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Anthropology | Key topics by field: sociocultural | Key topics by field: sociocultural |
Anthropology | Art, media, music, dance and film | Art, media, music, dance and film |
Anthropology | Art | Art
One of the central problems in the anthropology of art concerns the universality of 'art' as a cultural phenomenon. Several anthropologists have noted that the Western categories of 'painting', 'sculpture', or 'literature', conceived as independent artistic activities, do not exist, or exist in a significantly different form, in most non-Western contexts.Layton, Robert. (1981) The Anthropology of Art. To surmount this difficulty, anthropologists of art have focused on formal features in objects which, without exclusively being 'artistic', have certain evident 'aesthetic' qualities. Boas' Primitive Art, Claude Lévi-Strauss' The Way of the Masks (1982) or Geertz's 'Art as Cultural System' (1983) are some examples in this trend to transform the anthropology of 'art' into an anthropology of culturally specific 'aesthetics'. |
Anthropology | Media | Media
thumb|upright|left|A Punu tribe mask, Gabon, Central Africa
Media anthropology (also known as the anthropology of media or mass media) emphasizes ethnographic studies as a means of understanding producers, audiences, and other cultural and social aspects of mass media. The types of ethnographic contexts explored range from contexts of media production (e.g., ethnographies of newsrooms in newspapers, journalists in the field, film production) to contexts of media reception, following audiences in their everyday responses to media. Other types include cyber anthropology, a relatively new area of internet research, as well as ethnographies of other areas of research which happen to involve media, such as development work, social movements, or health education. This is in addition to many classic ethnographic contexts, where media such as radio, the press, new media, and television have started to make their presences felt since the early 1990s. |
Anthropology | Music | Music
Ethnomusicology is an academic field encompassing various approaches to the study of music (broadly defined), that emphasize its cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dimensions or contexts instead of or in addition to its isolated sound component or any particular repertoire.
Ethnomusicology can be used in a wide variety of fields, such as teaching, politics, cultural anthropology etc. While the origins of ethnomusicology date back to the 18th and 19th centuries, it was formally termed "ethnomusicology" by Dutch scholar Jaap Kunst . Later, the influence of study in this area spawned the creation of the periodical Ethnomusicology and the Society of Ethnomusicology. |
Anthropology | Visual | Visual
Visual anthropology is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. While the term is sometimes used interchangeably with ethnographic film, visual anthropology also encompasses the anthropological study of visual representation, including areas such as performance, museums, art, and the production and reception of mass media. Visual representations from all cultures, such as sandpaintings, tattoos, sculptures and reliefs, cave paintings, scrimshaw, jewelry, hieroglyphs, paintings, and photographs are included in the focus of visual anthropology. |
Anthropology | Economic, political economic, applied and development | Economic, political economic, applied and development |
Anthropology | Economic | Economic
Economic anthropology attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic, geographic and cultural scope. It has a complex relationship with the discipline of economics, of which it is highly critical. Its origins as a sub-field of anthropology begin with the Polish-British founder of anthropology, Bronisław Malinowski, and his French compatriot, Marcel Mauss, on the nature of gift-giving exchange (or reciprocity) as an alternative to market exchange. Economic Anthropology remains, for the most part, focused upon exchange. The school of thought derived from Marx and known as Political Economy focuses on production, in contrast. Economic anthropologists have abandoned the primitivist niche they were relegated to by economists, and have now turned to examine corporations, banks, and the global financial system from an anthropological perspective. |
Anthropology | Political economy | Political economy
Political economy in anthropology is the application of the theories and methods of historical materialism to the traditional concerns of anthropology, including, but not limited to, non-capitalist societies. Political economy introduced questions of history and colonialism to ahistorical anthropological theories of social structure and culture. Three main areas of interest rapidly developed. The first of these areas was concerned with the "pre-capitalist" societies that were subject to evolutionary "tribal" stereotypes. Sahlin's work on hunter-gatherers as the "original affluent society" did much to dissipate that image. The second area was concerned with the vast majority of the world's population at the time, the peasantry, many of whom were involved in complex revolutionary wars such as in Vietnam. The third area was on colonialism, imperialism, and the creation of the capitalist world-system. More recently, these political economists have more directly addressed issues of industrial (and post-industrial) capitalism around the world. |
Anthropology | Applied | Applied
Applied anthropology refers to the application of the method and theory of anthropology to the analysis and solution of practical problems. It is a "complex of related, research-based, instrumental methods which produce change or stability in specific cultural systems through the provision of data, initiation of direct action, and/or the formulation of policy". Applied anthropology is the practical side of anthropological research; it includes researcher involvement and activism within the participating community. It is closely related to development anthropology (distinct from the more critical anthropology of development). |
Anthropology | Development | Development
Anthropology of development tends to view development from a critical perspective. The kind of issues addressed and implications for the approach involve pondering why, if a key development goal is to alleviate poverty, is poverty increasing? Why is there such a gap between plans and outcomes? Why are those working in development so willing to disregard history and the lessons it might offer? Why is development so externally driven rather than having an internal basis? In short, why does so much planned development fail? |
Anthropology | Kinship, feminism, gender and sexuality | Kinship, feminism, gender and sexuality |
Anthropology | Kinship | Kinship
Kinship can refer both to the study of the patterns of social relationships in one or more human cultures, or it can refer to the patterns of social relationships themselves. Over its history, anthropology has developed a number of related concepts and terms, such as "descent", "descent groups", "lineages", "affines", "cognates", and even "fictive kinship". Broadly, kinship patterns may be considered to include people related both by descent (one's social relations during development), and also relatives by marriage. Within kinship you have two different families. People have their biological families and it is the people they share DNA with. This is called consanguinity or "blood ties". People can also have a chosen family in which they chose who they want to be a part of their family. In some cases, people are closer with their chosen family more than with their biological families. |
Anthropology | Feminist | Feminist
Feminist anthropology is a four field approach to anthropology (archeological, biological, cultural, linguistic) that seeks to reduce male bias in research findings, anthropological hiring practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge. Anthropology engages often with feminists from non-Western traditions, whose perspectives and experiences can differ from those of white feminists of Europe, America, and elsewhere. From the perspective of the Western world, historically such 'peripheral' perspectives have been ignored, observed only from an outsider perspective, and regarded as less-valid or less-important than knowledge from the Western world. Exploring and addressing that double bias against women from marginalized racial or ethnic groups is of particular interest in intersectional feminist anthropology.
Feminist anthropologists have stated that their publications have contributed to anthropology, along the way correcting against the systemic biases beginning with the "patriarchal origins of anthropology (and (academia)" and note that from 1891 to 1930 doctorates in anthropology went to males more than 85%, more than 81% were under 35, and only 7.2% to anyone over 40 years old, thus reflecting an age gap in the pursuit of anthropology by first-wave feminists until later in life.Cattell, Maria and Marjorie M. Schweitzer, editors. Women in Anthropology: Autobiographical Narratives and Social History. (Left Coast Press: Walnut Creek), pp. 15–40. This correction of systemic bias may include mainstream feminist theory, history, linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology. Feminist anthropologists are often concerned with the construction of gender across societies. Gender constructs are of particular interest when studying sexism.
According to St. Clair Drake, Vera Mae Green was, until "[w]ell into the 1960s", the only African American female anthropologist who was also a Caribbeanist. She studied ethnic and family relations in the Caribbean as well as the United States, and thereby tried to improve the way black life, experiences, and culture were studied. However, Zora Neale Hurston, although often primarily considered to be a literary author, was trained in anthropology by Franz Boas, and published Tell my Horse about her "anthropological observations" of voodoo in the Caribbean (1938).
