Alchemists Of Revolution

Alchemists Of Revolution PDF Author: Richard E. Rubenstein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Neither a call to "exterminate the beasts" nor a soft-hearted "sympathy for the devil" [the book] is a compelling argument that the surest way to unintentionally abet a terrorist organization is to deny its authenticity.--Blurb.

Alchemists Of Revolution

Alchemists Of Revolution PDF Author: Richard E. Rubenstein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Neither a call to "exterminate the beasts" nor a soft-hearted "sympathy for the devil" [the book] is a compelling argument that the surest way to unintentionally abet a terrorist organization is to deny its authenticity.--Blurb.

Gehennical Fire

Gehennical Fire PDF Author: William R. Newman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226577142
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Both the quest for natural knowledge and the aspiration to alchemical wisdom played crucial roles in the Scientific Revolution, as William R. Newman demonstrates in this fascinating book about George Starkey (1628-1665), America's first famous scientist. Beginning with Starkey's unusual education in colonial New England, Newman traces out his many interconnected careers—natural philosopher, alchemist, chemist, medical practitioner, economic projector, and creator of the fabulous adept, "Eirenaeus Philalethes." Newman reveals the profound impact Starkey had on the work of Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Samuel Hartlib, and other key thinkers in the realm of early modern science.

Atoms and Alchemy

Atoms and Alchemy PDF Author: William R. Newman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226577031
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Since the Enlightenment, alchemy has been viewed as a sort of antiscience, disparaged by many historians as a form of lunacy that impeded the development of rational chemistry. But in Atoms and Alchemy, William R. Newman—a historian widely credited for reviving recent interest in alchemy—exposes the speciousness of these views and challenges widely held beliefs about the origins of the Scientific Revolution. Tracing the alchemical roots of Robert Boyle’s famous mechanical philosophy, Newman shows that alchemy contributed to the mechanization of nature, a movement that lay at the very heart of scientific discovery. Boyle and his predecessors—figures like the mysterious medieval Geber or the Lutheran professor Daniel Sennert—provided convincing experimental proof that matter is made up of enduring particles at the microlevel. At the same time, Newman argues that alchemists created the operational criterion of an “atomic” element as the last point of analysis, thereby contributing a key feature to the development of later chemistry. Atomsand Alchemy thus provokes a refreshing debate about the origins of modern science and will be welcomed—and deliberated—by all who are interested in the development of scientific theory and practice.

Distilling Knowledge

Distilling Knowledge PDF Author: Bruce T. MORAN
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674041224
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book 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

The Secrets of Alchemy

The Secrets of Alchemy PDF Author: Lawrence Principe
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226682951
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Alchemy, the Noble Art, conjures up scenes of mysterious, dimly lit laboratories populated with bearded old men stirring cauldrons. Though the history of alchemy is intricately linked to the history of chemistry, alchemy has nonetheless often been dismissed as the realm of myth and magic, or fraud and pseudoscience. And while its themes and ideas persist in some expected and unexpected places, from the Philosopher's (or Sorcerer's) Stone of Harry Potter to the self-help mantra of transformation, there has not been a serious, accessible, and up-to-date look at the complete history and influence of alchemy until now.

Paracelsus

Paracelsus PDF Author: Bruce T. Moran
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789141761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Throughout his controversial life, the alchemist, physician, and social-religious radical known as Paracelsus combined traditions that were magical and empirical, scholarly and folk, learned and artisanal. He read ancient texts and then burned “the best” of them. He endorsed both Catholic and Reformation beliefs, but he also believed devoutly in a female deity. He traveled constantly, learning and teaching a new form of medicine based on the experience of miners, bathers, alchemists, midwives, and barber-surgeons. He argued for changes in the way the body was understood, how disease was defined, and how treatments were created, but he was also moved by mystical speculations, an alchemical view of nature, and an intriguing concept of creation. Bringing to light the ideas, diverse works, and major texts of this important Renaissance figure, Bruce T. Moran tells the story of how alchemy refashioned medical practice, showing how Paracelsus’s tenacity and endurance changed the medical world for the better and brought new perspectives to the study of nature.

The Alchemy of Revolution

The Alchemy of Revolution PDF Author: David W. Mulder
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This pioneering study in the history of revolutionary thought presents a reinterpretation of the development of communism among the lower classes during the English Revolution of the 1640s. The subject of the study is the revolutionary ideology of Gerrard Winstanley, the leader of the Diggers, a group of rural laborers who in 1649 founded a communistic colony and challenged conservative revolutionary leaders like Oliver Cromwell. The main principle of reinterpretation is what the author terms «chronological realism», a method that seeks to analyze Winstanley's ideology on its own terms without reference to modern socialism. Primary among the conclusions of this study is that hermeticism, or the theory of alchemy, formed the basis of what was genuinely revolutionary in Digger ideology.

Through Alchemy to Chemistry

Through Alchemy to Chemistry PDF Author: John Read
Publisher: London : G. Bell
ISBN:
Category : Alchemy
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description


The New Alchemists

The New Alchemists PDF Author: Dirk Hanson
Publisher: Boston ; Toronto : Little, Brown
ISBN: 9780316343428
Category : Microelectronics industry
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description


Isaac Newton and the Transmutation of Alchemy

Isaac Newton and the Transmutation of Alchemy PDF Author: Philip Ashley Fanning
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1556437722
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Isaac Newton was a dedicated alchemist, a fact usually obscured as unsuited to his stature as a leader of the scientific revolution. Author Philip Ashley Fanning has diligently examined the evidence and concludes that the two major aspects of Newton’s research—conventional science and alchemy—were actually inseparable. In Isaac Newton and the Transmutation of Alchemy, Fanning reveals the surprisingly profound influence that Newton’s study of this hermetic art had in shaping his widely adopted scientific concepts. Alchemy was an ancient tradition of speculative philosophy that promised miraculous powers, such as the ability to change base metals into gold and the possibility of a universal solvent or elixir of life. Fanning compellingly describes this carefully tended esoteric institution, which may have found its greatest advocate in the career of the father of modern science. Relegated to the fringes of discourse until its twentieth-century revival by innovative thinkers such as psychiatrist Carl Jung, alchemy offers a key to understanding both the foundations of modern knowledge and important avenues in which we may yet discover wisdom.