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Lecture

Newton's Alchemical Experiments: Unveiling the Liquor of Antimony

In courses (2)

HUM-402: Experimental history of science I

The course allows students to learn by doing about the history of science, and the role played by experimentation, technical skills or material objects in the production of knowledge. Students will explore these topics by reconstructing a historical experi ...

HUM-466: Experimental history of science II

Description

This lecture delves into Newton's 30 years of research in alchemy, exploring his laboratory records, techniques, and influences from figures like Robert Boyle. It discusses Boyle's experiments, alchemical principles, and Newton's reenactment of them. The identity of the liquor of antimony is scrutinized, along with Newton's meticulous approach to experiments. The lecture concludes by highlighting the challenges in deciphering Newton's notebooks and the necessity of replicating his experiments to understand his thought process.

Instructors (2)

Simon François Dumas Primbault

Simon holds a PhD in the history of science from the joint programme of the European University Institute (EUI, Florence) and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, Paris). His doctoral dissertation focused on the drafts and working papers belonging to two natural philosophers of the second half of the 17th century – Galileo’s last disciple Vincenzio Viviani in Florence and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in Hannover – and could be described as a work of historical anthropology of knowledge. By addressing the ink-and-paper materiality of these supposedly purely intellectual operations that scatter the mechanical and physico-mathematical papers of Viviani and Leibniz, he aims at seizing knowledge and scholars in statu nascendi. Studying closely down to the most subtle details of the activity of the scholars’ hands on the paper of their notes, and with the support of anthropology, history of art, literature, or history of emotions, Simon hopes to flesh out anew a historical epistemology too conceptual and positivist still.

Ion-Gabriel Mihailescu

Official source

Related concepts (11)

Alchemy

Alchemy (from Arabic: al-kīmiyā; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, khumeía) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD. Alchemists attempted to purify, mature, and perfect certain materials. Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation of "base metals" (e.

Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His pioneering book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, consolidated many previous results and established classical mechanics.

Experiment

An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a particular factor is manipulated. Experiments vary greatly in goal and scale but always rely on repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results. There also exist natural experimental studies.

Historiography

Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic by using particular sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches. Scholars discuss historiography by topic—such as the historiography of the United Kingdom, that of WWII, the pre-Columbian Americas, early Islam, and China—and different approaches and genres, such as political history and social history.

Scientific method

The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific method for additional detail.) It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation.

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