Feminist anthropology is inclusive of the anthropology of birth as a specialization, which is the anthropological study of pregnancy and childbirth within cultures and societies. |
Anthropology | Medical, nutritional, psychological, cognitive and transpersonal | Medical, nutritional, psychological, cognitive and transpersonal |
Anthropology | Medical | Medical
Medical anthropology is an interdisciplinary field which studies "human health and disease, health care systems, and biocultural adaptation". It is believed that William Caudell was the first to discover the field of medical anthropology. Currently, research in medical anthropology is one of the main growth areas in the field of anthropology as a whole. It focuses on the following six basic fields:
The development of systems of medical knowledge and medical care
The patient-physician relationship
The integration of alternative medical systems in culturally diverse environments
The interaction of social, environmental and biological factors which influence health and illness both in the individual and the community as a whole
The critical analysis of interaction between psychiatric services and migrant populations ("critical ethnopsychiatry": Beneduce 2004, 2007)
The impact of biomedicine and biomedical technologies in non-Western settings
Other subjects that have become central to medical anthropology worldwide are violence and social suffering (Farmer, 1999, 2003; Beneduce, 2010) as well as other issues that involve physical and psychological harm and suffering that are not a result of illness. On the other hand, there are fields that intersect with medical anthropology in terms of research methodology and theoretical production, such as cultural psychiatry and transcultural psychiatry or ethnopsychiatry. |
Anthropology | Nutritional | Nutritional
Nutritional anthropology is a synthetic concept that deals with the interplay between economic systems, nutritional status and food security, and how changes in the former affect the latter. If economic and environmental changes in a community affect access to food, food security, and dietary health, then this interplay between culture and biology is in turn connected to broader historical and economic trends associated with globalization. Nutritional status affects overall health status, work performance potential, and the overall potential for economic development (either in terms of human development or traditional western models) for any given group of people. |
Anthropology | Psychological | Psychological
Psychological anthropology is an interdisciplinary subfield of anthropology that studies the interaction of cultural and mental processes. This subfield tends to focus on ways in which humans' development and enculturation within a particular cultural group – with its own history, language, practices, and conceptual categories – shape processes of human cognition, emotion, perception, motivation, and mental health. It also examines how the understanding of cognition, emotion, motivation, and similar psychological processes inform or constrain our models of cultural and social processes. |
Anthropology | Cognitive | Cognitive
Cognitive anthropology seeks to explain patterns of shared knowledge, cultural innovation, and transmission over time and space using the methods and theories of the cognitive sciences (especially experimental psychology and evolutionary biology) often through close collaboration with historians, ethnographers, archaeologists, linguists, musicologists and other specialists engaged in the description and interpretation of cultural forms. Cognitive anthropology is concerned with what people from different groups know and how that implicit knowledge changes the way people perceive and relate to the world around them. |
Anthropology | Transpersonal | Transpersonal
Transpersonal anthropology studies the relationship between altered states of consciousness and culture. As with transpersonal psychology, the field is much concerned with altered states of consciousness (ASC) and transpersonal experience. However, the field differs from mainstream transpersonal psychology in taking more cognizance of cross-cultural issues – for instance, the roles of myth, ritual, diet, and text in evoking and interpreting extraordinary experiences. |
Anthropology | Political and legal | Political and legal |
Anthropology | Political | Political
Political anthropology concerns the structure of political systems, looked at from the basis of the structure of societies. Political anthropology developed as a discipline concerned primarily with politics in stateless societies, a new development started from the 1960s, and is still unfolding: anthropologists started increasingly to study more "complex" social settings in which the presence of states, bureaucracies and markets entered both ethnographic accounts and analysis of local phenomena. The turn towards complex societies meant that political themes were taken up at two main levels. Firstly, anthropologists continued to study political organization and political phenomena that lay outside the state-regulated sphere (as in patron-client relations or tribal political organization). Secondly, anthropologists slowly started to develop a disciplinary concern with states and their institutions (and on the relationship between formal and informal political institutions). An anthropology of the state developed, and it is a most thriving field today. Geertz's comparative work on "Negara", the Balinese state, is an early, famous example. |
Anthropology | Legal | Legal
Legal anthropology or anthropology of law specializes in "the cross-cultural study of social ordering". Earlier legal anthropological research often focused more narrowly on conflict management, crime, sanctions, or formal regulation. More recent applications include issues such as human rights, legal pluralism, and political uprisings. |
Anthropology | Public | Public
Public anthropology was created by Robert Borofsky, a professor at Hawaii Pacific University, to "demonstrate the ability of anthropology and anthropologists to effectively address problems beyond the discipline – illuminating larger social issues of our times as well as encouraging broad, public conversations about them with the explicit goal of fostering social change". |
Anthropology | Nature, science, and technology | Nature, science, and technology |
Anthropology | Cyborg | Cyborg
Cyborg anthropology originated as a sub-focus group within the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting in 1993. The sub-group was very closely related to STS and the Society for the Social Studies of Science.Dumit, Joseph. Davis-Floyd, Robbie (2001). "Cyborg Anthropology". in Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women. Routledge. . Donna Haraway's 1985 Cyborg Manifesto could be considered the founding document of cyborg anthropology by first exploring the philosophical and sociological ramifications of the term. Cyborg anthropology studies humankind and its relations with the technological systems it has built, specifically modern technological systems that have reflexively shaped notions of what it means to be human beings. |
Anthropology | Digital | Digital
Digital anthropology is the study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology and extends to various areas where anthropology and technology intersect. It is sometimes grouped with sociocultural anthropology, and sometimes considered part of material culture. The field is new, and thus has a variety of names with a variety of emphases. These include techno-anthropology, digital ethnography, cyberanthropology, and virtual anthropology. |
Anthropology | Ecological | Ecological
Ecological anthropology is defined as the "study of cultural adaptations to environments". The sub-field is also defined as, "the study of relationships between a population of humans and their biophysical environment". The focus of its research concerns "how cultural beliefs and practices helped human populations adapt to their environments, and how their environments change across space and time. The contemporary perspective of environmental anthropology, and arguably at least the backdrop, if not the focus of most of the ethnographies and cultural fieldworks of today, is political ecology. Many characterize this new perspective as more informed with culture, politics and power, globalization, localized issues, century anthropology and more. The focus and data interpretation is often used for arguments for/against or creation of policy, and to prevent corporate exploitation and damage of land. Often, the observer has become an active part of the struggle either directly (organizing, participation) or indirectly (articles, documentaries, books, ethnographies). Such is the case with environmental justice advocate Melissa Checker and her relationship with the people of Hyde Park. |
Anthropology | Environment | Environment
Social sciences, like anthropology, can provide interdisciplinary approaches to the environment. Professor Kay Milton, Director of the Anthropology research network in the School of History and Anthropology, describes anthropology as distinctive, with its most distinguishing feature being its interest in non-industrial indigenous and traditional societies. Anthropological theory is distinct because of the consistent presence of the concept of culture; not an exclusive topic but a central position in the study and a deep concern with the human condition. Milton describes three trends that are causing a fundamental shift in what characterizes anthropology: dissatisfaction with the cultural relativist perspective, reaction against cartesian dualisms which obstructs progress in theory (nature culture divide), and finally an increased attention to globalization (transcending the barriers or time/space).
Environmental discourse appears to be characterized by a high degree of globalization. (The troubling problem is borrowing non-indigenous practices and creating standards, concepts, philosophies and practices in western countries.) Anthropology and environmental discourse now have become a distinct position in anthropology as a discipline. Knowledge about diversities in human culture can be important in addressing environmental problems - anthropology is now a study of human ecology. Human activity is the most important agent in creating environmental change, a study commonly found in human ecology which can claim a central place in how environmental problems are examined and addressed. Other ways anthropology contributes to environmental discourse is by being theorists and analysts, or by refinement of definitions to become more neutral/universal, etc. In exploring environmentalism - the term typically refers to a concern that the environment should be protected, particularly from the harmful effects of human activities. Environmentalism itself can be expressed in many ways. Anthropologists can open the doors of environmentalism by looking beyond industrial society, understanding the opposition between industrial and non-industrial relationships, knowing what ecosystem people and biosphere people are and are affected by, dependent and independent variables, "primitive" ecological wisdom, diverse environments, resource management, diverse cultural traditions, and knowing that environmentalism is a part of culture. |
Anthropology | Historical | Historical
Ethnohistory is the study of ethnographic cultures and indigenous customs by examining historical records. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may not exist today. Ethnohistory uses both historical and ethnographic data as its foundation. Its historical methods and materials go beyond the standard use of documents and manuscripts. Practitioners recognize the utility of such source material as maps, music, paintings, photography, folklore, oral tradition, site exploration, archaeological materials, museum collections, enduring customs, language, and place names. |
Anthropology | Religion | Religion
The anthropology of religion involves the study of religious institutions in relation to other social institutions, and the comparison of religious beliefs and practices across cultures. Modern anthropology assumes that there is complete continuity between magical thinking and religion,Cassirer, Ernst (1944) An Essay On Man , pt.II, ch.7 Myth and Religion, pp. 122–123. and that every religion is a cultural product, created by the human community that worships it.Guthrie (2000) Guide to the Study of Religion. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 225–226 . . |
Anthropology | Urban | Urban
