Paracelsus: The Man and His Reputation, His Ideas and Their Transformation (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Paracelsus: The Man and His Reputation, His Ideas, and Their Transformation
A common thread running through this miscellany of essays on Paracelsus and Paracelsianism is the enigmatic character of Paracelsus and his followers. Essays by Andrew Cunningham and Stephen Pumfrey remind us just how little we really know about Paracelsus as a historical figure, and how much historians—indeed, writers of all disciplinary stripes—have made out of Paracelsianism. Pumfrey points out that “Paracelsianism” was a name of abuse after Paracelsus, but, in the hands of historians of science writing the history of practices, it has recently come to encompass all manner of practitioners, even those who would not have been caught dead referring to themselves as Paracelsians. Dietlinde Goltz offers some preliminary suggestions for why Paracelsus has been such a compelling figure for so many centuries, and an essay by Herbert Breger explores the possible emotional appeal of Paracelsian natural philosophy as contrasted to mechanism.
The essays on the social significance of Paracelsus, particularly Bruce Moran’s, make clear the way in which Paracelsus and his writings functioned as counterculture. Moran’s account of Andreas Libavius’s pamphlet battles with his Paracelsian nemeses makes a case for the connection made in the late sixteenth century between virtue, language, pedagogy, and established authority: Libavius spoke the language of privilege and establishment, while Paracelsians used the language of personal illumination to enforce their claims to new kinds of authority in several different realms. Ole Peter Grell’s essay picks up some of the same themes in his discussion of the eclectic and irenic Paracelsianism at the court and university in Copenhagen. His essay illustrates that Paracelsus’s work was also taken up by those who did not want to cause controversy, and Grell details the ways in which these Danish physicians made Paracelsus palatable to themselves and to established institutional authorities.
The essays on Paracelsus’s theological writings and those of his followers, including Carlos Gilly’s interesting account of the Paracelsian-Weigelian religion of the 1620s, point out the centrality of the problem of body and soul and matter and spirit to Paracelsus, and the way in which he explored it in both his religious and natural philosophical works. These essays also illustrate just how much more remains for historians to explore in this area.
The most original essay in this collection is that by J. R. R. Christie on “The Paracelsian Body,” in which he proposes the writing of a corporeal history of the sciences: How did the senses and the body come to be the primary source for natural philosophical knowledge? How precisely was the body used in practicing natural philosophy? What was the historical significance of the senses, and how did they operate? Certainly, with all the emphasis on practice in recent historiography of science, such a history is overdue. Christie’s answer to some of these questions is very suggestive, but, like many of the essays in the volume, it calls out to be developed and refined. This book contains valuable points about Paracelsus [End Page 157] and Paracelsianism, but they are scattered unevenly among idiosyncratic essays that show their origin as talks written for a 1993 symposium.
