A Response to Klein

Alchemical Atoms or Artisanal “Building Blocks”? A Response to Klein

William R. Newman Indiana University

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 ingredients during processes of “mixture” (e.g. chemical reactions), and that this corpuscular alchemical tradition bore important fruit in the work of early modern chymists such as Daniel Sennert and Robert Boyle.

Introduction: Alchemy and its Troubled Historiography In the historiography of science alchemy has long held a special place as one of the great losers. If one consults the historians who ªrst popularized the notion of an early modern Scientiªc Revolution, scholars such as E. J. Dijksterhuis, Herbert Butterªeld, Marie Boas, and A. Rupert Hall, a tradition of anti-alchemical disparagement immediately leaps to the fore. Focusing on the highly quantiªed methods of astronomy and physics, mid-20th century historians of the Scientiªc Revolution saw alchemy not only as a ªeld that lagged behind those more exact disciplines in its employment of quantiªcation, but even as a positive hindrance to the progress of science (Newman 2006, pp. 6–8). Their denigration of alchemy re- ceived further justiªcation from the frankly obscurantist outlook of modern self-styled occultists, and additional corroboration arose from the pronouncements of analytical psychologists and scholars of comparative religion who viewed alchemy primarily as a form of religious experience or as a Jungian “integration of the personality”—certainly not as a forerun-

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ner of modern experimental science and technology (Newman 1996, Prin- cipe and Newman 2001). In the last decade and a half, however, a new historiography of alchemy has arisen, which has begun to reveal that these traditional views of the “auriªc art” are largely specious. Above all, it has come to light that alchemy in the early modern period did not consist merely of attempts to discover the agent of chrysopoeia (literally “goldmaking,” i.e. trans- mutational alchemy), the philosophers’ stone, but was also a discipline concerned with a broad range of technological pursuits. These activities included dye and pigment manufacture, the reªning of salts, metallurgical assaying and mineral extraction, the making of artiªcial gemstones, the improvement of glass and ceramic formulas, techniques for the improvement of brewing, research on incendiary weapons, the making of perfumes and cosmetics, the study and development of artiªcial fertilizers, and a variety of medical pursuits, such as the discovery and manufacture of entirely new pharmaceuticals as well as the analysis and puriªcation of existing drugs (Von Martels 1991, Eamon 1994, Smith 1994, Newman 1994, Butters 1996, Moran 2005, Martinón-Torres and Rehren 2005, Nummedal 2007).1 At the same time, fundamental developments in the history of chemistry, such as the discovery of the principle of mass balance and the basing of the discipline on paired analysis and resynthesis, have been located in the works of alchemists (Newman and Principe 2002). This casts a new and very different light on the relationship of alchemy to the chemistry of the eighteenth century and later. Given the wide-ranging character of early modern alchemy, its focus on many goals in addition to chrysopoeia, and its relationship to later chemistry, historians have begun to adopt the old term chymistry, a synonym for alchemy in early modern English, to describe this multifaceted discipline rather than sticking exclusively to the connotatively loaded word alchemy (Newman and Principe 1998, Moran 2007).2 Despite these encouraging developments, however, the historiography of alchemy now faces a set of challenges that are in some measure new, and in other respects disturbingly familiar. First, it is clear that some historians of chemistry are ill at ease with the new emphasis being placed on alchemy as a parent of the modern discipline. Hence we see the winner of the American Chemical Society’s 2005 Edelstein Award enunciating his fully unsupported credo that “I believe, despite the recent fad in the his-

1. See Newman 1994, chapter 2 and passim, where the multifarious “industrial” pursuits of the American alchemist George Starkey, otherwise known as “Eirenaeus Philalethes,” and his contemporaries are spelled out. 2. The advantages of the term chymistry are argued in Newman and Principe 1998.

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tory of science, which purports to ªnd the origins of virtually everything from Newton’s physics to Boyle’s atomism in the alchemical literature, that alchemy proper is not an important progenitor of modern chemistry, which instead clearly evolved out of metallurgy and pharmacy” (Jensen 2006, p. 5).3 This marginalization of alchemy in favor of pharmacy and metallurgy derives ultimately from Enlightenment chemists themselves (Venel 1772, p. 420).4 Writers such as Nicolas Lemery, Etienne-François Geoffroy, and Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, who were eager to dissoci- ate their practices from the “darkness” of the Middle Ages as embodied in chrysopoetic writings, denounced alchemy as simple charlatanry at the beginning of the Siècle des Lumières. This swelling chorus laid the founda- tions for a tradition that viewed alchemy as the very embodiment of fraud, a tradition that was subsequently adopted, without the slightest critical restraint, by numerous historians of science as well as by the general pub- lic. Since the view of alchemy as a sort of “anti-science” has formed the ob- ject of extended critiques elsewhere, it should be unnecessary to debunk it further here (Principe and Newman 2001, Newman 2006). Instead, I will point to some additional pitfalls that accompany the present heightened interest in the history of the discipline. A more subtle threat to the proper understanding of alchemy derives from the very success of the new historiography. Thanks to the growing realization that early modern chymistry had a strong and diverse technological component, there is a tendency among some current scholars to see this as the major feature of the discipline and to downplay the close connections between alchemical practice—even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—and the scholasticism of the medieval and early modern university. The connections between chymistry, material culture, and eco-