Urban anthropology is concerned with issues of urbanization, poverty, and neoliberalism. Ulf Hannerz quotes a 1960s remark that traditional anthropologists were "a notoriously agoraphobic lot, anti-urban by definition". Various social processes in the Western World as well as in the "Third World" (the latter being the habitual focus of attention of anthropologists) brought the attention of "specialists in 'other cultures'" closer to their homes. There are two main approaches to urban anthropology: examining the types of cities or examining the social issues within the cities. These two methods are overlapping and dependent of each other. By defining different types of cities, one would use social factors as well as economic and political factors to categorize the cities. By directly looking at the different social issues, one would also be studying how they affect the dynamic of the city. |
Anthropology | Key topics by field: archaeological and biological | Key topics by field: archaeological and biological |
Anthropology | Anthrozoology | Anthrozoology
Anthrozoology (also known as "human–animal studies") is the study of interaction between living things. It is an interdisciplinary field that overlaps with a number of other disciplines, including anthropology, ethology, medicine, psychology, veterinary medicine and zoology. A major focus of anthrozoologic research is the quantifying of the positive effects of human-animal relationships on either party and the study of their interactions.Mills, Daniel S (2010). "Anthrozoology" , The Encyclopedia of Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare. CABI, pp. 28–30. . It includes scholars from a diverse range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, biology, and philosophy.DeMello, Margo (2010). Teaching the Animal: Human–Animal Studies Across the Disciplines. Lantern Books. p. xi. |
Anthropology | Biocultural | Biocultural
Biocultural anthropology is the scientific exploration of the relationships between human biology and culture. Physical anthropologists throughout the first half of the 20th century viewed this relationship from a racial perspective; that is, from the assumption that typological human biological differences lead to cultural differences. After World War II the emphasis began to shift toward an effort to explore the role culture plays in shaping human biology. |
Anthropology | Evolutionary | Evolutionary
Evolutionary anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of the evolution of human physiology and human behaviour and the relation between hominins and non-hominin primates. Evolutionary anthropology is based in natural science and social science, combining the human development with socioeconomic factors. Evolutionary anthropology is concerned with both biological and cultural evolution of humans, past and present. It is based on a scientific approach, and brings together fields such as archaeology, behavioral ecology, psychology, primatology, and genetics. It is a dynamic and interdisciplinary field, drawing on many lines of evidence to understand the human experience, past and present. |
Anthropology | Forensic | Forensic
Forensic anthropology is the application of the science of physical anthropology and human osteology in a legal setting, most often in criminal cases where the victim's remains are in the advanced stages of decomposition. A forensic anthropologist can assist in the identification of deceased individuals whose remains are decomposed, burned, mutilated or otherwise unrecognizable. The adjective "forensic" refers to the application of this subfield of science to a court of law. |
Anthropology | Palaeoanthropology | Palaeoanthropology
thumb|Five of the seven known fossil teeth of Homo luzonensis found in Callao Cave
Paleoanthropology combines the disciplines of paleontology and physical anthropology. It is the study of ancient humans, as found in fossil hominid evidence such as petrifacted bones and footprints. Genetics and morphology of specimens are crucially important to this field. Markers on specimens, such as enamel fractures and dental decay on teeth, can also give insight into the behaviour and diet of past populations. |
Anthropology | Organizations | Organizations
Contemporary anthropology is an established science with academic departments at most universities and colleges. The single largest organization of anthropologists is the American Anthropological Association (AAA), which was founded in 1903.AAAnet.org . AAAnet.org. Retrieved on 2 November 2016. Its members are anthropologists from around the globe.
In 1989, a group of European and American scholars in the field of anthropology established the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) which serves as a major professional organization for anthropologists working in Europe. The EASA seeks to advance the status of anthropology in Europe and to increase visibility of marginalized anthropological traditions and thereby contribute to the project of a global anthropology or world anthropology.
Hundreds of other organizations exist in the various sub-fields of anthropology, sometimes divided up by nation or region, and many anthropologists work with collaborators in other disciplines, such as geology, physics, zoology, paleontology, anatomy, music theory, art history, sociology and so on, belonging to professional societies in those disciplines as well.Johanson, Donald and Wong, Kate (2007). Lucy's Legacy. Kindle Books.Netti, Bruno (2005). The Study of Ethnomusicology. Ch. 1. University of Illinois Press. . |
Anthropology | List of major organizations | List of major organizations
American Anthropological Association
American Ethnological Society
Asociación de Antropólogos Iberoamericanos en Red, AIBR
Anthropological Society of London
Center for World Indigenous Studies
Ethnological Society of London
European Association of Social Anthropologists
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Network of Concerned Anthropologists
N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Society for Anthropological Sciences
Society for Applied Anthropology
USC Center for Visual Anthropology |
Anthropology | Ethics | Ethics
As the field has matured it has debated and arrived at ethical principles aimed at protecting both the subjects of anthropological research as well as the researchers themselves, and professional societies have generated codes of ethics.
Anthropologists, like other researchers (especially historians and scientists engaged in field research), have over time assisted state policies and projects, especially colonialism.Asad, Talal, ed. (1973) Anthropology & the Colonial Encounter. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.van Breman, Jan, and Akitoshi Shimizu (1999) Anthropology and Colonialism in Asia and Oceania. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.
Some commentators have contended:
That the discipline grew out of colonialism, perhaps was in league with it, and derives some of its key notions from it, consciously or not. (See, for example, Gough, Pels and Salemink, but cf. Lewis 2004).Gellner, Ernest (1992) Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion . London/New York: Routledge. pp. 26–29. .
That ethnographic work is often ahistorical, writing about people as if they were "out of time" in an "ethnographic present" (Johannes Fabian, Time and Its Other).
In his article "The Misrepresentation of Anthropology and Its Consequences," Herbert S. Lewis critiqued older anthropological works that presented other cultures as if they were strange and unusual. While the findings of those researchers should not be discarded, the field should learn from its mistakes. |
Anthropology | Cultural relativism | Cultural relativism
As part of their quest for scientific objectivity, present-day anthropologists typically urge cultural relativism, which has an influence on all the sub-fields of anthropology. This is the notion that cultures should not be judged by another's values or viewpoints, but be examined dispassionately on their own terms. There should be no notions, in good anthropology, of one culture being better or worse than another culture.
Ethical commitments in anthropology include noticing and documenting genocide, infanticide, racism, sexism, mutilation (including circumcision and subincision), and torture. Topics like racism, slavery, and human sacrifice attract anthropological attention and theories ranging from nutritional deficiencies,Harris, Marvin. Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches. to genes, to acculturation, to colonialism, have been proposed to explain their origins and continued recurrences.
To illustrate the depth of an anthropological approach, one can take just one of these topics, such as racism, and find thousands of anthropological references, stretching across all the major and minor sub-fields.Goodman, Allan (1995). "The Problematics of "Race" in Contemporary Biological Anthropology." In Biological Anthropology: The State of the Science. International Institute for Human Evolutionary Research. . |
Anthropology | Military involvement | Military involvement
Anthropologists' involvement with the U.S. government, in particular, has caused bitter controversy within the discipline. Franz Boas publicly objected to US participation in World War I, and after the war, he published a brief exposé and condemnation of the participation of several American archaeologists in espionage in Mexico under their cover as scientists.
But by the 1940s, many of Boas' anthropologist contemporaries were active in the allied war effort against the Axis Powers (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan). Many served in the armed forces, while others worked in intelligence (for example, the Office of Strategic Services and the Office of War Information). At the same time, David H. Price's work on American anthropology during the Cold War provides detailed accounts of the pursuit and dismissal of several anthropologists from their jobs for communist sympathies.
Attempts to accuse anthropologists of complicity with the CIA and government intelligence activities during the Vietnam War years have turned up little. Many anthropologists (students and teachers) were active in the antiwar movement. Numerous resolutions condemning the war in all its aspects were passed overwhelmingly at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA).
Professional anthropological bodies often object to the use of anthropology for the benefit of the state. Their codes of ethics or statements may proscribe anthropologists from giving secret briefings. The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth (ASA) has called certain scholarship ethically dangerous. The "Principles of Professional Responsibility" issued by the American Anthropological Association and amended through November 1986 stated that "in relation with their own government and with host governments ... no secret research, no secret reports or debriefings of any kind should be agreed to or given." The current "Principles of Professional Responsibility" does not make explicit mention of ethics surrounding state interactions.
Anthropologists, along with other social scientists, were working with the US military as part of the US Army's strategy in Afghanistan.US Army's strategy in Afghanistan: better anthropology . CSMonitor.com (7 September 2007). Retrieved on 2 November 2016. The Christian Science Monitor reports that "Counterinsurgency efforts focus on better grasping and meeting local needs" in Afghanistan, under the Human Terrain System (HTS) program; in addition, HTS teams are working with the US military in Iraq. In 2009, the American Anthropological Association's Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities (CEAUSSIC) released its final report concluding, in part, that: |
Anthropology | Post-World War II developments | Post-World War II developments
Before WWII British 'social anthropology' and American 'cultural anthropology' were still distinct traditions. After the war, enough British and American anthropologists borrowed ideas and methodological approaches from one another that some began to speak of them collectively as 'sociocultural' anthropology. |
Anthropology | Basic trends | Basic trends
There are several characteristics that tend to unite anthropological work. One of the central characteristics is that anthropology tends to provide a comparatively more holistic account of phenomena and tends to be highly empirical. The quest for holism leads most anthropologists to study a particular place, problem or phenomenon in detail, using a variety of methods, over a more extensive period than normal in many parts of academia.
