For nearly a century, the worldwide anthroposophical movement has been a catalyst for environmental activism, helping to bring to life many modern ecological practices such as organic farming, community-supported agriculture, and green banking. Yet the spiritual practice of anthroposophy remains unknown to most environmentalists. A historical and ethnographic study of the environmental movement, Eco-Alchemy uncovers for the first time the profound influences of anthroposophy and its founder, Rudolf Steiner, whose holistic worldview, rooted in esoteric spirituality, inspired the movement. Dan (...) McKanan shows that environmentalism is itself a complex ecosystem and that it would not be as diverse or transformative without the contributions of anthroposophy"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Alchemy now holds an important place in the history of science. Its current status contrasts with its former exile as a “pseudoscience” or worse and results from several rehabilitative steps carried out by scholars who made closer, less programmatic, and more innovative studies of the documentary sources. Interestingly, alchemy's outcast status was created in the eighteenth century and perpetuated thereafter in part for strategic and polemical reasons—and not only on account of a lack of historical understanding. Alchemy's (...) return to the fold of the history of science highlights important features about the development of science and our changing understanding of it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Alchemy now holds an important place in the history of science. Its current status contrasts with its former exile as a “pseudoscience” or worse and results from several rehabilitative steps carried out by scholars who made closer, less programmatic, and more innovative studies of the documentary sources. Interestingly, alchemy's outcast status was created in the eighteenth century and perpetuated thereafter in part for strategic and polemical reasons—and not only on account of a lack of historical understanding. (...) class='Hi'>Alchemy's return to the fold of the history of science highlights important features about the development of science and our changing understanding of it. (shrink)

Jon Elster has written a comprehensive, wide-ranging book on the emotions in which he considers the full range of theoretical approaches. Drawing on history, literature, philosophy and psychology, Elster presents a complete account of the role of the emotions in human behaviour. While acknowledging the importance of neurophysiology and laboratory experiment for the study of emotions, Elster argues that the serious student of the emotions can learn more from the great thinkers and writers of the past, from Aristotle to Jane (...) Austen. He attaches particular importance to the work of the French moralists, notably La Rochefoucauld, who demonstrated the way esteem and self-esteem shape human motivation. The book also maintains a running dialogue with economists and rational-choice theorists. Combining methodological and theoretical arguments with empirical case-studies and written with Elster's customary verve and economy, this book has great cross-disciplinary appeal. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Early modern alchemy studied both matter and life, much like today's life sciences. What material life is and how it comes about intrigued alchemists. Many found the answer by assuming a vital principle that served as the source and cause of life. Recent literature has presented important cases in which vitalist formulations incorporated corpuscular or mechanical elements that were characteristic of the New Science and other cases in which vitalist thinking influenced important figures of the Scientific Revolution. Not (...) merely speculative, vitalist ideas also motivated chymical practice. The unity of life science and material science that is found in many formulations of Renaissance alchemy disintegrated in Georg Ernst Stahl's version of post-Cartesian vitalism. (shrink)

Of all the traditional sciences it is alchemy based as it is in metallurgy that is directly concerned with the coming of the industrial order. In alchemical terms modern man lives in the Ferric Age and his state is best analogized to the properties of the metal iron, hard, cold, unbending but quick to succumb to corrosion and rust. The great ancient wisdom traditions of the world all anticipated this present age for it was already implicit in the technological (...) and other changes that brought on the dawn of history. These ancient traditions - dismissed as childish superstitions by the scientist contain ideas essential to the self-understanding that contemporary man so desperately needs. This is the central contention of the writings brought together in Primordial Alchemy & Modern Religion. Drawing upon many unexpected sources especially Plato and the ancient Greeks these wide-ranging, generous essays provide timely reiterations of ancient alchemical traditions and trace some pivotal themes that have continued in the theology and symbolism of the modern religions. This work restores some important keys for the recovery of a lost heritage of primordial wisdom, offering fresh perspectives on aspects of the Western and Islamic alchemical traditions in particular, and at the same time exploring the most distant roots of the modern impasse. (shrink)

Traditionally, the problem of evil, in its various formulations, has been one of the strongest objections against perfect being theism. In the voluminous literature on this problem, the motif of evil has usually been discussed with respect to human flourishing. In recent decades more focused attention has been paid to animal suffering and the philosophical problems that such suffering poses for perfect being theists. However, this growing body of literature, in Anglo-American philosophical milieus, is largely aimed at sketching a specifically (...) Christian or Christianity-inflected theodicy that would reconcile animal suffering with the existence of an omni-God. In contrast, there are few, if any, systematic attempts to put forth a Hindu theodicy that aims to offer morally justifiable reasons that God has for allowing animal suffering. In this article, we address this scholarly lacuna by illustrating how a Hindu perfect being theist might respond to the problem of animal suffering. (shrink)

