Greg+Silva+-+Book+Review,+Atoms+and+Alchemy,+by+William+R.+Newman

To most, alchemy represents the epitome of greed and mysticism. Indeed, it is often portrayed in modern culture as the quest for the all-powerful philosopher’s stone, capable of turning common metals to gold, curing all diseases, and a myriad of seemingly miraculous or impossible deeds. However, as William R. Newman argues in his work, //Atoms and Alchemy//, and I believe rightly so, the truth behind alchemy lies far from this almost mythical pursuit. According to the arguments Newman presents in //Atoms and Alchemy//, the truth as uncovered from philosophical, alchemical, and early scientific works strongly indicates that alchemy, particularly developments from the thirteenth century through the seventeenth century, is the continuous precursor to the modern chemistry often attributed to Robert Boyle, and played a significant role in the period now described as the “Scientific Revolution.” Chemistry can find both its corpuscular (made of minute objects resistant to analysis) and empirical roots in alchemical practices, and owes much of its fundamental knowledge to alchemy.

To understand how chemistry emerged from alchemy, however, the modern reader needs to understand how alchemy emerged before chemistry as a scientific and philosophical pursuit (in other words, not the practice of making fake gold; scams like this have existed as long as greed has), as Newman discusses in the first section of //Atoms and Alchemy//. Alchemy, and later chemistry, both sought to explain the nature of matter itself; what it was made of, how things turned into other things, etc. Newman cites two classical thinkers, Democritus and Aristotle, as the primary sources of information and contention within the alchemical tradition in the later middle ages and early modern times. Democritus, the predecessor to Aristotle, believed that all matter was composed of indivisible atoms and void in between, and that many aspects of the natural world could be explained by the varying shapes, sizes, and interactions between these atoms. Aristotle, despite rejecting Democritus’s theory of indivisible atoms, still upheld in his work, //Meteorology//, that all matter could be described in terms of corpuscles and pores. Aristotle further argued, using the elements of earth, water, fire, and air with the corresponding primary attributes of cold/dry, cold/wet, hot/dry, and hot/wet, that these elements combine to form the rest of matter by forming mixtures that are completely homogenous in nature (note that the alchemical definitions of “mixture” as purely homogenous and “compound” as heterogeneous are virtually the exact opposites of their meanings in chemistry today). According to Aristotle’s //De generatione et corruption,// when the elements (or two different types of matter), unite in perfect homogeneous mixture, the original ingredients of the mixture are corrupted and irretrievable. This definition of matter would become the point of enormous contention through the entirety of medieval alchemical tradition.

Newman, continuing to elaborate on the roots of chemistry, then cites several medieval alchemists and scholars, and their contributions to and against corpuscular and empirical alchemical theory. Of these thinkers, the most significant to the development of (and opposition to) corpuscular and empirical alchemy were Geber, an early figure that Newman considers to be the first empiricist alchemist, and Thomas Aquinas, a scholastic who opposed Geber’s matter theory in favor of substantial form. Geber, in his most significant contribution to alchemy, the //Summa perfectionis//, argued that extremely small elementary particles combined in very strong composition to form matter. He followed with experiments involving the heating of various materials, including mercury and sulfur. Geber noted, in particular, that mercury and sulfur that was heated in his alembic (an alchemical instrument for subliming (evaporating) and condensing matter) condensed in the form of tiny droplets and powdery “flowers” (Newman 29) respectively. He used this and the fact that other metals form a calx when heated to infer that base metals were made of mercury, which left the metal when heated, and both volatile and nonvolatile sulfur. Geber also used this information to support many corpuscular arguments. The fact that mercury and at least some sulfur seemed to quickly leave metals was supported by the claim that mercury and some sulfur particles were subtle or small in size, and could easily work their way out of the pores in the impurities in base metals.

Newman then introduces the major source of scholastic opposition to Geber’s work in the late medieval period, Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas argued that matter requires an additional component alongside the four elements, a substantial form, to make it into a true mixture or new material. While this lead to a division in scholastics between unitists, who believed only one substantial forms could exist in an object, and pluralists, who believed that many substantial forms could exist in an object, both sides of the division argued for a formation into mixture based on Aristotle, in which the preceding elements are immediately destroyed and the substantial form/forms is/are imposed. This leaves no room for the intermediate mercury or sulfur corpuscles that Geber supported.