In the 1990s and 2000s, calls for clarification of what constitutes a culture, of how an observer knows where his or her own culture ends and another begins, and other crucial topics in writing anthropology were heard. These dynamic relationships, between what can be observed on the ground, as opposed to what can be observed by compiling many local observations remain fundamental in any kind of anthropology, whether cultural, biological, linguistic or archaeological.Rosaldo, Renato (1993). Culture and Truth: The remaking of social analysis. Beacon Press. IndaXavier, John and Rosaldo, Renato (2007). The Anthropology of Globalization. Wiley-Blackwell.
Biological anthropologists are interested in both human variationJurmain, Robert; Kilgore, Lynn; Trevathan, Wenda and Ciochon, Russell L. (2007). Introduction to Physical Anthropology. 11th ed. Wadsworth. chapters I, III and IV. .Wompack, Mari (2001). Being Human. Prentice Hall. pp. 11–20. and in the possibility of human universals (behaviors, ideas or concepts shared by virtually all human cultures).Brown, Donald (1991). Human Universals. McGraw Hill.Roughley, Neil (2000). Being Humans: Anthropological Universality and Particularity in Transciplinary Perspectives. Walter de Gruyter Publishing. They use many different methods of study, but modern population genetics, participant observation and other techniques often take anthropologists "into the field," which means traveling to a community in its own setting, to do something called "fieldwork." On the biological or physical side, human measurements, genetic samples, nutritional data may be gathered and published as articles or monographs.
Along with dividing up their project by theoretical emphasis, anthropologists typically divide the world up into relevant time periods and geographic regions. Human time on Earth is divided up into relevant cultural traditions based on material, such as the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, of particular use in archaeology. Further cultural subdivisions according to tool types, such as Olduwan or Mousterian or Levalloisian help archaeologists and other anthropologists in understanding major trends in the human past. Anthropologists and geographers share approaches to culture regions as well, since mapping cultures is central to both sciences. By making comparisons across cultural traditions (time-based) and cultural regions (space-based), anthropologists have developed various kinds of comparative method, a central part of their science. |
Anthropology | Commonalities between fields | Commonalities between fields
Because anthropology developed from so many different enterprises (see History of anthropology), including but not limited to fossil-hunting, exploring, documentary film-making, paleontology, primatology, antiquity dealings and curatorship, philology, etymology, genetics, regional analysis, ethnology, history, philosophy, and religious studies,Erickson, Paul A. and Liam D. Murphy (2003). A History of Anthropological Theory. Broadview Press. pp. 11–12. .Stocking, George (1992) "Paradigmatic Traditions in the History of Anthropology", pp. 342–361 in George Stocking, The Ethnographer's Magic and Other Essays in the History of Anthropology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. . it is difficult to characterize the entire field in a brief article, although attempts to write histories of the entire field have been made.Leaf, Murray (1979). Man, Mind and Science: A History of Anthropology. Columbia University Press.
Some authors argue that anthropology originated and developed as the study of "other cultures", both in terms of time (past societies) and space (non-European/non-Western societies).See the many essays relating to this in Prem Poddar and David Johnson, Historical Companion to Postcolonial Thought in English, Edinburgh University Press, 2004. See also Prem Poddar et al., Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures – Continental Europe and its Empires, Edinburgh University Press, 2008 For example, the classic of urban anthropology, Ulf Hannerz in the introduction to his seminal Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology mentions that the "Third World" had habitually received most of attention; anthropologists who traditionally specialized in "other cultures" looked for them far away and started to look "across the tracks" only in late 1960s.Hannerz, Ulf (1980) Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology, , p. 1. Columbia University Press.
Now there exist many works focusing on peoples and topics very close to the author's "home".Lewis, Herbert S. (1998) The Misrepresentation of Anthropology and its Consequences American Anthropologist "100:" 716–731 It is also argued that other fields of study, like History and Sociology, on the contrary focus disproportionately on the West.Goody, Jack (2007) The Theft of History . Cambridge University Press.
In France, the study of Western societies has been traditionally left to sociologists, but this is increasingly changing, starting in the 1970s from scholars like Isac Chiva and journals like Terrain ("fieldwork") and developing with the center founded by Marc Augé (Le Centre d'anthropologie des mondes contemporains, the Anthropological Research Center of Contemporary Societies).
Since the 1980s it has become common for social and cultural anthropologists to set ethnographic research in the North Atlantic region, frequently examining the connections between locations rather than limiting research to a single locale. There has also been a related shift toward broadening the focus beyond the daily life of ordinary people; increasingly, research is set in settings such as scientific laboratories, social movements, governmental and nongovernmental organizations and businesses.Fischer, Michael M. J. (2003) Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice. Duke University Press. |
Anthropology | See also | See also
Christian anthropology, a sub-field of theology
Philosophical anthropology, a sub-field of philosophy
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Anthropology | Lists | Lists
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Anthropology | Notes | Notes |
Anthropology | References | References |
Anthropology | Works cited | Works cited
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Anthropology | Further reading | Further reading |
Anthropology | Dictionaries and encyclopedias | Dictionaries and encyclopedias
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Anthropology | Fieldnotes and memoirs | Fieldnotes and memoirs
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Anthropology | Histories | Histories
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Anthropology | Textbooks and key theoretical works | Textbooks and key theoretical works
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Anthropology | External links | External links
Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology.
(AIO)
Category:Behavioural sciences
Category:Humans |
Anthropology | Table of Content | Short description, Etymology, Origin and development of the term, Through the 19th century, 20th and 21st centuries, Fields, Sociocultural, Biological, Archaeological, Linguistic, Ethnography, Key topics by field: sociocultural, Art, media, music, dance and film, Art, Media, Music, Visual, Economic, political economic, applied and development, Economic, Political economy, Applied, Development, Kinship, feminism, gender and sexuality, Kinship, Feminist, Medical, nutritional, psychological, cognitive and transpersonal, Medical, Nutritional, Psychological, Cognitive, Transpersonal, Political and legal, Political, Legal, Public, Nature, science, and technology, Cyborg, Digital, Ecological, Environment, Historical, Religion, Urban, Key topics by field: archaeological and biological, Anthrozoology, Biocultural, Evolutionary, Forensic, Palaeoanthropology, Organizations, List of major organizations, Ethics, Cultural relativism, Military involvement, Post-World War II developments, Basic trends, Commonalities between fields, See also, Lists, Notes, References, Works cited, Further reading, Dictionaries and encyclopedias, Fieldnotes and memoirs, Histories, Textbooks and key theoretical works, External links |
Agricultural science | short description | Agricultural science (or agriscience for short) is a broad multidisciplinary field of biology that encompasses the parts of exact, natural, economic and social sciences that are used in the practice and understanding of agriculture. Professionals of the agricultural science are called agricultural scientists or agriculturists. |
Agricultural science | History | History
In the 18th century, Johann Friedrich Mayer conducted experiments on the use of gypsum (hydrated calcium sulfate) as a fertilizer.John Armstrong, Jesse Buel. A Treatise on Agriculture, The Present Condition of the Art Abroad and at Home, and the Theory and Practice of Husbandry. To which is Added, a Dissertation on the Kitchen and Garden. 1840. p. 45.
In 1843, John Bennet Lawes and Joseph Henry Gilbert began a set of long-term field experiments at Rothamsted Research in England, some of which are still running as of 2018.
In the United States, a scientific revolution in agriculture began with the Hatch Act of 1887, which used the term "agricultural science". The Hatch Act was driven by farmers' interest in knowing the constituents of early artificial fertilizer. The Smith–Hughes Act of 1917 shifted agricultural education back to its vocational roots, but the scientific foundation had been built.Hillison J. (1996). The Origins of Agriscience: Or Where Did All That Scientific Agriculture Come From? . Journal of Agricultural Education. For the next 44 years after 1906, federal expenditures on agricultural research in the United States outpaced private expenditures.Huffman WE, Evenson RE. (2006). Science for Agriculture. Blackwell Publishing. |
Agricultural science | Prominent agricultural scientists | Prominent agricultural scientists
thumb|200px|Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution.
Wilbur Olin Atwater
Robert Bakewell
Norman Borlaug
Luther Burbank
George Washington Carver
Carl Henry Clerk
George C. Clerk
René Dumont
Sir Albert Howard
Kailas Nath Kaul
Thomas Lecky
Justus von Liebig
Jay Laurence Lush
Gregor Mendel
Louis Pasteur
M. S. Swaminathan
Jethro Tull
Artturi Ilmari Virtanen
Sewall Wright |
Agricultural science | Fields or related disciplines | Fields or related disciplines |
Agricultural science | Occupations in Agricultural Science | Occupations in Agricultural Science
Following are occupations in Agricultural Science listed in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. 040 Occupations in Agricultural Sciences . Occupations in Agricultural Sciences. |
Agricultural science | Scope | Scope
Agriculture, agricultural science, and agronomy are closely related. However, they cover different concepts:
Agriculture is the set of activities that transform the environment for the production of animals and plants for human use. Agriculture concerns techniques, including the application of agronomic research.
