Paracelsian medicine and natural philosophy was formed during the Radical Reformation and incorporated metaphysical propositions that were incompatible with the Lutheran confession as codified in the Confessio Augustana and elaborated in the ultra-orthodox Formula of Concord. Although Paracelsian ideas and practices were endorsed by important philosophers and physicians in late-sixteenth century Denmark without raising serious alarm, the imposition of strict Lutheran orthodoxy in the Danish Church and a concomitant resurgence of Aristotelian philosophy drew attention to the religious heterodoxies inherent in (...) Paracelsianism. Unacceptable theological and religious propositions, which reached Denmark in Rosicrucian texts and were implicit in certain medical and philosophical treatises, were in many cases inseparable from core Paracelsian concepts, with the result that Danish academic philosophers, physicians, and theologians rejected Paracelsian ideas except where they could be accommodated to acceptable Galenic and Aristotelian interpretations. When this was done, such ideas are arguably no longer Paracelsian in any meaningful way. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile the emergence of a new scientific culture in 16th-century Europe is well known, the role of the actors of the Hispanic New World in this time of renewal of knowledge has long been judged marginal for two reasons: first, because the strong presence of the Inquisition in the Hispanic World has been considered by historians to have been an obstacle for research or scientific innovation; and second, because the discontinuity of the territories of the Hispanic Monarchy and the problem (...) of distances between Spain and the New World have long been interpreted in ways that suggest the marginality and peripheral status of the American colonies. However, some works counterbalance this dismissal and shed new light on the scientific activity of the Hispanic New World. This is the case with the treatise Arte de los Metales, by the secular priest Alvaro Alonso Barba, which would achieve remarkable fame and circulation, and would become a seminal work in the fields of metallurgy and mining until the mid-1700s. The article demonstrates that this treatise also presents ideas that can be traced back to a set of Paracelsian ideas combining alchemy, pharmacopoeia, and medicine, and studies specific examples of these ideas – the description of three fundamental substances as components of all matter, references to Epatica sulfuris, an oil capable of turning silver into gold and curing certain diseases; and the use of antimony – that together testify to the spread of the ideas of Basil Valentine and of Paracelsian influences. From this point of view, Arte de los Metales can be viewed as part of a tradition unexpectedly renewed by the author through many observations based on his own work in Peru and the discoveries he made thanks to alternative techniques. This demonstrates the richness and diversity of knowledge rooted in the New World, and links Alonso Barba’s scholarly activity to some of the great schools of thought that spanned the Early Modern European world. (shrink)

'Walter Pagel's last book is more arcane and difficult, certainly as erudite and inimitable, and perhaps as rewarding as all his others. In a strange alchemical mixture of alter ego, familiar and doppelgänger, Paracelsus was Pagel's cross and his torch.' With 'The Smiling Spleen', Walter Pagel reconfirms his position as a leading authority on Paracelsus and the influence of his doctrines and practice on the development of modern science and medicine. In this final work of his life, Pagel concentrates on (...) Paracelsianism as a historical phenomenon, giving major attention to the lesser-known figures who characterized the 'storm and stress' of the Paracelsian reform movement during the 16th and 17th centuries. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus (1540–1602)Dane T. DanielJole Shackelford. A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus (1540–1602). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004. Pp. 519. Cloth, $83.00.The Paracelsian and Danish royal physician Petrus Severinus complained, "If we can make more potent [drugs], extracted from metals and minerals,... I ask, what age (...) except this one will oppose our efforts?" (115). Indeed, early modern attempts to prepare and prescribe drugs forged in the alchemical laboratory often faced vehement opposition by the university-trained physicians who were weaned on the humoral theory and herbal materia medica of Galen. The orthodox Galenists disdained not only the "chemical poisons" of the Paracelsians, but also their theoretical speculations. After all, the Paracelsians dismissed the belief that disease was the result of humoral imbalances, and promoted both the analogy of microcosm (the human) and macrocosm (the natural world, including the stars), and the idea that diseases were essences or actual beings.Severinus was prescient in his prediction that chemical medicine would become popular, but—as Jole Shackelford notes in the introduction to his A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine—the concepts of Paracelsus and his followers continue to remain peripheral to the grand narratives of early modern intellectual history. This remains the case despite the illuminating studies of such scholars as the late-Enlightenment medical historian Kurt Polycarp Sprengel, Walter Pagel, and Allen Debus. Thus, Shackelford sheds much needed light on this significant strand of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century science and medicine. Via text-oriented study, particularly of Severinus's Idea medicinæ philosophicæ (Ideal of Philosophical Medicine), Shackelford provides a long-awaited and meticulous biographical account of Severinus and explains with refreshing clarity the sources and speculative theory behind his brand of chemical medicine. Like such recent scholars as Michael Walton and Charles Gunnoe, Shackelford presents Paracelsianism as an ideology, duly noting that the ideas of Severinus, reflecting the reception of Paracelsus in general, were frequently accepted or rejected on religious grounds.To begin, Shackelford establishes Severinus's importance, noting that the medical author and Wittenberg professor Daniel Sennert wrote in 1619 that most iatrochemists followed in the steps of Severinus, who had molded Paracelsus's ideas into a coherent philosophy. Shackelford then traces the story of how Severinus—after studying at such universities as Padua and Paris—joined his friend Pratensis (a recognized Paracelsian) and Tycho [End Page 488] Brahe in bringing an increasingly eclectic Denmark up to continental cultural and intellectual standards. Unfortunately, Severinus's appointment as physician to the king distracted him from completing most of his research projects, but he had already left for posterity his Idea medicinæ, published in 1571.As Shackelford writes, the Idea medicinæ promoted Severinus's belief that Paracelsian medicine was not only an alternative to humoral medicine, but also promised to cope better with "new" fevers. Also, Severinus invested Paracelsianism with authority by emphasizing its ancient forebears and by arguing that Paracelsus was the latest in the line of prisca theologia—one of the few to "ascend to the inner chambers of the Mosaic mysteries" (57). In his amalgamation of Neoplatonism, the Hippocratic tradition, and Paracelsus, Severinus's featured doctrine was efficient causation, or "semina theory." Unlike Robert Boyle's inertial, material corpuscles and their active principles, Severinus's semina were "intrinsically formal and immaterial, and were logically and ontologically prior to matter" (17). The characteristics of these "loci," which accounted for all change in the subvisible world, could be observed through chemical analysis, and they were uniquely attractive to Christians, who were drawn to Severinus's Paracelsian interpretation of Genesis and his idea that when the predestinations contained in the semina are completed, the world will reach its end.Shackelford engages the reader with such fascinating topics as why Tycho—who was not just an astronomer, but also a student of alchemy—departed Denmark, and how Paracelsians were involved in the effort to improve the Danish Bible by "cleansing" it of non-Lutheran elements. Very welcome too is Shackelford's discussion of the neglected topic of Paracelsian therapeutics, especially his evaluation of... (shrink)

