Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry (review)

As Lawrence Principe notes, “Alchemy is now a hot topic” (ix). Whereas historians of science once regarded it as superstition and magic and refused to consider its history part of the history of science, over the last fifty years or so scholars from a variety of disciplines have acknowledged the significant role alchemy, or chymistry, played in the development of modern science. This was prompted, in part, by the work of Frances A. Yates and Walter Pagel, among others, on natural magic, Hermeticism, and Paracelsian medicine. Allen G. Debus, a chemical engineer by training, wrote pioneering studies of alchemy and early chemistry. Since then, growing appreciation of the complexity of early modern debates about understanding nature, involving Galenists, Paracelsians, mechanical philosophers, and others, has revised our narrative of the Scientific Revolution and established alchemy’s crucial role in early modern science.

Principe and several contributors to this volume have contributed substantially to this revisionist view. They do not distinguish early modern alchemy from chemistry, but see the two as joint enterprises, more properly described as “chymistry.” Rather than considering alchemy a primitive art made obsolete by scientific chemistry, they chart the role alchemy played in the development of theories of the nature of matter and of chemical change. Their goals are to integrate the history of chymistry into the history of science and to focus more attention on the history of scientific practice, thereby breaching the walls between the history of science and the histories of technology and medicine. This volume contributes much to the achievement of such goals.

The product of an international conference held at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia in July 2006, the volume collects twenty-two papers representing the recent research of specialists in the history of science, chemistry, archaeology, art history, intellectual history, and languages, from both established and emerging scholars, and covering chronological developments from Paracelsus to Lavoisier.

Although it is not easy to categorize the papers, familiar themes and issues are well presented: the problem of the comprehensibility of alchemical language, the nature of laboratory practice, debates between Paracelsians and both Galenists and mechanists, the difficulty of uncloaking alchemical charlatans and fraud, and the challenges of textual exegesis. Likewise, familiar figures are treated to new analyses, including Andreas Libavius, Heinrich Khunrath, Athanasius Kircher, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton. The volume also reflects the application of gender theory and other recent theoretical perspectives to the study of alchemy together with the more traditional textual analysis of alchemical works that has long been part of serious scholarship.

While textual analysis receives considerable attention in these papers, Marcos Martinón-Torres and R. Werner Soukup address the practical side of chymistry. Martinón-Torres focuses on the archaeological remains of laboratories, in particular instruments such as the crucible, to highlight the importance of the Renaissance laboratory to the development of analytical chemistry and modern science. The laboratory’s link between observation and theory and its participation in a wider trade network of scientific instruments used in the minting of coins and metallurgical workshops illustrates the close relationship that existed among mining, metallurgy, and alchemy and underscores the importance of studying chymistry within its technological and social context. Soukup, a structural chemist who has analyzed archaeological remains of laboratory waste pits in Lower Austria, adds to our understanding of the links between mining and alchemy and of the importance of patronage in supporting such laboratories for practical purposes, the latter theme echoed in Didier Kahn’s analysis of King Henry IV of France’s patronage of alchemy and Paracelsian medicine. Such research suggests ways to transcend the historic boundaries between the history of science and the history of technology and points to the importance of historians and scientists working together to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the place of chymistry within early modern culture.

One risks slighting many fine...