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.     

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".     

Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) and the Saline Chymistry of Plants

Abstract

In a series of lectures appended to his magisterial Anatomy of Plants (1682), Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) explained the results of his own research into the saline chemistry of plants, following an established tradition in early modern chemistry. Members of the Royal Society such as Daniel Coxe were heavily involved in researching salt chemistry in the latter part of the seventeenth century, analysing the role of salts in spa waters, physiology, and as a fundamental element in iatrochemistry. Such researches of Royal Society members were often based upon the chemistry of Johann Van Helmont (1577–1634). As this paper will demonstrate, Grew's work drew from his microscopic research to elaborate and question some of Coxe's and hence Van Helmont's ideas about the principles of matter. Grew also used the results of his chemical research to draw conclusions about plant structure and colour, and applied his results to other areas in natural history such as meteorology, illustrating that chemistry was the basic analytical tool for seventeenth-century investigators of anatomy and natural history.     

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.     

M. S. Tswett and the discovery of chromatography II: Completion of the development of chromatography (1903–1910)

Summary In this, the second part of our review we continue the discussion of the activities of M. S. Tswett related to the development of chromatography. We shall deal here with his activities in Warsaw from 1903 onwards, resulting in his fundamental twin papers of 1906 and his book of 1910, summarizing all his activities related to the investigation of plant pigments and to the development of chromatography. Finally, a few special questions related to Tswett's work shall be discussed.For Part I, seeChromatographia 35, 223 (1993). References are numbered through.     

Paracelsus,a Transmutational Alchemist

A scholarly consensus has long held that in redefining alchemy, Paracelsus rejected metallic transmutation. I show here, however, that for most of his career Paracelsus believed that it was possible to change one metal into another, and even late in his short life he did not break with that view. Furthermore, in certain places in his works he also represented himself, occasionally directly and more often obliquely, as a practical transmutationist. Because Paracelsus not only acknowledged that metallic transmutations were theoretically possible but also claimed to have carried them out in practice, we must regard him as (among other things) a transmutational alchemist. As such, he had more in common than historians have generally admitted with both his medieval predecessors and his posthumous followers. The Paracelsian alchemists of the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not wrong to situate Paracelsus within the alchemical tradition, nor to connect their own goldmaking interests to his.     

Tracing Influence in Small Steps: Richard Kirwan's Quantified Affinity Theory

Abstract

This paper presents an attempt to negotiate the familiar historiographical difficulties of tracing influence in science without fear of accusations of whiggishness. Through a close reading of three papers presented to the Royal Society by Richard Kirwan in the early 1780s on specific gravity, proportions and affinity, it seeks to show that the search for the role of influence in the history of science need not be based on a present-centred value judgement of past science. Prevailing historiography tends to link Kirwan's work to notions of definite combining proportions, settling him firmly on the Proust side of the Berthollet–Proust debate and regarding his work as vaguely precursory to Dalton's atomic theory. My reading suggests, however, that these papers may well have had a surprising level of influence on Berthollet's Chemical Statics and should perhaps be viewed through a somewhat different historical lens. I hope to show that the tracing of historical influence can offer valuable insights to historians of science and that when influence is tracked in small steps only, and forwards rather than backwards, we can legitimately follow it without fear of present-centredness clouding our vision.     

Distilling Reliable Remedies: Hieronymus Brunschwig's Liber de arte distillandi (1500) Between Alchemical Learning and Craft Practice

Abstract

Hieronymus Brunschwig's Liber de arte distillandi, written in German and first published in Strasbourg in 1500, was the first printed manual on the distillation of medicinal waters. Although influential among early modern audiences and well known to modern scholars, its intriguing blend of intellectual and practical traditions has thus far received little attention. This paper identifies these strands in Brunschwig's technical instructions and shows how they intertwine in the production of reliable remedies. Exploring the intellectual dimension of Brunschwig's work, I argue that his concept of distillation is shaped by an alchemical understanding of matter, especially by the writings on ‘quintessence’ of the fourteenth-century alchemist John of Rupescissa. To realise this concept in the workshop, Brunschwig emphasises the central importance of the body and its senses to ensure true craftsmanship. Brunschwig's printed manual was as much a product of skilled artisanal practices as the distilled waters it describes, and I argue that it was shaped by the same concerns about technical precision and reliability.     

