1989
DOI: 10.1086/355083
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Technology and Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract: An earlier version of the article won the Schuman Prize in 1986. 1 Lynn White, jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962). A generally positive assessment of White's work can be found in Brian Stock, "Science, Technology, and Economic Progress in the Early Middle Ages," in Science in the Middle Ages, ed. David C. Lindberg (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 1-51. For general treatments of medieval technology, see Bertrand Gille, Histoire ge'nerale des techniques, ed. Ma… Show more

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Cited by 76 publications
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“…Na Renascença a imitação para os artesãos era vista como boa prática, associada à novidade e à inovação, bem como à invenção propriamente (Newman, 1989). Ou seja, na época a imitação era considerada como manifestação de trabalho artístico, demandando experimentação e imaginação.…”
Section: Inovação E Construção Do Conhecimentounclassified
“…Na Renascença a imitação para os artesãos era vista como boa prática, associada à novidade e à inovação, bem como à invenção propriamente (Newman, 1989). Ou seja, na época a imitação era considerada como manifestação de trabalho artístico, demandando experimentação e imaginação.…”
Section: Inovação E Construção Do Conhecimentounclassified
“…Threats faced mechanical philosophers not only from mechanicks, who had privileged knowledge of the machines now seen as the basic components of the universe, but from chemical philosophers, who had never distinguished between artificial and natural objects, and who had long prized the role of art and technology in philosophy. 4 The recent introduction of alchemy to the academy had elevated the authority of chemical knowledge for a wide philosophical audience. 5 Although the alchemical work of practising alchemists such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton has now received attention, alchemy still often appears irrelevant to the historiography of non-alchemical concerns such as mechanics and the mechanical philosophy.Such irrelevance is an artifact of a purposeful re-interpretation, which was every…”
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confidence: 99%
“…The historical reason was that the claim of perfecting and surpassing nature was already highly debated before in the field of metallic transmutation. Indeed, any simple chemical transformation was suspected to be a presumptuous change of the divine creation against God's wills up to the 18th century (Newman 1989, Obrist 1996, Karpenko 1998, Schummer 2003a. Therefore, the homunculus could become an emblem of the hubris of alchemy altogether, which, as may be recalled, was the prototype of all laboratory sciences.…”
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confidence: 99%