3. This is the 2005 Edelstein Award paper; online version consulted on 7/25/07 at http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/ϳmainzv/HIST/awards/Edelstein%20Papers/2005-Edelstein- Jensen.pdf . 4. See for example Gabriel-François Venel’s entry on chemistry in the Encyclopédie (Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres. Mis en ordre & publié par M....Volume 3. Geneve [Paris & Neufchastel], 1772; 1754–72. 924pp. 28 vols.) p. 420, where Venel praises pharmacy and mining for their contributions to the discipline: “Nous avons regardé jusqu’à-present la Chimie comme la science générale des petits corps, comme une vaste sources de connoissances naturelles; l’application particuliere qu’on en a faite à différens objets, a produit les diverses branches de la Chimie & les différens arts chimiques. Les deux branches de la Chimie qui ont été cultivés le plus scientiªquement & qui sont devenues par-là la base du travail, le vrai fonds d’expérience du chimiste philosophe, en mème tems qu’elles ont ètè les deux premiers arts chimiques, sont l’art de préparer les médicamens (voy. PHARMACIE), & celui de traiter les mines & de puriªer les métaux, soit en grand, soit en petit.” Ursula Klein (1996, p. 253), uses this passage to justify her own belief that the origins of modern chemistry lie in the pharmaceutical and metallurgical trades.

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nomics have been outlined very well by scholars such as Pamela Smith and Tara Nummedal, but it is important not to forget the theoretical component of the discipline (Smith 1994, Nummedal 2002). This is a particular worry in the face of a resurgence of Edgar Zilsel’s mid-twentieth century thesis that the important changes leading to the Scientiªc Revolution lay in the interaction of artisans, humanists, and bankers that marked the emergent capitalism of early modern Europe. In particular, Zilsel argued that it was only when merchants and workmen had moved up the social ladder to a point where Renaissance men of letters and university-trained scholars were willing to interact with them that natural philosophy could escape the feudal world of the Middle Ages and become the productive science of Francis Bacon and his heirs.5 Unfortunately, Zilsel’s thesis leaves little place for alchemy, which had already been integrating theory and practice since its inception in late antique Greco-Roman Egypt. Already in the alchemy of pseudo-Democritus, composed in the early centuries of the Christian era, one ªnds the discipline treated as a sort of “applied science” where theory is employed as a means of attaining useful material products (Berthelot 1888).6 The alchemy of the Middle Ages intensiªed this relationship between head and hand still further, when major scholastic ªgures of the thirteenth century such as Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus engaged themselves deeply in the subject. Nor was the connec- tion lost in the early modern period. Industrial projectors such as Johann Rudolph Glauber and Johann Joachim Becher were every bit as indebted to the traditional theory and practice of alchemy as were those whose fame lay mainly in their work on chrysopoeia, such as George Starkey and Thomas Vaughan.7 The problems that I have outlined so far, namely a tradition with En- lightenment roots that marginalizes the historical role of alchemy in favor of pharmacy and metallurgy and a Zilsel-like focus on material culture and the growth of capitalism at the expense of scholasticism, are obviously complementary. Both traditions decouple artisanal traditions from learned ones and de-emphasize the contributions of medieval and early modern university culture to the birth of modern science. When combined and carried to extremes, these historiographical stances yield a position that is at once radically discontinuist in its chronological perspective and opposed to any acknowledgement of a contribution coming from the world

5. For Zilsel’s life and works , see Zilsel, et al. 2000. 6. For more on the technological component of alchemy and its status as an “applied science” see Newman 1994, chapters 2 and 4. 7. For Glauber’s indebtedness to theories of the alkahest, see Ahonen 1972, p. 107 et passim. For Starkey and Vaughan, see Newman 1994, chapter 6. For Becher, see Smith 1994.

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of the scholastics. Such a view comes perilously close to endorsing the triumphalist vision of modern science as a complete break with the Mid- dle Ages that is already familiar from the works of the pioneer historians of the Scientiªc Revolution. As we will see in the remainder of this essay, the Enlightenment view of alchemy as unimportant compared to the metallurgical and pharmaceutical trades and the Zilselian focus on the contribution of artisans unencumbered by philosophy receive precisely such mutual reinforcement in the work of Ursula Klein, which is the focus of the present essay. Klein’s recent essay review of my book Atoms and Alchemy casts an unusually strong light on the historiographical divisions still at work in the history of chemistry and its relationship to alchemy (Klein 2007). By responding to Klein’s major points, it will be possible to illuminate these fault-lines still further, and to lay bare a number of the presuppositions that still underlie the historiography of science as it is being written today. It is of course the case that revisionist theses, by their very nature, dis- turb long-held views. One should not be surprised, then, that Atoms and Alchemy, which posits that alchemical corpuscular theories arising in the Middles Ages had a major impact on seventeenth century chymists such as Daniel Sennert and Robert Boyle, should have unsettled at least one re- viewer (Newman 2006, Klein 2007). Ursula Klein has been promulgating her own view of these matters since at least 1994, when she published Verbindung und Afªnität, a study of chemical afªnity and bonding in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this work and in several articles appearing mainly in Science in Context, Klein presents a more traditional view of the origins of modern chemistry that privileges the writings and practices of metallurgists and pharmacists and plays down the contributions of medieval alchemy, much as the Enlightenment chemists themselves were wont to do (Klein 1994a, 1994b, 1996, Klein and Lefèvre 2007).8 Klein’s argument that seventeenth-century French text-book writers and pharmacists were somehow responsible for revolutionizing chemistry at the expense of alchemy was already popularized in the history of science community by Hélène Metzger in the 1920s and 1930s, and until recently has been an unquestioned feature of the historiography of chemistry. As the historiography of alchemy has undergone its recent growth and transformation, however, such views have increasingly come to represent a

