Translating Ancient Alchemy: Fragments of Graeco-Egyptian Alchemy in Arabic Compendia

Translation played a vital role in the development and transfer of alchemy in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Since its origins in Graeco-Roman Egypt, alchemy was encapsulated in Greek texts which allegedly relied on Persian or Egyptian sources. Later, a variety of Greek and Byzantine writings were translated into Syriac and Arabic, and these translations were in turn fragmented and disseminated in later Arabic compendia. This paper will first review the main phases of this historical process of transmission of alchemy from one language and culture to another. Second, this process will be examined using two significant case studies: a close analysis of various quotations from Graeco-Egyptian authors (Pseudo-Democritus, Zosimus of Panopolis, and Synesius) as presented in two Arabic dialogues on alchemy, The Tome of Images and The Dialogue between āras and the King Caesar. These sources demonstrate some of the concrete textual realities that underlie general patterns of translation and reception.     

Books,Gold, and Elixir: Alchemy and Religious Orders in Early Modern Naples

In the early modern period Naples was a European centre of learning where a number of scholars engaged with alchemy. Variously perceived as a legitimate scientific practice or as a mendacious trick for gullible minds, alchemy engaged Neapolitan scholars in an ongoing dispute that involved members of the clergy. In this article I consider convents as research centres mainly engaged with medical alchemy. Specifically, I reconstruct the activity of the Dominican friar Tommaso d’Eremita. Upon his arrival at the Neapolitan convent of Santa Caterina a Formello in 1609, d’Eremita set up a laboratory where he spent years working on alchemical procedures in order to produce an elixir of life for the benefit of all. Beyond this charitable mission, I argue that members of religious orders in Naples engaged with alchemy for different purposes. In so doing, I discuss the cases of some members of religious orders in Naples who practised chrysopoeia with the aim of producing artificial noble metals.     

Alchemy and Mining: Metallogenesis and Prospecting in Early Mining Books

Abstract

Historians have assumed that alchemy had a close association with mining, but exactly how and why miners were interested in alchemy remains unclear. This paper argues that alchemical theory began to be synthesised with classical and Christian theories of the earth in mining books after 1500, and served an important practical function. The theory of metals that mining officials addressed spoke of mineral vapours (Witterungen) that left visible markings on the earth's surface. The prospector searched for mineral ore in part by studying these indications. Mineral vapours also explained the functioning of the dowsing rod, which prospectors applied to the discovery of ore. Historians of early chemistry and mining have claimed that mining had a modernising influence by stripping alchemy of its theoretical component, but this paper shows something quite to the contrary: mining officials may have been sceptical of the possibility of artificial transmutation, but they were interested in a theory of the earth that could translate into prospecting knowledge.     

Cross and Crucible: Alchemy in the Theology of Paracelsus

Paracelsus was not only a reformer of medicine with a preference for medical alchemy, but also emerged as a radical church reformer. However, he only rarely used the imagery of alchemy as a parable for theological salvation. Fire as the driving force for every alchemical process was also suitable as an image for the purification of souls. A central idea of alchemy, to transfer a substance from its still impure original state into the purified final state, was very much in line with Paracelsus’s doctrine of the Last Supper, according to which the mortal human who had descended from Adam is to be brought to a new birth through baptism with the Holy Spirit. As an alchemist, Paracelsus was keenly interested in the transfiguration of Christ, which he first explained alchemically, but later magically, probably according to the model of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.     

A New Alchemical Poem Attributed to Khālid b. Yazīd (d. ca. 705)

This paper deals primarily with the identification of an inaccurately catalogued alchemical poem attributed to the famous Umayyad prince Khālid b. Yazīd (d. 705), edited, translated, and commented upon here for the first time. The paper also addresses the authenticity of Khālid’s interest in alchemy and connects that interest to the need of the early Islamic empire to develop its own gold coinage as a sign of political independence from Byzantine coinage that was up till then the currency of the lands occupied by early Muslims in the regions of modern-day Egypt and Syria. On the matter of the legendry character of Khālid which was apparently started by Ibn Khaldun and passed on after him to most nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century orientalists, the paper exposes here the inner contradictions in Ibn Khaldun’s theorising on the matter, and his failure to understand why someone like the historical Prince Khālid would be interested in alchemy.     

Stoicism and Alchemy in Late Antiquity: Zosimus and the Concept of Pneuma

At the beginning of the twentieth century, historians associated the alchemy of the third-century alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis with Platonism and Aristotelianism, explicating his theory of alchemical transmutation under the intellectual umbrella of these philosophical traditions. More recently, scholars of alchemy such as Christina Viano and William Newman have suggested a connection between Zosimean alchemy and Stoicism. Through a close reading of texts in Zosimus’s corpus, this paper posits a Stoic interpretation of several aspects of Zosimean alchemy, focusing on the concepts of pneuma and tension. For Zosimus, I argue, pneuma played a vital role in colouring metals, while tension conferred stability and cohesion upon metallic compounds. This interpretation suggests that Zosimus applied Stoic concepts to describe the alchemical process of tincturing metals.     

