Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 135 Newton's Alchemy Book
William Chaloner can be regarded as a genius in the criminal world. In addition to provoking the British government, he was also successfully exonerated after being captured and imprisoned for the first time.

It is very important that the other party can do this because the British law retains ancient and troublesome issues, so that prosecuting criminals needs to jump through many obstacles.

Of course, William Chaloner himself was cunning enough in this regard. On the one hand, he accused the Mint of public revenge, and he was arrested because he offended the Mint.

On the other hand, he bought several witnesses, and the money brought by the counterfeit money allowed him to find people with sufficient identification to prove that he was in Scotland at the time of the crime.

But in the end this outlaw fanatic was arrested and executed, because his opponent was the director of the Royal Mint who was even more talented than him: Isaac Newton.

Yes, that's right, Newton here is the great physicist and mathematician Newton.However, relative to the scholar's side, few people realize his contribution in other aspects.

But in fact, for the British at that time, Newton's greatest contribution was not a series of contributions in science at all, but saving the financial industry in Britain that was about to collapse when he served as the supervisor of the Royal Mint.

Interestingly, according to current research, the reason why Newton was able to obtain this position was not because of his academic status, but because of his niece who was the mistress of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer.

However, as a great scientist, Newton unexpectedly made a huge contribution to this theory.

With the meticulous thinking of a scholar, he greatly improved the craftsmanship and efficiency of silver coin minting, and at the same time arrested a series of counterfeit coin makers without any criminal detection training, including this William Chaloner.

When the first application for arrest failed, Newton began to use his extraordinary logical thinking ability to analyze the whole process of the case, and kept a close eye on the opponent's every move.

However, William Chaloner became underestimated because of his victory in the last match, and even expanded his business from counterfeiting silver coins to counterfeiting Bank of England notes of larger denominations.

As a result, in the second fight, William Chaloner lost a lot. Newton found 14 witnesses, more than 30 testimonies against Chaloner's crimes, and finally successfully sent him to the gallows.

However, before his execution, William Chaloner wrote a special letter to Newton begging for mercy.And this letter has also become the object of research by many people in later generations.

The reason why this letter was studied by so many people is also very simple, because counterfeiting currency in those days was a kind of treason, and the main criminal had only a dead end.So it was obviously abnormal for William Chaloner to write a begging letter at this time.

After all, Newton was only the supervisor of the Mint, and was not responsible for a series of legal trial issues. He was at most a public prosecutor, so writing him a begging letter at this time seemed a bit weird.

Therefore, many people in later generations believed that William Chaloner probably possessed some secrets belonging to Newton, so at the last moment, he hoped to exchange his life from Newton with the secrets he possessed.

This mystery has plagued the history circle for hundreds of years, and many people even simply think that this is just William Chaloner's method of seeking medical treatment in a hurry under the premise that there is really no other way.

But the lightest of the three boxes that Liang En found today revealed the secret, because it contained a copy of Newton's handwriting.

"—Very good, now that the staff has processed the book briefly, let's see what Newton wrote on these documents?"

After more than half an hour of procrastinating about the love and hatred between Newton and William Chaloner, the staff finally signaled to Liang En that they had finished processing the manuscript, and now they can check the contents of the manuscript. content.

"This is a very interesting paper." After flipping through the paper, Liang En said to the camera lens in Hans' hand. "Because the content written in this paper is about alchemy."

"Of course, this kind of alchemy is different from the most common alchemy system in pursuit of making gold at that time. From the manuscripts, we can see that Newton actually hoped to get in touch with the reality of the world through alchemy."

"In fact, in Newton's time, alchemy could not be regarded as a kind of metaphysics, but a method used to explore the unknown like other scientific methods."

"After all, the level of scientific development in that era was much lower than today's, so alchemy is naturally an important way to understand the world. It's not completely reduced to superstition like it is today."

"From another perspective, in order to be able to improve academically, Newton has also gone a long way on the road of alchemy."

"So Newton was not only the master of alchemy in the Middle Ages, but also raised the theory of alchemy to an unprecedented level.

It's just that because he has always believed in the theory of particles, he has not been able to switch from primitive alchemy to the elemental theory of contemporary chemistry. "

"For example, in this paper, Newton integrated alchemy and other knowledge."

"Taking the first part of the thesis as an example, he believes that the reason why the celestial bodies have the wonderful property of gravity is because our universe is in the great and wonderful crucible of God, and alchemy is what moves our world. The original power of operation—"

It has to be said that it is reasonable for some people to think that Newton was the most famous alchemist of that era, because in addition to the initial title, the latter one is about how to refine the philosopher's stone.

According to Newton himself in the paper, the reason why he wanted to refine this legendary item was because he believed that this item was the top product of alchemy.

And if this kind of item is refined, it means that he has mastered the key to the gods' creation of the universe rules, and then can follow such clues to find the existence of the gods.

Unlike the so-called alchemists who are actually liars.Newton's treatise on alchemy was more of a purely philosophical treatise than a how-to.

Although the various operation methods seem to describe how to use various raw materials to produce philosophical mercury, and then produce philosopher's stone.But in fact it is expounding some kind of philosophical theory.

But for the people watching the program live, what Liang En is talking about now is similar to the heavenly scriptures.At least Hans has been reminding Liang En that his ratings are dropping.

So Liang En quickly finished the content of the paper itself, and then analyzed why this paper belonging to Newton appeared in William Chaloner's treasure location.

For Chaloner, who was making a lot of money from counterfeit coins at the time, it was difficult to obtain something about Newton, but it was not difficult.So it was only natural to get this treatise on alchemy.

As for why the other party wanted to keep this paper, the reason is also very simple, because at that time alchemy was also a serious illegal act, and the maximum sentence could be the death penalty.So Chaloner obviously wanted to use this thing to blackmail Newton.

It's just that a series of mistakes later caused things to change, making this secret hidden for hundreds of years in one go.

(End of this chapter)