8. In addition to Klein 1994a, 1994b, and 1996, the ªrst half of her recent Materials in Eighteenth-Century Science: A Historical Ontology (2007), coauthored with Wolfgang Lefèvre, recapitulates a great deal of this material. For further articles by Klein, see her website (consulted 17 July 2007) at http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/staff/members/klein/ publications_full?-tableϭpersonal_www&keyϭUrsula_Klein.

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sort of scholarly atavism (Newman and Principe 1998, Principe and Newman 2001).9 One of the characteristic features of Klein’s scholarship is that she radically plays down the historical importance of atomism and corpuscularian matter theories more generally for the history of chemistry, in a way that is reminiscent of Zilsel’s de-emphasis of philosophy in favor of artisanal “know-how.” In her Verbindung und Afªnität and various articles, she erects a dichotomy between the philosophically oriented “mechanical corpuscular theory,” as she calls it, and the empirically grounded if inchoate views about matter shared by mineralogical and pharmaceutical writers. The former, according to Klein, failed to recognize the permanence of chemical species, since its focus on mechanism led its acolytes to overemphasize an underlying “uniform catholic matter” characterized by primary qualities alone. In her view it was the empirically oriented practical men of the early modern mining and drug trades who ªrst recognized the signiªcance of reversible chemical reactions and the implications that these had for the existence of enduring material “building blocks” (Klein’s term) that retained their identity in chemical compounds. In Klein’s opinion, these practical writers owed little if any debt to philosophy of any sort—indeed, she argues that the dominant hylomorphism of the scholastics and the hylozoism of the Paracelsians acted as impediments rather than aids to what historians used to call “positive knowledge.” Unfortunately, Klein’s heavy-handed division between learned and empirical traditions leaves no room for a discipline that had spanned the two realms of human activity for centuries before the early modern writers that form the focus of her inquiry. I refer of course to alchemy, which had been integrating theory and practice since its inception in the late antique world, and which had already been dealing with the meaning of reversible reactions and semi-permanent chemical species since at least the High Middle Ages.

Alchemical Corpuscular Theory in the Middle Ages Unlike Klein’s work, my Atoms and Alchemy does not erect an impassable gap between philosophical matter-theories and empirical practice. Nor does it see Aristotelianism and corpuscular views of matter as starkly in- compatible opposites. To the contrary, as recent scholarship has stressed, Book Four of Aristotle’s Meteorology contains a well-developed micro- structural physics based on the interaction of particles (onkoi) and pores (poroi). This tradition, along with medically oriented questions and scho- 9. For revision and criticism of the Metzgerian positions that form Klein’s backdrop, see Newman and Principe (1998); and Principe and Newman (2001).

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lastic disputations on the nature of matter, provided the background for a corpuscular alchemy that blossomed in the High Middle Ages. The most important text in that tradition was undoubtedly the Summa perfectionis of “Geber,” a pseudonymous work that ªrst appeared on the scene around the end of the thirteenth century. The Summa of Geber presents a theory of matter explicitly linked to alchemical practice. Unlike some of the chymical writers of the early modern period, who often tended to think of the components of the metals as being ideal types or “hypostatical principles,” Geber views ordinary mercury and sulfur as being the immediate components of metals, even if they are altered by subterranean processes in the course of mineral generation. Indeed, he argues that the four Aristote- lian elements, ªre, air, water, and earth, bond together in a “very strong composition” (fortissima compositio) to form particles of mercury and sulfur, which in turn combine in a “very strong composition” to make up the particles of the metals. Geber argues throughout the Summa that imperfect metals are converted to noble ones by multiple processes that remove ex- cess “unªxed” (volatile) mercury and sulfur, and replace these defective principles with an ultrapure variety of mercury and sulfur that can pene- trate by means of interstitial pores into the deep structure of metals pre- pared by alchemical practice. There can be no doubt that the Summa upholds a theory in which the mercury and sulfur remain present as fully formed components within the metals, and that they can therefore be extracted as such by means of laboratory processes. Geber’s approach took aim at an interpretation of Aristotelian matter theory that reached its apogee with Thomas Aquinas and his followers. The Thomists, following Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione I, 10, argued that mixture occurs only when the ingredients to be mixed lose their individual being and are assimilated by a new substantial form. This im- position of a new substantial form can only occur after the four elementary qualities of the ingredients, their hot, cold, wet, and dry, interact with one another to produce a medial state of temperation. Only at this point, according to the Thomistic theory, can the mixture become genuinely homogeneous. The Thomistic theory of mixture, adopted and modiªed by Duns Scotus and many others, made it difªcult or impossible to uphold the reality of persistent corpuscular ingredients that could be reclaimed from a mixture. By deªnition, the presence of such uncombined parts would result in a heterogeneous composition (compositio) rather than a homogeneous true mixture (vera mixtio). As I argue at length in Atoms and Alchemy, the dominant tendency among Thomists and Scotists was to argue that reversible chemical reactions could only come about by a regener- ation of the ingredients rather than by an extraction of them. The Summa’s marked predilection for the term compositio—as in “very strong composi-

