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420 Hjalmar Fors the Origin of the Concept of the Chemical 420 Early Science and Medicine 21 (2016) 420-422 book reviews Hjalmar Fors The Limits of Matter: Chemistry, Mining, and Enlightenment (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. 248 (cloth), US$ $40, ISBN 978 0 226 19504 9. The origin of the concept of the chemical element has been a topic of his- torical debate since the beginning of the history of science. Hjalmar Fors has written a fascinating book, which places this debate within the context of eigh- teenth-century Swedish mining culture. The Limits of Matter focuses on the Swedish Bureau of Mines circa 1680 to 1760 and the changing views of its chem- ists, mineralogists, administrators, and patrons regarding the nature and uses of metals and minerals. At the core of this story lies the development of, as Fors puts it, “the modern notion of materiality” (p. 2), which encompasses both the concept of stable chemical elements and the rejection of spiritual and quasi- material “keeper” entities and magical forces, which shaped earlier under- standings of mining and mineral species. In effect, Fors documents what he calls an “epistemological shift” marked by the transition from Paracelsian or “transmutative” chymistry, in which matter was seen as malleable and could be transformed from one species to another, such as in alchemical transmuta- tions of metals, to one grounded in “mechanical chemistry,” which promoted a materialist ontology, accepted only entities that could be isolated and manipu- lated in the laboratory, and borrowed many of its practical operations from artisanal practices, like assaying and smelting. Fors does not present a straightforward origin story for the idea of the chem- ical element. Rather than identify a single discoverer or key moment, he de- scribes the emergence of the idea of metals as stable chemical species as the result of “Enlightenment boundary work around nature” (p. 10). He argues that the new idea of materiality was a synthesis of academic chemistry, natural his- tory, and artisanal practices, which emerged as the Bureau of Mines’s chemists and officials negotiated and delineated novel philosophies and approaches, new ideas about utility and patriotism, and the Bureau’s patronage system. As a department within the cameralist bureaucracy of the Swedish state, the pur- pose of the Bureau was to assess and maximize Sweden’s mineral wealth. Fors documents how over two generations the Bureau became a central point of exchange, or “contact zone” (to use Fors’ term, which he borrowed from the historian Kapil Raj), for European chemical and mining knowledge. But the result of this process was that the Paracelsian view of the Bureau officials and chemists was gradually transformed into one that came to see metals as stable commodities that could be identified and assessed via chemical assay. Fors begins by reviewing the world which Urban Hiärne (1641–1724), a Bu- reau official and, from 1683, the director of the Bureau’s chemical laboratory, ISSN 1383-7427 (print version) ISSN 1573-3823 (online version) ESM 4 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doiEarly 10.1163/15733823-00214p27 Science and Medicine 21 (2016) 420-422 A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period book reviews 421 inhabited. Hiärne’s world was one in which instances of witchcraft, demons, and prognostication were common events, dowsing to find metal deposits and interactions with keeper-entities (such as trolls, kobolder, and gnomes) were a part of mining culture, and the possibility of metallic transmutation, especial- ly chrysopoeia, seemed plausible and garnered much interest from Bureau of- ficials, including Hiärne himself. Nevertheless, Hiärne promoted chemistry as an essential part of a mining official’s knowledge and utilized patriotic rhetoric to obtain royal patronage and transform the laboratory into a showcase for the Swedish state. To promote this agenda and the utilitarian aims of the Bureau, Hiärne sponsored his protégé, Erich Odhelius (1661–1704), on a grand tour of the mining regions of Germany and Hungary as well as centers of the new phi- losophy, like London, to bring back the most recent knowledge of mining, as- saying, smelting, chemistry, and mineralogy. Odhelius’ trip became the model for ambitious young Bureau officials, and the materials and experiences with which these men returned transformed the Bureau into a storehouse and ex- change center for chemical and mining knowledge. However, as Fors docu- ments through Odhelius’ correspondence during this and subsequent trips (c. 1683–1692), these travels proved to be transformative for the travelers as well. Odhelius learned to be skeptical towards his patron’s views on trans- mutative chymistry, and brought back an enthusiasm for English experimental philosophy. The young men who followed Odhelius also remade the Bureau by integrat- ing these new views into the Bureau’s practices. Georg Brandt (1694–1768), who became head of the Bureau’s chemical laboratory in 1727, studied in Leiden during his trip abroad and adopted Herman Boerhaave’s chemical sys- tem, which fit with the Bureau’s mission. Brandt promoted “mechanical” chemistry, which rejected spirits and the idea of chemical principles, saw mat- ter as composed of immutable particles, embraced experimental philosophy, and ultimately adopted, in William Newman’s term, a negative-empirical no- tion of chemical species; i.e., that basic chemical constituents (elements) are those substances that are reduced as far as chemistry is capable of reducing them. Fors points out that many of the Bureau’s chemists came through Brandt’s laboratory and that he and subsequent chemists came to regard the search for the ultimate constituents of metals, their chemical principles (mer- cury, sulfur, or salt), as speculation without utilitarian value. As Fors summa- rizes, by the 1730s the goal of chemistry at the Bureau “was reduced to that of assaying for metals followed by natural historical description” (p. 111). This new, utilitarian approach to metals made possible Brandt’s discovery of cobalt (1735) and Axel Fredrik Cronstedt’s (1722–1765) discovery of nickel (1751). As Fors explains, within the older, “transmutative” or Paracelsian chemistry, these Early Science and Medicine 21 (2016) 420-422.
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