Chemistry and the universities in the seventeenth century

Abstract

T he appointment of de Renault as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Louvain in 1685 reflected more than a century of debate in European-learned circles (1). The followers of the Swiss-German reformer Paracelsus (1493-1541) had seen in chemistry-and alchemy-a new foundation for learning (2). Paracelsus had burned the Canon of Avicenna publically in 1527 at Basel and his followers rejected the Aristotelian-Galenic tradition of the universities. They saw little value in disputations or the study of logic and they sought an alternative to the four elements in Natural Philosophy and their attendant humors in medicine. They scorned the reading of the books of the ancient philosophers and saw truth primarily in the two books of Divine Revelation, the Bible and the Book of Creation or Nature. * Conferência do Mês do IEA/USP feita pelo autor no dia 10 de setembro de 1990.

Discipline Dynamics of Chymistry and Rejection of Alchemy

“…For example, Johann Hartmann was appointed as professor of chymiatria in 1609 at Marburg. This was likely not an exceptional event and suggests that chymistry for medicinal applications could have gained a foothold in universities years earlier (Debus, 1990;Frietsch, 2021). Chymistry as a whole, however, did not become firmly established in European universities until the later half of the century.…”

Testing the New World: early modern chemistry and mineral prospection at colonial Jamestown, 1607–1610

“…The investigation of one of the most intriguing and well-preserved of such contexts, the laboratory of Oberstockstall in Austria, revealed intricate details of a consistent assaying and cupellation procedure, as well as some experiments that deviated from the codified practice of contemporary manuals (Mongiatti et al 2009a, b ). Experimentation was also at the heart of Oxford's Old Ashmolean laboratory, home of the first chair of Chemistry in England in the 1680s (Gunther, 1923(Gunther, -1945Sherwood Taylor 1949;Debus 1990;Roos 2014). The analysis of the ceramic tools recovered archaeologically revealed that a startling variety of processes were being carried out, from zinc distillation to the production of lead crystal and glass enamels (Martinón-Torres 2012; Veronesi 2019).…”