William R. Newman

Alchemy Vs. Chemistry: the Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake1

The parallel usage of the two terms alchemy and chemistry by seventeenth-century writers has engendered considerable confusion among historians of science. Many historians have succumbed to the temptation of assuming that the early modern term chemistry referred to something like the modern discipline, while supposing that alchemy pertained to a different set of practices and beliefs, predominantly the art of transmuting base metals into gold. This paper provides the first exhaustive analysis of the two terms and their interlinguistic cognates in the seventeenth century. It demonstrates that the intentional partition of the two terms with the restriction of alchemy to the sense of metallic transmutation was not widely accepted until the end of the seventeenth century, if even then. The major figure in the restriction of meaning, Nicholas Lemery, built on a spurious interpretation of the Arabic definite article al, which he inherited from earlier sources in the chemical textbook tradition. In order to curtail the tradition of anachronism and distortion engendered by the selective use of the terms alchemy and chemistry by historians, the authors conclude by suggesting a return to seventeenth-century terminology for discussing the different aspects of the early modern discipline chymistry.

The Significance of "Chymical Atomism"

The historical treatment of atomism and the mechanical philosophy largely neglects what I call chymical atomism, namely a type of pre-Daltonian corpuscular matter theory that postulated particles of matter which were operationally indivisible. From the Middle Ages onwards, alchemists influenced by Aristotles Meteorology , De caelo , and De generatione et corruptione argued for the existence of robust corpuscles of matter that resisted analysis by laboratory means. As I argue in the present paper, this alchemical tradition entered the works of Daniel Sennert and Robert Boyle, and became the common property of seventeenth-century chymists. Through Boyle, G.E. Stahl, and other chymists, the operational atomism of the alchemists was even transmitted to Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, where it became the basis of his claim that elements are simply the final limit that analysis reaches.

Mercury and sulphur among the High Medieval alchemists: from Rāzī and Avicenna to Albertus Magnus and pseudo-Roger Bacon.

Abstract This essay challenges the often expressed view that the principles of metals, namely mercury and sulphur, were generally viewed by alchemists as being of a ‘metaphysical’ character that made them inaccessible to the tools and operations of the laboratory. By examining a number of Arabo-Latin and Latin alchemical texts in circulation before the end of the thirteenth century, the author presents evidence that most alchemists of the period considered mercury and sulphur to be materials subject to techniques of purification in the same way that naturally occurring salts and minerals could be freed of their impurities or dross. The article also points to the immense influence of Avicenna and Albertus Magnus in formulating the theory that mercury and sulphur were compounds of different materials, containing both fixed and unfixed components. Finally, the author briefly examines the relationship between this materialist approach to the principles and the chymical atomism of early modern authors who were deeply aware of medieval alchemical literature.

The Chemical Revolution and its Chymical Antecedents

In 1989, the late Frederic L. Holmes published an important cor rective to the history of eighteenth-century chemistry. In the bril liantly succinct 144 pages of his Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as an Investigative Enterprise, Holmes argued that historians have tradi tionally placed far too much emphasis on Antoine-Laurent Lavoi siers resounding defeat of the phlogiston theory and indeed on the chemistry of airs more generally. Such radically discontinuist pic tures of Lavoisiers contribution had given the impression that his immediate predecessors contributed little but error to the history of chemistry. Holmes advocated a much more balanced treatment of chemistry in the era of the Enlightenment, a new approach that would give due consideration to the quotidian developments of ordi nary chemists before and during the Chemical Revolution. In this way it would be possible not only to arrive at a truer picture of the goals common to eighteenth-century chemists, but to chart the

Joachim Telle (1939–2013)

Joachim Telle left us on 12 December 2013. Just the evening before, he had come one last time to lead his seminar at the University of Heidelberg. Those colleagues who live neither in Heidelberg no...