Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with Polemical Fire (review)

Bruce Moran’s new book makes an important contribution to the history of science and technology by presenting a rigorous and nuanced interpretation of the chemical work of the German schoolteacher and humanist Andreas Libavius (about 1550–1616). Libavius is well-known in the history of chemistry as the author of the first synthetic textbook of chemistry, Alchemia (1597). As Owen Hannaway asserted in The Chemists and the Word (1975), Libavius accomplished this by rejecting the magical and “gnostic” methods of the Paracelsians; he thus founded a didactic tradition in chemistry which could thrive and evolve in institutions of learning long before the subject became a “science” at the end of the eighteenth century.

Moran both challenges and augments this view by placing Libavius’s chemical writings within the polemical, academic culture of the late Renaissance. He reveals Libavius to be a pedagogue and humanist who valued the proper use of classical languages and clear reasoning above all else. The truth of things, even the truth of chemistry, was to be found through the analysis of texts and the public debate on the interpretation of those texts. As such, Moran chooses not to focus on the Alchemia but rather on Libavius’s numerous polemical writings on chemistry, most of which were directed against the claims of specific individuals or institutions. Through these public debates, Moran argues, Libavius carved out a cultural space for alchemy (later, chemistry), which allowed it to become an art and a science. In each of Libavius’s debates, the essential question remained the same: what objects and approaches were a part of chemistry and which were not? As Moran adroitly explains, the answer to this question was embedded in Libavius’s notions of proper academic practice. Thus, what constituted a proper approach to chemical knowledge and practice depended on an opponent’s use of language, interpretation of texts, philosophical stance, religious beliefs, and perceived moral character, all of which were fair targets for Libavius in debate and served as opportunities for him to define proper chemical norms through comparison.

Moran describes in detail many of the exchanges between Libavius and his opponents, both to give a sense of the chemical topics under scrutiny and also to show how ideas about chemistry became connected to wider academic and cultural issues during debate. For example, in a dispute with one Nicolas Guibert, Libavius wrote that Guibert’s attack on his use of chemical language was like that of an uneducated “old woman.” From that point in the text, Libavius utilized the feminized “Guiberta” to refer to his opponent in a clear attempt to humiliate him in the hyper-masculine world of seventeenth-century scholarship.

By situating Libavius within his polemical cultural context, Moran calls into question the traditional interpretation of Libavius as a first step toward modern chemistry. Libavius was not a proponent of new philosophies. He was an Aristotelian who was dedicated to traditional pedagogy and humanist textual analysis. Through his study of chemical texts, he rejected the Paracelsian approach to chemistry in favor of an alchemical tradition which dated back to the Middle Ages. As Moran vividly describes, Libavius concluded that the transmutation of metals and other substances was central to the chemical art and that this position was in complete agreement with Aristotelian principles. Thus, Moran asserts, Libavius lambasted those, such as Guibert, who attacked alchemical transmutation with the same rigor as he raked the Paracelsians or anyone else who was “inspired by magical relationships in nature and less guided by humanist educational values” (p. 292).

Moran concludes the book with a discussion of the recent reexamination of the term “Paracelsian” by historians, pointing out the problems with using this term to signify a fixed and distinct set of beliefs and practices. The “Paracelsians” in Libavius’s day, like Libavius himself, created a “mixed” culture combining interpretations of Paracelsus’s work with ideas and...