Agronomy is research and development related to studying and improving plant-based crops.
is the science of cultivating the earth.“Geoponics.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/geoponics. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.
Hydroponics involves growing plants without soil, by using water-based mineral nutrient solutions in an artificial environment. |
Agricultural science | Research topics | Research topics
Agricultural sciences include research and development on:
Improving agricultural productivity in terms of quantity and quality (e.g., selection of drought-resistant crops and animals, development of new pesticides, yield-sensing technologies, simulation models of crop growth, in-vitro cell culture techniques)
Minimizing the effects of pests (weeds, insects, pathogens, mollusks, nematodes) on crop or animal production systems.
Transformation of primary products into end-consumer products (e.g., production, preservation, and packaging of dairy products)
Prevention and correction of adverse environmental effects (e.g., soil degradation, waste management, bioremediation)
Theoretical production ecology, relating to crop production modeling
Traditional agricultural systems, sometimes termed subsistence agriculture, which feed most of the poorest people in the world. These systems are of interest as they sometimes retain a level of integration with natural ecological systems greater than that of industrial agriculture, which may be more sustainable than some modern agricultural systems.
Food production and demand globally, with particular attention paid to the primary producers, such as China, India, Brazil, the US, and the EU.
Various sciences relating to agricultural resources and the environment (e.g. soil science, agroclimatology); biology of agricultural crops and animals (e.g. crop science, animal science and their included sciences, e.g. ruminant nutrition, farm animal welfare); such fields as agricultural economics and rural sociology; various disciplines encompassed in agricultural engineering. |
Agricultural science | See also | See also
Agricultural Research Council
Agricultural sciences basic topics
Agriculture ministry
Agroecology
American Society of Agronomy
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
Crop Science Society of America
Genomics of domestication
History of agricultural science
Indian Council of Agricultural Research
Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences
International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development
International Food Policy Research Institute, IFPRI
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture
International Livestock Research Institute
List of agriculture topics
National Agricultural Library (NAL)
National FFA Organization
Research Institute of Crop Production (RICP) (in the Czech Republic)
Soil Science Society of America
USDA Agricultural Research Service
University of Agricultural Sciences |
Agricultural science | References | References |
Agricultural science | Further reading | Further reading
Agricultural Research, Livelihoods, and Poverty: Studies of Economic and Social Impacts in Six Countries Edited by Michelle Adato and Ruth Meinzen-Dick (2007), Johns Hopkins University Press Food Policy ReportAgricultural research, livelihoods, and poverty | International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Claude Bourguignon, Regenerating the Soil: From Agronomy to Agrology, Other India Press, 2005
Pimentel David, Pimentel Marcia, Computer les kilocalories, Cérès, n. 59, sept-oct. 1977
Russell E. Walter, Soil conditions and plant growth, Longman group, London, New York 1973
Saltini Antonio, Storia delle scienze agrarie, 4 vols, Bologna 1984–89, , , ,
Vavilov Nicolai I. (Starr Chester K. editor), The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants. Selected Writings, in Chronica botanica, 13: 1–6, Waltham, Mass., 1949–50
Vavilov Nicolai I., World Resources of Cereals, Leguminous Seed Crops and Flax, Academy of Sciences of Urss, National Science Foundation, Washington, Israel Program for Scientific Translations, Jerusalem 1960
Winogradsky Serge, Microbiologie du sol. Problèmes et methodes. Cinquante ans de recherches, Masson & c.ie, Paris 1949
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Agricultural science | Table of Content | short description, History, Prominent agricultural scientists, Fields or related disciplines, Occupations in Agricultural Science, Scope, Research topics, See also, References, Further reading |
Alchemy | Short description | thumb|upright=1.3|Depiction of an Ouroboros from the alchemical treatise (15th century), Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Switzerland
Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD.Principe, Lawrence M. The secrets of alchemy . University of Chicago Press, 2012, pp. 9–14. Greek-speaking alchemists often referred to their craft as "the Art" (τέχνη) or "Knowledge" (ἐπιστήμη), and it was often characterised as mystic (μυστική), sacred (ἱɛρά), or divine (θɛíα).
Alchemists attempted to purify, mature, and perfect certain materials. Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation of "base metals" (e.g., lead) into "noble metals" (particularly gold); the creation of an elixir of immortality; and the creation of panaceas able to cure any disease. The perfection of the human body and soul was thought to result from the alchemical magnum opus ("Great Work"). The concept of creating the philosophers' stone was variously connected with all of these projects.
Islamic and European alchemists developed a basic set of laboratory techniques, theories, and terms, some of which are still in use today. They did not abandon the Ancient Greek philosophical idea that everything is composed of four elements, and they tended to guard their work in secrecy, often making use of cyphers and cryptic symbolism. In Europe, the 12th-century translations of medieval Islamic works on science and the rediscovery of Aristotelian philosophy gave birth to a flourishing tradition of Latin alchemy. This late medieval tradition of alchemy would go on to play a significant role in the development of early modern science (particularly chemistry and medicine).
Modern discussions of alchemy are generally split into an examination of its exoteric practical applications and its esoteric spiritual aspects, despite criticisms by scholars such as Eric J. Holmyard and Marie-Louise von Franz that they should be understood as complementary. The former is pursued by historians of the physical sciences, who examine the subject in terms of early chemistry, medicine, and charlatanism, and the philosophical and religious contexts in which these events occurred. The latter interests historians of esotericism, psychologists, and some philosophers and spiritualists. The subject has also made an ongoing impact on literature and the arts. |
Alchemy | Etymology | Etymology
The word alchemy comes from old French alquemie, alkimie, used in Medieval Latin as . This name was itself adopted from the Arabic word (). The Arabic in turn was a borrowing of the Late Greek term khēmeía (), also spelled khumeia () and khēmía (), with al- being the Arabic definite article 'the'. Together this association can be interpreted as 'the process of transmutation by which to fuse or reunite with the divine or original form'. Several etymologies have been proposed for the Greek term. The first was proposed by Zosimos of Panopolis (3rd–4th centuries), who derived it from the name of a book, the Khemeu.George Syncellus, Chronography, 18–9On the ancient definitions of alchemy in ancient Greek and Syriac texts see Matteo Martelli. 2014. "The Alchemical Art of Dyeing: The Fourfold Division of Alchemy and the Enochian Tradition", In: Dupré S. (eds) Laboratories of Art, Springer, Cham. Hermann Diels argued in 1914 that it rather derived from χύμα,Hermann Diels, Antike Technik, Leipzig: Teubner, 1914, pp. 108–109. Read online used to describe metallic objects formed by casting.
Others trace its roots to the Egyptian name (hieroglyphic 𓆎𓅓𓏏𓊖 ), meaning 'black earth', which refers to the fertile and auriferous soil of the Nile valley, as opposed to red desert sand. According to the Egyptologist Wallis Budge, the Arabic word ʾ actually means "the Egyptian [science]", borrowing from the Coptic word for "Egypt", (or its equivalent in the Mediaeval Bohairic dialect of Coptic, ). This Coptic word derives from Demotic , itself from ancient Egyptian . The ancient Egyptian word referred to both the country and the colour "black" (Egypt was the "black Land", by contrast with the "red Land", the surrounding desert). |
Alchemy | History | History
Alchemy encompasses several philosophical traditions spanning some four millennia and three continents. These traditions' general penchant for cryptic and symbolic language makes it hard to trace their mutual influences and genetic relationships. One can distinguish at least three major strands, which appear to be mostly independent, at least in their earlier stages: Chinese alchemy, centered in China; Indian alchemy, centered on the Indian subcontinent; and Western alchemy, which occurred around the Mediterranean and whose center shifted over the millennia from Greco-Roman Egypt to the Islamic world, and finally medieval Europe. Chinese alchemy was closely connected to Taoism and Indian alchemy with the Dharmic faiths. In contrast, Western alchemy developed its philosophical system mostly independent of but influenced by various Western religions. It is still an open question whether these three strands share a common origin, or to what extent they influenced each other. |
Alchemy | Hellenistic Egypt | Hellenistic Egypt
thumb|Ambix, cucurbit and retort of Zosimos, from Marcelin Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (3 vol., Paris, 1887–1888)
The start of Western alchemy may generally be traced to ancient and Hellenistic Egypt, where the city of Alexandria was a center of alchemical knowledge, and retained its pre-eminence through most of the Greek and Roman periods.New Scientist, 24–31 December 1987 Following the work of André-Jean Festugière, modern scholars see alchemical practice in the Roman Empire as originating from the Egyptian goldsmith's art, Greek philosophy and different religious traditions. Tracing the origins of the alchemical art in Egypt is complicated by the pseudepigraphic nature of texts from the Greek alchemical corpus. The treatises of Zosimos of Panopolis, the earliest historically attested author (fl. c. 300 AD), can help in situating the other authors. Zosimus based his work on that of older alchemical authors, such as Mary the Jewess,See Pseudo-Democritus, and Agathodaimon, but very little is known about any of these authors. The most complete of their works, The Four Books of Pseudo-Democritus, were probably written in the first century AD.
