http://www.ftg-comic.com/2008/05/06/index.php
There is a fine line between magic and science. Watch a pen fall from your hand, really watch it, and it can blow your mind just as easily as seeing the Eiffel Tower, covered in white tigers, suddenly vanish. So perhaps it is not surprising that a scientist such as Newton in the end finds himself tied to the Father of Modern Magic, Robert-Houdin. But can magician and scientist work next to each other before one must succumb to the other, and who will cross the line first? There’s deep thinking afoot, and it’s to be found somewhere roundabout Episode 123: One Man’s Magic is Another Man’s Alchemy.
– Geoff and The Count
Newton devoted HUGE amounts of time to both Alchemy and the Search for Textual Evidence Disproving the Truth of the Trinity. The former, which so many modern Newton pamphleteers laugh up their sleeves about, was pretty common at the time and was basically just Chemistry By Other Means. The latter could very nearly have gotten him fired from his position (at TRINITY college), but fortunately the British government was never stable enough to make a thorough go at cleansing the entire nation of whatever happened to be deeply heretical that week.
Oh, and that aether…
– Count Dolby von Luckner
I really wanted to have Newton refer to the twinned pages from the book as a kind of ansible. However, I realized that since our presentation of Newton doesn’t hold any truck with non-Newtonian physics, I was out of luck.
Of course, some rules have been discussed in the past about how Factotums work.
Newton has been wrong before.
–Geoff