Albertus Magnus’ alchemy is a subject that has attracted the attention of the scholars since the early decades of the 20th century. Yet, the research that has been conducted this far is characterised by its non philosophical character. As a matter of fact, the previous studies approached Albertus’ alchemy either in terms of history of science or of intellectual history. In this paper, I focus on Albertus’ definition of alchemical transmutation that is found in his De mineralibus and (...) I analyze it in terms of his theory of creation and of his theory of matter. Therefore, I show whether a re-creation of a metal is in accordance with Albertus’ philosophy and congruently I bring forth the Aristotle Graecus and the Aristotle Latinus that are found as background in his alchemical theory of transmutation. Ultimately this paper aims to show that the aforementioned theory is not an arbitrary statement from Albertus’ part, but the result of a serious philosophical endeavour. (shrink)

This article turns one of most cited philosopher's John Dewey's title, How We Think (1933/1998) back upon itself to consider how ‘thought’ or ‘reason’ are cultural practices that historically order and generate principles for reflection and action. The discussion proceeds thusly: (1) Schooling is about changing people; (2) Changing people embodies cultural theses about modes of living, such as that of being a lifelong learner or a Learning Society. The modes of living in modern pedagogy embody changing cultural norms and (...) values about systems of reason that are to express universal cosmopolitan qualities; (3) Pedagogy fabricates the systems of reason to principles for reflection and participation that shreds provincial values in the name of greater universal cosmopolitan values; (4) This ‘making’ of cosmopolitan ‘reason’ forms through cultural practices that have overlapping sets of distinctions and differentiations about agency, the rational planning of one's biography in time, and science as a procedure for action in daily life. The educational sciences and philosophy of education are inscription devices or intellectual tools in the governing practices; (5) The inscriptions of reason, however, are more than mere qualities of thought or the mind. The narratives and images of cosmopolitan reason embody particular sublimes about collective hopes, desires and fears; (6) Further, the distinctions of cosmopolitan reason are comparative in that the very qualities of the ‘reasonable person’ create maps of its opposite: those who do not ‘fit’ the normalized qualities of the cosmopolitan thus stand outside that mode of living; The last section (7) provides three exemplars of the changing notions of the cosmopolitan and its ‘other’ in school subjects (literacy, mathematics, and music). School subjects are viewed as alchemies that transmogrify disciplinary thinking into normalizing pedagogies that fabricate who the child is and should be. The historical sketch has two layers in its educational study. One is to explore the politics of schooling with cosmopolitanism as a comparative method to consider the changing cultural practices that fabricate who child is and should be. The second raises questions about taken‐for‐granted categories and their systems of reason of education and reform. The very categories and distinctions of policy, educational research and philosophy are historicized as cultural practices to order, classify and divide what is ‘seen’ and felt as experience. (shrink)

Crispin Wright has proposed that one has entitlements to accept certain propositions that play a foundational role within one’s body of belief. Such an entitlement is a kind of warrant that does not require the possessor to have acquired evidence speaking in favor of the proposition in question. The proposal allows Wright to concede much of the force of the most powerful arguments for scepticism, while avoiding the truly sceptical conclusion that one lacks warrant for most of one’s beliefs. Here (...) I will argue that Wright has underestimated a problem for his proposal, the alchemy problem, which is that it seems to make room for the easy conversion of mere entitlement to accept a proposition into justification to believe it. I question the adequacy of Wright’s own response to this worry, and instead explore the idea that epistemic alchemy, properly understood, is not epistemically objectionable. (shrink)

The Renaissance of scientific thought in twelfth-century Western culture, when alchemy was introduced into the Latin schools, was largely due to the wave of translations, mainly from Arabic into Latin, but also including translations into and from Hebrew, sometimes with vernacular languages as intermediaries. Alchemy, whose tradition had been broken in the West at the end of the Hellenistic age, gained considerable attention—albeit less than astronomy/astrology and medicine—from the twelfth-century translators, who presented Latin culture with a hitherto unknown (...) doctrine that was completely different from any other science. Alchemy, as the Latin Middle Ages received it, is the philosophical search for the agent of material perfection by means of the manipulation of base materials. It thereby united theory and practice in a way unexpected by Latin scholars. In fact, alchemy as a doctrine was inseparable from laboratory practice; and this practice so much resembled well-established craftsmen's labor that for a long period the place of alchemy in the divisio disciplinarum wavered between the mechanical and the liberal arts. (shrink)

