This article argues that during the seventeenth century chemistry achieved intellectual and institutional recognition, starting its transition from a practical art -- subordinated to medicine -- into an independent discipline. This process was by no means a smooth one, as it took place amidst polemics and conflicts lasting more than a century. It began when Andreas Libavius endeavored to turn chemistry into a teaching discipline, imposing method and order. Chemistry underwent harsh criticism from Descartes and the Cartesians, who reduced natural phenomena to the mechanical affections of matter, leaving little room for chemistry as an independent discipline. Boyle rejected the chemical principles and promoted the fusion of chemistry with corpuscularianism. He did not reduce chemical phenomena to the mechanical affections of matter, but strived to promote chemistry as part of natural philosophy. Lemery gave strong impulse to the recognition of chemistry as a discipline in its own right by fostering a compromise of chemistry and mechanism. Lemery adopted the chemical principles, but did not see them as the ultimate ingredients of bodies. In order to promote chemistry, he distanced it from alchemy and pursued the reform of chemical terminology.
...More
Article
Moran, Bruce T.;
(2014)
Eloquence in the Marketplace: Erudition and Pragmatic Humanism in the Restoration of Chymia
(/isis/citation/CBB001550408/)
Article
Klein, Joel A.;
(2014)
Corporeal Elements and Principles in the Learned German Chymical Tradition
(/isis/citation/CBB001421638/)
Book
Hunter, Michael Cyril William;
(2015)
Boyle Studies: Aspects of the Life and Thought of Robert Boyle (1627-91)
(/isis/citation/CBB001551955/)
Book
Sargent, Rose-Mary;
(1995)
The Diffident Naturalist: Robert Boyle and the Philosophy of Experiment
(/isis/citation/CBB000820069/)
Book
Boyle, Robert;
Hunter, Michael;
Davis, Edward B.;
(1999)
The Works of Robert Boyle: Volume 3, The Usefulness of Natural Philosophy and sequels to Spring of the Air, 1662-3
(/isis/citation/CBB000111503/)
Article
Lyke de Vries;
(2022)
Protecting Academia and Religion: Andreas Libavius’s Criticism of a General Reformation
(/isis/citation/CBB629444913/)
Article
Holmes, Frederic Lawrence;
(2004)
Investigative and Pedagogical Styles in French Chemistry at the End of the 17th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000700650/)
Book
Moran, Bruce T.;
(2007)
Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with Polemical Fire
(/isis/citation/CBB000774182/)
Chapter
Antonio Clericuzio;
(2016)
Mechanism and Chemical Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England: Boyle’s Investigation of Ferments and Fermentation
(/isis/citation/CBB153077081/)
Book
Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino;
(2020)
The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle: Mechanicism, Chymical Atoms, and Emergence
(/isis/citation/CBB474107384/)
Article
Michael Wintroub;
(2019)
The Pharmakon of ‘If’: Working with Steven Shapin's A Social History of Truth
(/isis/citation/CBB323045277/)
Article
Salvatore Ricciardo;
(2020)
The «greate Star-gazer Galileo» in mid-seventeenth-century England: the case of Robert Boyle
(/isis/citation/CBB858495549/)
Book
Roux, Sophie;
Garber, Daniel;
(2013)
The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB001450199/)
Book
Avramov, Iordan;
Hunter, Michael;
Yoshimoto, Hideyuki;
(2010)
Boyle's Books: The Evidence of His Citations
(/isis/citation/CBB001200537/)
Chapter
Osler, Margaret J.;
(2001)
Whose Ends? Teleology in Early Modern Natural Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB000101140/)
Chapter
Wojcik, Jan;
(2001)
Robert Boyle, the Conversion of the Jews, and Millennial Expectations
(/isis/citation/CBB000500708/)
Book
Dennehy, Myriam;
Ramond, Charles;
(2009)
La Philosophie naturelle de Robert Boyle
(/isis/citation/CBB000951736/)
Article
Dana Matthiessen;
(2019)
The rise of cryptographic metaphors in Boyle and their use for the mechanical philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB765223874/)
Chapter
Black, Scott;
(2007)
Boyle's Essay: Genre and the Making of Early Modern Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB000775017/)
Article
Richard Yeo;
(2018)
Hippocrates’ Complaint and the Scientific Ethos in Early Modern England
(/isis/citation/CBB238799968/)
Be the first to comment!