Before Newman explains the theories of Daniel Sennert, whom Newman believes to be a very strong influence on Boyle’s works, he finishes his summary of alchemical and scholastic argument with the figures during the early modern period up to Sennert’s life in the early 17th century. Paracelsus von Hohenheim proposed, as many later followed and opposed, that the fundamental alchemical (and therefore material) process was “Scheidung” (Newman 45), or separation. Paracelsus insisted on the retrievability of initial ingredients from chemical reactions, and suggested that those ingredients are at least semi-permanent.

The main opponent to Paracelsus’s theory, Thomas Erastus, argued that ingredients in mixtures were irretrievable, as Aristotle had proposed. He continues, in an all out assault on the validity of chemistry, to assert his Reditus principle. Erastus’s Reditus principle stated that, with the exception of the four basic elements, matter had a linear, non-reversible progression and that in order to reach a proximal state of matter (i.e. turn vinegar into wine), the mixture had to be resolved entirely to its elements before being mixed again.

In turn, Paracelsus’s main supporter, Andreas Libavius, promoted the importance of Paracelsus’s concept of Sheidung. Libavius extended this concept to include the processes of synkrisis (bringing together) and diakrisis (pulling apart) of corpuscles in alchemical processes such as dissolution, distillation, and evaporation. Libavius explicitly argued in favor of the presence of atoms that operate using synkrisis and diakrisis, and argued that these atoms are themselves perfect mixtures and undergo no further mixture (in the Aristotelian sense). Libavius further argued that the mere presence of elements in atoms is not enough to distinguish all of their traits, and that all atoms possess semina, or seeds, that hold the innate and permanent qualities of matter.

After finishing this extensive background in Alchemy, Newman shifts his focus in the second section of //Atoms and Alchemy// to the person who could be called the “missing link” between alchemy and chemistry, Daniel Sennert. Sennert combined many of the corpuscular and empirical ideas of his alchemical predecessors into a cohesive and effective theory supported with empirical evidence that rendered many scholastic alternatives obsolete. Like Libavius, Sennert argued that matter was composed of atoms that interacted by coming together and coming apart (Sennert also adds a third interaction, the immutation or rearrangement of atoms). Further, Sennert argued, similarly to Libavius’s semina, that these atoms possessed “occult” (Newman 139) qualities that explained phenomena such as magnetism that could not easily be explained by structural or elemental causes. Sennert’s atomism was based on a negative empirical system that formed the basis of modern chemistry and subatomic physics. Sennert argued that since certain things, such as mercury in an alembic, completely resisted any effort to analyze their composition; it followed that these resistant things must be fundamental matter. Sennert supports his claim using experiments, similar to ones performed by an earlier alchemist, Paul of Taranto, that caused “reduction to the pristine state” (Newman 99). Sennert’s first experiment uses aqua fortis (nitric acid) to dissolve silver, passes the solution through filter paper, and uses salt of tartar (potassium carbonate) to precipitate a calx from the solution. Heating the calx (silver carbonate) yields the original silver. Sennert’s second experiment places electrum, an alloy of gold and silver, into aqua fortis, dissolving the silver and leaving behind the gold. In a similar manner to his first experiment, he regains the silver. These experiments, combined, both strongly support the claims of extremely small atoms that are the basis of modern chemistry and render other theories of matter, particularly that of substantial forms and mixtures, unable to explain the phenomenon in a satisfactory way. Thus, Newman argues, using empirical data, Sennert laid the corpuscular foundations for modern chemistry as developed by Robert Boyle and later figures.

As Newman describes in the final section of //Atoms and Alchemy//, Boyle, despite efforts to associate himself with the “new science” of the later 17th century, drew all of his empirical evidence for the existence of atoms from Sennert’s “reduction to the pristine state” (Newman 99), and, lacking a mechanical explanation for many phenomena in nature, was forced to conclude that many properties of atoms were essential to their being, as Sennert’s occult qualities had done. Newman concludes that the early modern chemist who often receives credit for founding modern chemistry drew his conclusions from the work of Sennert and other alchemists, rather than eschewing their beliefs in favor of a totally mechanical world.

Newman’s //Atoms and Alchemy// presents a compelling and detailed argument that alchemy was the precursor to and a strong influence on modern chemistry. After reading this book, I believe that I can appreciate alchemy for its scientific nature, rather than the mystical nature that modern society often attributes to it, and I can only hope, like Newman, that history learns to favor alchemy and respect its place in the turbulent shift known as the Scientific Revolution.