Alchemy Revisited PDF Download

Author: Z. R. W. M. Von Martels
Publisher: Brill Archive
ISBN: 9789004092877
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Author: Martels
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004625704
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The contributors to these Proceedings give an unusually comprehensive survey of Indian, Greek, Arabic and European alchemy which will serve as an authoritative scholarly introduction to the subject. An extensive bibliography greatly enhances the value of this rich collection of material.

Author: C. G. Vlassis
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195020199
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Michael Hunter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521892674
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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This book presents a new view of Robert Boyle (1627-91), the leading British scientist in the generation before Newton. It comprises a series of essays by scholars from Europe and North America that scrutinize Boyle's writing on science, philosophy and theology, bringing out the subtlety and complexity of his ideas. Particular attention is given to Boyle's interest in alchemy and to other facets of his ideas that might initially seem surprising in a leading advocate of the mechanical philosophy. Many of the essays use material from among Boyle's extensive manuscripts, which have recently been catalogued for the first time. The introduction surveys the state of Boyle studies and deploys the findings of the essays to offer a reevaluation of Boyle. The book also includes a complete bibliography of writings on Boyle since 1940.

Author: C. G. Vlassis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chemistry
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Author: William R. Newman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226577058
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Winner of the 2005 Pfizer Prize from the History of Science Society. What actually took place in the private laboratory of a mid-seventeenth century alchemist? How did he direct his quest after the secrets of Nature? What instruments and theoretical principles did he employ? Using, as their guide, the previously misunderstood interactions between Robert Boyle, widely known as "the father of chemistry," and George Starkey, an alchemist and the most prominent American scientific writer before Benjamin Franklin as their guide, Newman and Principe reveal the hitherto hidden laboratory operations of a famous alchemist and argue that many of the principles and practices characteristic of modern chemistry derive from alchemy. By analyzing Starkey's extraordinary laboratory notebooks, the authors show how this American "chymist" translated the wildly figurative writings of traditional alchemy into quantitative, carefully reasoned laboratory practice—and then encoded his own work in allegorical, secretive treatises under the name of Eirenaeus Philalethes. The intriguing "mystic" Joan Baptista Van Helmont—a favorite of Starkey, Boyle, and even of Lavoisier—emerges from this study as a surprisingly central figure in seventeenth-century "chymistry." A common emphasis on quantification, material production, and analysis/synthesis, the authors argue, illustrates a continuity of goals and practices from late medieval alchemy down to and beyond the Chemical Revolution. For anyone who wants to understand how alchemy was actually practiced during the Scientific Revolution and what it contributed to the development of modern chemistry, Alchemy Tried in the Fire will be a veritable philosopher's stone.

Author: Fabrizio Pregadio
Publisher: Golden Elixir Press
ISBN:
Category : Alchemy
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Author: Lawrence M. Principe
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226923789
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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"This ele­gant, readable book…covers the history of alchemy from its shadowy origins in Hellenistic Egypt to its scholarly recovery in the 20th century” (Anthony Grafton, Science). In The Secrets of Alchemy, science historian and practicing chemist Lawrence M. Principe dispels commonly held misconceptions about alchemy and sheds light on what it was, how it began, and how it influenced a range of other ideas and pursuits. Principe demonstrates the importance of alchemy during its heyday in early modern Europe, and explores its enduring place in literature, fine art, theater, and religion as well as its recent acceptance as a serious subject of study for historians of science. Principe also introduces readers to some of the most fascinating alchemists, such as Zosimos and Basil Valentine, whose lives dot alchemy’s long reign from the third century and to the present day. Through his discussion of alchemists and their times, Principe pieces together clues from obscure texts to reveal alchemy’s secrets, and uses them to recreate many of the most famous recipes in his lab, including those for the “glass of antimony” and “philosophers’ tree.”

Author: Martina Zamparo
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303105167X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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This book explores the role of alchemy, Paracelsianism, and Hermetic philosophy in one of Shakespeare’s last plays, The Winter’s Tale. A perusal of the vast literary and iconographic repertory of Renaissance alchemy reveals that this late play is imbued with several topoi, myths, and emblematic symbols coming from coeval alchemical, Paracelsian, and Hermetic sources. It also discusses the alchemical significance of water and time in the play’s circular and regenerative pattern and the healing role of women. All the major symbols of alchemy are present in Shakespeare’s play: the intertwined serpents of the caduceus, the chemical wedding, the filius philosophorum, and the so-called rex chymicus. This book also provides an in-depth survey of late Renaissance alchemy, Paracelsian medicine, and Hermetic culture in the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages. Importantly, it contends that The Winter’s Tale, in symbolically retracing the healing pattern of the rota alchemica and in emphasising the Hermetic principles of unity and concord, glorifies King James’s conciliatory attitude.

Author: William Scott Shelley
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 1628943149
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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