tilthat: TIL a philosophy riddle from 1688 was recently solved. If a man born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes, could he, if given the ability, distinguish those objects by sight alone? In 2003 five people had their sight restored though surgery, and, no they could not.
nentuaby: I love when apparently Deep questions turn out to have clear empirical answers.
That time was the begging of the scientific revolution; natural sciences were known as natural philosophy. And scientists were more like philosophers, eg Descartes, Bacon, etc.
In one of his biographies, Newton is described as the last magician, and the first scientist.
Newton did dabble quite a bit in alchemy, biblical studies, and the occult, possibly as much as in mathematics and natural philosophy.