Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
that we live in a particular kind of intellectual climate. It is a climate that
we have inherited from antiquity, one in which the abstract and theoreti-
cal are valued above the manual and practical. Classical Greek philoso-
phers were often careful observers of nature, but they rarely engaged in
experiment, and even then it would not be to learn about the world but
merely to demonstrate the validity of their ideas. It was only when this
philosophical strand mingled with the practical skills of the Middle East
in Hellenistic Alexandria that the great experimental Greek scientists
such as Archimedes and Hero appeared (Multhauf 1993). That blend, of
course, gave rise to the proto-science of alchemy; but alchemy, as well as
practical chemical arts such as dyeing, pottery, metallurgy, cooking, and
brewing, was never deemed a subject worthy of scholarly study at the
medieval universities, where astronomy, geometry, and music were the
pre-eminent 'sciences'. Although medicine was taught academically, the
doctors typically never laid a finger on a human body - manual medical
operations such as cautery, bone-setting, and blood-letting were left for
lowly surgeons to perform.
Yet chemistry
could
have become a rich source of inspiration and
metaphor for everyone interested in the puzzles and dilemmas of human
existence. In the chemical philosophies that flourished in the sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries, it was precisely that: these theories, now
seemingly so arcane and indeed occult, can be considered the first proto-
scientific 'theories of everything'. This aspect of Renaissance science,
which drew in particular on the ideas of the Swiss alchemist and physi-
cian Paracelsus and left its mark on the notion of science developed by
Francis Bacon, has been discussed by the American historian of science
Allen Debus (1978). It came sometimes into explicit conflict with the
mechanistic view of science initiated by René Descartes and his follow-
ers, and which of course ultimately triumphed in the form of the deter-
ministic mechanics of Isaac Newton.
I am not saying that this was a mistake, and that we should instead
have chosen to embrace Paracelsian chemical philosophy, which typi-
cally veered towards a rather nebulous mysticism. I am simply pointing
out that these developments in science were not independent of our cul-
ture as a whole, and that they continue to shape it.