Recent scholarship tends to emphasize the testimony of Zosimus, who traced the alchemical arts back to Egyptian metallurgical and ceremonial practices. It has also been argued that early alchemical writers borrowed the vocabulary of Greek philosophical schools but did not implement any of its doctrines in a systematic way. Zosimos of Panopolis wrote in the Final Abstinence (also known as the "Final Count").The title of the τελευταὶα ἀποχή is traditionally translated as the "Final Count". Considering that the treatise does not mention any count nor counting and that it makes a case against the use of sacrifice in the practice of alchemy, a preferable translation would be "the Final Abstinence". See Zosimos explains that the ancient practice of "tinctures" (the technical Greek name for the alchemical arts) had been taken over by certain "demons" who taught the art only to those who offered them sacrifices. Since Zosimos also called the demons "the guardians of places" (, ) and those who offered them sacrifices "priests" (, ), it is fairly clear that he was referring to the gods of Egypt and their priests. While critical of the kind of alchemy he associated with the Egyptian priests and their followers, Zosimos nonetheless saw the tradition's recent past as rooted in the rites of the Egyptian temples. |
Alchemy | Mythology | Mythology
Zosimos of Panopolis asserted that alchemy dated back to Pharaonic Egypt where it was the domain of the priestly class, though there is little to no evidence for his assertion. Alchemical writers used Classical figures from Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology to illuminate their works and allegorize alchemical transmutation.Yves Bonnefoy. 'Roman and European Mythologies'. University of Chicago Press, 1992. pp. 211–213 These included the pantheon of gods related to the Classical planets, Isis, Osiris, Jason, and many others.
The central figure in the mythology of alchemy is Hermes Trismegistus (or Thrice-Great Hermes). His name is derived from the god Thoth and his Greek counterpart Hermes.A survey of the literary and archaeological evidence for the background of Hermes Trismegistus in the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth may be found in Bull, Christian H. 2018. The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom. Leiden: Brill, pp. 33–96. Hermes and his caduceus or serpent-staff, were among alchemy's principal symbols. According to Clement of Alexandria, he wrote what were called the "forty-two books of Hermes", covering all fields of knowledge.Clement, Stromata, vi. 4. The Hermetica of Thrice-Great Hermes is generally understood to form the basis for Western alchemical philosophy and practice, called the hermetic philosophy by its early practitioners. These writings were collected in the first centuries of the common era. |
Alchemy | Technology | Technology
The dawn of Western alchemy is sometimes associated with that of metallurgy, extending back to 3500 BC. Many writings were lost when the Roman emperor Diocletian ordered the burning of alchemical books after suppressing a revolt in Alexandria (AD 292). Few original Egyptian documents on alchemy have survived, most notable among them the Stockholm papyrus and the Leyden papyrus X. Dating from AD 250 to 300, they contained recipes for dyeing and making artificial gemstones, cleaning and fabricating pearls, and manufacturing of imitation gold and silver.Caley, E. R. (1927) "The Stockholm Papyrus : An English Translation with brief notes" Journal of Chemical Education IV:8 : 979–1002. These writings lack the mystical, philosophical elements of alchemy, but do contain the works of Bolus of Mendes (or Pseudo-Democritus), which aligned these recipes with theoretical knowledge of astrology and the classical elements.A History of Chemistry, Bensaude-Vincent, Isabelle Stengers, Harvard University Press, 1996, p13 Between the time of Bolus and Zosimos, the change took place that transformed this metallurgy into a Hermetic art. |
Alchemy | Philosophy | Philosophy
Alexandria acted as a melting pot for philosophies of Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Stoicism and Gnosticism which formed the origin of alchemy's character. An important example of alchemy's roots in Greek philosophy, originated by Empedocles and developed by Aristotle, was that all things in the universe were formed from only four elements: earth, air, water, and fire. According to Aristotle, each element had a sphere to which it belonged and to which it would return if left undisturbed. The four elements of the Greek were mostly qualitative aspects of matter, not quantitative, as our modern elements are; "True alchemy never regarded earth, air, water, and fire as corporeal or chemical substances in the present-day sense of the word. The four elements are simply the primary, and most general, qualities by means of which the amorphous and purely quantitative substance of all bodies first reveals itself in differentiated form." Later alchemists extensively developed the mystical aspects of this concept.
Alchemy coexisted alongside emerging Christianity. Lactantius believed Hermes Trismegistus had prophesied its birth. St Augustine later affirmed this in the 4th and 5th centuries, but also condemned Trismegistus for idolatry.Fanning, Philip Ashley. Isaac Newton and the Transmutation of Alchemy: An Alternative View of the Scientific Revolution. 2009. p.6 Examples of Pagan, Christian, and Jewish alchemists can be found during this period.
Most of the Greco-Roman alchemists preceding Zosimos are known only by pseudonyms, such as Moses, Isis, Cleopatra, Democritus, and Ostanes. Others authors such as Komarios, and Chymes, we only know through fragments of text. After AD 400, Greek alchemical writers occupied themselves solely in commenting on the works of these predecessors.F. Sherwood Taylor. Alchemists, Founders of Modern Chemistry. p.26. By the middle of the 7th century alchemy was almost an entirely mystical discipline.Allen G. Debus. Alchemy and early modern chemistry: papers from Ambix. p. 36 It was at that time that Khalid Ibn Yazid sparked its migration from Alexandria to the Islamic world, facilitating the translation and preservation of Greek alchemical texts in the 8th and 9th centuries.Glen Warren Bowersock, Peter Robert Lamont Brown, Oleg Grabar. Late antiquity: a guide to the postclassical world. pp. 284–285 |
Alchemy | Byzantium | Byzantium
Greek alchemy was preserved in medieval Byzantine manuscripts after the fall of Egypt, and yet historians have only relatively recently begun to pay attention to the study and development of Greek alchemy in the Byzantine period. |
Alchemy | India | India
The 2nd millennium BC text Vedas describe a connection between eternal life and gold. A considerable knowledge of metallurgy has been exhibited in a third-century AD text called Arthashastra which provides ingredients of explosives (Agniyoga) and salts extracted from fertile soils and plant remains (Yavakshara) such as saltpetre/nitre, perfume making (different qualities of perfumes are mentioned), granulated (refined) Sugar. Buddhist texts from the 2nd to 5th centuries mention the transmutation of base metals to gold. According to some scholars Greek alchemy may have influenced Indian alchemy but there are no hard evidences to back this claim.Multhauf, Robert P. & Gilbert, Robert Andrew (2008). Alchemy. Encyclopædia Britannica (2008).
The 11th-century Persian chemist and physician Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī, who visited Gujarat as part of the court of Mahmud of Ghazni, reported that they
The goals of alchemy in India included the creation of a divine body (Sanskrit divya-deham) and immortality while still embodied (Sanskrit jīvan-mukti). Sanskrit alchemical texts include much material on the manipulation of mercury and sulphur, that are homologized with the semen of the god Śiva and the menstrual blood of the goddess Devī.
Some early alchemical writings seem to have their origins in the Kaula tantric schools associated to the teachings of the personality of Matsyendranath. Other early writings are found in the Jaina medical treatise Kalyāṇakārakam of Ugrāditya, written in South India in the early 9th century.
Two famous early Indian alchemical authors were Nāgārjuna Siddha and Nityanātha Siddha. Nāgārjuna Siddha was a Buddhist monk. His book, Rasendramangalam, is an example of Indian alchemy and medicine. Nityanātha Siddha wrote Rasaratnākara, also a highly influential work. In Sanskrit, rasa translates to "mercury", and Nāgārjuna Siddha was said to have developed a method of converting mercury into gold.
Scholarship on Indian alchemy is in the publication of The Alchemical Body by David Gordon White.See bibliographical details and links at https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3266066W/The_Alchemical_Body
A modern bibliography on Indian alchemical studies has been written by White.
The contents of 39 Sanskrit alchemical treatises have been analysed in detail in G. Jan Meulenbeld's History of Indian Medical Literature. The discussion of these works in HIML gives a summary of the contents of each work, their special features, and where possible the evidence concerning their dating. Chapter 13 of HIML, Various works on rasaśāstra and ratnaśāstra (or Various works on alchemy and gems) gives brief details of a further 655 (six hundred and fifty-five) treatises. In some cases Meulenbeld gives notes on the contents and authorship of these works; in other cases references are made only to the unpublished manuscripts of these titles.