Emil Wohlwill's “Entdeckung des Isomorphismus”: A Nineteenth-Century “Material Biography” of Crystallography

Abstract

Eilhard Mitscherlich's experimental work on isomorphism in the crystallisation of many inorganic compounds was regarded by Emil Wohlwill (1835–1912) as a milestone in the history of the atomic–molecular theory. Despite his positivist account, Wohlwill's 1866 survey was primarily concerned with the material conditions that shaped Mitscherlich's theoretical assumptions on iso- and polymorphic crystallisation, narrowing the range of possible alternative models. Following an account of Wohlwill's exposition, and a discussion of his historiographic views, the paper shows how, from a historico-epistemological perspective, technical improvements in crystallography (an emerging branch of early-nineteenth-century mineralogy) were deeply entangled with a new interest in crystal formation as a cutting-edge research field of inorganic chemistry. This had fundamental implications for the development of atomic and molecular theory.     

Peter Debye: Nazi Collaborator or Secret Opponent?

Abstract

In January 2006, the so-called "Debye Affair" emerged, triggered by the publication of a Dutch book on Einstein. Debye was accused of Nazi collaboration in his capacity as chairman of the German Physical Society when he requested, in December 1938, the remaining Jewish members to leave the society. Within a month, two Dutch universities deleted Debye's name from their research institute and scientific award, and this led, both nationally and internationally, to a heated discussion. The Dutch government commissioned the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation to investigate the case. In its final report, the accusation was toned down to 'opportunism'. This paper is based on new information. Above all, I have researched Debye's extensive American archive. This archive disclosed the correspondence (1940–1963) with his friend Paul Rosbaud, an important MI6 intelligencer in Berlin during the Nazi period. The correspondence, combined with information from other sources, suggests that Debye might have been one of Rosbaud's informants. Therefore, this paper also includes a powerful warning against hasty and definitive conclusions.     

Francis Bacon and the Art–Nature Distinction

Abstract

Commentators generally expound Bacon's position on the art–nature relationship in terms of how much it retained or departed from traditional conceptions. This paper argues that an appreciation of the Baconian meaning of the terms "art" and "nature" requires a close examination of his wider cosmogonical speculations. Bacon's cosmogonical account moves from a state of unbridled chaos to the relatively stable system for which the term "nature" is normally used. The fundamental principle lying at the heart of Baconian cosmogony is an enriched and appetitive matter: eternal, unchanging, and the plenipotentiary source of all things. Successive limitations of matter's absolute power produced a lazy and habitual nature, which Bacon labelled "nature free." To shift nature from this otiose condition, the Baconian operator recapitulates the original binding of matter. Bacon designated the systematic procedures of binding nature the science of magic. Magic is Bacon's human counterpart to the original cosmogonical process that gave rise to the current system of nature. In Bacon's cosmogony, all possible worlds unfold out of matter: the function of art is to shake out nature's hidden folds. Hence, the distinction between naturalia and artificialia maps on to the distinction between actual and potential. Nature free is without purpose, but art — nature bound — knowingly brings into being an alternative nature designed for human utility.     

Our Future,Our Heritage. The Chemical Family Tree of Tetsuo Nozoe

Note from the Editor: When I was editing Tetsuo Nozoe's autobiography Seventy Years in Organic Chemistry in the late 1980s, I realized that the history of Japanese organic chemistry was not too well known in countries other than Japan. I urged Professor Nozoe to include the historical context of his life in his writings, and I was absolutely delighted that he did so. I also suggested that he publish a “Riko Majima Family Tree in Chemistry.” Majima was not only Nozoe's professor but, as detailed in Nozoe's autobiography and elsewhere in the literature, the father figure of Japanese organic chemistry. Nozoe was reluctant because to single‐out some chemical academics but not others in such a public manner could—would—prove embarrassing. But faithful to his profession, the obligations to history prevailed and Nozoe's autobiography contains the Majima Family Tree. We now skip ahead 25 years where we are immersed in the publication of the Nozoe Autograph Books (see: http://www.tcr.wiley‐vch.de/nozoe and this introductory essay: J. I. Seeman, Chem. Rec. 2012 , 12, 517–531). I find myself once again an editor studying in the life and legacies of Riko Majima and Tetsuo Nozoe. The “repeating experiences” of history have been felt once again! ² I asked Professors Ichiro Murata, Shô Itô, and Toyonobu Asao (who are Professor Nozoe's students and biographers) to follow Professor Nozoe's lead and provide his Family Tree in Chemistry. What follows is a reproduction of the Majima Family Tree as provided by Professor Nozoe along with the next generation Family Tree, that being the students of Tetsuo Nozoe's students who themselves became illustrious professors. —Jeffrey I. Seeman Guest Editor University of Richmond Richmond, Virginia 23173, USA E‐mail: jseeman@richmond.edu     

