Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (review)

In this important new book, William Newman uncovers the surprisingly long history of modern debates concerned with delineating the natural and the artificial by exploring the philosophical underpinnings of alchemy from the ancient world to the period of the Scientific Revolution. With his characteristic command of difficult primary sources and his flair for framing provocative, historically nuanced arguments based on formidable archival research, Newman succeeds in bringing together the ancient myth of Daedalus and the modern concerns about Dolly the cloned sheep in convincing and telling ways. He does so by emphasizing alchemy's powerful blend of theory and practice, highlighting the alchemist's interest in constructing elaborate systems to explain transformation while actually manipulating and changing natural materials. Newman argues that the conceptual and linguistic frameworks of alchemy provided western Europeans with a means to debate and discuss the often troubling relationship between art and nature. Whereas Pamela Smith's The Body of the Artisan (likewise published in 2004 by the University of Chicago Press) begins with the artisanal ability to replicate and imitate nature and relates it to growing early-modern preoccupations with understanding and controlling nature, here Newman begins with alchemy and moves into discussions of the pictorial and plastic arts as well as technology.

Promethean Ambitions is organized chronologically, with chapters that range from a careful elucidation of the debates surrounding the relationship between art and nature in antiquity to a fascinating analysis of the ways that these same debates influenced the work of Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, and other important figures of the Scientific Revolution. The second chapter, which gives a clear and compelling account of alchemical philosophies from the particular vantage point of the art–nature debate, is a masterful treatment of this difficult and often opaque subject. Newman explains how Avicenna's arguments against alchemy led to strong divisions among pro-alchemy and anti-alchemy philosophers, and explores how these debates spilled over and spread into courtly literature and the legal writings on the problems of witches and demons.

No one knows these intricate, technical texts as well as Newman, and his wide-ranging familiarity with dozens of philosophers and their work makes this important material accessible to the reader. A chapter on alchemy and Renaissance artists illuminates how much was at stake when artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Bernard Palissy attacked the alchemists as counterfeiters and tricksters. Although alchemy had its roots in antiquity's decorative arts, by the early modern period many of the technical aspects of alchemy were utilized by visual artists competing for the same limited patronage opportunities as the court alchemists. The fourth chapter, on efforts to manufacture the homunculus—the artificial "little man" who would do his master's bidding and possessed startling powers—is a fascinating journey through centuries of learned writing on spontaneous generation. The writings of Paracelsus on the subject (as well as those writings ascribed to him, like De natura rerum) figure strongly in the chapter, but Newman successfully places them within a broader historical context by exploring the ancient and medieval literature on androgenesis as well as by gauging their contribution to the art–nature debate.

One of the book's most powerful and noteworthy features is the way that it links modern scientific and technical concerns over cloning and artificial life to the alchemical tradition. Because alchemy was unique among the sciences in claiming that it could both imitate and perfect nature, there are eerie similarities between this field of inquiry and modern bioengineering—to name just one example. Newman's juxtaposition of ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern concerns is ambitious and will be controversial to some, but in the end it works. When he places Paracelsus's homunculus in a historical spectrum that includes Daedalus's machines and a cartoon from Britain's The Mail on Sunday showing the perils of bioengineering humans, he enables the reader to view each arcane historical figure and thorny medieval...