Establishing the Canon: George Ripley and his Alchemical Sources

Abstract

George Ripley, Canon of Bridlington (ca. 1415 to ca. 1490) was one of England's most famous alchemists, whose alchemical opera attracted study and commentary throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and were printed and translated both in England and abroad. Yet Ripley's frequently baffling texts have proved resistant to scholarly interpretation. This paper attempts to unravel some of Ripley's alchemical theories and practice, firstly by identifying his major sources, and secondly by gauging his response to these texts. For instance, although Ripley's interest in the corpus of alchemical texts pseudonymously attributed to Ramon Lull is well documented, it transpires that his best known work, the Compound of Alchemy, or Twelve Gates, is actually based not on a Lullian work, but on a Latin treatise that Ripley attributed to the little-known alchemist, Guido de Montanor. Further clues to Ripley's alchemical thought can be obtained by considering his handling of a potential conflict between his two authorities, Lull and Guido. The resulting insights into Ripley's alchemy provide an instrument for assessing which of Ripley's pseudoepigraphic works can be truly called "canonical".     

Alchemical Patronage and the Making of an Adept: Letters of Michael Sendivogius to Emperor Rudolf II and His Chamberlain Hans Popp

Based on four extant letters the famous Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius wrote to Emperor Rudolf II and his first chamberlain Hans Popp between 1597 and 1602, this paper adds to a growing body of revisionist scholarship on alchemy in Rudolfine Prague. Unlike most of his many rivals – including luminaries such as John Dee and Michael Maier – who hoped for the Emperor's patronage in vain, Sendivogius officially became a courtier at the imperial court in 1594. As such he was in the privileged position of having access to the Emperor and his close advisors. The surviving correspondence shows how the Pole successfully balanced his alchemical promises against Rudolf's expectations for a number of years. The fact that even Sendivogius found it difficult to translate imperial patronage into ready money suggests that Emperor Rudolf II was considerably more circumspect and less gullible than the widespread cliché suggests. Fully contextualised by all available sources on Sendivogius' early career, the four letters emerge as important documents regarding the Polish adept and alchemical patronage in Rudolfine Prague. They also shed new light on the circumstances which led to the writing and publication of Sendivogius' famous treatise De lapide philosophorum (Novum lumen chymicum).     

R. B. Woodward's Letters: Revealing,Elegant and Commanding

A collection of excerpts from letters written by R. B. Woodward to his friends, colleagues, young students and others is presented. These excerpts are representative of Woodward 's lengthy correspondence and illustrate many aspects of his personality and philosophies of life.     

The Correspondents of Thomas Andrews

Abstract

This paper alerts historians to a large cache of correspondence received by Irish chemist Thomas Andrews MD, FRS (1813–1885) over a period of thirty years. It gives a biographical summary of Andrews' life and work. With the collection being virtually unknown and, until recently, uncited in guides to British archives, it also seeks, by quoting from many of the letters, to highlight interesting aspects of the work and character of many of the correspondents and of Andrews himself.     

Interpretation and the Hieroglyphic Monad: John Dee's Reading of Pantheus's Voarchadumia

Abstract

John Dee's marginalia in his copy of Johannes Pantheus's Voarchadumia (now in the British Library) are an interesting source of information about the development of Dee's scientific ideas in the period between the Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558) and the Monas Hieroglyphica (1564). In reading the book, Dee has systematically compared the text with Pantheus's earlier work, the Ars Metallicae, and noted any differences between the two largely identical works. Therefore, most of Dee's comments are not indications of his own interests, as has previously been assumed. Only the marginalia that are not concerned with comparing the two texts can be taken to express Dee's own views. These marginalia, probably written in 1559, provide evidence that Dee had already at this time a strong interest in cabbalistic methods as a means of gaining knowledge about natural substances. Cabbalistic speculation was to be central to Dee's thought in the Monas Hieroglyphica, and has previously been taken to indicate a dramatic change in Dee's scientific outlook, towards a spiritual quest. In his marginalia in the Voarchadumia, however, Dee appears to be using cabbalistic methods to gain information on wholly material, non-spiritual matters. The abundant use of the symbol of the hieroglyphic monad in the marginalia provides a further source of insight into the alchemical import of the symbol, five years before the publication of the Monas Hieroglyphica.     

John Dastin: The Alchemist as Co-Creator

Abstract

Take Phobus Levine at the Rockefeller Institute. He was absolutely certain that DNA was a boring irrelevant molecule containing random sequences of those four letters, ACGT. He dismissed it, and then, in that peculiar human way, it became a matter of faith with him, deep faith. What he knew, he knew, and the molecule was insignificant.

