PROFESSOR JUSTIN SMITH (JUSTISMI@ALCOR.CONCORDIA.CA)
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
AUTUMN, 2009, CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
W 17:45-20:15 SGW
With guest appearances from:
• Victor Boantza, Department of History, McGill University
• Andrea Falcon, Department of Philosophy, Concordia University
• Vera Keller, Department of English, McGill University
• Ted McCormick, Department of History, Concordia University
Brief Description:
The natural philosophy of the 17th century is marked by a widespread effort to redescribe natural change exhaustively in terms of the size, shape, and motion of subvisible particles or corpuscles. This endeavor has long been held to have constituted a wholesale rejection of premodern theories of natural change, which relied upon a metaphysics of matter and form being guided through change in accordance with their natural ends or teleology.
But early modern natural philosophy has its prehistory, too, and part of this takes us back to some rather unlikely sources. In this seminar, we will consider the roots of modern natural philosophy in the tradition of what Bill Newman, reviving a lapsed actor’s category, has called ‘chymistry’, which is to say the practical and theoretical investigation of the nature of mixtures and compositions. In passing, we will also touch upon a number of related subjects, such as the nature of ‘the occult’, the conceptual problems of perpetual motion and magnetism, and the epistemological issues arising within the new experimental philosophy of the early modern period. We will be adopting a rigorous historical and contextualist approach to the philosophical questions arising from our chosen topic, and so will also have occasion, in an interdisciplinary spirit, to consider the social, economic, and technological forces at play in the chapter of natural philosophy we have undertaken to study.
Means of Evaluation:
* One research paper (8-10 pages for undergraduates, 12-15 pages for graduate students) on a topic chosen in consultation with the instructor (60% of grade).
* One in-class presentation of course material (30%).
* Attendance and participation (10%).
Prerequisites:
* Advanced standing in philosophy, history, or a related discipline (final-year undergraduate and above).
* Commitment to doing serious research in the history and philosophy of science. If you are not certain this interests you, please consider taking another course to fulfill your 400-level graduation requirements.
* Ability to read Latin will confer a definite advantage, though all required readings will be made available in translation.
Required Texts:
William R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry & the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2006). (You will be expected to have purchased and read this book, by way of introduction to the course’s central focus and objectives, by the first day of class.)
A course pack will be available at Copies Concordia (on de Maisonneuve, between Mackay and Guy). Additional materials will either be made available in class, or will be available in an electronic format.
Provisional Schedule of Classes
(Subject to change. Texts will be available in the course pack, unless otherwise noted. Dates given indicate the year of publication of the edition to be used, not necessarily the first edition. Additional secondary literature, from the bibliography at the end of the course outline, will be assigned each week.)
Week One: 9 September (Guest lecture from Andrea Falcon)
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS MATTER THEORY? WHAT IS ALCHEMY? WHY DO THEY MATTER TO THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY?
Readings: Aristotle, Meteorology IV; Avicenna, De Congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum; Pseudo-Geber, Summa Perfectionis.
Week Two: 16 September
THE IDEA OF ‘THE OCCULT’. NATURAL MAGIC, EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, AND SCIENTIA
Readings: ‘Hermes Trismegistus’, The Emerald Tablet; Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1651); Girolamo Cardano, De subtilitate rerum (1550)
Week Three: 23 September
CHRYSOPOIESIS AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
Readings: Thomas Erastus, Explicatio quaestionis famosae (1572, translation ours); Andreas Libavius, Defensio et declaratio perspicua alchymiae transmutatoriae (1604, translation ours).
Week Four: 30 September
PARACELSUS AND PARACELSIANISM: INTRODUCTION
Readings: Paracelsvs of the Supreme Mysteries of Nature (1656); Paracelsus His Aurora (1659).
Week Five: 7 October
MEDICINE AND IATROCHEMISTRY
Readings: Jean Fernel, On the Hidden Causes of Things (1548); Franciscus Sylvius, Praxeos medicae idea nova (1671, translation ours).
Week Six: 14 October (Guest lecture from Victor Boantza)
CHEMICAL ATOMISM, SEED THEORY, AND SUBORDINATE FORMS
Readings: Daniel Sennert, Thirteen Books of Natural Philosophy (1661); Sennert, Hypomnemata physica (1636, translation ours); Pierre Gassendi, Syntagma philosophicum (1658).
Week Seven: 21 October (Guest lecture from Vera Keller)
CENTRAL NITRE THEORY, PERPETUAL MOTION, AND RELATED TOPICS
Readings: Andreas Libavius, Alchymia triumphans (1607, translation ours); Michael Sendivogius, A New Light of Alchemy (1605); Cornelis Drebbel, Een kort Tractaet van de Natuere der Elementen (1621, translation ours).
