6/8/2023 0 Comments The end of alchemy![]() ![]() Astrological prognostications-forecasts about the king’s health or coming war or famine-could threaten political stability. Both of these were potentially subversive. Colbert prohibited two topics of study at the founding: astrology and the Philosophers’ Stone. The Académie had been founded in 1666 by Louis XIV’s minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. There was a real fear that alchemy, or rumors of alchemy, could undermine the state. Principe concentrates on the Académie Royale des Sciences in the eighteenth century: members pursued transmutation even as administrators tried to suppress it. ![]() In recent decades, Principe and other scholars have gone a long way to rehabilitate alchemy, often thought as something of a bad seed, in the history of science.īut, given alchemy’s long history, “how then to explain the disappearance of metallic transmutation from the normal operations and goals of chymists”? When, in short, did the pursuit of alchemy end? This ending was a major development in the history of chemistry, but it’s hard to pin down. Such efforts were “pursued for a millennium and a half in various cultural, intellectual, and theoretical contexts.” The fact that chrysopoeia didn’t actually work taught the scientists-to-come a lot. Principe, “ a serious and rational endeavor, undergirded by coherent theoretical and observational foundations, to understand the natural world and to make use of its powers.” ![]() The transmutation of metals, or chrysopoeia (gold-making), was, writes scholar Lawrence M. ![]()
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