurally identify the headwords for entries,
which are encoded within <label> tags.
One way to move forward with the technical implementation is to continue
building upon the TEI data created for The Chymistry of Isaac Newton. With
some effort, the alchemical bibliographic references could be isolated and
specified using features of the TEI defined for describing bibliographic material2.
Though this version of the TEI does include facilities for indicating entries to be
used in generating indexes, it does not offer a specific tag set for modelling
syndetic relationships of the sort usually seen in subject indexes or thesauri3.
“6.10.1 Elements of Bibliographic References”, http://www.teic.org/cms/Guidelines/P4/html/CO.html#COBI .
3
i.e. indicating lead-in terms. See also: “7.6 Back Matter”, http://www.teic.org/cms/Guidelines/P4/html/DS.html#DSBACK ; “6.8.2 Index Entries”,
2
10
Nevertheless, cross references to other entries can be specified using the <ref>
and <ptr> tags4 and synonyms could be similarly approximated.
A slightly different approach might be to represent the versions of the Index using
one of a number of semantic-oriented technologies developed in recent years for
representing conceptual models like Topic Maps or the newer generation RDF
based languages. As with the TEI, there is much experience to draw upon from
the digital humanities community to support this approach. The Deeds project at
the University of Toronto, for example, has migrated their data from XML to the
newer-generation modelling language RDF in order to facilitate complex dating
and attribution analyses. At a different level in the modelling stack, the Canonical
Text Services Protocol developed by Neel Smith’s Holy Oak tackles the issue of
consistent, normalized bibliographic citation. Elsewhere within the Centre for
Computing in the Humanities (CCH), recent projects like the Fine Rolls of Henry
III have examined the use of other “semantic web” technologies like RDF
expressed domain ontologies for automatically deriving subject indexes (Gerves
et al. 2007, Ciula et al. 2007).
However, these directions are less attractive when variations between different
versions, and the manuscript transformations are considered. As we have shown
in the previous examples, Newton's ideas about what constituted a significant
concept was fluid: within one version he might have expanded the information
about a single idea into several entries, or conversely contracted multiple items
into a single entry. Newton’s lists of synonyms fluctuated in similar ways between
versions and clusters of entries. Moreover, terms that could be considered an
entry synonym in one version were elevated to the rank of a concept in a
subsequent version, and vice versa. These features are not surprising. The focus
on the different manuscript versions and their transformations emphasizes, so to
speak, Newton’s magmatic work with the text, and not its crystallized form. The
fluid quality of term selection suggests that entries are too representational to
serve as units of analysis for the Digital Index Chemicus.
A more fruitful tack to take may be to consider each version of the Index as a
systematically arranged set of textual analyses. Conceptually, this orientation is
similar to that developed by John Bradley (2003) at the Centre for Computing in
the Humanities (CCH). Framed within an analysis of famed user interface
developer Engelbart's Augment System, Bradley suggests that the goal of
technologists working on textual analysis projects should not be to create
systems for presenting the texts themselves or the words within the texts, but
instead to find ways to represent the conceptual model as it is developed by the
analyst in working with the texts, to facilitate the work of the analyst in model
building. In so doing, these systems must also reflect the ways in which
http://www.tei-c.org/cms/Guidelines/P4/html/CO.html#CONO .
4
“6.6 Simple Links and Cross References”, http://www.teic.org/cms/Guidelines/P4/html/CO.html#COXR .
11
temporality manifests itself within the modelling process. Bradley identifies four
effects of time on models: an increase in complexity and richness, the
encapsulation of distinct models introduced by the analyst’s own scholarly
context; the development of sub-models that explain and support the larger work;
and the evolution and development of more formalized structures or ways of
representing the model.
Conclusion
Accepting that the work done by Newton in creating the Indexes is like that
performed in textual analysis, one can use Bradley’s discussion to identify design
goals for the Digital Index Chemicus. Within this framework, the different versions
of the Index Chemicus can be understood to be products of modelling. But as
has been shown, Newton’s products are the focus of the Chymistry of Isaac
Newton, and have been ably represented there. The Digital Index Chemicus, by
contrast, must build a tool that breaks apart the static representations left by
Newton, presenting them to the scholar instead in a way that approximates the
process by which Newton created them. We have observed that Newton’s
models grew in richness and complexity over time, and suspect that he used
successive versions to develop a more general conceptual model of Alchemy.
The tool must therefore at once reveal Newton’s paths through alchemical texts,
while assisting scholars in their own modelling processes.
This paper is the first exploratory step beyond the digital edition and publication
of the manuscript within the Chymistry of Isaac Newton. That edition made the
Index available to researchers for the first time, a significant contribution to
Newtonian scholarship. However, as we have shown, the singularity of this
manuscript begs a richer treatment and invites the development of new
approaches toward its study.
Cesare Pastorino is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History
and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, and a research and
editorial assistant for the digital project the Chymistry of Isaac
Newton (http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/newton/). Among many
other Newtonian manuscripts, he has transcribed and encoded Isaac
Newton's "Index chemicus", conceiving the initial idea for a digital
reference tool to be built out of Newton's text. Aside from digital
humanities, Pastorino's interests include the history of science and
medicine of the early modern period. He is currently working on a
dissertation addressing the issue of Francis Bacon's involvement with
alchemy, and his connections with chemical practitioners,
metallurgists, and experimenters during the reign of James I.
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Tamara Lopez is a member of the XML Team at the Centre for Computing
in the Humanities, King's College London. Holding degrees from the
School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University,
Lopez's research interests include the design and use of mixedcontent model XML languages, socially constructed web standards and
software, and the creation of information systems to support digital
scholarship. While at IU, she was also the programmer and technical
analyst for the Chymistry of Isaac Newton (http://
www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/newton/) and collaborated in the
design and development of Xubmit, a text collection repository.
John A. Walsh is an assistant professor in the School of Library and
Information Science at Indiana University, where he teaches and
conducts research in the areas of digital humanities and digital
libraries. His work explores electronic textuality; complex document
structures; the nature of the document in the digital age; and the
evolution of the document, the book, and the literary text--both borndigital new media texts and digital representations of prior texts.
Exploring current transformational developments in textuality, Walsh
studies the application of metadata and semantic web technologies to
facilitate new forms of close, distant, and social reading and
interpretation. Current projects include the Swinburne Project
(http://www.swinburneproject.org/), the Chymistry of Isaac Newton
(http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/newton/), and Comic Book
Markup Language (http://www.cbml.org/).
13
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