The scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is normally characterised in terms of astronomy and the physics of motion. In The French Paracelsians, first published in 1992, Allen Debus narrates an important episode whose contribution to the scientific revolution has been largely ignored: the long-standing contention between Paracelsians and Galenists.
Despite his fame Paracelsus remains an illusive character. As this volume points out it is somewhat of a paradox that the fascination with Paracelsus and his ideas has remained so widespread when it is born in mind that it is far from clear what exactly he contributed to medicine and natural philosophy. But perhaps it is exactly this enigma which through the ages has made Paracelsus so attractive to such a variety of people who all want to claim him as an advocate for their particular ideas. The first section of this book deals with the historiography surrounding Paracelsus and Paracelsianism and points to the need of reclaiming the man and his ideas in their proper historical context. A further two sections are concerned with the different religious, social and political implications of Paracelsianism and its medical and natural philosophical significance respectively.
This book traces the development of modern French habits of cooking, eating, and drinking from their roots in the Ancien Regime. Pinkard examines the interplay of material culture, social developments, medical theory, and Enlightenment thought in the development of French cooking, which culminated in the creation of a distinct culture of food and drink.
Aims to bring together essays that explore how knowledge was obtained and demonstrated in Europe during an intellectually explosive four centuries, when standard methods of inquiry took shape across several fields of intellectual pursuit. This book looks at production and consumption of knowledge as a social process within different communities.
In Elements, Principles and Particles, Antonio Clericuzio explores the relationships between chemistry and corpuscular philosophy in the age of the Scientific Revolution. Science historians have regarded chemistry and corpuscular philosophy as two distinct traditions. Clericuzio's view is that since the beginning of the 17th century atomism and chemistry were strictly connected. This is attested by Daniel Sennert and by many hitherto little-known French and English natural philosophers. They often combined a corpuscular theory of matter with Paracelsian chemical (and medical) doctrines. Boyle plays a central part in the present book: Clericuzio redefines Boyle's chemical views, by showing that Boyle did not subordinate chemistry to the principles of mechanical philosophy. When Boyle explained chemical phenomena, he had recourse to corpuscles endowed with chemical, not mechanical, properties. The combination of chemistry and corpuscular philosophy was adopted by a number of chemists active in the last decades of the 17th century, both in England and on the Continent. Using a large number of primary sources, the author challenges the standard view of the corpuscular theory of matter as identical with the mechanical philosophy. He points out that different versions of the corpuscular philosophy flourished in the 17th century. Most of them were not based on the mechanical theory, i.e. on the view that matter is inert and has only mechanical properties. Throughout the 17th century, active principles, as well as chemical properties, are attributed to corpuscles. Given its broad coverage, the book is a significant contribution to both history of science and history of philosophy.
"If he had lived among the Greeks, he would now be numbered among the stars." So wrote Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in his epitaph for Francis Mercury van Helmont. Leibniz was not the only contemporary to admire and respect van Helmont, but although famous in his own day, he has been virtually ignored by modern historians. Yet his views influenced Leibniz, contributed to the development of modern science, and fostered the kind of ecumenicalism that made the concept of toleration conceivable. The progressive nature of van Helmont's thought was based on his deep commitment to the esoteric doctrines of the Lurianic Kabbalah. With his friend Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, van Helmont edited the Kabbala Denudata (1677-1684), the largest collection of Lurianic Kabbalistic texts available to Christians up to that time. Because the subject matter of this work appears so difficult and arcane, it has never been appreciated as a significant text for understanding the emergence of modern thought. However, one can find in it the basis for the faith in science, the belief in progress, and the pluralism characteristic of later western thought. The Lurianic Kabbalah thus deserves a place it has never received in histories of western scientific and cultural developments. Although van Helmont's efforts contributed to the development of religious toleration, his experience as a prisoner of the Inquisition accused of "Judaising" reveals the problematic relations between Christians and Jews during the early-modern period. New Inquisitional documents relating to van Helmont's imprisonment will be discussed to illustrate the difficulties faced by anyone advocating philo-semitism and toleration at the time.
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.
Of interest to interdisciplinary historians as well as those in various other fields, this book presents the first publication of 14 poems ranging from 12 to 3,000 lines. The poems are printed in the chronological order of their composition, from Elizabethan to Augustan times, but nine of them are verse translations of works from earlier periods in the development of alchemy. Each has a textual and historical introduction and explanatory note by the Editor. Renaissance alchemy is acknowledged as an important element in the histories of early modern science and medicine. This book emphasises these poems’ expression of and shaping influence on religious, social and political values and institutions of their time too and is a useful reference work with much to offer for cultural studies and literary studies as well as science and history.
In September 2008, an international conference on the history of alchemy was held at El Escorial, close to the ancient location of the distilling houses operating under royal patronage during the second half of the 16th century. The present book consists of a selection of the papers presented then, shedding light on little-studied medieval and early modern texts, important alchemical doctrines such as medieval corpuscularianism, early modern spiritus mundi or the function of salt within chymical principles, and discussing such prominent figures as Paracelsus, Isaac Hollandus, Michael Sendivogius, Fontenelle or G. E. Stahl. Last but not least, the book offers new insights on the most recent history of Spanish alchemy.
