sonogashira
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English-language alchemical texts
I don't know if anyone else has interests in the history of chemistry, but should anyone be interested in good alchemical texts, it would be useful if
people could recommend those that they have read and found interesting.
Fasciculus Chemicus: http://archive.org/details/fasciculuschemic00deea
and
Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum:
http://archive.org/details/theatrumchemicum00ashm
are good starting points for those who have not read any alchemical literature. Hopefully it is of interest to someone, and if others wish to
recommend any other good books that they have read then please do.
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maxpayne
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Thank you very much for this texts.
Many people sees alchemy only as a way of substance transmutation and because of this as something that has no real scientific value. However,
chemistry was born from an alchemy and since many today theories and concepts are still only unconfirmed theories (like atom and space) it is good to
know/visualize how this concepts developed through the history.
But the main problem with alchemy books is that they are hard to read for today minds and philosophy presents a problem.
Isaac Newton was an alchemist which is recently discovered. If anyone missed this documentary, here it is: Youtube - Newtons Dark Secrets (52:33)
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watson.fawkes
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"Recently"? 1936, when the Newton personal
manuscripts were auctioned, isn't exactly recent, even if is was two centuries after his death. The material in this documentary isn't news to anyone
who's read any of the recent biographies of the man. Although if it weren't obvious before, hagiography is just as applicable to scientists as it to
saints.
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sonogashira
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Perhaps he refers to these:
http://web.nli.org.il/sites/nli/english/collections/humaniti...
http://dlib.nli.org.il/R/?func=collections&collection_id...
I've been in Newton's house!  The tree was not the original! The website which collects Newton's writings looks
interesting: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=1
The Canon's Yeoman's Tale is a good read too (the translation): http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/gchaucer/bl-gc...
[Edited on 3-9-2013 by sonogashira]
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watson.fawkes
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From that site: | Quote: | | Professor Shalom Yehuda purchased the manuscripts at a public auction at London’s Sotheby’s in 1936. Other manuscripts in the collection, dealing
mostly with the topic of alchemy, were purchased by the well-known economist, John Maynard Keynes, and are located at King’s College in Cambridge
University. |
This collection is one of the places that those personal papers ended up. Still known for almost
a century.
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sonogashira
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There's an abundance written on the history of the papers, if it interests you: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=20
The Chymistry of Isaac Newton: http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/index.jsp
I forgot to mention that Elias Ashmole actually authored his own alchemical work called 'The way to bliss':
http://archive.org/details/waytoblissinthre00ashm
I have some scans of several 13th century manuscripts that I will upload at some stage.
---
Just for interest:
| Quote: | Michael Faraday:
Now I must take you to a very interesting part of our subject—to the relation between the combustion of a candle and that living kind of combustion
which goes on within us. In every one of us there is a living process of combustion going on very similar to that of a candle, and I must try to make
that plain to you. For it is not merely true in a poetical sense—the relation of the life of man to a taper; and if you will follow, I think I can
make this clear.
Source: http://www.bartleby.com/30/12.html |
c.f.
Mercury thiocyanate decomposition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ritaljhhk7s
-
[Edited on 5-9-2013 by sonogashira]
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mayko
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This book is a secondary account, but looks quite interesting.
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jul-aug/05-isaac-newton-wor...
After recreating alchemical techniques from primary sources, the authors say that alchemy was scientific in the sense that they had empirically
constructed a theoretical understanding of chemistry. Some of what they believed was incorrect (their belief in transmutation was based on the
misconception that metals were actually compounds of mercury, sulfur, and salt), but reasonable in context of what they had observed.
| Quote: |
“There were reasons that alchemists thought they could make gold,” Newman says. “They had theories about the nature of metals that made them
believe they could manipulate their structure. They also conducted experiments that they believed proved minerals could be made to grow.” In an age
when there were no microscopes to penetrate living cells and no understanding of the nature of atoms and molecules, the alchemists were not misguided
so much as misinformed, doing their best to make sense of a world they could not see. That they understood as much as they did is the real marvel: In
pursuing what today seems like little more than witchcraft, the alchemists were in fact laying the foundation for modern experimental science.
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I'm not sure I agree with the last claim - experimental science seems like something that is very old and self-emergent - but alchemy certainly seems
like an internally consistent, empirical science. It made concrete contributions:
| Quote: |
creating new alloys; manufacturing acids and pigments; inventing apparatus for distillation, the process used in making perfumes and whiskeys;
conceiving of atoms centuries before modern atomic theory
|
as well as discovering several elements.
A recurring theme is the secrecy of the alchemists, to the point of writing in cryptic codes to protect their proprietary knowledge. This is very much
in contrast with, for example, the modern open data movement. I wonder if this isn't also the cause of a lot of spiritualist interest in alchemy.
Some of the phenomena the alchemists investigated appear to have been largely forgotten, raising questions for me as to what degree science is truly
accretionary. Once we abandoned the theory that metals have a sort of quasi-botanical life, did we forget the evidence that once motivated that
theory?
| Quote: |
One key alchemical experiment was called the Tree of Diana, a magical-looking demonstration that metals could grow like vegetation. Newman learned
that the Tree of Diana really works. “If you immerse a solid amalgam of silver and mercury in nitric acid with dissolved silver and mercury, you
produce tiny, twiglike branches of solid silver,” he says. Today this process is regarded as a simple matter of chemistry. But to Newton, the Tree
of Diana was evidence that metals could be made to grow and, therefore, “possessed a sort of life.”
