Genesis and the Chemical Philosophy
Genesis and the Chemical Philosophy

Author: Michael Thomson Walton

Publisher: Gwasg y Bwthyn

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780404623456

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"In the following pages, I will outline the complex intellectual traditions surrounding the interaction of chemistry and Genesis from classical times into the seventeenth century. I will detail the baptism of chemistry into a Christian natural philosophy by Paracelsus and his heirs in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Chemical philosophers reexamined matter theory in light of Genesis. They developed a new epistemology, which focused on experiencing nature rather than relying on accepted texts. This attitude fostered quantitative experimentation, which ultimately transformed chemistry. With this transformation, Genesis itself lost its importance; the 'reading' of nature was no longer dependent on theological considerations. Chemistry moved from a theological to secular interpretation of nature, as is found in modern science."--Preface, p. xiii.

Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact
Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

Author: Ludwik Fleck

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2012-09-05

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 022619034X

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Originally published in German in 1935, this monograph anticipated solutions to problems of scientific progress, the truth of scientific fact and the role of error in science now associated with the work of Thomas Kuhn and others. Arguing that every scientific concept and theory—including his own—is culturally conditioned, Fleck was appreciably ahead of his time. And as Kuhn observes in his foreword, "Though much has occurred since its publication, it remains a brilliant and largely unexploited resource." "To many scientists just as to many historians and philosophers of science facts are things that simply are the case: they are discovered through properly passive observation of natural reality. To such views Fleck replies that facts are invented, not discovered. Moreover, the appearance of scientific facts as discovered things is itself a social construction, a made thing. A work of transparent brilliance, one of the most significant contributions toward a thoroughly sociological account of scientific knowledge."—Steven Shapin, Science

An Alchemical Quest for Universal Knowledge
An Alchemical Quest for Universal Knowledge

Author: Georgiana D. Hedesan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-20

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1317182138

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History of science credits the Flemish physician, alchemist and philosopher Jan Baptist Van Helmont (1579-1644) for his contributions to the development of chemistry and medicine. Yet, as this book makes clear, focussing on Van Helmont's impact on modern science does not do justice to the complexity of his thought or to his influence on successive generations of intellectuals like Robert Boyle or Gottfried Leibniz. Revealing Van Helmont as an original thinker who sought to produce a post-Scholastic synthesis of religion and natural philosophy, Georgiana Hedesan reconstructs his ambitious quest for universal knowledge as it emerges from the text of the Ortus medicinae (1648). Published after Van Helmont's death by his son, the work can best be understood as a compilation of finished and unfinished treatises, the historical product of a life unsettled by religious persecution and personal misfortune. The present book provides a coherent account of Van Helmont's philosophy by analysing its main tenets. Divided into two parts, the study opens with a background to Van Helmont's concept of an alchemical Christian philosophy, demonstrating that his outlook was deeply grounded in the tradition of medical alchemy as reformed by Theophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493-1541). It then reconstitutes Van Helmont's biography, while giving a historical dimension to his intellectual output. The second part reconstructs Van Helmont's Christian philosophy, investigating his views on God, nature and man, as well as his applied philosophy. Hedesan also provides an account of the development of Van Helmont's thought throughout his life. The conclusion sums up Van Helmont's intellectual achievement and highlights avenues of future research.

Bridging Traditions
Bridging Traditions

Author: Karen Hunger Parshall

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2015-06-01

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 1612481353

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Bridging Traditions explores the connections between apparently different zones of comprehension and experience—magic and experiment, alchemy and mechanics, practical mathematics and geometrical mysticism, things earthy and heavenly, and especially science and medicine—by focusing on points of intersection among alchemy, chemistry, and Paracelsian medical philosophy. In exploring the varieties of natural knowledge in the early modern era, the authors pay tribute to the work of Allen Debus, whose own endeavors cleared the way for scholars to examine subjects that were once snubbed as suitable only to the refuse heap of the history of science.

The Language of God
The Language of God

Author: Francis Collins

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008-09-04

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1847396151

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Dr Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is one of the world's leading scientists, working at the cutting edge of the study of DNA, the code of life. Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God. How does he reconcile the seemingly unreconcilable? In THE LANGUAGE OF GOD he explains his own journey from atheism to faith, and then takes the reader on a stunning tour of modern science to show that physics, chemistry and biology -- indeed, reason itself -- are not incompatible with belief. His book is essential reading for anyone who wonders about the deepest questions of all: why are we here? How did we get here? And what does life mean?

Natural Kinds and Genesis
Natural Kinds and Genesis

Author: Stewart Umphrey

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2016-08-22

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1498531423

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In Natural Kinds and Genesis: The Classification of Material Entities, Stewart Umphrey raises and answers two questions: What is it to be a natural kind? And are there in fact any natural kinds? First, using the everyday understanding of things, he argues that natural kinds may be understood as classes or as types, and that the members or tokens of such kinds are individual continuants. A continuant is essentially a being-in-becoming, a material thing which changes and yet remains the same, in virtue of its nature or essence, as long as it exists. In the primary sense of the term, then, a natural kind is a class whose members closely resemble one another substantially, in virtue of their essences. Alternatively, it is a type whose tokens exemplify it in virtue of their essences. To answer the second question, one must make use of relevant scientific theories as well. Umphrey agrees with scientific essentialists that there are natural kinds, but he argues that most of the chemical, physical, and biological kinds posited in current theories are not natural kinds in the primary sense of the term. The natural-kinds realism he affirms is thus quite restricted: it requires the existence of enduring things which closely resemble one another in virtue of their essences, and such things exist, apparently, only if they have come into being, or emerged, in the course of symmetry-breaking events. Natural Kinds and Genesis will be of interest to philosophers of science and to those interested in the metaphysics of natural kinds and their members.

The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle
The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle

Author: Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0197502504

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The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle examines the relationship between Robert Boyle's experimental work in chemistry and his commitment to mechanical philosophy.