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.
The NSF DDRI Grant provided funds for me to travel throughout Germany and carry out archival research at libraries in Halle an der Saale, Leipzig, Jena, Dresden, Munich, Hamburg and Erfurt. During the course of my research, I discovered several documents that have not been discussed within the current literature of the history of science or the history of medicine. These included dissertations and disputations of students of Daniel Sennert (1572-1637) and handwritten notes by the same students. Such documents are especially helpful in determining the chronological development of Sennert’s views, and in particular, a dissertation entitled De Alchimia Transmutatione Certitudine is helpful in tracking Sennert’s views on chymistry (the transitional discipline between alchemy and modern chemistry), transmutation and experimentation. Analysis of these documents in the light of Sennert’s entire body of work provides a unique window on early modern medicine in German universities. The handwritten student notes are especially interesting for new information about early modern medical and chymical pedagogy, but they also provide much particular information about Sennert’s views on epilepsy – a topic that has only recently come to the attention of scholars. This research will be useful not only in for historians of science and medicine, but also historians of education and pedagogy. I will be presenting some of my research at the upcoming International History of Chemistry Conference in Rostock, Germany (Sept. 2011). From my study of the above documents, I argue that sense perception and empiricism played a very central role in early modern chymistry, and that these early modern ideas about sensation and empiricism had an important influence throughout the seventeenth century and even into the eighteenth century. Chymists such as Daniel Sennert and his student, Werner Rolfinck (1599 – 1673), based many of their fundamental chymical beliefs on sense perception. In particular, such chymists argued that the senses revealed that nature is composed of only three elements (sometimes referred to as principles): salt, sulfur and mercury. I argue that this emphasis on sense perception was central to the disciplinary identity of a large contingent of chymists from both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This continued emphasis on sense perception suggests that an important continuity existed between seventeenth-century chymistry and much of the chemistry of the eighteenth century, whereas other recent studies have suggested certain sharp discontinuities occurring around the year 1700. The NSF DDRI grant has allowed me to attend several conferences, including several at the Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin and the Falling Walls Conference on Future Breakthroughs in Science and Society in Berlin. Moreover, I have been able to network with a diverse group of international scholars at the Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle an der Saale, the Freie Universität, and the Max Planck Institut. I have also been in contact with several journalists stationed in Berlin regarding my research and the history of chemistry in general. I am currently continuing my research in Berlin at the Max Planck Institut as a Predoctoral Fellow and will thus continue to network with an international group of scholars. All research that I have conducted this past year will be included in my dissertation, which I expect to finish by December 2012.
