Words Into Gold an Early Instance of the Closer Relation- Ship Between Science, Society and Policy Philip Ball Finds Much Wrestling with Ideas in That We Know Today

BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT

“President Bush believes policy should be HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY made with the best and most complete information”. Although ‘information’ does not necessarily mean ‘evidence’, that speech remains historically significant as Words into gold an early instance of the closer relationship between science, society and policy Philip Ball finds much wrestling with ideas in that we know today. (Chris Mooney’s alchemists’ scribbled-over texts. 2005 The Republican War on Science (Basic Books) offers a very different interpretation of the events surrounding he sixteenth-century the UCS declaration.) physician and alchemist Marburger’s policy comfort zone was Paracelsus claimed, “Not clearly the meticulous analysis of the sci- Teven a dog killer can learn his trade

LES ENLUMINURES LES ence and innovation ecosystem to better from books, but only from experi- inform the appropriations process. His ence.” As later ‘experimental phi- call for a new “science of science policy” losophers’ turned alchemy — defining the metrics for evaluating the into chemistry, they inputs and outputs of a public science retained this affectation: system — is an important legacy that in the seventeenth cen- has helped to embed the concept in the tury, Robert Boyle is said to have government vernacular. That powerful claimed that he had learnt “more focus on appropriations might have been from men, real experiments, and a strategic way to promote evidence- his laboratory … than from books”. informed public policy more broadly; Such comments seem to imply but Marburger does not make that claim. that alchemy and the transitional It is one thing to support the production discipline of ‘chymistry’ were all of evidence, and quite another to help it about bench-top graft, in contrast to the This alchemical manual may have become to find its way to the corridors of policy. medieval tradition of seeking knowledge soot-smeared over a furnace. Perhaps Marburger’s contribution was in the library. Yet in most paintings of in supporting the alchemists at work in the sixteenth and handwritten and printed documents, some supply of scien- “It is one thing seventeenth centuries, books are ostenta- attributed (often spuriously) to famous tific knowledge, tiously on show. Apparatus lies unheeded or alchemists including Raymond Lull and without concern- to support the broken while the alchemist pores over a text, Petrus Bonus. They reveal the character and ing himself with production of papers sometimes cascading in comic pro- functions of the literary culture of nascent the more complex evidence, and fusion from desk to floor. In these images, chemical science from the Renaissance to business of devel- quite another books matter very much indeed: they seem the early Enlightenment. oping the govern- to help it to to be where the real secrets lie. The books were evidently well used. The ment’s appetite for find its way to This vexed relationship is examined pages of one fifteenth-century compila- its systematic use. the corridors in Books of Secrets, an exhibition at the tion of Italian and English manuscripts Science Policy of policy.” Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) in arrived covered in dirt — or perhaps soot, Up Close leaves Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Juxtaposing from being read over a smoky furnace. The the impression that Marburger might fifteenth-century alchemical books and CHF’s curator of rare books, James Voelkel, have had more to say had he been able manuscripts recently acquired by the CHF persuaded conservator Rebecca Smyrl to to finish the book himself. Only the with its extensive collection of paintings of avoid cleaning the pages: the ‘dirt’ may be a concluding essay offers a hint of his alchemists at their labours, the exhibition remnant of experiments. “It could be some- thoughts about the broader role of sci- explores this early literature of proto- thing someone was trying to turn into gold,” ence in public policy and what he per- science, and what it was for. says Smyrl. ceived as science’s lack of privilege in the Alchemical books varied significantly. To peruse these books is to glimpse a seat of US governance. Some were esoteric treatises, all cryptic lively dialogue between author and reader. More than a decade after the UCS diagrams and encoded instructions for Despite the volumes’ costliness, some have declaration, the favoured tactic for conducting ‘rubification’ and other chemi- words or passages crossed out or altered. In dealing with ‘inconvenient truths’ is cal procedures. Others were cheaply printed one sixteenth-century handwritten work, perhaps less often about discredit- or hastily copied compilations of miscella- comments are squeezed into every corner ing the science, and more often about neous recipes for dyes, soaps and medicines. of the margins: it is as much lab notebook as acknowledging the evidence and placing Both were apt to be marketed as ‘books of reference source. it among the many legitimate inputs into secrets’. The term seems to promise for- On this evidence, the painters had it policy and decision-making. But there is bidden, mystical insights, but could also right, even if their depictions of alche- some way to go: although the science– simply mean tricks of mists often owed more to convention than policy nexus is maturing and becom- the trade. Books of Secrets: observation. This band of proto-scientists ing more nuanced, the challenges and The new acquisi- Writing and engaged intimately with the words on the loneliness of intermediary roles such as tions, originally part Reading Alchemy page. The text was not sacred, but it was Chemical Heritage ■ ■ Marburger’s remain. of the Bibliotheca Foundation, indispensable. Philosophica Her- Philadelphia, Peter Gluckman is chief science adviser metica in Amster- Pennsylvania. Philip Ball is a writer based in London. to the prime minister of New Zealand. dam, include both Until 4 September. e-mail: [email protected]