This article analyses a central episode in the response of the Catholic bodies of doctrinal control to the emergence of Paracelsianism. More specifically, it discusses the censorial report written in 1616 by the physician Johannes Faber for the Congregation for the Index about the works of Paracelsus. This report was written in a time that Paracelsianism had become increasingly popular, but also a source of fierce debates. The complex context surrounding the report is investigated, with particular attention to (...) the broader social, religious, and scientific aspects as well as the precise historical situation in which it was written. Faber’s report and an English translation are provided in separate appendices. (shrink)

Both Andreas Libavius and Heinrich Khunrath graduated from Basel Medical Academy in 1588, though the theses they defended reveal antithetical approaches to medicine, despite their shared interests in iatrochemistry and transmutational alchemy. Libavius argued in favour of Galenic allopathy while Khunrath promoted the contrasting homeopathic approach of Paracelsus and the utility of the occult doctrine of Signatures for medical purposes. This article considers these differences in the two graduates' theses, both as intimations of their subsequent divergent notions of the boundaries (...) of alchemy and its relations with medicine and magic, and also as evidence of the surprisingly unstable academic status of Paracelsian philosophy in Basel, its main publishing centre, at the end of the sixteenth century. (shrink)

The ArgumentMost historians of science share the conviction that the incorporation of the corpuscular theory into seventeenth-century chemistry was the beginning of modern chemistry. My thesis in this paper is that modern chemisty started with the concept of the chemicl compound, which emerged at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, without any signifivant influence of the corpuscular theory. Rather the historical reconstruction of the emergence of this concept shows that it resulted from the reflection (...) on the chemical operations in the sixteenth-century metallurgy and seventeenth-century pharmacy. I argue that the reversibility of these operations and their understanding as crafts (metallurgy) or chemical arts (pharmacy) were decisive factors for the emergence of the first ideas about chemical compounds in the seventeenth-century pharmaceutical works written by pharmaceutically trained authors, influenced by the Paracelsian image of nature. There is a direct line of descent from these authors to E.F.Geoffroy (1675–1742), who integrated the first scattered ideas of chemical compound into a general concept comprising chemical artefacts as well as natural bodies. (shrink)

The so-called ‘redintegration experiment’ is traditionally at the center of the comments on the supposed Boyle/Spinoza controversy. A. Clericuzio influentially argued in his publications that, in De nitro, Boyle accounted for the ‘redintegration’ of saltpeter on the grounds of the chemical properties of corpuscles and “did not make any attempt to deduce them from mechanical principles”. By way of contrast, this paper argues that with his De nitro Boyle wanted to illustrate and promote his new corpuscular or mechanical philosophy, and (...) that he made significant attempts to explain the phenomena in terms of mechanical qualities. Boyle had borrowed the ‘redintegration experiment’ from R. Glauber and used it in an attempt to demonstrate that his philosophy was superior to the Peripatetic and Paracelsian theory. Consequently, Clericuzio’s characterization of the Boyle/Spinoza controversy as a discussion between a strict mechanical philosopher and a chemist is problematic and a wider view of Spinoza’s interpretation and its context gives a fairer picture. (shrink)

Relying on the double meaning of Alkaest on the texts of the first paracelsians, in a first sense the universal dissolvent of the alchemic Work, in a second a wonderful epatic medicine, the paper outlines history and spread of this alchemical substance, from the late XVI century to the early XVIII. With the growing dissemination of Franciscus Van Helmont and his followers writings, the Alkaest as universal solvent earns credibility, touching his peak probably in England, where arouses the strong interest (...) of George Starkey, physician and alchemist, and Robert Boyle, chemist and inventor. (shrink)