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tion”—is signiªcant. As every scholastic knew, compositio was the standard translation for the Greek synthesis, a term that Aristotle used to express mere juxtaposition (as in barley and wheat kernels shaken in a jar) as opposed to real mixture (mixis). Klein complains that Geber also sometimes uses the term mixtio, hence—as she sees it—undercutting my claim that his theory reinterpreted or opposed Aristotelian mixis (Klein 2007, pp. 249–250). But it was typically the method of the medieval Aristotle commentators to retain Aristotle’s terminology while giving it a new interpretation. In the fourteenth century Thomas Bradwardine was able to gloss Aristotle’s comments on motion in the Physics as something that can be represented as a logarithmic function, Nicole Oresme could elaborate his famous mean speed theorem from the same source, and William of Ockham could represent Aristotle as a fellow nominalist. Even the Eucharist found its justiªcation in the language of Aristotle, when the Fourth Lateran Council argued that the “accidents” of the host could remain present without a proper substance, since the body of Christ had replaced the substance of the bread (Murdoch and Sylla 1978).10 It is therefore no surprise that Geber would retain Aristotelian terminology while interpreting it in a new way. If one in fact consults the broader textual passages from which Klein has extracted snippets for her review, it is quite clear that Geber is interpreting homogeneity not in the traditional Thomistic sense but primarily in terms of uniformity of particle size. For example, he describes the temperation of the dry and the wet, but adds that this occurs only when the smallest particles of the ingredients pass off in the form of vapor and the larger particles remain, a process that he says requires a slow, gentle heating (Newman 1991, pp. 645, 279).11 Like many corpuscular thinkers since antiquity, Geber thinks of ºuids as composed at the microlevel of smaller particles than solids. He also assumes, reasonably enough, that smaller particles of a given material are easier to sublime than larger ones. Thus Geber interprets the “temperation” that precedes the acquisition of material uniformity as a mechanical sifting out of the smallest particles by gentle heating, which leaves the larger ones behind. To underscore this point he turns to the laboratory sublimation of mercury and sulfur. If these materials are sublimed at a high temperature, they do not leave behind signiªcant impurities, since the heat drives up both

10. These points are of course well known to those who work on the history of medieval science. For a brief introduction to the thought world of scholastic natural philosophy in the Middle Ages, I direct the reader to the classic article by John E. Murdoch and Edith Sylla (1978), “The Science of Motion.” 11. In response to Klein 2007, pp. 249–250, see Newman 1991, p. 645 of English and 279 of Latin.

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small and large particles. In order to separate the differently sized particles, the alchemist must employ a mild heat, just as nature does within the earth. Throughout the Summa perfectionis, laboratory operations such as sublimation, distillation, and coagulation are therefore interpreted in terms of such separation of small and large particles, and it is precisely this separation that results in material uniformity. The fact that Geber sometimes employs the term mixtio alongside compositio is not evidence that he interpreted mixture in the Thomistic or Scotist sense, but rather that he had reinterpreted mixture as composition. Klein, who views all explicitly particulate concepts of matter in terms of “the mechanical corpuscular” theories of the seventeenth century, does not accept that the Summa contains any coherent corpuscularian basis since she looks for the highly visual models proposed by early modern mecha- nists with their microscopic hooks and eyes, whirligigs, and grappling irons. In order to convince her that Geber’s Summa contains a hierarchical theory of composition, with the elements remaining fully formed within the principles and the principles within the metals, “Newman needs to show that Geber explained the great speciªc gravity of gold by referring to the packing of the gold corpuscles and the small interstices between the gold corpuscles. Instead, he refers exclusively to the packing of the particles of mercury and sulfur or to the microlevel more elusively” (Klein 2007, p. 249). In fact, Klein imposes an anachronistic condition that need not be fulªlled in order to make my claim. In principle the introduction of porosity into a metal could obviously occur either at the corpuscular level of the four elements, at the level of the two principles, or even at that of the metallic corpuscles themselves (which could be closely or loosely spaced). To expect Geber unequivocally to have chosen one of these paths would be to ask for the importation of a Gassendi or Descartes into the High Middle Ages, obviously not a reasonable historical demand. Concrete evidence that Geber really did uphold the existence of distinct metallic corpuscles made up of mercury and sulfur, and therefore that he did not think of the principles as akin to squares in a checkerboard dis- tributed loosely across the structure of the metal, is readily available. The last book of the Summa contains a comprehensive treatment of assaying techniques such as cupellation and cementation that could be used to test the products of alchemy—the precious metals—for their genuineness. Geber’s discussion here makes sense only if he is thinking that the individual metals—which are melted together in the test of cupellation—are themselves composed of relatively robust particles. Otherwise, a combina- tion of fused metals would produce a strikingly counterfactual result: an entirely new metal would be formed from the molten mass, since the sulfur and mercury of the molten metals would combine indiscriminately as

