newton chymistry
DESCRIPTION
PDF of PPT re: Newton's ChymistryTRANSCRIPT
Joel A. Klein
Joel A. Klein
§ Indiana U. History and Philosophy of Science ú Ph.D (ABD)
§ Chemical Heritage Foundation ú Dissertation Fellow
Today’s Topics
What was alchemy?
Origins and Development
Alchemical Imagery
Newton’s Alchemy
Alchemy and Chemistry
George Ripley’s Scroll, Yale University Edition, c. 16th c. (Public Domain)
What was Alchemy?
-‐ The chemistry of the Middle Ages and 16th c. … Now applied distinctively to the pursuit of the transmutation of baser metals into gold… ~ Oxford English Dictionary -‐ Philosopher’s Stone -‐ Alkahest
Rosarium Philosophorum, c. 16th c. (Public Domain)
• Transmutation: changing base metals into gold or silver
• Chrysopoeia: ‘gold making.’ • Argyropoeia: ‘silver making’
Other Alchemical Processes
Dye production
Distillation
Cementation
Sublimation
Cupellation
Metallurgy
(Sometimes) Associated Philosophies
§ Neo-‐platonism § Zoroastrianism § Gnosticism § Hermeticism
Image of Hermes Trismegistus,c. 1480, Siena Cathedral (Public Domain)
-‐ Alchemy dates to the Hellenistic Period in Egypt -‐ Leiden and Stockholm Papyri (c. 300 CE)
-‐ Chemical workshop recipes
-‐ Zosimos of Panoplis (c. late 3rd – 4th c.) -‐ Combination of theory and practice.
-‐ Decknamen – Cover names -‐ Mercury: “the silvery water, the hermaphrodite,
that which flees without ceasing…”
The alchemical symbol for “Mercury”
-‐ Legal Pressures: Rulers outlawed transmutation -‐ Destabilization of currency
-‐ Protect trade secrets -‐ Alchemy was higher knowledge and came out of
period steeped in mystical philosophy (e.g. Gnosticism)
Medieval Arabic Alchemy
§ Translation of Greek and Latin Natural Philosophy ú House of Wisdom in
Baghdad Founded by Al-‐Ma’mun Headed by Hunayn Ibn Ishaq
(808-‐873)
§ Arabic: ú :الكيمياء ‘al-‐kimia’
§ Greek: ú Χημία: ‘chemia’
§ 1000 AD – almost all of Greek medicine, nat. phil., and math translated into Arabic
Ibn Butlan’s Risalat da ‘wat-‐al-‐atibba (L.A. Meyer Museum for Islamic Art)
Jabir Ibn Hayyan (8th or 9th c.)
§ Latinized as “Geber” § One individual? Many? § Mercury -‐ Sulfur Theory
15th c. imagining of “Geber” (Wikimedia Commons)
Pseudepigraphical Texts
* Falsely attributed texts; often attributed to a renowned figure from the past. * Especially Important Example: Tabula Smaragdina, or The Emerald Tablet, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus (prob. 8th c. Arabic origin) * Hermetic Corpus – texts dating back to antiquity; mystical, religious.
Artist’s rendition of Hermes Trismegistus, from Viridarium chymicum, 1624 (Wikimedia Commons)
The Emerald Tablet 1. Tis true without lying, certain most true. 2. That which is below is like that which is above; that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing. 3. And as all things have been arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation. 4. The Sun is its father, the moon its mother… Chrysogonos Polydorus, De Alchimia,
Nuremberg 1541 (Wikimedia Commons)
Translation: Arabic to Latin
§ English Monk, Robert of Chester in Spain
§ De compositione alchemiae, 1144 – translated by
“I have translated this Book because, what alchemy is, and what its composition is, almost no one in our Latin world knows, finished February the 11th anno 1144.”
1542 ed. of Geber’s Complete Works printed in Venice (Public Domain; Archive.org – orig. in Getty Inst., L.A)
Western Confrontation with Alchemy § Literary Ridicule
ú Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ‘The Canon Yeoman’s Tale’
Portrait of Chaucer by Thomas Hoccleve, 1412 (Wikimedia Commons)
§ Papal Decrees ú Pope John XXII – outlaws
transmutation of metals
Pope John XXII (Public Domain)
More Secrecy
§ Pseudo-‐Arnald of Villanova
From Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493 (Public Domain)
“Christ was the example of all things, and our elixir can be understood according to the conception, generation, nativity, and passion of Christ…”
Aurora Consurgens (Rising Dawn) • 15th c. manuscript
(Wikimedia Commons)
Rosarium Philosophorum (~Rose Garden of the Philosophers) § 15th-‐16th c. § The “Green Lion”
devours the Sun.
Rosarium Philosophorum, Public Domain
Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1617/18)
Illustration of Basil Valentine’s 12 Keys of Alchemy. Musaeum hermeticum reformatum et amplificatum (Frankfurt, 1678). Courtesy Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library, CHF.
11 Two women cloathed riding on two lyons each with a heart in her hand of this form . The right hand lyon farts on a company of young lyons behind it & bites the snout of the left hand Lyon & tears him with her paw. This Lyon by her farting (which signifies her aerial form)
& young ones, & being on the side of the hearts next the moon & he biting & tearing the other lyon signifies the female…
Chymistry of Isaac Newton Project
Sir Isaac Newton, Alchemist
• 1642-‐1727
µ
These rules in generall should bee observed. 1st that the fire bee quick. 2dly that the crucible bee through heated before any thing bee put in: 3dly that metalls bee put in successivly according to their degree of fusibility ♂. ♀. ♁. ♃. . 4tly That they stand some time after fusion before they bee poured of accordingly to the quantity of regulus they yield, ♂, ♀.< or >♃.< or >. 5tly That at the first time noe salt bee thrown on, unlesse upon ♂ to keep it from hardening on the top & then let it bee poured of when the fury of the salt is over before it have quite done working. 6 That if you would have the saltpetre flow without two great a heat, you may quicken it by throwing in a little more saltpeter mixed with 1/8 or 1/16 of charcoal finely poudered….
Thus with a good quick & smart fire 4 of ♂ to 9 of ♁ gave a most black & filthy scoria & the Regulus after a purgation or two starred very well.
Portsmouth Collection Add. MS. 3975, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge University42v
Eirenaeus Philalethes (AKA George Starkey) “This chaos is called our Arsenic, our air, our Luna, our Magnes, our Chalybs, but in diverse respect, because our matter undergoes various states before our Regal Diadem is extracted from the menstrual blood of our whore. So learn who the comrades of Cadmus are, and who the Serpent who ate them, [and] what the hollow oak, on which Cadmus transfixed the Serpent. Learn what the Doves of Diana are, which conquer the Lion by beating him, the green Lion, I saw, which is really the Babylonian Dragon, killing all by means of his venom.”
http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/