Alchemy,Prophecy, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Iberia: Anselmo Castelo Branco's Critique of Benito Feijoo

The Benedictine monk Benito Jerónimo Feijoo (1676–1764) is now considered one of the major figures of the Spanish and Iberian Enlightenment. However his work, both in Spain and in Portugal, was far from being universally acclaimed. His critical approach to the subject of alchemy in his essay “Piedra Filosofal,” published in the third volume of his magisterial Teatro Crítico Universal (1726–1739), sparked an unexpected response from the Portuguese alchemist Anselmo Castelo Branco, who sought to refute Feijoo's claims in his own work, the Ennoea. This paper presents an outline of this exchange and its position within Iberian Enlightenment circles. It further argues that Castelo Branco's defence of alchemy was informed by his political and prophetic views, in particular his adherence to the Portuguese messianic doctrine of Sebastianism.     

Between Aquinas and Eymerich: The Roman Inquisition’s Use of Dominican Thought in the Censorship of Alchemy

In the latter half of the sixteenth century the Roman Inquisition developed criteria to prosecute a series of operative arts, including various forms of divination and magic. Its officials had little interest in alchemy. During that period the Roman Inquisition tried few people for practising alchemy, and it was rarely discussed in official documents. Justifications for prosecuting alchemists did exist, however. In his influential handbook, Directorium inquisitorum, the fourteenth-century inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich had developed a clear rationale for the investigation and prosecution of alchemists as heretics. His position was endorsed in the 1570s by Francisco Peña in his commentary on Eymerich’s handbook. In this article I explore the reasons why alchemy held this ambiguous status. I argue that members of the Dominican Order developed two traditions of thinking about alchemy from Aquinas’s thought. The first, and closest to Aquinas’s own belief, held that alchemy was a natural art that posed no danger to the Christian faith. The second, developed by Eymerich from a selective reading of Aquinas’s writings, indicated specific circumstances in which alchemists could be investigated. The Roman Inquisition’s response to alchemy vacillated between the positions advocated by Aquinas and Eymerich.     

Fuit Ille non Empiricus Mercenarius: Apprehensions to Alchemy in Colonial New England

While recent historical studies have uncovered the intercontinental reputations of New England alchemists, much still remains to be known about actual attitudes concerning alchemy in the early colonies. Focusing on a corpus of roughly a dozen untranslated, and all but entirely unexamined Latin orations (ca. 200 pages) composed by Harvard College’s presidents and students in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, I argue that these new sources reveal the ambivalent, occasionally antagonistic attitude that educated New England men held towards the art of alchemy. Appreciating what they regarded as, in some cases, selfless, Christian efforts to cure diseases, these Harvard elite speakers still worried that alongside pious investigators had cropped up some self-serving charlatans, those who cared not for the communal promises of the art, but only the base financial reward.     

Exploring early modern chemistry: the first twenty-five years of the Society for the Study of Alchemy & Early Modern Chemistry 1935-1960

The article uses the recently deposited archives of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry to explore the ideas, motives and disagreements of its founders and officers between 1935 and 1960. The origin of the title Ambix for the society's journal is also explained. An appendix identifies the initial membership of the society.     

Views on History in Medieval Alchemical Writings

Abstract

During the Middle Ages, the prevailing conception of the history of alchemy was that of a genealogical line of descent — both carnal and spiritual — where the original paternal figure was invested with the role of ensuring unity of knowledge. The relationship between this figure and its descendants was one of genus and species. On an epistemological level, the genealogy of knowledge entails the idea of an initial full revelation of knowledge, and its subsequent (partial) loss and recovery. Fundamentally, this view precludes the idea of progress. However, within the frame of history of salvation, alchemy was being assigned a particular role. In writings of, or associated with, Franciscan spirituals, it was meant to provide both material and spiritual support for fighting the Antichrist. From the early fourteenth century onwards, the adherence to a Christocentric and anthropocentric perspective favoured the idea of progress, in the sense that human knowledge of natural and artificial transformations was considered to be increasingly complete. This progress was considered primarily to be one of spiritual perfection, aimed at restoring the nature of man.     

