EPILOGUE
If the chemical philosophy seemed a plausible alter-
native to the work of the mechanical philosophers in
the middle
decades of the seventeenth century, this
alternative did not remain a
viable one for long. The
impressive results of the
mechanists—culminating in
the
Principia mathematica of Isaac
Newton
(1687)—stamped on “respectable”
natural philosophy
the mathematical abstraction of the new physics.
And
yet, this is not to say that alchemical thought died after
a final
flowering in the sixteenth and the seventeenth
centuries. The collection of
manuscripts at King's Col-
lege, Cambridge
leaves little doubt that Isaac Newton
was passionately concerned with the
traditional prob-
lems of transmutation.
Furthermore, recent research
indicates that Newton's alchemical
speculations may
have been instrumental in the crystallization of some
of his more acceptable concepts of physics. Similarly,
Robert Boyle was
influenced by alchemical thought.
He published on the degradation of silver
and his
theoretical views were strongly influenced by his early
reading of van Helmont. However, it is possible to go
beyond these
examples. Alchemical works were written
by the important practical chemist,
Johann Rudolf
Glauber and the medical chemistry of the Renaissance
alchemists found a new proponent in the revision of
Franciscus Sylvius de
la Böe whose work went through
numerous seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century edi-
tions. In like manner
many elements of Paracelsian
chemistry were retained in somewhat altered
form in
the texts of the eighteenth-century phlogiston chemists.
At
the same time the German revival of alchemy and
Rosicrucianism stimulated a
new interest in earlier
interpretations of a vitalistic and mystically
oriented
universe. The impact of this on the growth of the
nineteenth-century
Naturphilosophie has yet to be as-
sessed.
Many characteristic themes of alchemical thought
and style are present in
the earliest texts that have
survived. Both the secrecy and the practical
recipes
of the metallic craft tradition are evident in the works
of
the late Hellenistic authors dating from the late third
and the fourth
centuries A.D. The allegorical and sym-
bolical style of later alchemical works is also present
here, and
this is a reflection of the mystical tenor of
the current philosophies and
religions of the late Em-
pire. The medical theme
is absent in the Greek tradi-
tion and this
seems to have been derived from Eastern
sources. First found in Chinese
alchemical works em-
phasizing the
lengthening of life and the search for
immortality, medical alchemy was
integrated first into
Islamic and then into Western alchemy and medicine.
There is little doubt that alchemy, understood in its
broadest sense as a
chemical key to nature, played a
significant role in the development of the
Scientific
Revolution. The claim that this mystical science should
replace the Aristotelianism and Galenism of the schools
was looked on with
dismay by early seventeenth-
century
mechanists who were forced to clarify their
own views in their attacks on authors such as Paracelsus
and
Robert Fludd. At the same time, however, the
chemical and alchemical call
for a new science based
on new observations in nature was important in
a
period that witnessed an ever-lessening adherence to
scholastic
authority. Finally, the Paracelsian and iatro-
chemical adoption of the primary goal of the medical
alchemy of
the Middle Ages resulted in the permanent
acceptance of chemistry as a
legitimate tool of the
physician and the pharmacist.
