萬物簡史 第47期:事物的測定(5)

For all his brilliance, real science accounted for onlya part of his interests. At least half his working lifewas given over to alchemy and wayward religiouspursuits. These were not mere dabblings butwholehearted devotions. He was a secret adherentof a dangerously heretical sect called Arianism,whose principal tenet was the belief that there hadbeen no Holy Trinity (slightly ironic since Newton'scollege at Cambridge was Trinity).

盡管他那么聰明，真正的科學只占他興趣的一部分。他至少有一半工作年齡花在煉金術和反復無常的宗教活動方面。這些活動不是涉獵，而是全身心地撲了進去。他偷偷信仰一種很危險的名叫阿里烏斯教的異教。該教的主要教義是認為根本沒有三位一體(這有點兒諷刺意味，因為牛頓的工作單位就是劍橋大學的三一學院)。

He spent endless hours studying the floor plan of the lost Temple of King Solomon in Jerusalem(teaching himself Hebrew in the process, the better to scan original texts) in the belief that itheld mathematical clues to the dates of the second coming of Christ and the end of the world.His attachment to alchemy was no less ardent.

他花了無數(shù)個小時來研究耶路撒冷不復存在的所羅門王神殿的平面圖(在此過程中自學了希伯來語，以便閱讀原文作品)，認為自己掌握著數(shù)學方面的線索，知道基督第二次降臨和世界末日的日期。他對煉金術同樣無比熱心。

In 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes bought a trunk of Newton's papers at auction anddiscovered with astonishment that they were overwhelmingly preoccupied not with optics orplanetary motions, but with a single-minded quest to turn base metals into precious ones.An analysis of a strand of Newton's hair in the 1970s found it contained mercury—anelement of interest to alchemists, hatters, and thermometer-makers but almost no one else—at a concentration some forty times the natural level. It is perhaps little wonder that he hadtrouble remembering to rise in the morning.

1936年，經(jīng)濟學家約翰·梅納德在拍賣會上購得一箱子牛頓的文件，吃驚地發(fā)現(xiàn)那些材料絕大部分與光學或行星運動沒有任何關系，而是些有關他潛心探索把低賤金屬變成貴重金屬的資料。20世紀70年代，人們通過分析牛頓的一綹頭發(fā)發(fā)現(xiàn)，里面含有汞--這種元素，除了煉金術士、制帽商和溫度計制造商以外，別人幾乎不會感興趣--其濃度大約是常人的40倍。他早晨有想不到起床的毛病，這也許是不足為怪的。