Week Eight: 28 October (Guest lecture from Vera Keller)
MAGNETIC PHILOSOPHY AND RELATED TOPICS
Readings: Petrus Severinus, Idea medicinae (1571, translation ours) Johann Hartmann, Praxis chymiatricae (1670); Heinrich Khunrath, Catholic Magnesia (1599); Robert Fludd, The Mosaicall Philosophy (1659); Jean-Baptiste van Helmont, A Ternary of paradoxes: The magnetick cure of wounds, Nativity of tartar in wine, Image of God in man (1649).
Week Nine: 4 November (Guest lecture from Ted McCormick)
ALCHEMY, POLITICS, AND ECONOMICS
Readings: George Starkey, from the Alchemical Laboratory Notebooks and Correspondence; William Petty, "Appendix of Elasticity," from the Discourse... Concerning the Uses of Duplicate Proportion (1674)
Week Ten: 11 November (Guest Lecture from Victor Boantza)
ROBERT BOYLE
Readings: The Origine of Formes and Qualities (1666).
Week Eleven: 18 November
ROBERT BOYLE
Readings: Free Considerations about Subordinate Forms (1666).
Week Twelve: 25 November
ISAAC NEWTON
Readings: The Commentary on the Emerald Tablet.
Week Thirteen: 2 December
TBA
Further Reading:
General Introductions
Peter Alexander, Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles (Cambridge University Press, 1985).
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers, A History of Chemistry (Harvard University Press, 1996).
Antonio Clericuzio, Elements, Principles, and Corpuscles: a Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000).
Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500-1700 (Princeton University Press, 2001).
Allen Debus, The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Science History Publications, 1977).
Jan Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
John Henry, The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science (St. Martin’s Press, 1997).
Hiro Hirai, Le concept de semence dans les théories de la matière à la Renaissance: de Marsile Ficin à Pierre Gassendi (Brepols, 2005).
Henk Kubbinga, L’histoire du concept de ‘molécule’ (Springer, 2001).
Cristoph Lüthy, J. Murdoch, and William R. Newman (Eds.), Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories (Brill, 2001).
Bruce T. Moran, Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2005).
William R. Newman, “Alchemy vs. Chemistry: The Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake,” in Early Science and Medicine 3 (1998): 32-65.
William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton, Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe (MIT Press, 2001).
William R. Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (University of Chicago Press, 2004).
Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Karger, 1982).
Andrew Pyle, Atomism and Its Critics (Thoemmes, 2001).
Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton University Press, 1997).
Particular Topics
Peter Anstey, “Boyle on Seminal Principles,” Sudies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences 33 (2002): 161-74.
Brian Copenhaver, “The Occultist Tradition and Its Critics,” in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. Ed. Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers. Vol. I, 454-512. (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Betty Jo Dobbs, The Janus Face of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
David Furley, “The Mechanics of Meteorologica IV: A Prolegomenon to Biology,” in Zweifelhaftes im Corpus Aristotelicum. Ed. Paul Moraux and Jürgen Wiesner. (De Gruyter, 1983), 73-93.
Carlos Gilly, “‘Theophrastia Sancta’: Paracelsianism as a Religion in Conflict with the Established Churches,” in Paracelsus: The Man and His Reputation. Ed. Ole Peter Grell. (Brill, 1998).
Anthony Grafton, Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Harvard University Press, 2001).
Danielle Jacquart, “Minima in Twelfth-Century Medical Texts from Salerno,” in Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscularian Matter Theories. Ed. Christoph Lüthy, John E. Murdoch, and William R. Newman. (Brill, 2001), 39-56.
Lauren Kassell, “Magic, Alchemy, and the Medical Economy in Early Modern England: The Case of Robert Fludd’s Magnetical Medicine,” in Mark Jenner and Patrick Wallis (Eds.), Medicine and the Market in England and Its Colonies, c. 1450-1850 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 88-107.
Craig Martin, Interpretation and Utility: The Renaissance Commentary Tradition on Aristotle’s Meteorologica IV. Ph.D. dissertation. (Harvard University, 2002).
Sylvain Matton, ”L’alchimie chez les Ramistes et semi-ramistes” in Argumentation 5 (1991), 403-446.
Ted McCormick,“Alchemy in the Political Arithmetic of Sir William Petty (1623-1687),” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 37, 2 (June, 2006): 290-307.
Emily Michael, “Daniel Sennert on Matter and Form: At the Juncture of the Old and the New” in Early Science and Medicine (1997): 272-300.
William R. Newman, “Corpuscular alchemy and the tradition of Aristotle’s Meteorology, with special reference to Daniel Sennert,” in International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 15: 2 (2001), 145-153.
Tara Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
Bruce T. Moran, Chemical Pharmacy Enters the University: Johannes Hartmann and the Didactic Care of Chymiatria in the Early Seventeenth Century (American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, 1991).
Zbigniew Szydlo, “The Influence of the Central Nitre Theory of Michael Sendivogius on the Chemical Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century,” in Ambix 43 (1996), 80-97.
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