A Karger 'Publishing Highlights 1890-2015' title This 2nd, revised edition is still the reference work available in print and electronically on Paracelsus by the Paracelsus authority. Furthermore, it makes a very good read. See also Pagel's last book The Smiling Spleen on Paracelsianism as a historical phenomenon. '...a work in the brilliant tradition of biographical research... even the casual reader will be impressed to learn that, four centuries ago, the man who had the courage to burn in public the (...) writings of Avicenna, recognised pulmonary disease in miners as an occupational hazard, cretinism and goitre as endemic in certain areas, and chorea and hysteria as manifestations of disease, not demonic possession.' The Lancet. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:All was this land full fill'd of faerie," or Magic and the Past in Early Modern EnglandLauren KassellI.In 1625 Gabriel Naudé (1600–53), student of medicine and up-and-coming librarian, wrote a history of magic.1 Paracelsianism had been debated in France for decades, and in 1623 Naudé had lent his pen to the controversy following the hoax appearance of bills posted in Paris announcing the arrival of the Fraternity of (...) the Rosy Cross and the wonders they could provide. The impetus for Naudé's history of magic was a pamphlet that described Homer and Virgil, abusively, as magicians. As Didier Kahn has shown, Naudé's 1623 intervention against the Rosicrucians wrested a brewing dispute about Paracelsianism from the hands of theologians and settled it in the name of reason, not religion; his medical training no doubt informed his intervention.2 In his history of magic Naudé complained that everyone who ever did anything clever was now reputed to be a magician, which meant in league with the devil. His project was to clear the ground of the [End Page 107] false histories that had been written for the previous two hundred years. Adopting a mode of historia litteraria, he redeemed the reputations of several dozen learned men—including Zoroaster, Socrates, Roger Bacon, Agrippa, and ultimately Virgil—whose names had been sullied by the term magician.3The branding of natural philosophers and especially mathematical practitioners as magicians had been an enduring problem.4 As John Aubrey would later reflect in notes on the life of the Oxford scholar Thomas Allen, "In those darke times Astrologer, Mathematician, and Conjurer, were accounted the same thing."5 But Naudé provides an elaborate account of why these accusations initially might have been fabricated—jealousy, incredulity, malice, fear of technology—and demonstrates a method for unmasking these errors. Follow the simple rules of good scholarship, he insists: read the best authors, think logically, and acquire "a certain familiarity with the most profitable Sciences, and the most universal and general account of the affairs of this World that may be had, which is to be gained partly by our own industry, partly by the endeavors of those who have gone before us, such as may be those of Historians."6 That is, through hard work and the help of other historians, understand the context in which these texts were written. Perfect historians are indispensable; false historians should be read with caution.7 If one encounters a fabulous tale, locate its textual sources, read critically, and remember that (many) historians vend rubbish.8 Naudé surveys a vast literature dating from antiquity through the sixteenth century, demonstrating that misreadings of tropes and irony, for instance, have led to the labeling of poets and natural philosophers as magicians.9 Likewise, where people have professed their magical powers, Naudé is careful to show that writing books about magic and boasting about one's expertise are not the same thing as practicing magic.10 These fables persist because authors repeat what others have written without applying the above principles of good research; they write for their own glory instead of doing proper research; and they show off their polymathic skills by assembling great [End Page 108] heaps of examples instead of making sense of them. Thus the noble name of history is built upon a monstrous edifice of fables.11In short, prompted by festering occultism and religious controversies in Paris, Naudé wrote a history of magic in order to release the great men of learning from the label of magician. This is a history of the "first appearance of learning, the first rising of the great wits, the time they flourished, the ages which have brought forth most, and take notice by the way, how that ignorance hath always persecuted them with this calumny"; he defines magic historically.12 Great learning and suspicion of its demonic sources are inseparable. Through pragmatic reading, Naudé redeems scholars who have been called magicians, and shifts the onus of explanation away from these learned men and onto historians and their incredulous readers.13 Poor histories are written by men guilty of pride and malice. These fables persist because... (shrink)

John Case , the most important English Aristotelian of the Renaissance period, has not yet received the attention he deserves. In his Lapis philosophicus , an exposition of Aristotle's Physics, is found a discussion of the relation of nature to art which parallels in many ways that formulated a few years later in the writings of Francis Bacon. Case argues, in a way more reminiscent of the works of Giambattista della Porta than of those of Aristotle, that the natural philosopher (...) can legitimately apply the productive arts in helping nature to fulfill her function. Moreover, while rejecting the excessive claims of the Paracelsians, Case does accept the transmutational claims of the alchemists. In the final analysis, his ‘Aristotelianism’ has been tempered by the tradition of Renaissance natural magic. Like many other Peripatetic thinkers of the period, Case shows himself to be an eclectic, drawing materials from a wide variety of sources and open to many of the new scientific tendencies then developing. (shrink)

Francis Bacon critique souvent l’attitude et les pratiques des alchimistes. Pour autant, il ne rejette pas l’alchimie, qui est la chimie de son temps. Non seulement il intègre dans sa philosophie naturelle des aspects essentiels de la pensée paracelsienne, mais surtout il fait de l’alchimie l’une des sciences auxquelles sa nouvelle méthode doit s’appliquer de manière privilégiée en vue de la perfectionner. Comme de nombreux philosophes naturels du XVIIe siècle, il n’hésite pas à développer sa propre conception de la transmutation (...) des métaux.Francis Bacon often criticizes both attitude and practice of the alchemists. Yet he doesn’t, give away alchemy which is the chemistry of his time. Not only does he integrate in his natural philosophy a few major aspects of Paracelsian thought, but first and foremost does he turn alchemy into one of the sciences to which his new method should be applied in a priviledged way in order to improve it. As was the case with quite a few natural philosophers of the XVIIth century, never does he quavers in developing his own conception of the metallic transmutation. (shrink)

John Locke’s medical interests resulted in several short texts in which he criticizes two theoretical conceptions of his days, paracelsianism and galenism. Two of the texts – ‘ Morbus’ and ‘ Anatomia’ – show the influence of Thomas Sydenham on Locke’s understanding of medicine which can be summarized as a turn towards clinical medicine and empirical investigations. The article reconstructs this early stage of the development of Locke’s standpoint leading to ‘ An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’.

Introduction -- Undermining the hermeneutics of suspicion -- The historical emergence of psychological man -- The "religious" therapeutics -- Rieff on Jung's "language of faith" -- Rieff and the hermeneutics of suspicion -- An alternative hermeneutic -- Applying this hermeneutic to depth psychology -- Concluding remarks -- The historical sources of Jung's psychology -- The young metaphysician -- Tempering metaphysical inclinations with a pragmatic standpoint -- The resurgence of metaphysics in Jung's psychology -- Jung's subjectivist argument -- The influence of (...) vitalism -- Individuation and the prospective method -- From the prospective method to a metaphysics of archetypes -- Jung and the Paracelsian theory of knowledge -- The persistence of metaphysical questions -- Hermeneutics and Jung's psychology -- The re-discovery of the psychogenic -- Towards a more adequate understanding of the psychogenic -- The methodological problems facing depth psychology -- The symbolic life -- The "realism of the East" -- The symbol of the self -- The "two kinds of thinking" -- "The transcendent function" -- From signs to symbols -- The practice of the transcendent function -- Definitions from psychological types (1921) -- The symbolic attitude -- Transcendent presence -- Alignment with the self -- Projective psychology and divine transcendence -- The relevance of the dispute between Jung and Buber -- The still point -- The beyond -- Contemporary psychoanalysis and the still point -- Ogden on potential space. (shrink)

