'Chemistry, That Starry Science' - Early Modern Conjunctions of Astrology and Alchemy (original) (raw)
Planets in Medieval Alchemy and Astrology (Medieval and Renaissance)
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Planetary Science, 2022
This article deals with astrology and alchemy in the Medieval and Renaissance culture of western Europe, examining their theoretical background and technical bases, as well as their interpretative conventions, social functions, religious and political uses, and the theory of fate in astrology, as well as critiques of them. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, both alchemy and astrology shared a common language in the meanings and characters attributed to the celestial bodies, which provided a cosmic framework for understanding all terrestrial affairs.
In the Renaissance, two major factors contributed to the modification of this traditional relationship between medicine and astrology. One is the severe criticism of judicial astrology, advanced by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) in his posthumous work, entitled "Disputations against Judicial Astrology" (Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem) (Bologna, 1496). Many of his contemporaries (followed by modern historians) generally considered that Pico rejected the divinatory aspects of astrology and accepted only its physical dimensions, which can be labeled as “natural astrology.” According to this interpretation, the influences of the celestial region were exerted only by physical means: motion, light and heat. Pico thus criticized the astrological aspects of the doctrine of critical days. Another stimulus came from Florentine philosopher, Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499). Among his works there was a treatise on longevity, entitled "Three Books on Life" (De vita libri tres) (Florence, 1489). His worldview, heavily influenced by ancient Neoplatonism, was blended with ideas borrowed from late medieval alchemy, astrology and natural magic. Pico’s criticism of judicial astrology and Ficino’s promotion of cosmic harmony lead sixteenth-century physicians to present theoretical innovations for a new system which can be called “astral medicine.” 1. Introduction 2. Leoniceno’s Naturalistic Interpretation 3. Fernel’s Astral Medicine 4. Mizauld’s Harmony between Heaven and Earth 5. Cardano’s Theory of Cosmic Heat 6. Gemma and the Apogee of Astral Medicine 7. The Paracelsians and the Quest for the Universal Medicine
From the standpoint of many thinkers in the Renaissance, astrology was science. 1 It comprised a body of knowledge that fit the criteria of verification commonly accepted for confirming information and establishing certitude about the natural world. It derived from authoritative traditions rooted in admired ages and places, illuminated by ancient wisdom. The most respected intellects had set great store by it from time immemorial. It made sense according to prevailing ideas about how the world and human nature worked. Its language was embedded in the very discourse whereby the results of scientific investigations were expressed. It seemed to conform to observations and experiences accumulated over time. Its methods were the methods of all knowledge-gathering. It used an experiential, not an experimental approach; and as such it belonged to Renaissance science and only partly to ours. And to the extent that Renaissance thinkers began to invent modes of knowledge-testing to which it could not conform, it gradually lost its grip on Renaissance minds and was superseded by other approaches. 2 Thus the story of astrology and science in the Renaissance is largely the story of science in general. No wonder Giovanni Battista Riccioli included both astrologers and astronomers together in the list he compiled at the end of the seventeenth century of experts on celestial matters from ancient to modern. And no wonder that, well into the seventeenth century and beyond, it kept its position among the studies associated with "mixed mathematics" as taught in the medical schools. And the works and days of its practitioners deserve all the attention that, for instance, the Cambridge History of Early Modern Science, or indeed the Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy have devoted to them. To these anthologies we also refer for a fuller discussion of the problematic term "science" in this context, adding only that for the sake of convenience "science" and "natural knowledge" will be used interchangeably in deference to historical usage when referring to our period, and clear indications will be given when anything specifically relating to the notion of "modern science" is in play.
Stars, spirits, signs: towards a history of astrology 1100–1800
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2010
When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
2017
Astrology was an integral part of university teaching in the Middle Ages. The discipline of astronomia comprehended not only the calculation of planetary orbits, but also the casting of horoscopes, the calculation of houses and aspects, the character of the various planets, and the like. Although the astronomical and astrological parts were separate and had their own textbooks, both domains were taught in the same body of education. However, starting in the seventeenth-century, universities gradually no longer considered the teaching of astrological techniques as their task. Astronomy developed further without any link to astrological pursuits.
