"From the Library to the Laboratory and Back Again: Experiment as a Tool for Historians of Science" (original) (raw)
Related papers
Archaeology and the alchemical laboratory (PhD thesis)
2021
The present PhD thesis focuses on the study of early modern laboratory apparatus, with the specific aim of adopting a material culture-approach to the history of science and technology. This is achieved through the scientific analysis of two assemblages of crucibles and other reaction vessels, namely that of Jamestown in Virginia (early 17th century) and that of the Ashmolean laboratory in Oxford (late 17th-early 18th century). For each of these case studies the high-temperature activities carried out were reconstructed and contextualised. The analysis of the residues left by the chemical reactions, through optical microscopy and SEM-EDS, allowed to determine what substances were manipulated and what technical processes were followed. While the vast majority of the crucibles from Jamestown were used for testing minerals in search of metals of interest to the settlers, the practitioners at the Ashmolean were found to diversify their work and experiment with technological innovation of the period. As no direct relation exists between the case studies, each of them stands on its own and each brings a novel contribution to its specific historical and archaeological context However, taken together the two case studies illustrate the wider scope of this thesis by indicating the potential of a new methodological approach to the study of laboratory remains, which combines the information of archaeological science with current narratives in the historiography of early modern science. The results are used to build a materials-based network, which tells the story of scientific developments from the bottom up and throws new light on the practical side of doing science. Ultimately, this thesis crosses old disciplinary boundaries and adds new layers of interpretation to both disciplines it engages with.
The archaeology of alchemy and chemistry: past, present and ideas for the future
Ambix, 2023
The materials and practices of chymical procedures have become key sources of information among science historians, opening up channels for cross-disciplinary dialogue. This is especially true with regard to material culture-based disciplines such as archaeology whose bottom-up approach offers significant contributions to the new historiography of science. Parallel to this trend, some archaeological scientists who specialise in reconstructing past technologies have begun to address questions concerning the production and circulation of scientific knowledge, and have focused as well on the contributions of artists/artisans to the development of natural philosophical theories. This essay charts the history of this archaeology of alchemy and chemistry and its development as a sub-discipline of archaeological science. By mapping this history, from an initial period with a focus on metallurgy to current trends, it demonstrates how the archaeology of alchemy and chemistry both mirrors and, at the same time, feeds the broadening scope of the historiography of science. After surveying the most relevant works and highlighting the key contributions that archaeologists have brought to a discourse related to the creation of scientific knowledge, the essay also offers a series of ideas related to materials awaiting comprehensive study that will further strengthen methodological synergies across disciplines.
ANATOMY OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ALCHEMY AND CHEMISTRY
University of Bristol (l uk.bl.ethos.805631 ), 2020
ABSTRACT It is claimed that alchemy and alchemists/early modern chymists contributed substantially to proto-chemistry in important ways. To a significant degree, sound science was being practised in the Latin West during the seventeenth century, though not all criteria were met consistently across all nations at all times. This thesis will: (1) Define the criteria for best practice of science (specifically chemistry) using a Wittgensteinian approach; (2) Examine the level to which such criteria were appreciated and adhered to across a representative sample of chemical practices during the seventeenth century. As a counteraction to the extremely negative perceptions of alchemy, often associated with the occult, I demonstrate a dynamic, international community, whose operational practices, far from being unscientific, included many of the criteria which are regarded in modern times as essential prerequisites of science. Determining exactly what constitutes good science is problematic, especially since it is disputed by some that science can even be distinguished from non-science. Therefore, a Wittgensteinian 'family resembles' approach to analysis of science has been selected, establishing the essential characteristics by which good science can be recognised. These criteria are divided into two groups, one designated ‘core requirements’ plus further ‘desirable’ elements. By evaluating various Early Modern chymistry textbooks, operational procedures, research communities and other components, I conclude that many of the criteria for good science were extant in the period in the Latin West. There are a few criteria which are under-represented or absent, for example, Popperian falsificationism and an inconsistent application of scepticism. The overall conclusion is the core criteria of critical reasoning, robust experimentation techniques, challenges to authorities and many of the important values and methods were present within a research community that had developed significantly in the Early Modern period, spanning Europe during the seventeenth-century and beyond.