Summary The famous Jesuit father Athanasius Kircher (1602?1680) tried to interpret the Creation of the world and to explain the origin of life in the last book of his geocosmic encyclopedia, Mundus subterraneus (Amsterdam, 1664?1665). His interpretation largely depended on the ?concept of seeds? which was derived from the tradition of Renaissance ?chymical? (chemical and alchemical) philosophy. The impact of Paracelsianism on his vision of the world is also undeniable. Through this undertaking, Kircher namely developed a corpuscular theory for (...) the spontaneous generation of living beings. The present study examines this theory and its relationship with Kircher's chymical interpretation of the Creation in order to place it in its own intellectual and historical context and will uncover one of its most important sources. (shrink)

Although by no means a genius, Comenius’s teacher, Johann Heinrich Alsted, was in one sense a prodigy. His great Encyclopaedia of 1630 was fi rst sketched out in his Panacea philosophica of 1610, when the young Herborner was only 22 years old; and in the larger Artium liberalium ac facultatum omnium systema mnemonicum, completed the previous year, its origins are traced back further still, to the outset of his studies in the Herborn academy in 1602, at the tender age of (...) fourteen. More specifi cally, Alsted reveals that his encyclopaedic project began as a commonplace book collected in no small part from his father’s table talk, his mother’s precepts and practice, his grandfather’s library, and the extraordinarily rich collection of pedagogical theorists in his immediate family circle. This paper traces Alsted’s genealogy as a bibliographical as well as a biographical exercise: that is, as a means not merely of revealing his bloodlines, but of tracing the intellectual genealogy of an individual at once deeply rooted in the Reformed academic and clerical community of Hesse and the Wetterau and impatient to break free of established orthodoxies in pursuit of a fresh intellectual synthesis. Tracing the tangled roots of this genealogy back several generations reveals that Alsted’s yearning for further reformation fed upon lengthy familial engagement with various strands of Renaissance humanism, Reformed theology, Ramist pedagogy, Paracelsian medicine, and perhaps even millenarianism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:238 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that enigmatic Swiss iatrochemist sympathetically. In any event, Dr. King's sympathetic approach to Paracelsus manages to throw considerable light on the Paracelsian advice to all future physicians: Don't read books! Read the stars, but read them "in Neo-Platonic fashion" (p. 114)! While the author is "judicious" about Galen and Paracelsus in particular, he is far from being so when it comes to Friedrich Hoffmann, a (...) medical materialist and "systematist" from Halle in the eighteenth century. Paradoxically enough, Dr. King has a marked antipathy for the doctor of "sympathy " himself (p. 173). Incidentally, the only other physician in the book who is not liked--apparently for his being polemical (p. 215)--is a famous fellow-pathologist of the last century, Rudolf Virchow. Still, it is only fair to add that the author acknowledges fully Virchow's important contributions to the field of cellular pathology. Finally, Dr. King not only has his likes and dislikes as to the medical men he actually selects from modern medicine to represent changes in theory of disease, but he seems also to have a definite bias in another and more serious sense. With the exception of the Epilogue and Chapter IV, which includes Vesalius and Harvey as well as Hoffmann, all the episodes of modern medicine deemed worthy of study derive from the Germanic world. Curiously enough, although there is no discussion of the germ theory of disease as such in the book, there is mention of Koch, but not of Pasteur. And French physiologist Claude Bernard, the great medical philosopher who tried to do in the nineteenth century for scientific medicine what American pathologist Lester King is attempting in the twentieth, is conspicuous by his absence in The Growth of Medical Thought. PATRICKROMANELL University of Oklahoma Siimtliche Werke von Plato. (Reinbeck b. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959-1963. 6 volumes -- Rowohlts Klassiker der Literatur und der Wissenschaft. Griechische Philosophie.) Diese Taschenbiicherausgabe enth~ilt die meisten der von Schleiermacher iibersetzten Dialoge und ffigt die Briefe, den Timaios, den Kritias und die Nomoi in der Obersetzung von H. und F. H. Miiller hinzu. Die Ordnung entspricht offenbar der von den Herausgebern (W. F. Otto, E. Grassi und G. Plamb/Sck) angenommenen chronologischen Reihenfolge. Ausgelassen sind: Minos, Alkibiades H und Theages, Nebenbuhler, Kleitophon und die Epinomis--offenbar weil sie die Herausgeber fiir unecht halten. Die Obersetzung einer Reihe von Dialogen (bes. Parmenides, Politikos, Philebos, Timaios, Kritias) wurde einer Durchsicht unterzogen; leider teilen uns BOOK REVIEWS 239 die Herausgeber nicht mit, von wem. Jedem Dialog geht eine Gliederung voran; jeder Band ist mit einer recht brauchbaren Bibliographie versehen. Es ist erstaunlich zu erfahren, dass der erste Band, erstmalig in 1957 erschienen, in 1963 eine Auflage von 78000 erreicht hat; bleiben auch die Auflageziffern der fibrigen B~inde dahinter zurfick, so sind sie doch genfigend eindrucksvoll. Man wfinscht, der Verlag m6chte doch, durch diesen Erfolg ermutigt, das nach Obgesagtem noch Fehlende--und dazu noch Platons Gedichte--in einem Erg~inzungsband bringen, wie immer man fiber die Echtheit der Stficke denkt. Der stilistische Unterschied zwischen den ~bersetzungen von Schleiermacher (erstmalig: 1804-1810) und von H. und F. H. Mfiller ist ausserordentlich. Dies ist nicht etwa auf die gr6ssere Sprachmeisterschaff Schleiermachers zurfickfiihren. Vielmehr liegt seiner Obersetzungsmethode eine h6chst interessante Theorie zugrunde (die F. A. Wolff, der Schleiermachers ~bersetzung verhShnt und Wilamowitz, der sie als ungeniessbar bezeichnet hatte, offenbar unbekannt war). Dieser Theorie zufolge ist es die Aufgabe des ~2bersetzers, den Leser besffindig daran zu erinnern, dass er nur eine l~bersetzung vor sich hat. Einem ~bersetzer, der sich brfistet, dass sich sein Text so liest, wie ihn der Autor geschrieben h~itte, wenn er in der Sprache des ~bersetzers und seines Publikums gedacht h~itte, sollte erwidert werden "Daffir bin ich dir so dankbar, wie ich es w~ire, wenn du mir das Bild eines Mannes zeigtest und sagtest--So wiirde er ausgesehen haben, wenn ihn mit seiner Mutter ein anderer Vater gezeugt h~tte." In anderen Worten: da sich Inhalt und Ausdruck nicht abtrennen lassen, sollte der f2bersetzer, start das Original seiner Sprache anzueignen, vielmehr--wir gebrauchen hier den bekannten Brechtschen Begriff--im Leser einen Verfremdungseffekt erzeugen. Wie man sieht, ist Schleiermachers ~3bersetzungstheorie jeder "rationalistischen " strikte... (shrink)

