Words and works in the history of alchemy.

Publisher: University of Chicago Press Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 2985182R Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Print ISSN: 0021-1753 (Print) Linking ISSN: 00211753 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Isis Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press
Original Publication: Seattle [etc.]

Alchemy* ; History of Medicine*; Art/*history ; Literature/*history ; Science/*history; Europe ; History, 17th Century ; Humans

This essay considers the implications of a shift in focus from ideas to practices in the history of alchemy. On the one hand, it is argued, this new attention to practice highlights the diversity of ways that early modern Europeans engaged alchemy, ranging from the literary to the entrepreneurial and artisanal, as well as the broad range of social and cultural spaces that alchemists inhabited. At the same time, however, recent work has demonstrated what most alchemists shared-namely, a penchant for reading, writing, making, and doing, all at the same time. Any history of early modern alchemy, therefore, must attend to all of these practices, as well as the interplay among them. In this sense, alchemy offers a model for thinking and writing about early modern science more generally, particularly in light of recent work that has explored the intersection of scholarly, artisanal, and entrepreneurial forms of knowledge in the early modem period.

Date Created: 20110831 Date Completed: 20110930 Latest Revision: 20191112

20231215

10.1086/660142

21874693