DISTILLING KNOWLEDGE --- ALCHEMY, CHEMISTRY, AND THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
by Bruce T. Moran. Harvard University Press, 2005
    INTRODUCTION (p1-7)

      The problem is that during the period of discovery and theoretical change called the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, not everyone started out with the same assumptions when they attempted to represent what was going on in nature. (p2-3)

      Alchemy, although motivated by assumptions about nature not shared by many today, still occasioned an intense practical involvement with minerals, metals, and the making of medicines. Alchemical procedures produced effects and led to the analysis of various parts of the natural world. We should try to understand how modern science and alchemy worked together to support intellectual life and to promote the process of discovery. In that way we can begin to comprehend how diverse and even contradictory ways of explaining the operations of nature were sometimes intertwined as they sought to unravel nature's secrets. (p3)

      Various perceptions of nature coexisted during the 16th and 17th centuries and exploring how each made sense of natural phenomena and sought to explain relationships between objects of nature lets us develop a greater depth of field in picturing the era itself. (p3)

      As far as the relevance of alchemy to the history of science is concerned, this is not a completely neutral point of view. Certain alchemical operations like "distillation" and "sublimation" influenced the work of later professional chemists. Also, significant figures of the Scientific Revolution like Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton pursued alchemical projects. Both things are true, are well documented, and have a place in what follows.

      This book steps outside the grand narrative of the victory of reason over nonsense and considers the interdependence of supposed opposites in the creation of new learning during the 16th and 17th centuries.

        [1] The question: Alchemy makes a nice anecdote, but it is a fable -- at best, a romantic fantasy. It may be beguiling, but it leads to nothing! Moreover, it has no useful purpose and, and as a knowledge system, has no means to perpetuate itself didactically. How then can this relate to science?

        [2] The answer: Most of us have a very imprecise, if not an altogether cockeyed, view of what early modern alchemy was all about. In fact, most of what we think we know has been created for us by other generations with specific political/cultural views. Early accounts of the history of science assigned alchemy to the superfluous part of a pair of opposites (reason vs. superstition) in which preference for real power and utility could get acknowledged and presumed romance (feelings) and rubbish rejected.

        Simply put, the history of science does not always have to be written as a giant success story. There can be room for the experience of both frustration and gratification -- even when the subject is the Scientific Revolution!

        In fact, if we ignore how experimental experiences are interwoven, lay as well as learned, satisfying as well as disappointing, we stand a good chance of missing what is really going on when accepted forms of knowledge begin to change. Scientific advancement is not one of light overcoming darkness, but of an animated muddle of belief, disillusion, and reinterpretation that is all part of negotiating what there is to talk about in the structure of nature -- and how best to learn more about it.

        The subject of alchemy stands center stage in this analysis. To begin, we have to know more exactly what alchemy was. What did it mean in the early modern world?

    1) DOING ALCHEMY (p8-36)

      Publication of the first real textbook of chemistry by Andreas Libavius (ca. 1555-1616) called Alchemy in 1597.

    2) "THAT PLEASING NOVELTY" --- doing alchemy in artisan and daily life (p37-66)

    3) PARACELSUS AND THE "PARACELSIANS" --- natural relationships and separation as creation (p67-98)

    4) SITES OF LEARNING AND THE LANGUAGE OF CHEMISTRY (p99-131)

    5) ALCHEMY, CHEMISTRY AND THE TECHNOLOGY OF KNOWING (p132-156)

    6) THE REALITY OF RELATIONSHIP (p137-181)

    CONCLUSION --- varieties of experience in reading the book of nature (p182-189)

    REFERENCES (p191-199)

    INDEX (p191-210)

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