The image of the growing metallic tree can be found in another type of experiment, one that Starkey, Boyle, and very likely Newton all conducted: the
attempt to synthesize the Philosophers’ Stone. Principe, who had studied the alchemical work of all three men, came to the same conclusion as Newman
and decided that he, too, had to replicate the long-abandoned alchemical experiments firsthand. He culled recipes from alchemists like Starkey and,
after “a lengthy process involving various materials and numerous distillations,” obtained Philosophical Mercury, just as Boyle had 350 years
earlier. Principe mixed the Philosophical Mercury with gold, sealed it in a glass egg, and watched. Just as Starkey and other alchemists reported,
strange things started to happen inside the egg. The mixture began to bubble, rising “like leavened dough,” Principe says. Then it turned pasty
and liquid and, after several days of heating, transformed into what he likens to a “dendritic fractal”: another metallic tree, like the trees the
miners saw underground, only this one was made of gold and mercury.
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There was I believe a reference to an odd phosphorescent log which was also forgotten. I'm having difficulty locating it though.
al-khemie is not a terrorist organization
"Chemicals, chemicals... I need chemicals!" - George Hayduke
"Wubbalubba dub-dub!" - Rick Sanchez
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maxpayne
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There is also a book, which came up recently, named Book of Aquarius.pdf
It is interesting text, written by anonymous writer, who claims he deciphered alchemical mysteries and put it in his book in a form of simple language
and experiment. But again, as many times before, he does not explain causes for any of the processes of the experiment.
My personal review of this book is negative because the experiment he claims is not even finished by him, excusing himself to write a book and release
it before, to keep "knowledge" secure. So i did not find any reason to try anything in this book, not even a first step, although I'm very open
minded.
As we are discussing here some history, I would ask if anyone have english or croatian e-books from Roger Joseph Boscovich (Ruđer Bošković
), please post it here.
Edit:
Sonogashira: Thanky you so much for the Michael Faraday link; He was incredible man, I love him  . He is the one who can really put a big question mark in my mind, and doing so by simple experiments.
[Edited on 5-9-2013 by maxpayne]
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franklyn
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The problem with the earliest texts is they were written in the lingua franca
of their time , Latin. Unless a translation is available , quite an undertaking
in itself , those are of little practical use. Later German texts present a similar
issue but at least it's not a dead language and translations are more available.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Re_Metallica
All available copies at Archive
http://archive.org/search.php?query=De%20Re%20Metallica%20AN...
index for 1st choice
https://ia600301.us.archive.org/28/items/deremetallica00agri
These others I found on Google books , many more there
http://books.google.ch/books/download/The_Hermetic_and_Alche...
http://books.google.ch/books/download/Philosophical_principl...
http://books.google.ch/books/download/A_collection_of_scarce...
http://books.google.ch/books/download/The_lives_of_alchemyst...
.
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watson.fawkes
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Quote: Originally posted by mayko  | | Quote: |
“There were reasons that alchemists thought they could make gold,” Newman says. [...] In pursuing what today seems like little more than
witchcraft, the alchemists were in fact laying the foundation for modern experimental science.
|
I'm not sure I agree with the last claim - experimental science seems like something that is very old and
self-emergent - but alchemy certainly seems like an internally consistent, empirical science. |
He's right,
and argues the point quite persuasively in his book _Alchemy Tried in the Fire_, by Newman and his co-author Principe. In particular, there's a story
about the invention of the analytical balance there (complete with glass case, even back then) to help refine the cluster of ideas that eventually
became the principle of conservation of mass for chemical elements. They suspected conservation of mass was general (by then it was known for gold and
some other metals), but didn't know how to demonstrate it, partly because the didn't understand the gas phase of matter. And this work was done by
self-identified alchemists, and prior to Boyle.
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sonogashira
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Thanks for the De re metallica recommendation. What a book! I've not seen better illustrations. I'll certainly be reading it over the
weekend.
As regards old methodology, an example of 17th century chromatography:
| Quote: |
This is performed by shreds of any white woolen cloth in vessels as you can see hereafter expressed.
A. Signifies the vessels.
B. The shreds.
Note that the shreds must be first wet in fair water, and the feculent matter be put into the uppermost vessel. Note also, whereas here be two
receivers, that in many cases one may be sufficient. This way serves for the purifying of decoctions, juices, or diesolutions of salts from their
feculency, for that which is distilled by the shreds is as clear as crystal, when what remains is very feculent. |
Source: John French, The Art of Distillation (1651) (http://www.alchemywebsite.com/jfren_ar.html)
This book was published almost 300 years before paper chromatography was invented (gaining its inventors the Nobel-prize for Chemistry: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1...)
The creation of almost perfect vacuum using metallic-mercury dropping from a burette (trapping and evacuating the air):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprengel_pump
Original paper:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UKIwAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA9&a...
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Bot0nist
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Sorry to jump in sort of <i>uninitiated-ly</i>, but I recently read the entire english wikipedia article of the history of chemistry and
its sequential "evolution" from what is now referred to as alchemy.
I know that isn't "alchemical texts" but I found the articles, and the links it led me to, to be extremely entertaining and enlightening.
U.T.F.S.E. and learn the joys of autodidacticism!
Don't judge each day only by the harvest you reap, but also by the seeds you sow.
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sonogashira
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I tried the 'distillation' method that I mentioned above using a sheet of folded kitchen paper wetted with acetone. The fractionation is not bad (here
collecting the second fraction):
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