In Renaissance and early modern times, the concept of imagination was essential for the philosophical explanation of magic processes, especially in the anthropology of Paracelsus. He assumed that imaginatio was a natural vital power including cosmic, mental, psychical, and physical dimensions. The Paracelsians criticized traditional humor pathology ignoring their theory of ‚natural magic’. On the other hand, they were criticized by their adversaries as charlatans practicing ‚black magic’. About 1800, in between enlightenment and romanticism, the healing concept of ‚animal magnetism’ (...) evoked an analogous debate, whether ‚magnetic’ phenomena originated from a real power or were just due to fantasy or imagination . At the end of the 19th century, the French internist Hippolyte Bernheim created — against the background of medical hypnosis as a consequence of Mesmerism — his theory of suggestion and autosuggestion: a new paradigm of psychological respectively psychosomatic medicine, which became the basis for the concept of ‚placebo’ in modern biomedicine. From now on, all the effects of ‚alternative medicine’ could easily be explained by the ‚placebo-effect’, more or less founded — at least unconsciously — on fraud. (shrink)

This paper examines Georg Ernst Stahl's first book, the Zymotechnia Fundamentalis, in the context of contemporary natural philosophy and the author's career. I argue that the Zymotechnia was a mechanical theory of fermentation written consciously against the influential "fermentational program" of Joan Baptista van Helmont and especially Thomas Willis. Stahl's theory of fermentation introduced his first conception of phlogiston, which was in part a corpuscular transformation of the Paracelsian sulphur principle. Meanwhile some assumptions underlying this theory, such as the composition (...) of matter, the absolute passivity of matter and the "passions" of sulphur, reveal the combined scholastic and mechanistic character of Stahl's natural philosophy. In the conclusion I show that Stahl's theory of fermentation undermined the old fermentational program and paved the way for his dualist vitalism. (shrink)

The mechanical philosophy that emerged during the Scientific Revolution can be characterised as a reductionism according to which all physical phenomena are to be explained in terms of corpuscles of different sizes, shapes, and motions. It provided early modern natural philosophers with a unified view of nature that contrasted primarily with the Aristotelian view of nature, but also with other naturalist, hermetic, mystic, occultist, Paracelsian, and chymical accounts. Indeed, early modern natural philosophers devised mechanical explanations of almost every kind of (...) phenomena; even supranatural phenomena, such as transubstantiation, or phenomena today described as paranormal, like the action of sympathetic powder on a wound, the influence of the stars on terrestrial events, or the identification of thieves with a divining rod, were given mechanical explanations. Confronting this explanatory deluge, historians adopted two opposing narratives. The first narrative amounted to view the mechanical philosophy as a well-identified category that captured something about early modern natural philosophy. The critical narratives of the last thirty years, however, have deconstructed both the belief that it is an adequate historical category and the conviction that it made a positive contribution to the sciences. First, in an era that privileged microscopic case studies over sweeping panoramas, and emic over etic categories, ‘mechanical philosophy’ came to be thought of as lacking any real descriptive significance. Second, from an evaluative point of view, it has been claimed that the mechanical philosophy had no impact on the development of the new sciences. Considering these descriptive and evaluative challenges, taking the mechanical philosophy at face value is historically inadequate and philosophically naïve. Hence the questions addressed in this chapter: What to do with the mechanical philosophy? Does it have to be dropped completely as a category? And, if not, how is it to be used? My view is that it captures something of the transformations that we put under the umbrella of the Scientific Revolution, but that it is not possible to treat it as a naturally given category. Rather, to be employed usefully, it needs conceptual clarification and historical specification. (shrink)

This volume offers a revisionist interpretation of Paracelsus and Paracelsianism. It points to the need for a new historiographical approach to the man and his ideas, while demonstrating the value of seeing them in their totallity, as well as in their proper historical text.

During the Renaissance, the su was regarded primarily as a source of light which gave form to all things*; during the Enlightenment, paradoxically, the sun was regarded primarily as a source of heat. Paracelsian chemistry of the 1500s introduced salt as a third principle which embodied the other two, mercury and sulphur; salt was that universal mediating presence which represented earth. By the late 1700s salt was no longer a metaphysical principle but an acid-base compound, and volatile salts aroused most (...) interest. These changes in scientific perceptions of sun and salt ran parallel to one another: beginning as transcendent sources of form, sun and salt came to be considered manipulable sources of energy. Our r-;odern approach to energy derives from a period during which Europeans gradually lost their belief in the creative agency of two essentials to human life. (shrink)

The seventeenth century witnessed the transition from qualitative to quantitative physics. The very process was not easy and obvious and it consisted of discussions in many fields. One of them was the question about the nature of chemistry which was at the time undergoing some changes towards the form we know now. The main argument concerned the explanatory principles one should invoke to understand properly certain outcomes of chemical experiments. The present paper is a presentation of such an argument between (...) R. Boyle, a prominent proponent of corpuscular, quantitative principles and S. Duclos, an al-chymist and a proponent of paracelsian, qualitative ones. What is interesting, Duclos knew The Sceptical Chymist, Boyle’s main work which contained a severe critique of paracelsian chemistry, and a%empted to point out some weaknesses of Boyle’s own position. Duclos scrutinized Boyle’s experiments described in his Certain Physiological Essays and other works and argued for certain shortcomings of Boyle’s laboratory skills, his failure to indicate some literature sources and, first of all, insufficiency of Boyle’s arguments for the corpuscular thesis. According to Duclos, Boyle did not follow in laboratory certain procedures recommended by himself, using unclear notions and applying the corpuscular principles without proper justification. What is more, Duclos argued also in favour of paracelsian chymistry presenting some qualitative explanations in experiments in which Boyle failed to give quantitative ones. Knowing the further development of natural philosophy, it seems interesting to realize how complex it was. The present paper shows also how much irremovable from scientific research is the theoretical component. (shrink)

