Cultural History Seminar in collaboration with the Descartes Centre, with dr. Dmitri Levitin (UU)

Isaac Newton as Theologian, Artisan, and Roommate: Some New Documents

Notebook John Wickins

This talk reports on a remarkable new discovery: the notebook of Isaac Newton’s roommate in Cambridge, John Wickins. The notebook, which I am currently editing, contains precious new evidence, including unknown letters from Newton. It also contains the text of his theology disputation - a mandatory task that gave birth to a deep interest in theology, and gradually led Newton into religious heterodoxy. Most importantly, the new text helps us uncover a Newton who was much more embedded in his institution than previously realised: building his reflecting telescope with Wickins; asking his roommate to secure alchemical specimens; going to London to work with artisans. Richard Westfall famous biography of Newton presented his subject as a solitary genius, utterly disconnected from the university where he did almost all his important work. The Wickins Notebooks helps us put Newton back into his institutional context - a project central to my wider approach to the history of knowledge.

About the speaker

Dmitri Levitin is a historian of knowledge. He has published on the histories of the sciences, humanities, medicine, and philosophy. His books include Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science (2015); The Kingdom of Darkness (2022); and Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (ed., 2019). He has just completed a large-scale history of the sciences and the humanities from the ancient Mesopotamians to the 18th century. Before coming to Utrecht, he held positions at Trinity College, Cambridge; All Souls College, Oxford; and the California Institute of Technology.