| What have we learned from the recent historiography of alchemy? | |
| | |
MedLine Citation:
|
PMID: 21874691 Owner: NLM Status: In-Process |
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
|
Over the last two decades a new scholarship on alchemy has emerged, leading to a fundamental reformulation of knowledge about alchemists and their activities. We now know that medieval and early modern alchemists employed experiment in concert with theory to demonstrate the existence of stable "chymical atoms," which were thought to combine with one another according to a hierarchical theory of matter. Employing laboratory-based analysis and synthesis, alchemists were among the first explicitly to enunciate the principle of mass balance and to show that materials are compounded of the ingredients into which they can be physically decomposed. Perhaps even more surprisingly, these convictions and practices arose out of the interaction of alchemical practice with scholastic Aristotelianism, long viewed by historians of the Scientific Revolution as antithetical to experiment. Thus the new historiography challenges both a long-standing marginalization of alchemy itself and a commonplace view of Aristotelianism as inimical to the early modern growth of experimental science. |
| | |
Authors:
|
William R Newman |
Publication Detail:
|
Type: Journal Article |
Journal Detail:
|
Title: Isis; an international review devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences Volume: 102 ISSN: 0021-1753 ISO Abbreviation: Isis Publication Date: 2011 Jun |
Date Detail:
|
Created Date: 2011-08-30 Completed Date: - Revised Date: - |
Medline Journal Info:
|
Nlm Unique ID: 2985182R Medline TA: Isis Country: United States |
Other Details:
|
Languages: eng Pagination: 313-21 Citation Subset: IM; Q |
Affiliation:
|
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA. |
Export Citation:
|
APA/MLA Format Download EndNote Download BibTex |
| MeSH Terms | |
Descriptor/Qualifier:
|
|
From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
Previous Document: Alchemy restored.
Next Document: Alchemy as studies of life and matter: reconsidering the place of vitalism in early modern chemistry...