“Agricultural Chymistry is at present in it's infancy”: The Board of Agriculture,The Royal Institution and Humphry Davy

In this paper I sketch the institutional interactions between the Board of Agriculture and the Royal Institution in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This includes analysing the composition of memberships and committees of both bodies in which, inter alia, I challenge Morris Berman's account of their institutional relations. A key figure was Humphry Davy who, because of his career ambitions, occupied a slightly uncomfortable position as Professor of Chemistry to both organisations. Davy's lecture notebooks and his subsequent publication Elements of Agricultural Chemistry reveal that he drew almost all his direct knowledge of the subject from Britain and Ireland. Yet, despite such parochial shortcomings that might be expected of an infant science at time of war, the popularity of his book, particularly in North America, provided continuity between the end of the Board of Agriculture in 1822 and the start of the impact of Justus Liebig's work in the 1840s.     

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 Grocers and Physicians: Pharmacists,the new Chemistry,and Institutional Reforms in Bologna during the Napoleonic Period

Abstract

This article argues that the chemical and physiological experiments undertaken by the natural philosopher Stephen Hales (1677–1761) constituted a reformulation of providential matter theory. Hales was responding to a continuing debate about the position of chaos in the natural world between Newtonians like Samuel Clarke, who posited chaos as oppositional to immediate providential direction, and those such as John Ray and Bernard Nieuwentyt, who argued that nature was a chaos of operations, organised by divinely endowed but innate principles. Vegetable Staticks (1727) represents an attempted solution, arguing that a chaos of operations could support life only if it was concurrent with God's direction. Subsequently criticised by the Irish theologian Peter Browne for indulging frivolity, Hales responded in Haemastatics (1733) by auditing how spirituous liquor precipitated a bodily disintegration from the chaos of operations into a destructive chaos. Hales’ subsequent campaign against spirits should be read as an extension of his experimental philosophy as a moral tool.     

Bad Chemistry: Basilisks and Women in Paracelsus and pseudo-Paracelsus

The basilisk of the pseudo-Paracelsian De natura rerum is the evil twin of the homunculus. Created from menstrual blood by artificial ectogenesis in an alchemical laboratory, the basilisk embodies the poisonous character traditionally ascribed to catamenial women, but magnified and concentrated by its mode of generation to the degree that it can kill by its glance alone. How does this remarkable thought experiment relate to other instances of the basilisk in the genuine and pseudonymous corpus of Paracelsus? The present paper outlines two primary uses which emerge repeatedly: first, in works other than De natura rerum, the basilisk is used by Paracelsus and his imitators as a means of explaining action at a distance, especially in the case of plague. Relying on a medieval association between the basilisk’s deadly gaze and the putative ability of menstruating women to damage mirrors, the genuine Paracelsus links contagious disease to the deleterious action of the female imagination. Second, because the basilisk was traditionally held to be the product of an unnatural birth, being born from an egg laid by a rooster and incubated by a toad, the Paracelsian corpus frequently invokes the monster as a model for unnatural generation in general.     

Michael Combrune,Peter Shaw and Commercial Chemistry: the Boerhaavian Chemical Origins of Brewing Thermometry

Abstract

Recent work by David P. Miller indicates how the chemical activity of a much-studied figure, James Watt, has been obscured by the retrospective assigning of heat studies in general to physics. This paper applies a similar analysis to the work of Michael Combrune, a philosophically inclined brewer of the mid-eighteenth century; remembered chiefly within the brewing profession as a pioneering thermometrist, Combrune understood the thermometer as the central diagnostic tool in a chemically derived system of management that is now largely forgotten. In the course of retrieving this scheme, I display its origins in the chemistry of Herman Boerhaave as mediated by his unauthorised translator Peter Shaw, Combrune's intellectual patron, whose association with the gentlemanly representatives of artisanal trades derived from his concern to establish "commercial chemistry." I next demonstrate Combrune's considerable conceptual independence and forcefully reductive quantitative agenda, and finally outline three reasons why later practitioners abandoned his scheme: the displacement of its supporting authorities, the affording of independence to users, and the acceptance of its practical outcomes as simple givens — all circumstances that might befall a "mainstream" as easily as a "marginal" theory.