The landscape of seventeenth-century chemistry is complex, and it is impossible to find in it either a clear-cut distinction between alchemy and chemistry or a sort of simple identification of the two. The seventeenth-century cultural context contained a rich variety of "chemical" discourses with arguments ranging from specific experiments to the justification of the validity of chemistry and its novelty in terms of its extraordinary antiquity. On the basis of an analysis of the works by O. Borch, J.J. Glauber, (...) and J. J. Becher, this paper tries to demonstrate that a historical reconstruction of "chemistry" must consider these different levels of the chemical debate. Only then will it be possible to appreciate the outstanding role played by G.E. Stahl in founding modern chemistry. The paper argues in favor of a contextualization of the historical research on seventeenth-century chemistry. (shrink)

The phenomenon of "social alchemy", containing the idea of the possibility of creating a new man and a new world and passing through all radical thought, especially of the New and Modern times, had and has a habit of pouring out into violence, in the broadest sense of the word, — from the guillotine and concentration camps to modern "information colonization of consciousness". Having received technological support, when digital technologies and new communication systems cover almost the entire world community, (...) leaving no one outside of their comprehensive influence, the phenomenon of "social alchemy" has acquired a qualitatively different, special and global significance. At the same time, the goals, means and actors have changed, only its radical component has remained unchanged, striving to transform society and build such social, political and economic structures and relations, that would correspond to certain ideas of some elites (economic, political, intellectual) about what should the global world be like in order to ensure their interests to the greatest extent. (shrink)

This essay takes its point of departure from a post-Nietzschean reading of Kant and the limits of logic and critique. The focus is on science, particularly chemistry and alchemy via mercurial cinnabar (HgS), to this day the primary source of elemental mercury. Seeking to raise the question of science as Nietzsche names it along with the question of truth, this essay undertakes to raise the question of historiography in science, using the illustration of alchemy.

This book explores politics as a form of alchemy, understood as the transformation of entities through an alteration of their identities. Identifying this process as a common denominator of many political phenomena, such as communism, EU integration, mediatisation or globalisation, the author demonstrates not only the widespread presence of alchemical techniques in politics, but also the acceleration of their deployment. A study of the steady growth of power as it reaches a continuous and permanent stage, thus avoiding the inherent (...) difficulties connected with birth and death of political organisations and institutions, this volume reveals political alchemy to be a form of self-sustaining growth through sterile multiplication, devoid of meaning. Revealing both the integrative and disintegrative nature of a political process that, while appearing to work in the interests of all, in fact produces apathy, desperate mobilisation and despair by crushing concrete entities such as personality and tradition, Political Alchemy: Technology Unbounded will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in social theory and political thought. (shrink)

The famous middle Byzantine alchemical manuscript Marcianus graecus 299 contains annotations from the late Byzantine period, most prominently in its opening quire. This article examines a text on the very first page of the manuscript, a text written in a late Byzantine Greek script, but in a language other than Greek. A number of words in this undeciphered text can be correlated with Arabic technical vocabulary that would also have been used in other Islamicate languages such as Persian and Ottoman (...) Turkish. Certain features such as accentuation on the final syllables of words make Turkish or Persian the most likely candidates. (shrink)

At some point during the last two years of his life, Robert Boyle dictated to his friend, Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, some notes on major events and themes in his career. Some of the information he divulged in these memoranda has become quite widely known because Burnet used it in the funeral sermon for Boyle that he delivered a month after his death, at St Martin's in the Fields on 7 January 1692. In addition, these notes were cited several (...) times by Thomas Birch in the ‘Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle’ that he prefixed to his edition of Boyle's collected works of 1744: he there describes his source as ‘Mr.Boyle'smemorandums of his own life, dictated by himself to BishopBurnet’.2 What has hitherto been virtually overlooked is that the manuscript of these notes, which is in Burnet's hand, survives among the Birch Papers in the British Library: it is this document—and particularly a substantial component of it which was publicized by neither Burnet nor Birch—that forms the starting point for this paper. (shrink)

