Alchemy ...

Alchemy really falls in the portfolio of the Cliopatriach of Wales, but she's off gossiping with a former roomate, so here goes: Brandon at Siris points to the fascinating work of William Newman, professor of the history and philosophy of science at Indiana University, who is exploring Sir Isaac Newton's interest in alchemy. Newman comes to it as the biographer of George Starkey (1628-1665), who was born in Bermuda and educated at Harvard. After moving to England in 1650 and writing as Eirenaeus Philolethes, Starkey promoted interest in alchemy. He convinced Sir Isaac Newton"that most of ancient Greco-Roman mythology was really encoded alchemy."

The story that Vulcan, the husband of Venus, caught Venus and Mars in bed, in flagrante delictu, became for him (and for Newton), a recipe for"the Net." According to the myth, Vulcan made a fine metallic net and hung the two lovers from the ceiling for all the Olympians to see. Now in alchemy,"Venus" usually means" copper,""Mars" means"iron," and"Vulcan" means"fire." Hence"Venus" referred to the copper in the alloy, and"Vulcan" to the intense heat used in making it. Since the antimony regulus that is added to the copper is itself reduced from stibnite (antimony sulfide) by the addition of iron,"Mars" (iron) was thought to be present in"the Net" as well. Voila - the whole myth becomes a recipe for"the Net."

"The net" is a copper/antimony alloy. Starkey and Newton believed that because"metals could be made to grow in a flask ... that they possessed a sort of life, and could therefore be made to ferment, putrefy, and ultimately multiply."

Here is where Newman's story becomes fascinating. With his background as Starkey's biographer, Newman establishes a cooperative relationship with The Newton Project at Imperial College in London, which is making the huge corpus of Newton's written work available on the net. Then, Newman reaches out to other resources at Indiana University to reproduce Sir Isaac Newton's experiments in alchemy. Working with the University's Pottery Studio, he has reproduced a facsimile of Newton's laboratory furnace; and, working with the chemistry department, Newman is reproducing the experiments which Newton had conducted.

This strikes me as a model of an extraordinary teaching and learning experience in history. Mobilizing expertise, resources, scholarship, and a sense of wonder makes it possible to enter into the very experiences and thought processes of science remote from our own, in a world not nearly so certain that there were clear lines of distinction between"science", which is respectable, and"pseudo-science", for which we have utter disdain.