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ISBN: HB: 9780226700786

University of Chicago Press

January 2021

504 pp.

22.8x15.2 cm

16 halftones, 6 line drawings

HB:
£36,00
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Transmutations of Chymistry

Wilhelm Homberg and the Academie Royale des Sciences

This book reevaluates the changes to chemistry that took place from 1660 to 1730 through a close study of the chymist Wilhelm Homberg (1653-1715) and the changing fortunes of his discipline at the Academie Royale des Sciences, France's official scientific body. By charting Homberg's remarkable life from Java to France's royal court, and his endeavor to create a comprehensive theory of chymistry (including alchemical transmutation), Lawrence M. Principe reveals the period's significance and reassesses its place in the broader sweep of the history of science. Principe, the leading authority on the subject, recounts how Homberg's radical vision promoted chymistry as the most powerful and reliable means of understanding the natural world. Homberg's work at the Academie and in collaboration with the future regent, Philippe II d'Orleans, as revealed by a wealth of newly uncovered documents, provides surprising new insights onto the broader changes chymistry underwent during and immediately after Homberg. A human, disciplinary, and institutional biography, "The Transmutations of Chymistry" significantly revises what was previously known about the contours of chymistry and scientific institutions in the early eighteenth century.

About the Author

Lawrence M. Principe is the Drew Professor of the Humanities in the Department of the History of Science and Technology and the Department of Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. His books include "Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry", also published by the University of Chicago Press.