The article picks up the threads of especially Martin Muslow’s 1990s research and describes the distinctiveness of the “relational metaphysics of resemblance” in the middle of the seventeenth century. The late Renaissance metaphysical outlines, carried out in the Comenius circle, are characteristic for their relationality, accent on universal resemblance, providentialism, pansensism, sensualism, triadism – and also for their effort to define metaphysical terms properly. While Comenians share the last – and only the last – feature with Cartesians, they differ in (...) the other features. Therefore, Cartesians and Comenians cannot come to terms in the issue of the proper definitions either. Quite on the contrary, they oppose each other on this issue. By means of Johann Clauberg’s criticism of Georg Ritschel and René Descartes’s only supposedly “mysterious” and “solipsist” second meditation, the article turns a Cartesian mirror to the Comenian metaphysical project. In its light, the definitions of Georg Ritschel, Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld and Jan Amos Comenius turn out to be unacceptable for Cartesians (and also for Thomists and, in part, for Baconians). Despite their superficially Aristotelian-scholastic appearance, their content is notably Paracelsian-Campanellian (with a Timplerian foundation). Even though Comenian definitions of metaphysical terms had been refused and refuted by Cartesians, they experienced a second lifespan in their robust influence on Leibniz and Newton. (shrink)

Traditionally, the so-called ‘redintegration experiment’ is at the center of the comments on the supposed Boyle/Spinoza correspondence. A. Clericuzio argued (refuting the interpretation by R.A. & M.B. Hall) in his influential publications that, in De nitro, Boyle accounted for the ‘redintegration’ of saltpeter on the grounds of the chemical properties of corpuscles and did not make any attempt to deduce them from the mechanical principles. By contrast, this paper claims that with his De nitro Boyle wanted to illustrate and promote (...) precisely his new Corpuscular or Mechanical Philosophy, and that he did significant attempts to explain the phenomena in terms of mechanical qualities. Boyle had borrowed the ‘redintegration experiment’ from R. Glauber and used it as a tool to prove that his philosophy was the right alternative for the Peripatetic and Paracelsian theory of qualities of bodies. Consequently, Clericuzio’s characterization of the Boyle/Spinoza controversy as a discussion between a strict mechanical philosopher and a chemist is problematic and should be revised. (shrink)

Johannes Jessenius published the treatise on Causes of Sympathy and Antipathy in 1599 which was defended by his student and disciple Daniel Sennert. This disquisition provides interesting material with respect to the concept of natural philosophy and its development in both Jessenius and Sennert. Although Jessenius proclaims that he deals with the question of sympathy and antipathy generally in the Aristotelian manner, he simultaneously indicates the inspiration and main source of his disquisition, these having been lectures held by the Paracelsian (...) Tycho de Brahe. Jessenius, with the help of a distinction between occult and manifest qualities, connected in his disquisition the principles of Aristotelian naturalism with the Paracelsian notion of correspondences between the higher and lower world. Sennert in his later works finds the theory of sympathy, based on analogies or on the doctrine of occult qualities, incompatible with Aristotelian scientific methodology and thereby implicitly demonstrates the inconsistencies in Jessenius's disquisition. (shrink)

I argue in the paper that classical chemistry is a science predominantly concerned with material substances, both useful materials and pure chemical substances restricted to scientific laboratory studies. The central epistemological and methodological status of material substances corresponds with the material productivity of classical chemistry and its way of producing experimental traces. I further argue that chemist’s ‘pure substances’ have a history, conceptually and materially, and I follow their conceptual history from the Paracelsian concept of purity to the modern concept (...) of pure stoichiometric compounds. The history of the concept of ‘pure substances’ shows that modern chemists’ concept of purity abstracted from usefulness rather than being opposed to it. Thus modern chemists’ interest in pure chemical substances does not presuppose a concept of pure science. (shrink)

Jan Baptist van Helmont’s development of the Paracelsian theory of the Archeus is often considered uncomfortably close to the animist theory that the specificity of organic bodies is largely due to the soul. In this paper, I argue that the historical assimilation of these two positions is mistaken. I show that van Helmont introduced his theory of the Archeus on the grounds that it guaranteed that natural processes are properly natural, and that his theory was driven by a specific conception (...) of what it means for a process to be properly natural. I also argue that the specific way in which van Helmont developed his theory of the Archeus put him at odds with the more animist positions defended in his own time, and that he stressed rather than downplayed the efficacy of natural secondary causes. This analysis runs counter to both the long tradition of reading van Helmont’s theory as a species of animism, and the more recent tendency to stress those Christian dimensions of his thought that seem to imply the inefficacy of natural causes. (shrink)

