Lawrence PrincipeRecensioni

This is one of those rare books that explains alchemy as part of history, as a set of beliefs that could be either metaphorical, spiritual, or physical, and that lead toward what became chemistry.

I found this Great Courses audiobook series of lectures by Professer Lawrence M. Principe on Science and Religion to be extremely educational and intellectually stimulating. Professor Principe did a very good job of summarizing and condensing into twelve half hour lectures an immense amount of information giving us a solid stepping stone on some of the principal points of history of theology and science and of some of the principal players in each. The main focus is how science and religion have for most of history not been at war with each other and the idea that they are is a relatively modern development and the reasons for that are explained.

Evolution and creationism is gone over in some detail, as well as the evangelical, fundamentalist movements in America that have grown so large in recent years and are one of the major sources of the huge divisions and political battling for control Americans are currently facing.

This book does exactly what it says on the cover - it's a short introduction to the Scientific Revolution with a good overview of the main ideas, people, and events. The bibliographies are thorough. This is a good starting point to research on the Scientific Revolution.

It's not that people in the pre-scientific age weren't intelligent - but rather they engaged in a fundamentally different form of reasoning. Science allowed us to reason differently about what we observe. Principe provides a wonderful and accessible account of this shift.

This is very much an academic work, well-cited with minimalist prose and as such can be difficult to make it all the way through. However, those that do make it through will be rewarded with an interesting overview of the history of chemistry, alchemy and the evolution of the scientific process over time. The two authors are both professors of history while Principe is a professor of chemistry as well. These two authors bring a deep domain knowledge of both the characters of interest and of the history of chemistry - both which are well-suited for the subject matter. Overall, a rewarding yet very dense overview on the history of some key figures in medieval alchemy.

A science historian and an art historian team up to produce this excellent illustrated essay on Alchemy and how it was the beginning of modern chemistry.

From page 3: "In 1600, chymists knew of just seven metals - gold, silver, iron, copper, tin, lead, and mercury ... All have some properties in common: they all are shiny, and they all (except for the liquid metal mercury) can be hammered, shaped, and cast. This commonality of properties implied to early thinkers a commonality of composition, and thus it was theorized that all the metals were composed of the same essential ingredients in different proportions and degrees of purity. The Arabic writers of the Middle Ages, who laid the foundations of chymistry, cited two hypothetical ingredients and named them "Mercury" and "Sulphur." This so-called Mercury and Sulphur combined underground naturally to produce metals. If there is too much Mercury - the fluid principle - then tin and lead - the two most easily melted metals - result. If there is too much Sulphur - the dry, inflammable principle - then iron and copper - the two hardest metals and the two that will burn most easily in air - will be formed. Only when very pure Mercury and Sulphur combine thoroughly in just the right proportion will gold be the product. Given this theory of the generation of metals, turning one metal into another was a simple (in theory) matter of learning by what means to purify and adjust the proportions of Mercury and Sulphur in a given metal."

https://maryoverton.wikispaces.com/The+Distracted+Driver

. I didn't always agree with the lecturer, it is certainly thought provoking. It provides a fascinating historical background (one that is often overlooked) to the interactions between and Science and religion. I was surprised to learn some of the sources for the present day notion of an antithesis between the two.

The Secrets of Alchemy
Lawrence M. Principe
Monday, March 11, 2013
According to Lawrence Principe, alchemy has been misunderstood as a fruitless quest by old men in stinking laboratories. His goal is to locate the “noble art” in practical chemistry as well as legend. He notes that much of the obscurity of alchemical texts originates in the desire to prevent the discoveries from being understood by persons who were not adept, and to avoid the wrath of emperors. He ranges through the history from Greco-Egyptian period to the 19th century, interrupting the time-line to discuss the distorting effect that the 19th century craze for occult arts had on the history of alchemy. Alchemists pursued both chrysopoieia, the secret of transforming base metal into gold, and chemiatria, the pursuit of the elixir of life, observing practical chemical transformations in their laboratories. Principe was able to demonstrate some of the transformations in the modern laboratory, like gold coloring of copper coins, and the growth of a crystal tree from amorphous starting material. Interesting but pedantic, not likely to engage those without a long interest in alchemy, but a very good reference to the modern literature.
Quotes:
“Latin alchemists often quoted the motto “Liber librum aperit”, that is “one book opens another”
“…Paracelsus gave this process of separation and reintegration the name spagyria. The term has been explained as meaning “to separate and recombine”, from the Greek “span” and “ageirein” meaning “to draw out” and “to bring together”
On the ouroboros, the serpent eating its tail” “But the inscription within it - ONE THE ALL (ben to pan) - directs us again toward ancient Greek philosophical notions about a single material that serves as an underlying substrate for all substances”
“The reading of classical mythology as chymical allegory developed into a standard part of the chymical literature [15 century - Aurelio Augurello]. It appears, for example, in Atalanta fugiens but even more so in Maier’s Secrets Most Secret (Arcana arcanissima)
John Donne using the transmutation of gold as an allegory:
“Oh! ’tis imposture all:
And as no chymique yet th’Elixar got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot
If by the way to him befall
Some odiferous thing, or medicinall,
So, lovers dream a rich and long delight,
But get a winter-seeming summer’s night”

A very good, up-to-date history of alchemical thought and practice. Principe has threaded the needle nicely here, with a book basic enough for someone with a casual interest in the subject but with enough depth (plus thorough footnotes and a very extensive bibliography) for those with a grounding in the history of science in general or alchemy in particular. One of the major strengths of the book is that Principe has actually attempted to replicate results described in alchemical texts, with some very interesting results.

I was particularly struck by the following passage, the substance of which comes up fairly often in Principe's discussions:

"People today and people of the past often do not share the same vision or expectations of the world, nor do they necessarily approach the world in the same way. Their questions were not our questions, nor were their ways of answering them necessarily our ways. What seems arbitrary to one expresses a profound law of nature to the other; what seems an insight into the design of the cosmos to one appears as mere trivia to the other. Recognizing these differences helps us avoid the error of projecting our own knowledge and expectations onto the past as measures of its value" (p. 42).

In the first three chapters, Principe explores the origins of alchemical thought in the Greco-Egyptian period, in the Arabic world, and in the medieval Latin period. Then he bounces forward briefly to examine how alchemy was seen and interpreted from the eighteenth century to the present before moving back slightly in time to cover the "heyday" period of alchemical in the early modern era. The final two chapters cover his efforts to interpret certain alchemical recipes, and offer a brief survey of alchemy as portrayed in art, literature, theater, and other cultural environments.

As Principe makes clear often, there's still much work to be done before we can fully understand the role of alchemical thought and practice, but this book does much to make that possible, and I hope perhaps it will spur other efforts as well.½