Acceleration of catalyst discovery with easy,fast, and reproducible computational alchemy

The expense of quantum chemistry calculations significantly hinders the search for novel catalysts. Here, we provide a tutorial for using an easy and highly cost‐efficient calculation scheme, called alchemical perturbation density functional theory (APDFT), for rapid predictions of binding energies of reaction intermediates and reaction barrier heights based on the Kohn‐Sham density functional theory (DFT) reference data. We outline standard procedures used in computational catalysis applications, explain how computational alchemy calculations can be carried out for those applications, and then present benchmarking studies of binding energy and barrier height predictions. Using a single OH binding energy on the Pt(111) surface as a reference case, we use computational alchemy to predict binding energies of 32 variations of this system with a mean unsigned error of less than 0.05 eV relative to single‐point DFT calculations. Using a single nudged elastic band calculation for CH₄ dehydrogenation on Pt(111) as a reference case, we generate 32 new pathways with barrier heights having mean unsigned errors of less than 0.3 eV relative to single‐point DFT calculations. Notably, this easy APDFT scheme brings no appreciable computational cost once reference calculations are performed, and this shows that simple applications of computational alchemy can significantly impact DFT‐driven explorations for catalysts. To accelerate computational catalysis discovery and ensure computational reproducibility, we also include Python modules that allow users to perform their own computational alchemy calculations.     

Textual Alchemy: The Transformation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus's Semita Recta into the Mirror of Lights

Abstract

This article explores the strategies of and the reasons behind the reworking of pseudo-Albertus Magnus's Semita recta into the Mirror of Lights. I argue that the redactor sought to provide a more comprehensive defence of the legitimacy of alchemy than found in the Semita recta. In the process of doing so, he reshaped the original text so as to present three units that addressed different parts of the alchemical opus: first, theory and justification of alchemy; second, basic information on substances and procedures; and, third, practice. The redactor employed sophisticated textual tools identical to those seen in scholastic texts. These strategies, I argue, constitute part of the redactor's attempt to bring authority and credibility to his project and to alchemy in general. Certainly, much more attention needs to be paid to these experiments of textual alchemy in order to understand the practice of alchemy in the late medieval period.     

Using probabilistic relational learning to support bronchial carcinoma diagnosis based on ion mobility spectrometry

Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS) provides a means for analyzing the substances a person exhales. In this paper, we report on an approach to support early diagnosis of bronchial carcinoma based on such IMS measurements. Given the peaks in a set of ion mobility spectra, we first cluster these peaks with a modified k-means algorithm. We then apply probabilistic relational modelling and learning methods to a logical representation of the data obtained from the ion mobility spectra and the peak clusters. Markov Logic Networks and the MLN system Alchemy are employed for various modelling and learning scenarios. These scenarios are evaluated with respect to ease of use, classification accuracy, and knowledge representation aspects.     

Toleration of Alchemists as a Political Question: Transmutation,Disputation, and Early Modern Scholarship on Alchemy

Abstract

In July 1702, Johann Franz Buddeus chaired a disputation with the title, "A Political Question: Whether Alchemists Should Be Tolerated in the Republic," in the wake of the reported transmutational success of Johann Friedrich Böttger just a few months earlier. This paper begins with this context, and then examines Buddeus's thesis, analyses its elemental notions, elaborates the major themes that underlay his thesis, and reviews the contemporary responses to this thesis. It also investigates a vast body of literature that constituted Buddeus's sources, and surveys five kinds of publications that characterised the early modern scholarship on alchemy.     

The Fire/Heat Concept and Its Journey from Prehistoric Time into the Third Millennium

The notion of fire/light/heat/energy is recognized as an integrating element in the pathway of ordering matter and society, and its historical aspects are thoroughly reviewed. Fire is argued to be a philosophical archetype and its role in the early concept of four elements is discussed. The Indian, Arabic and Greek historical bases are mentioned. Alchemy is briefly reviewed as a source of the wider adoption of fire. The era of renaissance and the new age are also included. The message of fire/heat is nowadays focused on the progress of civilization, with the assumption of engines as information transducers based on the conscious exploitation of fire. The role of chaos is emphasized. Overall, a condensed but consistent view is given of the various concepts that emerged during the historical progress of the understanding of heat (noting 61 references). This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

激子手性方法用于多氧取代环己烯类化合物的研究

多氧取代环己烯是一类比较独特的天然产物,分子中多具有四个手性中心,立体化学多变,尽管用化学衍生物方法确定了部分化合物的绝对构型,但对已报道的化合物中仍有大部分未能确定其构型。在阐明分子相对构型的基础上,应用激子手性方法确定此类化合物的绝对构型,并利用Alchemy程序进行了分子动力学计算,对此类化合物的圆二色性规律进行了总结。     

A Study of a Molecular Mechanics Field Used in Simulating Enantiorecognition

Enantiorecognitionisameasureofthediscriminationabilitybetweenenantiomericmolecules.Itisoffundamentalsignificanceinmanyareasofthechemicalandbiologicalsciences,italsoplaysanimportantroleinseparationofenantiomersbychromatography.Althoughtheintermolecularforces(hydrogenbonding,multipolarassociation,dispersionforces,chargetransfercomplexation,hydrophobicassociation.etc.)havebeenthoroughlystudiedandarewelldocumented,buthowtheseforcespreciselyworkinconcerttopromoteintermolecularactionisnotclearyet'.T…