This is perhaps the richest book on emotions I have read. It is also a very frustrating book. It appears to be—and Elster more or less suggests this—a series of quite different kinds of essays, connected by somewhat confusing cross references and a general concern for the nature of emotions and their transformations. The first chapter is a position paper on explanation in the social sciences, a plea for “mechanisms” as opposed to law-like principles and straightforward causal accounts. The second (...) chapter is an edifying romp through three very different periods and styles of writing about the emotions. Elster begins with Aristotle’s powerful theory of the emotions, in rich detail and with considerable sympathetic insight. The next section fast-forwards two thousand years and provides us with some of the most challenging remarks and aphorisms of the French moralists of the seventeenth century, Montaigne, Pascal, La Rochefoucault, and La Bruyére. Their wit and sometimes cynicism is delightful, particularly on the subject of hidden and hypocritical self-interest. In their often contradictory insights Elster finds apt examples of his emotional “mechanisms.” Finally, the chapter considers several of the great literary masters and their depiction of the emotions in action. Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Stendhal are obvious choices. The discussions of Racine, De Lafayette, and George Eliot tend to be, like their work, a good bit more prosaic. (shrink)

(2001). Corpuscular alchemy and the tradition of Aristotle's Meteorology, with special reference to Daniel Sennert. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 145-153. doi: 10.1080/02698590120059013.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 104-105 [Access article in PDF] William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe. Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 344. Cloth, $40.00. Newman and Principe have produced a masterful study of intellectual context, primarily by correcting the commonly held belief that there was a radical (...) break in the seventeenth century between late medieval alchemy and early modern chemistry. Although their main focus is on George Starkey (the 'alchemist') and Robert Boyle (the 'chemist'), they also provide copious details on the chemical practices and theories of Van Helmont, Benjamin Worsley, Frederick Clodius, and Kenelm Digby, among others. It is hard to do justice to their complex study in a short review. Following a brief summary, therefore, I will limit my discussion to how the authors' conclusions are significant for a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of philosophy in the seventeenth century.After a helpful introduction, Chapter 1 outlines the differences in the early lives of the English, aristocratic Boyle and the American, Harvard-educated Starkey. Chapter 2's background on late medieval chemistry includes an examination of corpuscular theories within that tradition as well as Van Helmont's arguments concerning the way in which mathematics is useful for explaining "superficial" changes but not the real, internal changes in bodies. Chapters 3 and 4 provide a close study of Starkey's laboratory notebooks. Among the entries, recorded in a style adapted from Scholasticism, there are passages that adopt the secrecy of alchemy, while others show Starkey's effective use of theoretical principles and such experimental quantitative methods as mass balance. Chapter 5 examines Boyle's intellectual context. Newman and Principe argue convincingly for Starkey's role in Boyle's addition of Helmontian elements to the general Baconian program. Chapter 6 looks at the [End Page 104] results of Boyle's eclectic mix of chemistry and mechanism. Although Helmontian chemistry played a significant role in Boyle's natural philosophy, the authors attribute his meager interest in quantitative measures and analyses to his attempts to use chemistry as a support for mechanism and as evidence against Aristotelianism. The concluding chapter draws together elements from previous chapters to provide the full argument against the idea of a radical break between medieval alchemy and modern chemistry.Newman and Principe's reconsideration of traditional categories surrounding the idea of a radical break should provide an impetus for similar reconsideration in the history of philosophy. As they point out, 'the' mechanical philosophy drew from a diverse range of disciplines. Boyle's eclectic and complex attempt to develop a unique version of the mechanical philosophy can be seen in other English philosophers, especially Locke and Newton. This study provides a promising basis for yet more extensive and refined studies of the seventeenth-century milieu. The continuing over-emphasis on the physical principles of Descartes and Gassendi's versions of the mechanical philosophy and the tendency to reduce all mechanism to their view needs revision. Also in need of reconsideration is the currently popular belief that the study of context simply means adding social elements to an uncontroversial intellectual context. As the authors clearly show, much more work on the intellectual context remains to be done.One line of research in the history of philosophy that could be pursued concerns the role of Francis Bacon in this context. Although Newman and Principe mention the general Baconian ethos, a detailed discussion of Bacon was clearly beyond their scope. Yet Bacon's own debts to chemistry, although frequently unrecognized, seem more significant given this study. Also, it would be interesting to see the extent to which Bacon's works influenced Van Helmont or Starkey. Newman and Principe's claims regarding the novelty of Starkey's notebooks, for example, may be a little overstated. Many of the elements from Starkey's notebooks can be found in Bacon's advice in his Natural and Experimental Histories (1622). In that work, Bacon advised writers... (shrink)