A great deal remains to be discovered about Indian alchemical literature. The content of the Sanskrit alchemical corpus has not yet (2014) been adequately integrated into the wider general history of alchemy. |
Alchemy | Islamic world | Islamic world
thumb|upright|15th-century artistic impression of Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber), Codici Ashburnhamiani 1166, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the focus of alchemical development moved to the Islamic World. Much more is known about Islamic alchemy because it was better documented: indeed, most of the earlier writings that have come down through the years were preserved as Arabic translations. The word alchemy itself was derived from the Arabic word al-kīmiyā (الكيمياء). The early Islamic world was a melting pot for alchemy. Platonic and Aristotelian thought, which had already been somewhat appropriated into hermetical science, continued to be assimilated during the late 7th and early 8th centuries through Syriac translations and scholarship.
In the late ninth and early tenth centuries, the Arabic works attributed to Jābir ibn Hayyān (Latinized as "Geber" or "Geberus") introduced a new approach to alchemy. Paul Kraus, who wrote the standard reference work on Jabir, put it as follows:
Islamic philosophers also made great contributions to alchemical hermeticism. The most influential author in this regard was arguably Jabir. Jabir's ultimate goal was Takwin, the artificial creation of life in the alchemical laboratory, up to, and including, human life. He analysed each Aristotelian element in terms of four basic qualities of hotness, coldness, dryness, and moistness. According to Jabir, in each metal two of these qualities were interior and two were exterior. For example, lead was externally cold and dry, while gold was hot and moist. Thus, Jabir theorized, by rearranging the qualities of one metal, a different metal would result. By this reasoning, the search for the philosopher's stone was introduced to Western alchemy. Jabir developed an elaborate numerology whereby the root letters of a substance's name in Arabic, when treated with various transformations, held correspondences to the element's physical properties.
The elemental system used in medieval alchemy also originated with Jabir. His original system consisted of seven elements, which included the five classical elements (aether, air, earth, fire, and water) in addition to two chemical elements representing the metals: sulphur, "the stone which burns", which characterized the principle of combustibility, and mercury, which contained the idealized principle of metallic properties. Shortly thereafter, this evolved into eight elements, with the Arabic concept of the three metallic principles: sulphur giving flammability or combustion, mercury giving volatility and stability, and salt giving solidity.Strathern, Paul. (2000), Mendeleyev's Dream – the Quest for the Elements, New York: Berkley Books The atomic theory of corpuscularianism, where all physical bodies possess an inner and outer layer of minute particles or corpuscles, also has its origins in the work of Jabir.
From the 9th to 14th centuries, alchemical theories faced criticism from a variety of practical Muslim chemists, including Alkindus,Felix Klein-Frank (2001), "Al-Kindi", in Oliver Leaman & Hossein Nasr, History of Islamic Philosophy, p. 174. London: Routledge. Abū al-Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, AvicennaRobert Briffault (1938). The Making of Humanity, pp. 196–197. and Ibn Khaldun. In particular, they wrote refutations against the idea of the transmutation of metals.
From the 14th century onwards, many materials and practices originally belonging to Indian alchemy (Rasayana) were assimilated in the Persian texts written by Muslim scholars. |
Alchemy | East Asia | East Asia
Researchers have found evidence that Chinese alchemists and philosophers discovered complex mathematical phenomena that were shared with Arab alchemists during the medieval period. Discovered in BC China, the "magic square of three" was propagated to followers of Abū Mūsā Jābir ibn Ḥayyān at some point over the proceeding several hundred years. Other commonalities shared between the two alchemical schools of thought include discrete naming for ingredients and heavy influence from the natural elements. The silk road provided a clear path for the exchange of goods, ideas, ingredients, religion, and many other aspects of life with which alchemy is intertwined.
thumb|upright|Taoist alchemists often use this alternate version of the taijitu.
Whereas European alchemy eventually centered on the transmutation of base metals into noble metals, Chinese alchemy had a more obvious connection to medicine.[Obed Simon Johnson, A Study of Chinese Alchemy, Shanghai, Commercial P, 1928. rpt. New York: Arno P, 1974.] The philosopher's stone of European alchemists can be compared to the Grand Elixir of Immortality sought by Chinese alchemists. In the hermetic view, these two goals were not unconnected, and the philosopher's stone was often equated with the universal panacea; therefore, the two traditions may have had more in common than initially appears.
As early as 317 AD, Ge Hong documented the use of metals, minerals, and elixirs in early Chinese medicine. Hong identified three ancient Chinese documents, titled Scripture of Great Clarity, Scripture of the Nine Elixirs, and Scripture of the Golden Liquor, as texts containing fundamental alchemical information. He also described alchemy, along with meditation, as the sole spiritual practices that could allow one to gain immortality or to transcend. In his work Inner Chapters of the Book of the Master Who Embraces Spontaneous Nature (317 AD), Hong argued that alchemical solutions such as elixirs were preferable to traditional medicinal treatment due to the spiritual protection they could provide. In the centuries following Ge Hong's death, the emphasis placed on alchemy as a spiritual practice among Chinese Daoists was reduced. In 499 AD, Tao Hongjing refuted Hong's statement that alchemy is as important a spiritual practice as Shangqing meditation. While Hongjing did not deny the power of alchemical elixirs to grant immortality or provide divine protection, he ultimately found the Scripture of the Nine Elixirs to be ambiguous and spiritually unfulfilling, aiming to implement more accessible practising techniques.
In the early 700s, Neidan (also known as internal alchemy) was adopted by Daoists as a new form of alchemy. Neidan emphasized appeasing the inner gods that inhabit the human body by practising alchemy with compounds found in the body, rather than the mixing of natural resources that was emphasized in early Dao alchemy. For example, saliva was often considered nourishment for the inner gods and did not require any conscious alchemical reaction to produce. The inner gods were not thought of as physical presences occupying each person, but rather a collection of deities that are each said to represent and protect a specific body part or region. Although those who practised Neidan prioritized meditation over external alchemical strategies, many of the same elixirs and constituents from previous Daoist alchemical schools of thought continued to be utilized in tandem with meditation. Eternal life remained a consideration for Neidan alchemists, as it was believed that one would become immortal if an inner god were to be immortalized within them through spiritual fulfilment.
Black powder may have been an important invention of Chinese alchemists. It is said that the Chinese invented gunpowder while trying to find a potion for eternal life. Described in 9th-century texts and used in fireworks in China by the 10th century, it was used in cannons by 1290. From China, the use of gunpowder spread to Japan, the Mongols, the Muslim world, and Europe. Gunpowder was used by the Mongols against the Hungarians in 1241, and in Europe by the 14th century.
Chinese alchemy was closely connected to Taoist forms of traditional Chinese medicine, such as Acupuncture and Moxibustion. In the early Song dynasty, followers of this Taoist idea (chiefly the elite and upper class) would ingest mercuric sulfide, which, though tolerable in low levels, led many to suicide. Thinking that this consequential death would lead to freedom and access to the Taoist heavens, the ensuing deaths encouraged people to eschew this method of alchemy in favour of external sources (the aforementioned Tai Chi Chuan, mastering of the qi, etc.) Chinese alchemy was introduced to the West by Obed Simon Johnson. |
Alchemy | Medieval Europe | Medieval Europe
thumb|"An illuminated page from a book on alchemical processes and receipts", ca. 15th century
The introduction of alchemy to Latin Europe may be dated to 11 February 1144, with the completion of Robert of Chester's translation of the ("Book on the Composition of Alchemy") from an Arabic work attributed to Khalid ibn Yazid. p. 116. Although European craftsmen and technicians pre-existed, Robert notes in his preface that alchemy (here still referring to the elixir rather than to the art itself) p. 890; . was unknown in Latin Europe at the time of his writing. The translation of Arabic texts concerning numerous disciplines including alchemy flourished in 12th-century Toledo, Spain, through contributors like Gerard of Cremona and Adelard of Bath. Translations of the time included the Turba Philosophorum, and the works of Avicenna and Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi. These brought with them many new words to the European vocabulary for which there was no previous Latin equivalent. Alcohol, carboy, elixir, and athanor are examples.
Meanwhile, theologian contemporaries of the translators made strides towards the reconciliation of faith and experimental rationalism, thereby priming Europe for the influx of alchemical thought. The 11th-century St Anselm put forth the opinion that faith and rationalism were compatible and encouraged rationalism in a Christian context. In the early 12th century, Peter Abelard followed Anselm's work, laying down the foundation for acceptance of Aristotelian thought before the first works of Aristotle had reached the West. In the early 13th century, Robert Grosseteste used Abelard's methods of analysis and added the use of observation, experimentation, and conclusions when conducting scientific investigations. Grosseteste also did much work to reconcile Platonic and Aristotelian thinking.