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a result of their intimate mixture. In reality, the test of cupellation pro- duces the opposite result, as Geber clearly describes—the base metals are separated from the precious ones. Geber’s ruling idea is that during cupellation, where the metals are subjected to strong heating and the base metals are correspondingly removed by blasting and or corrosion, gold and silver withstand the test because of the “very strong composition” of their metallic corpuscles. As Geber puts it, the noble metals are “not cor- rupted by the substance of an extraneous body on account of their strong composition, since a mixture through the smallest particles does not come about” (Newman 1991, pp. 776, 607).12 In other words, the tight bonding-together of the mercury and sulfur within a gold or silver corpuscle prevents the entry of corrosive agents, thanks to the resulting absence of porosity. This language of “smallest particles” and “strong composition,” would have been perfectly intelligible to a medieval or early modern reader, just as I believe it is intelligible today. Indeed, there is clear and wide- spread evidence that the Summa’s language was understood as expressing a compositional matter theory from the Middle Ages up to the seventeenth century. A popular tradition begun by one Frater Efferarius, probably in the late Middle Ages, repeatedly stresses that the Summa upheld a theory whereby minimal particles—which Efferarius interprets as indivisible atoms—are bonded intact rather than losing their identity in a mixture. Closely paraphrasing Chapter 24 of the Summa perfectionis without acknowledgement and then following this with his own gloss, Efferarius says the following – Each of these [i.e. mercury and sulfur] is respectively of very strong composition, and of uniform substance. And this is because they are united per minima [“through the smallest”], and none of their parts can leave the other behind during their resolution....Note “per minima,” that is, through indivisibles. For a minimum is that which is indivisible, for if it could be divided it would not be a minimum. But it appears that the commixture of the elements is through the smallest particles of the body itself, that is, per indivisibilia [“through indivisibles”]. For “element” is the simple and minimal particle of the body itself (Efferarius 1659, 3:146).13

12. The Latin of this passage is found on p. 607—“propter fortem illorum compositionem non corrumpitur illorum substantia a substantia corporis extranei, quoniam non ªat illorum per minima mixtio.” 13. [Efferarius monachus,] De lapide philosophorum secundum verum modum formando, Efferarius Monachus ad Apostolicum quendam scribit, in Efferarius 1659. See p. 146: “Est autem sciendum, quod principia materialia hujus rei, super quae fundat natura actionem

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Efferarius clearly interprets the Summa as expressing a corpuscular—even atomistic—theory of matter. The corpuscles of sulfur and mercury contain particles of the four elements bonded together by means of a “very strong composition.” It is this strong bonding that prevents their separation in the process of sublimation. All of this is in the Summa, but Efferarius goes even farther when he invokes the language of atomism and says that the minimal particles, the elements, are themselves indivisible. This line of interpretation is still found in the alchemical corpus attributed to Eirenaeus Philalethes in the mid-seventeenth century (Newman 2001, pp. 291–329). Opponents of Geber also recognized the nature of his position. As I show at length in Atoms and Alchemy (Chapter 2), the stridently anti- alchemical writer Thomas Erastus explicitly derided Geber and his followers as naïve corpuscularians who opposed Aristotelian perfect mixture. Echoing the standard scholastic distinction between mere juxtaposition and perfect mixture, Erastus explicitly asserts that the alchemists are proponents of composition (compositio) rather than genuine substantial change. Even those who were friendly to alchemy sometimes rejected Geber’s theory on the grounds that it was too mechanistic and therefore did not fulªll the conditions required for perfect mixture. The alchemical apologist Gaston DuClo, who wrote at the end of the sixteenth century, preferred more orthodox expressions of Aristotelianism to that of Geber. Hence he contrasted Geber’s position on mixture to that of Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione, saying “Geber in many places teaches the re- duction of diverse bodies into minimal particles to be the cause of true mixture and of union. But we say with Aristotle that the ªneness of the substance of bodies is not the main cause of mixture but only an aid, as is also true of the secondary qualities” (DuClo 1659, 4:377).14 DuClo then goes on to say that proper Aristotelian mixture requires the action and passion of the four elemental qualities, hot, cold, wet, and dry, unlike Geber’s theory.

suam in ejus operatione mirabili, sunt sulphur & argentum vivum, ut dictum est. Unumquodque istorum ad invicem, est fortissimae compositionis, & uniformis substantiae: Et hoc ideo, quia unitae per minima, ut nulla ipsarum partium in resolutione possit alteram dimittere....Item nota, per minima, id est per indivisibilia. Nam minimum est illud, quod est indivisibile: nam si posset dividi, non esset minimum: apparet autem quod per minimas particulas ipsius corporis, id est per indivisibilia sit commistio elementorum: nam elementum est simpla & minima particula ipsius corporis.” 14. “Geber etiam multis in locis docet reductionem diversorum corporum in minimas partes mistionis & verae unionis esse causam. Nos autem cum Aristotele dicimus tenuitatem substantiae corporum non esse principem causam mistionis, sed adjutricem tantum sicuti nec secundas alias qualitates.” I owe this reference to Principe 1998, p. 189.

