Seminal principles

Thus all appearances in nature result from the individual power of every creature, contained in the semen of its kind, to realise itself. Moreover, God Himself endowed the seed with its peculiar power of propagating. We have already seen that Boerhaave explained the growth of metals using a theory of regeneration. I shall now show that for the older Boerhaave the seminal principles came to be of utmost importance in his medicine as well and that he proposed chemistry as the best method to know their working. 

Thus, Boerhaave did not adopt Newtonianism as an all encompassing theory, explaining all the actions of nature. Instead, he emphasised the individual powers of bodies and rather than the forces of attraction, he adopted seminal principles, or threads of the warp in order to explain the variety of things in the created order. Boerhaave argued in 1715 ... 

Boerhaave even goes as far as stating that the phenomena arising from the working of the seminal principles are the prime concern of the natural philosopher. He is in no way able to recreate the seed itself, but he can only observe the powers it works in natural bodies. Thus the seminal principles stand at the beginning of all variety in nature, which means that seeds carry in them the creation, the nature and powers of single bodies. ... 

In Boerhaave s eyes, chemistry, of all natural philosophy, is best able to show the variety of life and motion in nature and improving natural knowledge, for chemistry is best adapted for discovering (...) latent peculiar powers of bodies. Boerhaave s admiration for the old alchemists is not surprising for the seminal principles were an important aspect of their work. They defined the seed as the interior heat, or the specific spirit, which is enclosed in the humid radical. Alchemy mainly speaks about mercury, the seed of metals. It cannot be a coincidence that Boerhaave experimented extensively on mercury towards the end of his life. Maybe he thought that insight into the... 

XIII, 18. Contains notes on magic and medicine in Antiquity, on seminal principles and theories of generation, on anatomy, recipes. 

His Alchemical Quest (Princeton Princeton University Press, 1998 for Boyle on seminal principles, see Antonio Clericuzio, A Redefinition of Boyle s Chemistry and Corpuscular Philosophy, Awmls of Science (1990) 56i-589,Jole Shackelford, Seeds with a Mechanical Purpose Sever-... 

Anstey, Peter. Boyle on Seminal Principles. Studies m History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33 (2002) gy-6 0. 

It is important to note that in the Paracelsian tradition, the term separation meant a creative act of reconstituting the original seminal principles. See Le Febvre [1664] pp. 17-20. 

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