Astrology (Cambridge History of Science)
As is well known, astrology finally disappeared from the domain of legitimate natural knowledge during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although the precise contours of this story remain obscure. It is less well known, albeit clearly documented, that astrology was taught from the beginning of the fourteenth century as an important part of the arts and science curriculum at the great medieval and Renaissance universities, including Padua, Bologna, and Paris. There, astrology was studied within three distinct scientific disciplines -mathematics, natural philosophy, and medicine -and served to integrate several highly developed mathematical sciences of antiquity -astronomy, geography, and geometrical optics -with Aristotelian natural philosophy. This astrologizing Aristotelianism provided fundamental patterns of interpretation and analysis in pre-Newtonian natural knowledge. Thus, the history of astrology -and, in particular, the story of its protracted criticism and ultimate rejection as a source of what the learned considered legitimate natural knowledge -is central for understanding the transition from medieval and Renaissance natural philosophy to Enlightenment science. The role of astrology in this transition was neither obvious nor unproblematic. Indeed, astrology's integration of astronomy and natural philosophy under the aegis of mathematics had much in common with the aims of the "new science"of the seventeenth century. Thus it becomes necessary to explain why this promising astrological synthesis was rejected in favor of a rather different mathematical natural philosophy.
Alchemy was never taught at any medieval or early modern university, yet there is evidence of interest in the art among students and professors throughout Europe. Studies of academic alchemy have generally focused on the interests of individuals rather than examining communities of university alchemists. At the turn of the fifteenth century, the University of Cracow hosted a larger community of practitioners than previously acknowledged. This article presents a discussion, edition, and translation of a text that came out of that community: the Fundamentum scienciae nobilissimae secretorum naturae, written by Adam of Bochyń in 1489 while a student at the University of Cracow. In Adam's day, the university was experiencing an exceptionally vibrant moment in the sciences, particularly astronomy. Editing Adam's text will lay the groundwork for further studies of Cracow's alchemical community, studies that will change our understanding of the university's scientific flourishing as well as of the geography of central European alchemy, which has been dominated in the scholarship by Rudolf II's Prague.
Barton_Tamsyn_Ancient_Astrology.pdf
Sciences of Antiquity is a series designed to cover the subject matter of what we call science. The volumes discuss how the ancients saw, interpreted and handled the natural world, from the elements to the most complex of living things. Their discussions on these matters formed a resource for those who later worked on the same topics, including scientists. The intention of this series is to show what it was in the aims, expectations, problems and circumstances of the ancient writers that formed the nature of what they wrote. A consequent purpose is to provide historians with an understanding of the materials out of which later writers, rather than passively receiving and transmitting ancient 'ideas', constructed their own world view.
The Wise Book of Astronomy and Philosophy in London, Wellcome Library, MS 411 (ff. 32r–37v)
Brno studies in English
London, Wellcome Library, MS 411 is a one-volume codex from the late fifteenth century which holds a collection of short treatises and tracts in English and Latin on different topics including prognostications, nativities, bloodletting, medical astrology, among others. In this article, the anonymous Wise Book of Astronomy and Philosophy, written in English and held in folios 32r to 37v, is taken into consideration. The objective is threefold: (i) to examine the contents, transmission and sources of the text, (ii) to describe it from a physical standpoint, and (iii) to analyse the text's main dialectal features in order to establish a likely place of composition. Investigation on these aspects can throw some light on the function and transmission of the text, and may also prove significant for a better understanding of it.
Scholarly attempts to analyze the history of science sometime suffer from an imprecise use of terms. In order to understand accurately how science has developed and from where it draws its roots, researchers should be careful to recognize that epistemic regimes change over time and acceptable forms of knowledge production are contingent upon the hegemonic discourse informing the epistemic regime of any given period. In order to understand the importance of this point, I apply the techniques of historical epistemology to an analysis of the place of the study of astrology in the medieval and early modern periods alongside a discussion of the “language games” of these period as well as the role of the “archeology of knowledge” in uncovering meaning in our study of the past. In sum, I argue that the term “science” should never be used when studying approaches to knowledge formation prior to the seventeenth century.
Astrology and the ‘Style’ of Modern Science
Academia Letters, 2021
Astrology (with alchemy) was the bridge between Aristotelian science and modern science, preserving the general Aristotelian framework, but opening the road to a science of the 'individuals' beyond the classical science of the 'universals'. In Dante's Divina Commedia we can find also the beginning of an 'astral science' which introduced the idea of science as a 'system'.
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
Astrological Medicine and the Popular Press in Early Modern England
Culture and Cosmos, 2005
For many centuries the study of the stars was considered to be a science in western Europe. In the middle ages both astrology and astronomy, thought be the practical and theoretical parts of the scientific study of the celestial heavens, were taught as part of the university curriculum. The advent of printing in the late fifteenth century resulted in a huge variety of publications that provided the general public with access to this knowledge. This essay will examine the major role that almanacs, which were cheap, mass-produced astrological publications, played in disseminating information about astrological medical beliefs and practices to a national audience.