In 1915, Frederick Soddy, later a winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, warned publicly of the future dangers of atomic war. Hisforesight depended not only upon scientific knowledge, but also upon emotion, creativity, and many sorts of nonscientific knowledge. The latter, which played a role even in the content of Soddy's scientific discoveries, included such diverse sources as contemporary politics, history, science fiction, religion, and ancient alchemy. Soddy's story may offer important, guiding msights for today's efforts in technology (...) assessment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Alchemy is part of the cultural experience of early modern Europe and yet has had to overcome problems of demarcation to be considered relevant to the history of science. This essay considers historiographical and methodological issues that have affected the gradual demarginalization of alchemy among attempts to explain, and find things out about, nature. As an area of historical study, alchemy relates to the history of science as part of an ensemble of practices that explored the (...) natural world through natural philosophy and speculative traditions and by functioning as a nexus of social and intellectual life. (shrink)

This paper studies the English poems of Richard Crashaw from a historicist and formalist perspective. It specifically considers Crashaw’s poetry in its religious but also intellectual and early scien­tific context to investigate the frequently overlooked influence of science on his poetry. Metaphors drawn from alchemy and particularly from the trans­formation of matter to achieve its purification and spiritualisation enrich the poet’s expression of mystical devotion to underline that access to the spiritual as well as mystical union with Christ are (...) deeply rooted in the devotee’s body. Representations of the earth as a chemical laboratory focus on materiality and corporality to emphasise the constant movement animating matter. A form of spiritual alchemy underscores Crashaw’s Christocentrism and references to the metamorphoses of matter consistently aim to express mystical union. A meta-poetic analysis eventually highlights a significant analogy between reading and alchemical processes in order to demonstrate the anagogical aim of Crashaw’s verse and the way his poems work on his reader’s heart to lift his soul. References to liquefaction, distillation or sublimation echo the published works of mystics but alchemical conceits based on symbolically evocative topoï and polysemic vocabulary reinforce the importance of the corporal in the expe­rience of mystical union. (shrink)

This dissertation reassesses the chemical revolution that occurred in eighteenth-century France from the pharmacists' perspective. I use French pharmacy to place the event in historical context, understanding this revolution as constituted by more than simply a change in theory. The consolidation of a new scientific community of chemists, professing an importantly changed science of chemistry, is elucidated by examining the changing relationship between the communities of pharmacists and chemists across the eighteenth century. This entails an understanding of the chemical revolution (...) that takes into account social and institutional transformations as well as theoretical change, and hence incorporates the reforms brought about during and after the French Revolution. First, I examine the social rise of philosophical chemistry as a scientific pursuit increasingly independent of its practical applications, including pharmacy, and then relate this to the theoretical change brought about by Lavoisier and his oxygenic system of chemistry. Then, I consider the institutional reforms that placed Lavoisier's chemistry in French higher education. ;During the seventeenth century, chemistry was intimately entwined with pharmacy, and chemical manipulations were primarily intended to enhance the medicinal properties of a substance. An independent philosophical chemistry gained ground during the eighteenth century, and this development culminated in the work of Lavoisier who cast pharmacy out of his chemistry altogether. Fourcroy, one of Lavoisier's disciples, brought the new chemistry to the pharmacists in both his textbooks and his legislation. Under Napoleon, Fourcroy instituted a new system of education for pharmacists that placed a premium on formal scientific education. Fourcroy's successors, Vauquelin and Bouillon-Lagrange, taught the new chemistry to the elite pharmacists in the School of Pharmacy in Paris. These pharmacists also developed new analytical techniques that combined the aims of the new chemistry with traditional pharmaceutical extractive practices. The scientific pharmacist was created, who, although a respected member of the community of pharmacists, helped to define the new chemistry precisely by not being a true chemist. (shrink)

Ecological science has been viewed by some philosophers as a foundational resource for the development of metaphysical, epistemological and normative views concerning humanity’s relationship with the natural environment, or what might be called an “ecological philosophy.” Analysis of three attempts to infer philosophical conclusions from ecological science shows that (1) there are serious obstacles facing any attempt to derive unique philosophical consequences from ecological science and (2) the project of developing an ecological philosophy relevant to human-environment relations is seriously hindered (...) by a reliance on traditional ecological science that focuses on relations between nonhuman organisms and their environments. However, the search for an ecological philosophy is not inherently misguided because (1) although ecological science may never support a unique philosophical interpretation of ecological theory, empirical evidence can function to narrow the range of possible interpretations, which is a significant epistemic achievement; and because (2) there are several non-traditional branches of ecological science that focus on human-environment relations and that consequently may be better suited to function as conceptual resources for the sorts of problems that concern environmental philosophers. (shrink)