What Have We Learned from the Recent Historiography of Alchemy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4173620 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William R Newman (0009-0007-6723-5452, Indiana University Bloomington, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 102 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 313-321 |
| Publication date | 2011-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Isis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/660140 |
| PMID | 21874691 |
| OpenAlex | W1510613089 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 14 |
| References cited | 12 |
Over the last two decades a new scholarship on alchemy has emerged, leading to a fundamental reformulation of knowledge about alchemists and their activities. We now know that medieval and early modern alchemists employed experiment in concert with theory to demonstrate the existence of stable "chymical atoms," which were thought to combine with one another according to a hierarchical theory of matter. Employing laboratory-based analysis and synthesis, alchemists were among the first explicitly to enunciate the principle of mass balance and to show that materials are compounded of the ingredients into which they can be physically decomposed. Perhaps even more surprisingly, these convictions and practices arose out of the interaction of alchemical practice with scholastic Aristotelianism, long viewed by historians of the Scientific Revolution as antithetical to experiment. Thus the new historiography challenges both a long-standing marginalization of alchemy itself and a commonplace view of Aristotelianism as inimical to the early modern growth of experimental science
Alchemy · Archaeology · Aristotelianism · Art · Epistemology · Historiography · History of science · Literature · Political science · Scholarship · Scientific revolution · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Philosophy
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Magic in Common and Legal Perspectives
Colonial Magic
Early Greco-Roman Antiquity
Magic in the Postcolonial Americas
On Jungius’ Texturæ Contemplatio
The Bronze Object in the Middle Ages
From the Atom to Living Systems
Alchýmia a jej žánre
Conceptual Profile of Chemical Analysis
Circulation
What’s Wrong with Talking About the Scientific Revolution? Applying Lessons from History of Science to Applied Fields of Science Studies
Persian Mumia
The Production of Silver, Copper, and Lead in the Harz Mountains from Late Medieval Times to the Onset of Industrialization
Styles of Experimentation and Alchemical Matter Theory in the Scientific Revolution
"The Significance of "Chymical Atomism
Alchemy Vs. Chemistry
How not to integrate the history and philosophy of science
Boyle and the origins of modern chemistry
| Unique citing works | 14 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,27 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 14 |