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 pe- riod. Newman responds here by providing further evidence that an experi- mental, scholastic tradition of alchemy extending well into the Middle Ages had already argued extensively for the persistence of ingredients during pro- cesses of “mixture” (e.g. chemical reactions), and that this corpuscular al- chemical 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 em- ployment of quantiªcation, but even as a positive hindrance to the prog- ress 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- Perspectives on Science 2009, vol. 17, no. 2 ©2009 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology 212 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc.2009.17.2.212 by guest on 01 October 2021 Perspectives on Science 213 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 al- chemy 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 improve- ment of brewing, research on incendiary weapons, the making of perfumes and cosmetics, the study and development of artiªcial fertilizers, and a va- riety of medical pursuits, such as the discovery and manufacture of en- tirely new pharmaceuticals as well as the analysis and puriªcation of exist- ing 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 ex- clusively 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 histori- ans of chemistry are ill at ease with the new emphasis being placed on al- chemy 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” pur- suits 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. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc.2009.17.2.212 by guest on 01 October 2021 214 Alchemical Atoms or Artisanal “Building Blocks”? 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 be- ginning 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 techno- logical component, there is a tendency among some current scholars to see this as the major feature of the discipline and to downplay the close con- nections between alchemical practice—even in the sixteenth and seven- teenth 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. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc.2009.17.2.212 by guest on 01 October 2021 Perspectives on Science 215 nomics have been outlined very well by scholars such as Pamela Smith and Tara Nummedal, but it is important not to forget the theoretical compo- nent 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 sci- ence” 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 scholas- tic ªgures of the thirteenth century such as Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus engaged themselves deeply in the subject.