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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 19 Jan 2022

Taken: 18 Jan 2022

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Excerpt •
The Invention of Science •
Author •
David Wootton •

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Alchemy

Alchemy
A family of alchemists at work, an engraving of Philip Galle, after a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, published by Hieronymus Cock, c. 1558
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
The issue of replication is central to a topic of foremost importance for any understanding of the Scientific Revolution: the demise of alchemy. Boyle and Newton devoted an enormous amount of effort to alchemical researchers. Boyle seems to have spent much of his life trying to turn base metal into gold, although our knowledge of his activities is limited because of the relevant papers were (as best we can tell) destroyed on the instructions of his first biographer, Thomas Birch. Boyle believed he was on the verge of succeeding, so close indeed that he thought it prudent to campaign (successfully) for a change in the law, which condemned to death anyone making god. ~ Page 353

Like many alchemists, Boyle was convinced that the quest for the philosopher’s stone en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_stone (which would turn base metal into gold) involved a spiritual element. He believed he had been transmutation performed; he evidently thought it likely that the anonymous stranger who had performed it, in his presence with his assistance, was an angel, no less. . . . Page 353

How could Boyle, one of the key figures of Scientific Revolution, be so totally convinced of the reality of alchemical transmutation? The answer is that alchemy was self-fulfilling enterprise. Those who practised it were convinced that the philosopher’s stone had been successfully produced in the past. As George Starkey, who collaborated closely with all their might have sought and found, and left the record of their search in writing, withall so veyling the maine secret that only an immediate hand of god must direct an Artist who by study shal seeke to atteyne the same.’ Like Boyle, Starkey believed he had held the stone in his hand, and with it he claimed that he had been able to turn base metal into gold and silver -- or at least into a sort of gold and sort of silver, for the gold had proved unstable, and the silver, though very like silver, weighed too much. ~ Page 354
3 years ago. Edited 3 years ago.

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