Alchemy Vs. Chemistry: the Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake1

Abstract

The parallel usage of the two terms "alchemy" and "chemistry" by seventeenth-century writers has engendered considerable confusion among historians of science. Many historians have succumbed to the temptation of assuming that the early modern term "chemistry" referred to something like the modern discipline, while supposing that "alchemy" pertained to a different set of practices and beliefs, predominantly the art of transmuting base metals into gold. This paper provides the first exhaustive analysis of the two terms and their interlinguistic cognates in the seventeenth century. It demonstrates that the intentional partition of the two terms with the restriction of alchemy to the sense of metallic transmutation was not widely accepted until the end of the seventeenth century, if even then. The major figure in the restriction of meaning, Nicholas Lemery, built on a spurious interpretation of the Arabic definite article al, which he inherited from earlier sources in the chemical textbook tradition. In order to curtail the tradition of anachronism and distortion engendered by the selective use of the terms "alchemy" and "chemistry" by historians, the authors conclude by suggesting a return to seventeenth-century terminology for discussing the different aspects of the early modern discipline "chymistry."

Some Recent Developments in the Historiography of Alchemy

“…1998. 18 In this article, Newman and Principe take a fresh look at the old topic of the relationship between alchemy and chemistry, once again revisiting the etymology, but combining it with a historiographical review. They make the strong claim that, prior to the eighteenth century, the terms "alchemy" and "chemistry" were largely synonymous; when discrimination was made between the two, this was generally based on contingent criteria that were individual to each author and different from the present ones.…”

The “System of Chymists” and the “Newtonian dream” in Greek-speaking Communities in the 17th–18th Centuries

“…In France, in the frames of Academie, N. Lemery played a protagonistic role in the shaping of a didactic tradition of ''chymia,'' 2 as a result of the novel natural philosophy (Newman and Principe 1998), in the development of which a leading role played the geometrical predicates. The concepts of affinity, attraction and repulsion were absent, and the only idea which existed was the violent destruction of rearranged particles.…”

De los dioses a los hombres: Un recorrido histórico del descubrimiento de los elementos químicos

“…Se cree que fueron los árabes quienes acuñaron el término Al-kimiya o Arte sagrado, que los traductores latinos transformaron en alkimia, alquimia, alchimia o alchemia. En árabe, el prefijo Al es el artículo determinado para el sustantivo griego chêmeia, que era la palabra empleada para designar a la fundición de metales (Newman & Principe, 1998).…”