Since 10:30 this morning I've been enjoying a series of seminars in the history of alchemy in honor of Larry Principe. I'm enjoying this so much! I really enjoyed Bill Neuman's talk on Boyle, Newton, and an alchemist named Johann de Monte Snyders (he even used FamilySearch.org to situate him, but I noticed there is a lot of work to be done on that line; no children had death dates). But they've l been good, on furnaces (early-modern), brewing (very late alchemy), Roger Bacon's medicine (early European alchemy), William Butler's view of quintessence, meteorology of Paracelsus (golden-age alchemy), Boyle's medicine (late alchemy). So much fun!
But I'm looking forward to the keynote talk by Larry Principe, of whom I an a great fan. He won the American Chemical Society award last year in the History division, ACS-HIST, and it will be presented today! Larry titled his lecture, "A Matter of Some Weight."
The event is cosponsored by the Science History Institute, the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, and the ACS-HIST division (link good until they change it again).
Here is the bio for Larry: LarryPrincipeHISTBio-2_LPedits.pdf (215.98 kb)
My notes on Larry's talk:
- Most histories of chemistry start with Levoisier
- He used weights to track chemical reactions
- Balance sheet method followed his work as a tax collector to track all masses
- Often presented as the first to weigh reactions
- This talk will track the importance of weights in the history of chemistry
- Homberg used a burning lens to initiate reactions measure reaction weight changes
- Lavoisier used the secondary lens of Homberg's burning lens machine in his work
- Homberg precipitated an silver acid salt from aquafortis (nitric acid) and followed the weight to see where the salt was located
- Weight monitoring is an extension of the human senses.
- Weights made invisible substances visible to the senses.
- George Starkey used weights to track alchemical reactions
- Found missing weight in the wash waters
- High-middle-age John of Rupescissa (1310-1366 A.D.), Franciscan monk, preached the antichrist, pissed off lots of church people, imprisoned
- Pleaded with Pope Clement VI (1349) for release, wasn't, spent 15 years in prison.
- Wrote 40 books, most about alchemy (how bad was prison for him?)
- "philosophical sulfur" was ferrous sulfate (FeSO4) which when heated in an aludel combined with mercury creates a white solid, mostly mercury chloride (HgCl2), when sublimed
- He recognizes the composition is changing, and uses weight to see the changes. He uses the same weight to indicate how the spirit of a substance is incorporated into the substance.
- Standard thinking was that weight is never conserved, an accidental property at best
- Best previous use of weight is to see how much original unreacted starting material is recoverable.
- Where did John get his ideas on weight?
- Oraculum Cyrilli contains a quote in this commentary (1347):
- references alchemy transmuting anything into gold and silver
- make a touchstone from carrots, and says he will make gold and assay it
- "...revelation of secrets in the weights of things."
- Hints that John practiced alchemy and assaying techniques
- Liber Lucias introduces a clever method to demonstrate the "hidden redness" of red hot iron in vinegar, then adds the white sublimate from earlier. In the morning, have a look. The tuncture rubediness forms in the vinegar, which when purified contains the redness. The mercury from the bottom has its full weight and looks like a powder, though it is really a liquid (making it look like the mercury has lost its liquid vitality into the red solution, identifying the "spirit of mercury" as a red substance).
- Paul (missed the name) and John were both Franciscans, and perhaps shared some ideas, some descended from St. Francis, which influenced Franciscan alchemy and theories of matter (Larry is still working on these ideas)
- Why do these ideas last so long? Lavoisier's revolution and early science all emphasized novelty.
- The long exile of alchemy from chemistry slowed the development of chemistry (by 100 years?) Butterfield
- More people engaged in the natural world through chemistry than in stargazing, dissection, or moving bodies. In developing new ideas, chemistry played a central role.
- Why did the other sciences take so long to catch up with chemistry, tying ideas to material substances, provable.
This just changed the ending of my seminar I'm giving on Monday about the role alchemy played in the development of chemistry and of science! Very important idea here.
I really need a copy of his talk, which I'm sure will be published in Ambix later this year.