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In sum, the historical commentary-tradition devoted to Geber provides unequivocal evidence that he was widely understood up to the seventeenth century as upholding a corpuscular theory of matter in which the components of mixtures retained their robust being in actu. Though Klein rejects both this point and the closely related notion of a corpuscular hierarchy, the evidence tells unequivocally against her position. The same can be said of her alternative reading of the Summa’s theory of composition in terms of the mutual tempering of the Aristotelian qualities (Klein 2007, p. 250). Klein suggests that Geber’s “mixture through the smallest particles” (mixtio per minima) is intended merely as a precondition for the temperation produced by the action of the Aristotelian elementary qualities, as in the Stagirite’s De generatione et corruptione I, 10, in other words a division into tiny particles that makes it easier for their qualities to act upon one another and produce a state of perfect mixture. Additionally, she attempts to link this to the late scholastic theory of minima naturalia, a line of interpretation based on Book I, Chapter 4 of Aristotle’s Physics, according to which particles below a certain threshold of size would have to lose their substantial form and undergo substantial metamorphosis. But this begs the question. The Summa perfectionis never even uses the term “substantial form,” nor does it refer anywhere at all to the theory of minima naturalia. Klein’s alternative interpretation, moreover, fails to account for Geber’s persistent claim that the ingredients of mixtures can be recap- tured intact. More importantly, it is belied by the testimony of historical actors such as Efferarius, Philalethes, Erastus, and DuClo, who all interpreted Geber’s “minimal parts” as permanent or semi-permanent corpuscular components rather than as merely transient bits of matter that con- verged to form a perfectly homogeneous body. Having failed to ªnd a Gassendist or Cartesian corpuscular theory in the Summa perfectionis, Klein tries to turn Geber into something like a Thomist, but in the end her interpretation simply fails to match the evidence.

Early Modern Developments A careful reading of the Summa perfectionis and its commentators seriously undermines the historiographical tradition from which Klein’s views apparently derive. If numerous medieval and early modern alchemists as- serted the reality of robust components that retained their substantial identity in chemical compounds, as I maintain, then one can hardly con- tinue to attribute the ªrst experimental awareness of “building blocks” that persist throughout chemical reactions either to sixteenth-century metallurgists or to the French chymical textbook writers of the seventeenth century. This, however, is Klein’s brief, and she presents it energet- ically when she comes to the sections of Atoms and Alchemy that deal with

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early modern chymists such as Daniel Sennert and Robert Boyle. Klein’s criticisms here are more diffuse and less pointed than her comments about medieval alchemy, and so instead of rebutting them point-by-point I will instead focus here on the general topics wherein she and I differ. One of the central points of Klein’s Verbindung und Afªnität and subsequent work is that the French tradition of chymical textbook writers, beginning with Jean Beguin and his Tyrocinium chymicum of 1610/12, gradu- ally transformed Paracelsian matter theory by slowly moving away from a hylozoist model where metals are transformed by the “ripening” of their homogeneous material to an awareness that matter is composed of robust “building blocks” that persist during reversible chemical reactions. The culmination of this development, according to Klein, was the afªnity table published by Etienne-François Geoffroy in 1718, whose columns of replacement series implicitly recognize the permanence of ingredients during chemical reactions. A close look at Klein’s use of source material, however, reveals striking weaknesses in her account, beginning with the treatment of Paracelsus. She claims repeatedly that Paracelsus believed every pure natural material to be a “perfect mixture,” as in the Aristotelian theory descending from De generatione et corruptione I, 10 (Klein 1994a, p. 41).15 Hence when Paracelsus speaks of Scheidung (separation)—a process that he thinks underlies such diverse processes as the separation of the earth from the waters described in Genesis to the removal of slag from ore in metal reªnement—Klein asserts unequivocally that he means a substantial transmutation rather than an isolation of pre-existing ingredients (Klein 1994a, p. 43).16 The reason behind her insistence on this point is clear. If Paracelsus himself believed in heterogeneous bits or particles that retained their character during mixture, the historical development leading up to Geoffroy as outlined by her thesis would lose its validity. Despite Klein’s bold assertions that Paracelsus was a sort of Aristotelian malgré lui, her account fails to convince. First, her claim that Paracelsus upheld the theory of perfect mixture is based largely on two texts whose authenticity was already thrown into serious doubt by Karl Sudhoff in the

15. “Der Geist der Naturkörper hat in dieser Konzeption ebensowenig wie Seele und Geist des Menschen einen bestimmten Ort, sondern durchdringt den ganzen Körper und bildet eine Einheit mit ihm. Das natürliche Mixtum ist somit kein aus heterogenen körperlichen Teilen zusammengesetztes Ganzes, sondern eine homogene Einheit.” 16. “Das natürliche Mixtum wurde, wie oben dargestellt, als homogene Einheit verstanden. Dennoch vermochte der Arzt-Chemiker aus dieser homogenen Einheit durch chemische Operationen wie z. B. die Destillation heterogene Substanzen zu scheiden. Dabei bedeutete Scheidung im Verständnis der Chemisten des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts nicht chemisches Zerlegen eines aus heterogenen präexistierenden Teilen bestehenden Ganzen, sondern das Hervorbringen heterogener Teile einer zuvor homogenen Einheit.”

