Doctoral Dissertation Research: Bringing Chemistry into Shape: the Chymico-Medical Arts in Early-Modern Germany

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

Recent research in the history of science has demonstrated the importance of chymistry to the dramatic intellectual and cultural changes that took place from the sixteenth century through the eighteenth century. (The term "chymistry" denotes the discipline of alchemy; it was widely used in seventeenth-century England.) Despite a renewal of interest in the history of chymistry, many of its most important figures and institutions remain untouched by historians. This is not only problematic for the larger history of chemistry, but for our general understanding of the period known as the Scientific Revolution. One of the most important (though neglected) institutions in which chymistry developed in the early modern period was the German university. This project will expand our understanding of the trajectory of Germany university chymistry by focusing on the Wittenberg medical professor, Daniel Sennert, and his students (especially Werner Rolfinck). Sennert was one of the first to import chymistry into medical teachings at early modern universities. Through investigating Sennert as a key figure around which early seventeenth-century chymistry developed, this project will examine the relationship between chymistry, medicine, experimentation, empiricism, and the decline of Aristotelianism. Through an analysis of multiple neglected chymical and medical texts, including published student dissertations and manuscript material, this study will demonstrate how chymistry evolved in the seventeenth-century university. The intellectual merit of this project has several facets. It will serve to revitalize interest in important early modern individuals and pedagogical systems. Its historiographical approach will uncover the cultural, intellectual, and social practices and assumptions that supported university chymistry. It will also be used to examine chymistry as a serious, empirical endeavor. Taking chymical investigation and pedagogy within a particular institution as a focal point will provide a much-needed narrative about the development of early modern chymistry. A socially and culturally sensitive history of Sennert's circle will uncover the driving forces behind the ascendancy of chymistry within the university, as well as the traditions that attended the rise of modern chemistry. The project has several potential broader impacts. It will provide insights concerning how changes in pedagogical structures and practices were related to experimentation as well as to shifting social forces outside the university. The role of chymistry at early modern universities will have bearing on a number of disciplines including the history of education, religious studies, philosophy, and the history of medicine and public health. In addition, because experimentation is a focal point of this study, an examination of the practices of early modern chymists will provide valuable insights for present-day education and the public for better understanding of science and its history.