Ian McEwan, Enduring Love (1997)     

Reviews

Abstract

Recent scholarship on Boyle's Sceptical Chymist has emphasised the alchemical context of Boyle's work. In this paper we will draw attention to its specifically sceptical context. Based on Cicero's works on Academic scepticism, the Academica and De Natura Deorum, we give some grounds for Boyle's choice of the literary style of the work and, in particular, for his choice of Carneades as its main character. Based on Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism, we show the sceptical nature of the arguments presented by Carneades against the alchemists. Finally, we set Boyle's Sceptical Chymist in the context of Seventeenth-Century skepticism (Gassendi, Mersenne, Descartes, and Glanvill) in order to shed light on the relation exhibited by Boyle's work between scepticism and the new science, in particular the corpuscular theory.     

The synthesis of methyl benzylpenillonate

Methyl phenylpenicillenate (10) was formed by the interaction of 4-carbomethoxy-5,5-dimethyl- 2-thiazoline (6) and 2-phenyloxazol-5-one in pyridine, whereas in neutral solvents the preponderant product of the reaction was methyl phenylpenillonate (7). Similarly, under the latter conditions, 2-benzyloxazol-5-one (5) and the thiazoline (6) yield methyl benzylpenillonate (4, R= Ph·CH₂, R=Me) identical with the product obtained from the methyl ester of benzylpenicillin.This contribution byA. B. A. Jansen andRobert Robinson is dedicated to ProfessorF. Wessely on the occasion of his 70th Birthday in admiration of his eminent services to chemistry as a teacher and original investigator.     

多碱化学的研究—纪念恩师戴安邦教授逝世一周年

本文为戴安邦教授及其学生们关于多碱化学的研究的回顾和总结,叙述了他的早期工作,Cr³⁺的水解聚合,富马酸和马来酸存在下Cr³⁺的水解聚合,及稀土离子的水解聚合。这项研究对实用领域是有益的,诸如核化学,鞣革及塑料与金属的粘接。     

Prigogine and the many voices of nature

Ilya Prigogine was not a systematic author: his ideas, covering a wide arch of areas, are dispersed in his many writings. In particular, his philosophical thought has to be reconstructed mainly on the basis of his works in collaboration with Isabelle Stengers: La Nouvelle Alliance (1979), Order out of Chaos (1984), and Entre le Temps et l’éternité (1988). In this paper I undertake that reconstruction in order to argue that Prigogine’s position, when read in the light of Putnam’s internalist realism, can be characterized as an ontological pluralism. The main aim of this work is to show the striking parallelism between the philosophical views of Prigogine and Stengers and those of Hilary Putnam in Reason, Truth and History (1981). This task will lead me to critically review Prigogine’s general scientific program: the attempt to establish the foundations of objective irreversibility.     

A thiocyanate-based hybrid molecular salt as a new fluorescent chemosensor for fluoride

An organic–inorganic hybrid solid [(dpaH)⁺(NCS)^?] (1) (dpa?=?2,2′-dipyridylamine) based on an anionic template NCS^? has been synthesized. Single crystal X-ray structural analysis reveals that NCS^? templates assemble dpaH⁺ units into a 3-D layer structure along the b axis through strong hydrogen bonding. Molecular salt 1 works as an anion-binder efficiently and selectively for recognition and sensing purposes in aprotic solvents. This receptor shows changes both in its UV-Vis absorption and fluorescence emission spectra upon the addition of F^?, resulting in high selectivity for fluoride detection in CH₃CN. It is promising to use these systems in various sensing applications.     

Facile Synthesis of High Nuclearity Silver–Ferrocenyldiselenolate Clusters

1,1′-Bis(trimethylsilylseleno)ferrocene has been used to prepare the silver–ferrocenyldiselenolate clusters Ag₈(Se₂fc)₄(PnPr₃)₄ 1 and Ag₁₆(Se₂fc)₈(PPh₂Et)₆ 2 in good yield. The structures of the frameworks in 1 and 2 have been determined by single crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. This work is dedicated to Prof. Dr. Günter Schmid in celebration of the 70th anniversary of his birthday and in recognition of his pioneering and inspirational work in the arena of metal cluster chemistry.     

Early Days of Gas Electron Diffraction Studies in Japan

Several episodes, never printed except in Japanese, related to the young days of Yonezo Morino are documented. Stories highlight how his personal contacts with his teachers and colleagues and his studies and experiences in spectroscopy, quantum theory etc. had influenced his early works on gas-phase electron diffraction (GED).     

