Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
helps point out the distinction between true and wrong alchemy. How-
ever, the new opposition has different elements now. Whereas the true
alchemy is the Christian belief system or the search for God, the wrong
alchemy is modern science or the search for scientific knowledge. The
writers of what might be called Christian Romanticism rejected modern
science altogether, because it no longer had any basis in Christian relig-
ion. Echoing Augustine, they considered curiosity-driven search for
knowledge as idle, useless, and misleading.
13
They strongly opposed the
contemporary efforts to separate knowledge of nature from moral knowl-
edge. In sum, they revived the discourse about the true alchemy in order
to express their strong opposition, not to alchemy or chemistry in particu-
lar, but to the general Enlightenment idea of science, which at that time
flourished.
4.
Reinventing the Medieval Alchemists in a Discourse about
Chemistry
Unlike the aforementioned writers, who rejected science altogether, there
are more specific romantic positions with particular attitudes towards
chemistry. In his autobiographical
Dichtung und Wahrheit
(1814),
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) described his early interest in
and fascination with experimental chemistry. Furthermore, his detailed
analogies between chemical relations and social relations in his
Wahlver-
wandtschaften
(1809) revealed profound knowledge of contemporary
chemical theories. How, then, did this 'chemistry-friendly' Romanticist,
who helped establish a chair of chemistry in the philosophical faculty at
the University of Jena in 1789,
14
consider the development of modern
chemistry in his literary work?
His two-part tragedy
Faust
(1806, 1832) provides surprisingly de-
tailed insight. In fact, the tragedy includes a certain genealogy - Faust's
father, Faust himself, and Faust's famulus Wagner - that reflects his
view on the historical development of chemistry. In Part I (vv. 1034-55),
13
A similar criticism of science can be found in the works of the early eighteenth-
century British moralists Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and William Cowper.
14
See Döbling 1928. On Goethe's general relationship to chemistry, see also Kuhn
1972 and Schwedt 1998.