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early twentieth century—namely the Philosophia ad Athenienses and the De natura rerum (Klein 1994a).17 At the time of writing Verbindung und Afªnität, Klein had apparently consulted only the modern German translation of Paracelsus by Bernhard Aschner, and was perhaps unaware of the scholarly introductions in the critical edition of Sudhoff, which demonstrate that these texts are either outright spurious or at best the products of extensive reworking by authors other than Paracelsus.18 They should not therefore be used in trying to determine the genuine views of Paracelsus himself on the subject of material composition.19 There is, moreover, a body of literature beginning perhaps with Thomas Erastus in the sixteenth century and continuing up to twentieth century scholars such as Reijer Hooykaas that sees Paracelsian Scheidung as an analysis of pre-existent ingredients.20 Paracelsus often uses ªre-analysis as a means of demonstrating that everything is made of his three principles, mercury, sulfur, and salt. What sense would this make if he thought that the principles were being generated by a ªre-induced transmutation? Although I do not believe that Paracelsus was a consistent corpuscularian thinker in the mold of Geber, the whole point of Scheidung by ªre lies in showing that the heat merely separates the three pre-existent principles that were already present, but disguised. In my view, pace Klein, Paracelsus himself was dependent on earlier alchemical models that stressed the ability of ªre analysis to reveal the constituents of minerals and metals. The oxidation of metals was widely thought to drive off the unªxed components and to leave behind a “ªxed” version of the metallic sulfur and mercury. We ªnd these tests clearly described in the Summa perfectionis, but in fact they are ubiquitous in the alchemy of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. As in the work of Paracelsus, alchemists had long used ªre analysis to show that the principles were the genuine constituents of metals. Their practice in fact depended on this belief, since they often worked by replacing or supple- menting the defective mercury (and sometimes sulfur) supposedly found

17. Klein naively cites these texts as though they were genuine throughout her 1994a: see especially pages 38–43 and 178–179. For Sudhoff’s doubts about the authenticity of the Philosophia ad Athenienses and the De natura rerum, see his Theophrast von Hohenheim, Sämtliche Werke, 1922–1933, vol. 8, pp. xi–xiii, and vol. 11, pp. xxxi–xxxiii. On the De natura rerum, see also my note 58 on page 199 of Newman, 2004. 18. Her citations of De natura rerum and Philosophia ad Athenienses are all from Aschner, and his Sämtliche Werke is the only edition of Paracelsus indicated in the bibliography of Verbindung und Afªnität. 19. Although Klein’s more recent scholarship contains Sudhoff’s edition in the bibliography, her analysis of Paracelsian matter theory has not changed. 20. Erastus 1572, pp. 42–46; See also Hooykaas, The Concept of Element in its Historical- Philosophical Development, pp. 81–83.

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in base metals by a corrected, “philosophical” variety. In short, alchemists had a vested interest in showing that metals really did contain mercury and sulfur, a “fact” that they believed they could prove by means of analysis. Although Paracelsus himself did not focus his energy on chrysopoeia, he adopted the alchemical theory of two principles and added a third to them—namely salt. Hence it was only natural that he should also appro- priate the demonstrative tool of ªre analysis, which had long been an instrument of experimental demonstration in the apologetic literature of alchemy. Klein’s discussion of other early modern ªgures similarly fails to square with the evidence. Her work often expresses the view that “men of practice,” such as the metallurgical writer Agricola and the pharmacist Christophle Glaser, came to believe in persistent material “building blocks” on account of their experience in the reªnery or shop, not because of any theory that they had learned from books. Motivated by this down- grading of an experimental tradition bound to book-learning, Klein con- sistently ignores or undervalues those ªgures—even within the tradition of early modern iatrochemical or pharmaceutical writing—who express openly corpuscularian views. Corpuscularian or atomist chymists of the early seventeenth century such as Angelus Sala and of course Daniel Sennert, are either altogether absent or make only the briefest of appear- ances in Verbindung und Afªnität and her subsequent work, presumably because their presence would undercut Klein’s narrative of progress emerging from the hands-on practice of metallurgists and leading through the early French textbook writers up to Etienne-François Geoffroy. She similarly overlooks other early modern chymists who, while not explicitly corpuscularian, employed reversible reactions in philosophical discussions of mixture, such as Gaston DuClo and Nicolas Guibert. But what is the real merit of Klein’s omission? Unlike the ªgures in the French textbook tradition studied by her, DuClo, Sala, Guibert, and Sennert all make use of reversible reactions explicitly to demonstrate the persistence of robust corpuscles of matter that persevere during mixture or compounding. They cannot be dismissed from Klein’s story because they were somehow too “philosophical.” In the same anti-philosophical vein Klein chastises Atoms and Alchemy towards the conclusion of her review for ignoring “artisan-alchemists” such as Johann Rudolph Glauber and Johann Kunckel simply because they did not do experiments intended to demonstrate the corpuscular nature of matter. She implies that such ªgures should have been included on the grounds that they “were widely cited by early modern chymists” (Klein 2007, p. 254). Here Klein seems to miss the major points of my book. Atoms and Alchemy shows above all else that the major trend in late

