Alchemy and the Concept of Elements

The foundation of natural philosophy in India dates back to around the fifth century B.c.E., and the concept of the transmutation of matter can be found in parts of the ancient Vedic writings. The oldest description of elements was based on a five-element system that comprised earth, water, fire, wind (or air), and space. There is evidence of a kind of atomistic view of matter as indivisible particles and even an estimation of their size. According to the ancient text Tarkasamgrahadeepika, the smallest perceptible object was a dust mote seen in a beam of sunlight. The atom was then equal to one-sixth of the mote.2 This atomism was overlaid with a form of vitalism to account for the difference between animate and inanimate matter. Vitalism, which appeared in the alchemy of almost all regions, was the belief in a spirit or spark of life that occurred in some types of matter. If matter contained the vital spark, it was alive. Whether the vital spark could be created or made to appear in inanimate matter was one of the areas of research for alchemists. 

It is at this point that we may return to one of our initial premises— that the corpuscular theory obtained by fusing alchemy and the type of Aristotelianism found in the Meteorology was genuinely experimental. In effect, Sennert considered his principles to be the limits attained by the analytical methods of the laboratory, a concept that modern scholars have found in the work of Robert Boyle. As Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers have pointed out, Boyle s closely related definition of an element as that into which bodies are ultimately resolved, was based on a negative-empirical concept ... that reflected the limits of technical analysis. Precisely this attitude underlay the tradition of scholastic alchemy appropriated by Sennert and developed further by... 

In the days of alchemy and the phlogiston theory, no system of nomenclature that would be considered logical ia the 1990s was possible. Names were not based on composition, but on historical association, eg, Glauber s salt for sodium sulfate decahydrate and Epsom salt for magnesium sulfate physical characteristics, eg, spirit of wiae for ethanol, oil of vitriol for sulfuric acid, butter of antimony for antimony trichloride, Hver of sulfur for potassium sulfide, and cream of tartar for potassium hydrogen tartrate or physiological behavior, eg, caustic soda for sodium hydroxide. Some of these common or trivial names persist, especially ia the nonchemical Hterature. Such names were a necessity at the time they were iatroduced because the concept of molecular stmcture had not been developed, and even elemental composition was incomplete or iadeterminate for many substances. 

For over 2,000 years, alchemy was the only chemistry studied. Alchemy was the predecessor of modern chemistry and contributed to the slow growth of what we know about the Earth s chemical elements. For example, the alchemists interest in a common treatment for all diseases led to the scientific basis for the art of modern medicine. In particular, the alchemist/ physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) introduced a new era of medicine known as iatrochemistry, which is chemistry applied to medicine. In addition, alchemists elementary understanding of how different substances react with each other led to the concepts of atoms and their interactions to form compounds. 

Alchemy, which provided the theoretical basis for metallurgy, gradually changed this. It added a deeper sophistication to ideas about the nature and transformation of matter, providing a bridge between the old and new conceptions of the elements. 

In addition to the theory of the four elements, alchemy held that metals grew in the earth, a product of the marriage between sulphur and mercury. These were seen as opposing forces, male and female, or volatile and fixed. In both laboratory and inner alchemy, the concept of bringing opposing forces together is at the foundation of the work. In the sixteenth century, Paracelsus... 

Along the way, the concept of the element became more codified, but, at the same time, the emphasis among Chinese and Islamic practitioners on practical investigation meant that alchemy had to be an active study. The apparatus created by people like Al-Razi opened the door to a more experimental approach to matter, and, in turn, the results of those studies began to disrupt the Aristotelian model of the four elements. Although the four elements of earth, water, air, and fire were philosophically elegant, they did not stand up to the challenge of practical application. 

In terms of the theory of elements, Paracelsus s contribution was not his work, although he did write about how the three principles made up most of terrestrial matter, but his role in the redirection of alchemy. He de-emphasized the concept of transmutation (although it is likely he believed it possible) and focused on practical aspects of the study of matter, particularly iatrochemistry. He also encouraged the investigation of materials through experiments. While this should not be confused with modern experimentalism, since Paracelsus included spiritualism and occult theory in his system of investigation, it was far more systematic than most alchemy tended to be. He also based his work on a conception of pure compounds, and that concept, in turn, led to work on purification and qualitative control of chemical research and production. 

The concept of the elements depended on two different but ultimately complementary ideas about matter. The first idea was ancient that the elements were the fundamental building blocks of nature. Whether there were 1, 2, 3, 4, or 92 elements was in a sense less important than the power of the concept to explain nature and direct research. The second idea came with the discovery of the structure of the atom and the physics that made that discovery possible that an element represented a specific combination of subatomic particles determined by physical laws. The creation of controlled nuclear fission and the invention of accelerators and cyclotrons made a kind of modem alchemy possible, allowing the creation of new elements that were not found in nature but that still met the new conditions to be considered elements. 

As with any other theoretical concept, the concept of ultimate chemical principles was defined not only by its reference to chemical operations and to substances that can be observed in the laboratory, but also by its relation to other concepts. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the concept of ultimate principles was loaded with meaning going back to alchemical philosophy. As we have shown in chapter 2, in seventeenth-century alchemy and chymistry principles were not quotidian perceptible substances. Rather, they were defined as semina invested with a set of qualities that generated perceptible substances in co-action with the elemental matrix. In most seventeenth-century chymical philosophies—especially those not... 

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