Distilling Knowledge
Subtitle: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution (New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine)
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: January 30, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 208
ISBN-13: 9780674014954
Subjects: History of science; Science/Mathematics; History; Science; Chemistry - General; Science / History; Alchemy; Chemistry; Science, Renaissance
Description: Reacting to the perception that the break, early on in the scientific revolution, between alchemy and chemistry was clean and abrupt, Moran literately and engagingly recaps what was actually a slow process. Far from being the superstitious amalgam it is now considered, alchemy was genuine science before and during the scientific revolution. The distinctive alchemical procedure--distillation--became the fundamental method of analytical chemistry, and the alchemical goal of transmuting "base metals" into gold and silver led to the understanding of compounds and elements. What alchemy very gradually but finally lost in giving way to chemistry was its spiritual or religious aspect, the linkages it discerned between purely physical and psychological properties. Drawing saliently from the most influential alchemical and scientific texts of the medieval to modern epoch (especially the turbulent and eventful seventeenth century), Moran fashions a model short history of science volume.