Sir Thomas Browne and the Study of Colour Indicators

Abstract

This reinterpretation of Carl Wilhelm Scheele's (1742–86) early life and career analyses the social interplay between Scheele and other chemists who were active in eighteenth-century Sweden. It is argued that Scheele, a rather lowly journeyman working in peripheral pharmacies, had to work hard and traverse several geographical and social boundaries to gain a foothold in the scientific community. Eventually, Scheele's skilful analysis of the mineral magnesia nigra would establish him as one of the pivotal Swedish chemists. However, this happened only after Scheele had managed to prove himself as a knowledgeable chemist who did not threaten the authority of certain socially superior colleagues. When Scheele had gained a place in the scientific community, the exchange logic of the eighteenth-century republic of letters permitted him to trade experimental results for other kinds of resources. Hence, he gained in both social status, economic prosperity and scientific prominence in a relatively short time.     

Tris(N-methylferrocenyl-N-(2-phenylethyl)dithiocarbamato-S,S′)cobalt(III) for anion sensing and preparation of cobalt-iron sulfide nanoparticles: A new photocatalyst for the degradation of dyes

Tris(N-(pyrrol-2-ylmethyl)-N-butyldithiocarbamato-S,S′)cobalt(III) (1) and tris(N-methylferrocenyl-N-(2-phenylethyl)dithiocarbamato-S,S′)cobalt(III) (2) have been synthesized and characterized by elemental analysis and spectroscopy (IR, UV-vis and NMR). The elemental analysis and IR, ¹H and ¹³C NMR spectra are consistent with the formation of the cobalt(III) complexes with dithiocarbamate ligands. The anion binding properties of 1 and 2 based on host-guest interaction have been examined with the use of cyclic voltammetry.This study showed that both complexes preferred to bind with I^-compared to other halides. 2 has been used as precursors for the preparation of cobalt-iron sulfide nanoparticles. TEM image of cobalt-iron sulfide nanoparticles showed that the particles are spherical. The elemental compositions of the nanoparticles were confirmed by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. IR spectral studies on nanoparticles confirm the presence of capping agent (triethylenetetramine). The nanoparticles were explored as photocatalysts to study the degradation of dyes using methylene blue and rhodamine-B in aqueous solution under UV irradiation. The cobalt-iron sulfide works as an efficient photocatalyst for degradation of rhodamine-B.     

Development of a Highly Sensitive and Selective Bismuth Optical Sensor Based on (2E,4E)-5-(2,4-Dinitrophenyl Amino)penta-2,4-dienal

Abstract

An optical sensor based on (2E,4E)-5-(2,4-dinitrophenyl amino)penta-2,4-dienal as ionophore has been developed for the determination of bismuth(III) ions in aqueous solutions. This proposed membrane works on the basis of a cation-exchange mechanism and shows a significant absorbance signal change on exposure to 1 M HCl solution of pH 0.0 containing bismuth ions. The optode membrane shows a reproducible and reversible response toward bismuth in the concentration range 0.2 to 60.5 ppm with a detection limit of 0.095 ppm. This sensor has been used for determination of bismuth in real samples.     

Synthesis of novel tryptamine and β-carboline derivatives via palladium-catalyzed reaction of bromotryptamine with organic boronic acids

New tryptamine 5, 7 and β-carboline derivatives 3 were preparated by palladium-catalyzed coupling reaction of 5-bromotryptamine 1 with aryl boronic acids. Dedicated to Professor András Lipták on his 70^th birthday.     

Conformational analysis of 2,3-dihydro-2,2-dimethyl-1,4-benzoxazepines and their 1,5-isomers

Summary Conformational analysis of 2,3-dihydro-2,2-dimethyl-1,4-benzoxazepines (1,3,5, and7) and their 1,5-isomers (2,4, and6) was performed by temperature dependent NMR measurements. The effect of substituents on the ring inversion was studied. The results obtained were corroborated by AMl calculations.Dedicated to Prof.Waldemar Adam on the occasion of his 60^th birthday     

4-Aminouracils and pyrimido[4,5-b]indolediones from 4-azidouracils

Azidouracils (3), which are obtained from barbituric acids (1), can easily be cyclized to pyrimido[4,5-b]indoles (4) or converted into 4-aminouracils (6).Dedicated to Prof. Dr.E. Ziegler on the occasion of his 75th birthday.