Simon Forman, as Barbara Howard Traister puts it, “turned himself into text”: an obsessive writer, he left a cache of manuscripts, some of which—like the earliest surviving chronological case records—are of great historical value. Some of Forman's manuscripts are autobiographical, and it is for the more intimate details of his life that Forman has been known in recent years. He is “notorious” today largely for his sex life, being the subject of A. L. Rowse's well‐known study, Simon Forman: Sex and (...) Society in Shakespeare's Age . But Traister looks at Forman's manuscripts in their entirety, and the bulk of her book considers the intellectual and professional aspects of his medical and astrological practice. This provides a welcome counterweight to Rowse's account of Forman as well as some corrections to the fleeting and often misleading impressions given in other secondary literature.In so far as Forman's professional life is known, it is as a charlatan who preyed on the gullible to acquire fame, money, and sexual favors. From Traister's account there would seem to be a kernel of truth in this but a great deal of distortion too. Though by no means averse to taking payment “in kind” from the women he treated, Forman was a widely recognized authority on the diseases of women and his case notes show that he took his practice seriously. The same is true more generally of Forman's astrological practice , which was founded on a deep belief in the accuracy of astrological predictions. Indeed, Forman claimed that only through astrology could a physician successfully diagnose and treat disease.Forman was, however, a controversial figure in his own age, being “notorious” in the sense that he repeatedly fell foul of the London College of Physicians, which attempted to enforce its monopoly of medical practice in the English capital and its environs. Forman was brought before the college on several occasions for practicing without a license and received a number of fines and jail sentences for his repeated violations of the law. He was continually hounded and ridiculed by the college, partly because he was so successful. People—especially women—from all sections of English society came to consult Forman as a physician and astrologer, although it was largely for the former that he was venerated. Although he was mocked by the college for his ignorance of classical learning, Forman's medical knowledge was considerable, if not entirely systematic, though he lacked the necessary “polish” to present his knowledge in a manner acceptable to such a conservative body. Nevertheless, Forman's medical reputation was sufficiently impressive for him to be granted a license to practice by Cambridge University, after what was most likely a serious examination.Forman's case notes show that he worked within a largely Galenic framework, and most of his treatments aimed at restoring humoral equilibrium. But, like many other practitioners of the time, he embellished his practice with chemical drug therapies; and there is evidence that he incorporated Paracelsian ideas. His case notes are so valuable because they show Forman's knowledge and practice evolving steadily over time: a development that is evident, for example, in his writings on plague. His first essay on plague was composed during the London epidemic of 1593, his second during the outbreak of 1607. The former treated the disease astrologically and theologically, seeing the epidemic as a form of divine punishment for the sins of mankind. The second dealt with the physical nature of the disease and its immediate causes. The two works should not be seen as set in opposition to one another, for they dealt with different features of a complex web of causation, with the increasing concern related to natural causes typifying much of the writing on plague at this time. Growing familiarity with plague—which typically broke out in major cities every ten years or so—permitted closer observation of the disease as a natural phenomenon. Forman was well placed to do this because he remained in London during both outbreaks, a decision that did much to enhance his professional reputation and expand his clientele.The importance of Forman's manuscript collection ensures that this book will reach a wide readership, and few will be disappointed. The author writes clearly, with sophistication and insight, and avoids the anachronistic sensationalism of earlier accounts. As might be expected from the title, the book is especially enlightening about medical astrology, the dominant aspect of Forman's professional life. It is interesting to read this account alongside Michael MacDonald's study of Richard Napier—Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth Century England —for there are many areas of commonality as well as significant differences. All in all, this is a truly fascinating book. Historians of medicine and astrology will find much in it that is relevant to their own areas of specialization. (shrink)

This book addresses two related generalizations that persist in the history of seventeenth‐century chemistry, both of which are crucial to the canonical narrative of the scientific revolution. The first is that the experimental program of Robert Boyle led him to abandon the Aristotelian and Paracelsian chemical theories of his predecessors and adopt a reductionist, materialist matter theory from the French mechanical philosophers Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes, forever changing the nature of chemical theory and paving the way for the modernization (...) of chemistry during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The second is that the theories of Gassendi and Descartes were unequivocally “mechanical” and reflect the reemergence and supervention of classical atomism over alchemical and vitalist ontologies. Both of these generalizations have been successfully challenged in the past fifteen years. The present book collects and explicates these findings, while focusing on Robert Boyle and the legacy of his matter theory for late seventeenth‐century European chemistry. In the end, Antonio Clericuzio shows that Cartesian mechanical philosophy did not have a decisive impact on the matter theory of the chemists who held onto chemical principles and qualities even as they adopted various forms of Boyle's corpuscular hypothesis.In an able historiographical overview, Clericuzio shows how Boyle was thrust into the mainstream of revolutionary science by Thomas Kuhn, Marie Boas, and A. R. Hall, who depended on an eighteenth‐century construction of Boyle that suited the needs of the experimentalism and materialism of Enlightenment science but hardly reflected the thinking of Boyle and his contemporaries, as is evident in the texts cited here. In fact, Boyle did not rigorously apply mechanical philosophy to his chemistry and medicine, as he did to his physics, and he fashioned his corpuscularist matter theory from the active seminal principles of the Paracelsians and Helmontians as well as the atoms of Epicurean theory and the minima naturalia of medieval Aristotelian alchemy. William Newman and Lawrence Principe have recently argued the importance of the medieval alchemists' materialism for seventeenth‐century chemistry, and Newman has credited J. B. Van Helmont and Daniel Sennert with forging medieval corpuscular minima into the corpuscles adopted by Boyle, but here Clericuzio argues that corpuscles were hardly evident in sixteenth‐century alchemy, that Van Helmont's theory was not truly corpuscular, and that Sennert's corpuscles still possessed Aristotelian forms. This matter awaits resolution.One of the strengths of this book is Clericuzio's treatment of the pre‐Boylean developments within chemical theory, documenting that corpuscularism did not emerge from the classical atomism of the French mechanists but evolved from various considerations of alchemical and Paracelsian theory, combined with Aristotelian natural philosophy. In the first place, the idea of semina, which Boyle explained as corpuscles endowed with generative power and specific developmental programming, was clearly present in chemical philosophy from Paracelsus and Petrus Severinus to Van Helmont, whose influence on Boyle and his contemporaries is now well established. Moreover, a materialized version of semina already existed in the medical theory of Girolamo Fracastoro, who adapted the idea from Lucretius. As well, semina were being corpuscularized and materialized in the early part of the century, as reflected in treatises by Nicholas Hill.One cannot expect a book of such wide‐ranging scholarship to reflect all of the recent literature in the field, but the author's failure to engage Barbara Beigun Kaplan's study of Boyle is unfortunate, both because her work speaks directly to the perspectives on Boyle that are treated here and because points on which their accounts differ need clarification. In sum, Clericuzio's book presents a much‐needed rectification of the entrenched Enlightenment view of Boyle and the development of corpuscular chemistry but is not the last word on Boyle's relationship to his predecessors' ideas on matter. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to investigate paths along which a transformation of the doctrine of natural signs was developed in works by Paracelsians, forming one of the main religious and philosophic currents of Late Renaissance. The modifications of the doctrine are discussed in a context of intensive speculations on the essence of the primordial language of humankind and on the possibility of its restoration, which can describe the intellectual life of that epoch. It is argued that within “chemical (...) philosophy” the possibility of restoration of the Adamic language directly depends on mastering the art of interpreting natural signs, which can give a key to correct understanding of nature. And shifts in the conceptualization of such signatures involved transformations in formulating and solving of the Adamistic problems, which did not exclude reverse causation. It is also ascertained that the most orthodox followers of Paracelsus usually appealed to the Adamistic narrative in order to reinforce legitimacy of the symbolic hermeneutics of nature, developed with chiefly medico-pharmacological purposes. Meanwhile, relatively more independent Paracelsians often paid more attention to linguo-philosophic issues. Realizing the deficiency of the doctrine of signatures for reconstruction of the primordial language, they postulated the necessity of one of the following premises: supplementing the doctrine with a mystical illumination; acceptance of a weaker version, according to which natural signs are just sparse reference points slightly simplifying empirical study of nature; abandonment of search for the Ursprache and constructing its artificial substitute, a universal semiotic system. (shrink)