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medieval and early modern scholasticism—dominated as it was by the inºuence of Thomas and Scotus—was to deny the existence of robust ingredients in mixtures and therefore to reject the possibility of their re- capture, while at the same time another scholastic tradition emerged, run- ning parallel to this majority view, in which alchemy provided a direct means of challenging the orthodox theory of mixture by way of experi- ment. The alchemical tradition inaugurated by Geber and adopted by Sennert among countless others provided a direct challenge to the scholastic orthodoxy, and one that in the end contributed powerfully to the undo- ing of the hylomorphic tradition itself. Figures such as Glauber and Kunckel, interesting as they are, do not form a part of this story for the simple reason that they did not join that discussion. Klein concludes her review with one ªnal blow for the man of practice. She points out quite rightly that Sennert’s operations with metals dis- solved in mineral acids were not a new matter of fact, but had long been known to metallurgists. This is obvious, though it is likely that the early discovery of the mineral acids themselves originated from experiments with “sharp waters” in a long tradition that itself derived from Arabic alchemy.21 What Sennert did was not to discover a new matter of fact, as I point out in Atoms and Alchemy, but rather to use an existing product in an experimental proof about the nature of matter. Klein’s ªnal words betray once again her insistence that artisanal traditions should be privileged above natural philosophical ones. She describes Sennert’s experiments as “only minor variations of existing technical operations performed in metallurgy and described in ªne detail in the sixteenth-century metallurgical booklets of German assay masters (such as Lazarus Ercker) and in book ten of Georg Agricola’s De re metallica of 1556” (Klein 2007, p. 255). Ironically, Klein fails to note that the 1557 Exercitationes of the natural philosopher Julius Caesar Scaliger was Sennert’s direct inspiration for his metal-acid experiments, and that Scaliger was already using these experiments—albeit in a way far less sophisticated than Sennert—to argue against the Thomistic position and to assert the persistence of ingredients within a mixture. It is not as though Sennert had to extract this material from Ercker or Agricola—all he had to do was open the copy of Scaliger that he had been using since his earliest days at the University of Wittenberg. After his initial exposure to Scaliger, Sennert’s gradual immersion in alchemy then led him to an increasing knowledge of alchemical corpuscular theory and to the empirical dimension of laboratory practice (Newman 2006, pp. 85–106).

21. A number of recipes for Arabic “sharp waters” are collected in Ruska and Garbers 1939.

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Sennert’s experience shows once again that a long tradition of philosophical engagement with practice existed alongside the “purely” artisanal trades emphasized by Klein. But is it actually the case that early modern metallurgy and pharmacy were as pure as Klein thinks—did their fruitful ideas and methodologies really develop in the theoretical vacuum that she postulates? The evidence for metallurgy strongly suggests the contrary. There is frank evidence of alchemical borrowing in the early metallurgical Berg- und Probierbüchlein tradition that preceded the work of Agricola. It is in such works as the Bergbüchlein (about 1505) and Rechter Gebrauch d’Alchimei (The Right Use of Alchemy; 1531) that one ªnds an explicit employment of alchemical traditions that extend back well into the Mid- dle Ages (Darmstaedter 1926, Eamon 1994). Not only do these works employ a host of technical processes descending from the practicae (recipe books) of medieval alchemy, but they also espouse the alchemical sulfur- mercury theory of metallic generation that we have already discussed. In the case of pharmacy, on the other hand, the evidence against Klein’s perspective is even more compelling. Even the corpuscular theory espoused by explicitly anti-alchemical writers such as Nicolas Lemery himself owed a debt to alchemical literature, not to mention the matter theory of earlier ªgures in the French chymical textbook tradition, such as Jean Béguin and Christophle Glaser.22 There is a clear lesson in this. Instead of erecting artiªcial dichotomies between artisanal and learned traditions, historians should be exploring the interactions between the world of the universities and that of the trades. The monasteries of the High and Late Middle Ages already provided a very fertile venue for interaction between learned theory and practice, as the many well-known examples of alchemist-monks demonstrate. Courtly patronage of alchemy also has a very long history, and was already linked in the late Middle Ages with the production of medicinals and probably with the debasement of coinage. “Vernacular epistemologies” did not bubble up out of nowhere, but often represented the reworking and popularization of long traditions that trickled down from more learned settings. This is not to deny, however, that alchemy was itself the beneªciary of the trades. Already in the High Middle Ages

22. Some editions of Lemery’s famous Cours de chymie describe the formation of metals beneath the earth in a way that is strikingly similar to the Summa perfectionis of Geber, and is surely borrowed from the tradition of alchemical corpuscular theory. See Nicolas Lemery 1713, pp. 70–71: “The hardest, most compact, and heaviest metals are those in whose composition fermentation has made the most effective separation of the gross particles [parties grossières], so that what coagulates—being an assemblage of very subtle, divided bodies [corps extrêmement subtils & divisez]—undergoes a very strict union [une union très- étroite] that leaves only very tiny pores.” Here we encounter the grossae partes, subtiles partes, strong composition, and interparticular pores of traditional corpuscular alchemy.

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one sees the inºuence of metallurgical practice on alchemy, as in the extensive treatment of assaying tests contained in Geber’s Summa perfectionis. Nor was this an isolated instance. As the works of Basilius Valentinus and other early modern alchemists clearly reveal, an intensive cross- fertilization of alchemy and the mining, metallurgical, and salt-reªning trades was well underway by the beginning of the seventeenth century, and probably long before.23 This was far from being a historical accident. In sum, the tradition of alchemy over the longue durée had never been a purely mental pursuit—by its very nature, the auriªc art involved the in- terplay of head and hand.

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