What alchemists got right about chemistry - The Boston Globe »
Posted By gamahuche 10 months, 3 weeks ago in Science & TechnologyIt is alchemists who gave Europe some of its key discoveries. Alchemists discovered zinc and metallic arsenic. A German alchemist named Hennig Brand isolated phosphorus in 1669. The alchemist Johann Bottger, working for the Dresden court, stumbled on a material that allowed German workshops to make their own porcelain and break China's monopoly on one of the world's most lucrative industries.
If alchemy's achievements can sometimes seem accidental, its practices and their approach were deliberate, and often notably scientific in spirit. "We see for example some wonderful cases when an alchemical writer is really observing a laboratory phenomenon - some reaction, some operation - and racking his brains, trying to figure out what's going on under the surface," says Principe. "And that, in a way, is what chemists do."
Without alchemy, it's unlikely chemistry could have happened at all. Influential early chemists, such as Georg Ernst Stahl and Robert Boyle, were either practicing alchemists or former alchemists. A chemistry lab in the 18th century would have been almost indistinguishable from an alchemist's workshop.
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gamahuche
"I would rather be a square peg than fit in a pigeon hole" -
an essay which won me the "Lamb Essay Prize" at the Religious ...
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gamahuche10 months, 3 weeks ago
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I live in a very alchemical country.. Its very hard to resist its allure here and the facts and fictions of alchemy are not regarded as strange or startling by anyone. This is one of the few excellent articles that I have read in the mainstream press and by happenstance I read it the afternoon after visiting a small exhibition about Paracelsus, a very significant medical alchemist who was both celebrated and reviled in his lifetime but is now regarded as an inspirer of homeopathy. He hung his hat here during his never-ending perambulations which took him much further than virtually anyone travelled those days - and he went mostly on foot.
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Unfortunately I was on a break from a long work-jag to which I must return, so I won't be able to contribute as much as I'd like to. But perhaps some follow-up one day. There's a LOT more that this one doesn't touch on - such as that our Western alchemy derived from knowledge from Greece and Egypt and that the tradition NEVER died and disappeared but continues to this day. And the search for gold was only one aspect of alchemy, which is always regarded as an ART rather than a SCIENCE. Spiritual perfection and longevity were just as important goals and alchemy WAS the cutting-edge of science for literally hundreds and hundreds of years. For some people it still is.. For others its always been more about magic..-
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hyperbola10 months, 3 weeks ago
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It is a type of common western provincialism that this article hardly mentions that the roots of alchemy come from islamic science. Much like algorithm, the very name alchemy is of islamic origin.
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Alchemy and chemistry in medieval Islam
.... The word alchemy itself was derived from the Arabic word ???????? al-kimia.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the focus of alchemical development moved to the Arab Empire and the Islamic civilization. Much more is known about Islamic alchemy as it was better documented; indeed, most of the earlier writings that have come down through the years were preserved as Arabic translations.[1]
The study of alchemy and chemistry often overlapped in the early Islamic world, but later there were disputes between the traditional alchemists and the practical chemists who discredited alchemy. Muslim chemists and alchemists were the first to employ the experimental scientific method (as practised in modern chemistry), while Muslim alchemists also developed theories on the transmutation of metals, the philosopher's stone and the Takwin (artificial creation of life in the laboratory), like in later medieval European alchemy, though these alchemical theories were rejected by practical Muslim chemists from the 9th century onwards.
Beginnings of chemistry
An early experimental scientific method for chemistry began emerging among early Muslim chemists. The first and most influential was the 9th century chemist, Geber (Jabir ibn Hayyan), who is "considered by many to be the father of chemistry",[7][8][9][10] for introducing:
The experimental method; apparatus such as the alembic, still, and retort; and chemical processes such as liquefaction, purification, oxidisation and evaporation.[10]
Crystallisation.[7]
The chemical process of filtration.[11]
Pure distillation[11] (impure distillation methods were known to the Babylonians, Greeks and Egyptians since ancient times, but Geber was the first to introduce distillation apparatus and techniques which were able to fully purify chemical substances).
The distillation and production of numerous chemical substances.
The historian of chemistry Erick John Holmyard gives credit to Jabir for developing alchemy into an experimental science and he writes that Jabir's importance to the history of chemistry is equal to that of Robert Boyle and Antoine Lavoisier.[13]...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_(Islam)
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tehranchik10 months, 3 weeks ago
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Alchemists were the scientists, healers, chemists, psychiatrists, magicians and modern day medicine men. A very important sideline and little known fact that this article doesn't touch on is - some alchemists were the barbers of the day.
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flyonthewallzz10 months, 3 weeks ago
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http://www.barberpole.com/
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"The modern barber pole originated in the days when bloodletting was one of the principal duties of the barber. The two spiral ribbons painted around the pole represent the two long bandages, one twisted around the arm before bleeding, and the other used to bind is afterward. Originally, when not in use, the pole with a bandage wound around it, so that both might be together when needed, was hung at the door as a sign. But later, for convenience, instead of hanging out the original pole, another one was painted in imitation of it and given a permanent place on the outside of the shop. This was the beginning of the modern barber pole."
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ShixaComment removed: Retracted by user
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CRYMTYPHON10 months, 3 weeks ago
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Alchemy : arabic for "the black art".
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In the renaissance cities of eastern europe, Prague and
Warsaw, Kiev, Vilnius and Vienna, men mapped the stars
and named the first elements.
They created a secret language for marrying fire, air, water and earth.
They built strange tools and crucibles,
alembics and decanters of twisted glass that resembled nightmare creatures.
They stayed up all night and made themselves sick.
Some got rich but mostly they lived on loans to discover eternal youth and free gold.
Think of them as early programmers and tech gurus.-
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hyperbola10 months, 3 weeks ago
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Actually the first elements were named long before europeans took up alchemy.
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The Islamic world was a melting pot for alchemy. Islamic alchemists such as Jabir ibn Hayyan (Latinized as Geber) and al-Razi (Latinized as Rasis or Rhazes) contributed key chemical discoveries, including:
Distillation apparatus (such as the alembic, still, and retort) which were able to fully purify chemical substances.
The words elixir, alembic and alcohol are of Arabic origin.
The muriatic (hydrochloric), sulfuric, nitric and acetic acids.
Soda and potash.
Distilled water and purified distilled alcohol.
Perfumery
Many more chemical substances and apparatus.
From the Arabic names of al-natrun and al-qal?y, Latinized into Natrium and Kalium, come the modern symbols for sodium and potassium.
The discovery that aqua regia, a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, could dissolve the noblest metal; gold, was to fuel the imagination of alchemists for the next millennium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_(Islam)
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annthatcherComment removed: Hard Banned
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DarkWizard10 months, 3 weeks ago
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You find the best stories EE!
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FTA - "They were essentially pursuing philosophy and pursuing the investigation of nature in a way that makes sense in the context of the tim[e]"
Isn't that what we do today? Science without philosophy, vision, or imagination is just a computer running a program, IMHO. Therefore, we understand chemistry and other sciences in the context of our time. But, that understanding is a as subjective as the limitations of the evolved mind allows. -
annthatcherComment removed: Hard Banned
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