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, or Paracelsus, was a renowned physician and naturalist, reformer of Galenic medicine, and violent opponent of scholasticism. His writings and teachings were contemporaneous with the Lutheran reformation and the northern Renaissance humanism of Cornelius Agrippa and Erasmus. Paracelsus’s rejection of ancient wisdom and the classicist philology of his day as viable avenues of knowledge, however, contradicts the Renaissance humanist epithet sometimes associated with him. Though traditionally painted as a “lonely genius” and a “martyr of (...) natural science” for his fractious relations with the medical establishments of his day, and thereby crowned as an agent of progress and a precursor of modern science, Paracelsian natural philosophy owes far more to mystical intuition than to any experimental scientific method currently understood. In this respect he was as much an influence on German mystics such as Jacob Boehme and later German Romanticism as he was on J. B. von Helmont, the seventeenth century Paracelsian chemist who first articulated the concept of ‘gas’. However, Paracelsian thought does not readily conform either to the Reformation or to Renaissance humanism, the two landmarks convenient to a general appreciation of the intellectual landscape in his day. Of course, such historical labels are the products of hindsight, and held little or no meaning among thinkers of the day: any attempt to define Paracelsus’ thought according to such a continuum is moot. He is best appreciated as an iconoclast: an eclectic non-partisan. As the author of the present study claims, Paracelsus was “an errant star in the firmament of sixteenth century aspirations” ; later in the work he emerges as “an idiosyncratic creature of the early Reformation”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Book Reviews The Growth of Medical Thought. By Lester S. King. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Pp. ix + 254. $5.50.) The author of this book is "a pathologist with a background in history and philosophy," to quote from the jacket. This combination of interests is reflected in the Preface itself, where it is stated, "The history of medicine is part of the history of ideas." However, the (...) text itself, unfortunately, is too episodic in treatment and too homiletic in tone to do justice to the explicit goal the author sets for himself at the very outset, which is "to indicate the growth of medical science and the patterns of medical doctrine," by a consideration of a few key figures in the history of Western medicine who represent certain distinct trends in medical theory. In his previous book, The Medical World of the 18th Century (1958), the author likened the historian to the photographer, but he forgot to bring out that a good historian needs (to exploit his own analogy) a movie camera in order to exhibit adequately the growth of things. An ordinary camera will not do for historiography. The volume opens with ancient Greek medicine and ends with the pioneers in molecular pathology. In the present reviewer's opinion, the most effective chapters of the book are the ones dealing with two of the most controversial figures in the whole history of medicine, namely, Galen and Paracelsus. For there more than anywhere else in the book, we learn the sobering lesson that just because, say, Galen's "doctrine of faculties" in Roman medicine is "wrong" (that is, false in fact), from the standpoint of modern science, is no reason for calling it "foolish" (that is, false in theory) --Moli~re to the contrary notwithstanding (p. 77). While Galen's Aristotelian "modes of thought may seem somewhat strange to us," Dr. King insists, "we must preserve a judicious historical attitude" (p. 49) towards them just the same, if our objective is to understand their raison d'etre in the first place. He uses the same criterion with respect to Paracelsus, even though he spoils his case a bit by contradicting himself concerning that bombastic figure of Renaissance medicine, describing him on one page as "essentially a poet and not a scientist or philosopher" (p. 125), and then declaring on another that he "was at heart a philosopher" (p. 137). Now, no matter whether we agree with the author's interpretation of Paracelsus as a "Neo-Platonist" in medicine, he deserves credit for discussing [2s7] 238 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that enigmatic Swiss iatrochemist sympathetically. In any event, Dr. King's sympathetic approach to Paracelsus manages to throw considerable light on the Paracelsian advice to all future physicians: Don't read books! Read the stars, but read them "in Neo-Platonic fashion" (p. 114)! While the author is "judicious" about Galen and Paracelsus in particular, he is far from being so when it comes to Friedrich Hoffmann, a medical materialist and "systematist" from Halle in the eighteenth century. Paradoxically enough, Dr. King has a marked antipathy for the doctor of "sympathy " himself (p. 173). Incidentally, the only other physician in the book who is not liked--apparently for his being polemical (p. 215)--is a famous fellow-pathologist of the last century, Rudolf Virchow. Still, it is only fair to add that the author acknowledges fully Virchow's important contributions to the field of cellular pathology. Finally, Dr. King not only has his likes and dislikes as to the medical men he actually selects from modern medicine to represent changes in theory of disease, but he seems also to have a definite bias in another and more serious sense. With the exception of the Epilogue and Chapter IV, which includes Vesalius and Harvey as well as Hoffmann, all the episodes of modern medicine deemed worthy of study derive from the Germanic world. Curiously enough, although there is no discussion of the germ theory of disease as such in the book, there is mention of Koch, but not of Pasteur. And French physiologist Claude Bernard, the great medical philosopher who tried to do in the nineteenth century for scientific medicine what... (shrink)