2021
The eighteenth century was an exciting period in the history of chemistry. The number of newly discovered metals, earths, alkalis, and gases was greater than in all the preceding history of chemical science, and contributed to the collapse of older philosophies of matter (Weeks 1933). 1 Important as they were, these discoveries were not the result of new theoretical ideas; rather, they reflected the increasing accuracy of analytical methods and apparatus. Such technical progress was made both in the laboratory and in the field. The new gases, for instance, were both isolated in laboratories and (in the case of methane) discovered in marshes. The different circumstances in the discoveries of new elements implied the existence of a wide range of types of apparatus, from the portable pocket laboratory (Smeaton 1966), to the pursuit of chemical experimentation on an industrial scale.
Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry: Papers from Ambix . Edited by Allen G. Debus
Ambix, 2007
The history of alchemy and early chemistry (or chymistry) has come a long way since George Sarton listed alchemy among the "pseudo-sciences" in the critical bibliography of the journal Isis. Alchemy is now studied as a serious subject in its own right and no longer viewed by most scholars in the field as an irrational precursor to the "properly" scientific discipline of chemistry. The role played by the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry in this historiographical sea-change was vital, and it is fitting that this volume of essays published by its society journal Ambix ("one of the first journals in the History of Science to be published in the English-speaking world") should be published so close to the seventieth anniversary of the journal's first issue in May 1937. In his brief introduction, the distinguished historian of alchemy and chemistry Allen G. Debus, who has done so much himself to promote the study of early chemistry, emphasises the unparalleled significance of the journal in its coverage of the history of chemistry prior to 1800. Debus makes a judicious and intelligent selection from the journal's extensive backcatalogue, beginning with two articles from its historic first issue by Julius Ruska and F. Sherwood Taylor, running right through to some early pieces by some of the leading historians of alchemy of today (Lawrence M. Principe, William R. Newman and Bruce Moran are all represented here). Debus's selection neatly encapsulates the seismic shifts in the discipline: from the philological and textual-critical focus of the 1930s, through to the more social and cultural historical approaches of today, which seek to set the practices of alchemy and chymistry in the context of patronage systems, religious confessions or other social forms of knowledge construction. The volume also spans the history of alchemy from its murky beginnings in ancient Greece (represented here by studies of Pseudo-Democritus and the ancient "Origins of Greek Alchemy") to "the end of alchemy" in the work of Nicholas Lemery in eighteenth-century France (an "ending" currently being reappraised by contemporary scholars). Between these two extremes, we find a wealth of valuable material on some of the most significant areas of early modern chymistry. Debus's lifelong devotion to the Paracelsian tradition is reflected in his choice of several pieces, including an essay by one of the early doyens of the Society, Walter Pagel, whose views (which rather too loosely conflate Paracelsus's ideas with those of late-antique Neo-Platonists and gnostics such as Plotinus, Numenius and Valentinus), while they might not seem entirely convincing to today's researchers, have undoubted historical significance to the discipline. It is also good to see collected here Piyo Rattansi's pieces from the 1960s on the place of Paracelsianism and van Helmontianism in the Revolutionary and Restoration England of the seventeenth century, and Graham Rees's excellent pieces on the "semi-paracelsian" cosmology of Francis Bacon from the 1970s. The contrast offered by C. H. Josten's piece on Robert Fludd's Philosophicall Key (published in 1963) and Berthold Heinecke's 1995 study of Van Helmont is illuminating, marking as it does the shift between a period in which unreflective description seemed to
2022
The substantial collection of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier’s apparatus is not the only surviving collection of eighteenth-century chemical apparatus and instrumentation, but it is without question the most important. The present study provides the first scientific catalogue of Lavoisier’s surviving apparatus. This collection of instruments is remarkable not only for the quality of many of them but, above all, for the number of items that have survived (ca. 600 items). Given such a wealth and variety of instruments, this study also offers the first comprehensive attempt to reconstruct the cultural and social context of Lavoisier’s experimental activities.