Alchemical Atoms or Artisanal Building Blocks? A Response to Klein

@article{Newman2009AlchemicalAO,
  title={Alchemical Atoms or Artisanal Building Blocks? A Response to Klein},
  author={William Newman},
  journal={Perspectives on Science},
  year={2009},
  volume={17},
  pages={212-231}
}
  • W. Newman
  • Published 14 April 2009
  • Philosophy
  • Perspectives on Science
In a recent essay review of William R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy (2006), Ursula Klein defends her position that philosophically informed corpuscularian theories of matter contributed little to the growing knowledge of reversible reactions and robust chemical species in the early modern period. Newman responds here by providing further evidence that an experimental, scholastic tradition of alchemy extending well into the Middle Ages had already argued extensively for the persistence of… 
View on MIT Press
3 Citations
Methods Citations
1

3 Citations

Stabilizing Chemical Reality: The Analytic-Synthetic Ideal of Chemical Species
Chemistry is a science of analysis and synthesis. This simple state- ment characterizes chemistry as an art that breaks down the 'nature out there' and puts it back together in a form convenient to…
The ontological function of first-order and second-order corpuscles in the chemical philosophy of Robert Boyle: the redintegration of potassium nitrate
Although Boyle has been regarded as a champion of the seventeenth century Cartesian mechanical philosophy, I defend the position that Boyle’s views conciliate between a strictly mechanistic…
Storied Objects, Scientific Objects, and Renaissance Experiment: The Case of Malleable Glass
Abstract The career of storied objects can help highlight the agency of absence and historicize the notion of scientific objects more generally. Until the sixteenth century, lost, ancient flexible…

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 57 REFERENCES
Alchemy tried in the fire : Starkey, Boyle, and the fate of Helmontian chemistry
Using the previously misunderstood interactions between Robert Boyle, widely known as "the father of chemistry," and George Starkey, an alchemist and the most prominent American scientific writer…
Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature
"In Promethean Ambitions", William R. Newman uses alchemy as a means to discuss the thinning boundary between the natural and the artificial. Focusing primarily on the period between 1200 and 1700,…
Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry.
TLDR
Newman and Principe provide an elegant account of how Starkey complemented theory and practice, building on the tradition of van Helmont while working on projects of his own, providing a balanced and informative evaluation of alchemy and its basis in the science of the midseventeenth century.
Alchemy vs. chemistry: the etymological origins of a historiographic mistake.
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…
Late medieval and early modern corpuscular matter theories
Preface Introduction: Corpuscles, Atoms, particles, and Minima, Christoph Luthy, John E. Murdoch, Williams R. Newman Minima in Twelth-Century Medical Texts from Salerno, DanielleJacquart Roger…
The social origins of modern science
Edgar Zilsel is perhaps the least well-known member of the Vienna Circle. Although he was a council member of the official Verein Ernst Mach he never played a central role in the debates of the…
Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire
TLDR
As Tara Nummedal shows in her fascinating Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire, practitioners of the art hoped to use their knowledge to generate precious minerals and gain spectacular wealth, but chasing such ambitions carried considerable risk.
Alchemy, chemistry and metallurgy in Renaissance Europe: a wider context for fire-assay remains
During the Renaissance, what we nowadays call 'alchemy' and 'chemistry' constituted a single, all-inclusive, sphere of activity, that involved the routine conduct of fire assays. The quest for the…
Origin of the Concept Chemical Compound
The Argument Most historians of science share the conviction that the incorporation of the corpuscular theory into seventeenth-century chemistry was the beginning of modern chemistry. My thesis in…
The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire
This study explores the relationships among alchemy, the Court and commerce in order to illuminate the cultural history of the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. In showing how an…
...
...