Through much of the 12th and 13th centuries, alchemical knowledge in Europe remained centered on translations, and new Latin contributions were not made. The efforts of the translators were succeeded by that of the encyclopaedists. In the 13th century, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon were the most notable of these, their work summarizing and explaining the newly imported alchemical knowledge in Aristotelian terms.John Read. From Alchemy to Chemistry. 1995 p.90 Albertus Magnus, a Dominican friar, is known to have written works such as the Book of Minerals where he observed and commented on the operations and theories of alchemical authorities like Hermes Trismegistus, pseudo-Democritus and unnamed alchemists of his time. Albertus critically compared these to the writings of Aristotle and Avicenna, where they concerned the transmutation of metals. From the time shortly after his death through to the 15th century, more than 28 alchemical tracts were misattributed to him, a common practice giving rise to his reputation as an accomplished alchemist.. Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays. PIMS. 1980. pp. 187–202 Likewise, alchemical texts have been attributed to Albert's student Thomas Aquinas.
Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar who wrote on a wide variety of topics including optics, comparative linguistics, and medicine, composed his Great Work () for as part of a project towards rebuilding the medieval university curriculum to include the new learning of his time. While alchemy was not more important to him than other sciences and he did not produce allegorical works on the topic, he did consider it and astrology to be important parts of both natural philosophy and theology and his contributions advanced alchemy's connections to soteriology and Christian theology. Bacon's writings integrated morality, salvation, alchemy, and the prolongation of life. His correspondence with Clement highlighted this, noting the importance of alchemy to the papacy.Edmund Brehm. "Roger Bacon's Place in the History of Alchemy." Ambix. Vol. 23, Part I, March 1976. Like the Greeks before him, Bacon acknowledged the division of alchemy into practical and theoretical spheres. He noted that the theoretical lay outside the scope of Aristotle, the natural philosophers, and all Latin writers of his time. The practical confirmed the theoretical, and Bacon advocated its uses in natural science and medicine. In later European legend, he became an archmage. In particular, along with Albertus Magnus, he was credited with the forging of a brazen head capable of answering its owner's questions.
Soon after Bacon, the influential work of Pseudo-Geber (sometimes identified as Paul of Taranto) appeared. His Summa Perfectionis remained a staple summary of alchemical practice and theory through the medieval and renaissance periods. It was notable for its inclusion of practical chemical operations alongside sulphur-mercury theory, and the unusual clarity with which they were described. By the end of the 13th century, alchemy had developed into a fairly structured system of belief. Adepts believed in the macrocosm-microcosm theories of Hermes, that is to say, they believed that processes that affect minerals and other substances could have an effect on the human body (for example, if one could learn the secret of purifying gold, one could use the technique to purify the human soul). They believed in the four elements and the four qualities as described above, and they had a strong tradition of cloaking their written ideas in a labyrinth of coded jargon set with traps to mislead the uninitiated. Finally, the alchemists practised their art: they actively experimented with chemicals and made observations and theories about how the universe operated. Their entire philosophy revolved around their belief that man's soul was divided within himself after the fall of Adam. By purifying the two parts of man's soul, man could be reunited with God.
In the 14th century, alchemy became more accessible to Europeans outside the confines of Latin-speaking churchmen and scholars. Alchemical discourse shifted from scholarly philosophical debate to an exposed social commentary on the alchemists themselves.Tara E. Nummedal. Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire. University of Chicago Press, 2007. p. 49 Dante, Piers Plowman, and Chaucer all painted unflattering pictures of alchemists as thieves and liars. Pope John XXII's 1317 edict, Spondent quas non-exhibent forbade the false promises of transmutation made by pseudo-alchemists.John Hines, II, R. F. Yeager. John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Boydell & Brewer. 2010. p.170 Roman Catholic Inquisitor General Nicholas Eymerich's Directorium Inquisitorum, written in 1376, associated alchemy with the performance of demonic rituals, which Eymerich differentiated from magic performed in accordance with scripture. This did not, however, lead to any change in the Inquisition's monitoring or prosecution of alchemists. In 1404, Henry IV of England banned the practice of multiplying metals by the passing of the (5 Hen. 4. c. 4) (although it was possible to buy a licence to attempt to make gold alchemically, and a number were granted by Henry VI and Edward IV).D. Geoghegan, "A licence of Henry VI to practise Alchemy" Ambix, vol. 6, 1957, pp. 10–17 These critiques and regulations centered more around pseudo-alchemical charlatanism than the actual study of alchemy, which continued with an increasingly Christian tone. The 14th century saw the Christian imagery of death and resurrection employed in the alchemical texts of Petrus Bonus, John of Rupescissa, and in works written in the name of Raymond Lull and Arnold of Villanova.Leah DeVun. From Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the late Middle Ages. Columbia University Press, 2009. p. 104
thumb|left|upright|The Alchemist in Search of the Philosopher's Stone, by Joseph Wright, 1771
Nicolas Flamel is a well-known alchemist to the point where he had many pseudepigraphic imitators. Although the historical Flamel existed, the writings and legends assigned to him only appeared in 1612."Nicolas Flamel. Des Livres et de l'or" by Nigel Wilkins
A common idea in European alchemy in the medieval era was a metaphysical "Homeric chain of wise men that link[ed] heaven and earth" that included ancient pagan philosophers and other important historical figures. |
Alchemy | Renaissance and early modern Europe | Renaissance and early modern Europe
During the Renaissance, Hermetic and Platonic foundations were restored to European alchemy. The dawn of medical, pharmaceutical, occult, and entrepreneurial branches of alchemy followed.
In the late 15th century, Marsilio Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum and the works of Plato into Latin. These were previously unavailable to Europeans who for the first time had a full picture of the alchemical theory that Bacon had declared absent. Renaissance Humanism and Renaissance Neoplatonism guided alchemists away from physics to refocus on mankind as the alchemical vessel.
Esoteric systems developed that blended alchemy into a broader occult Hermeticism, fusing it with magic, astrology, and Christian cabala.Peter J. Forshaw. '"Chemistry, That Starry Science" – Early Modern Conjunctions of Astrology and Alchemy' (2013)Peter J. Forshaw, 'Cabala Chymica or Chemia Cabalistica – Early Modern Alchemists and Cabala' (2013) A key figure in this development was German Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), who received his Hermetic education in Italy in the schools of the humanists. In his De Occulta Philosophia, he attempted to merge Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and alchemy. He was instrumental in spreading this new blend of Hermeticism outside the borders of Italy.Glenn Alexander Magee. Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition. Cornell University Press. 2008. p.30Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction. Oxford University Press. 2008 p.60
Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493–1541) cast alchemy into a new form, rejecting some of Agrippa's occultism and moving away from chrysopoeia. Paracelsus pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine and wrote, "Many have said of Alchemy, that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines."
His hermetical views were that sickness and health in the body relied on the harmony of man the microcosm and Nature the macrocosm. He took an approach different from those before him, using this analogy not in the manner of soul-purification but in the manner that humans must have certain balances of minerals in their bodies, and that certain illnesses of the body had chemical remedies that could cure them. Iatrochemistry refers to the pharmaceutical applications of alchemy championed by Paracelsus.
John Dee (13 July 1527 – December 1608) followed Agrippa's occult tradition. Although better known for angel summoning, divination, and his role as astrologer, cryptographer, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I, Dee's alchemical"Monas hieroglyphica is not a traditional alchemical work, but has important theoretical insights about a cosmic vision, in which alchemy played an important part." Monas Hieroglyphica, written in 1564 was his most popular and influential work. His writing portrayed alchemy as a sort of terrestrial astronomy in line with the Hermetic axiom As above so below.William Royall Newman, Anthony Grafton. Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe. MIT Press, 2001. P.173. During the 17th century, a short-lived "supernatural" interpretation of alchemy became popular, including support by fellows of the Royal Society: Robert Boyle and Elias Ashmole. Proponents of the supernatural interpretation of alchemy believed that the philosopher's stone might be used to summon and communicate with angels. Journal of the History of Ideas, 41, 1980, pp. 293–318
The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest, by Lawrence M. Principe, 'Princeton University Press', 1998, pp. 188 90
Entrepreneurial opportunities were common for the alchemists of Renaissance Europe. Alchemists were contracted by the elite for practical purposes related to mining, medical services, and the production of chemicals, medicines, metals, and gemstones.Tara E. Nummedal. Alchemy and authority in the Holy Roman Empire. p.4 Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, in the late 16th century, famously received and sponsored various alchemists at his court in Prague, including Dee and his associate Edward Kelley. King James IV of Scotland,Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, vol. iii, (1901), 99, 202, 206, 209, 330, 340, 341, 353, 355, 365, 379, 382, 389, 409. Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Henry V, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Augustus, Elector of Saxony, Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, and Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel all contracted alchemists.Tara E. Nummedal. Alchemy and authority in the Holy Roman Empire. pp. 85–98 John's son Arthur Dee worked as a court physician to Michael I of Russia and Charles I of England but also compiled the alchemical book Fasciculus Chemicus.
thumb|Alchemist Sendivogius (1566–1636) by Jan Matejko, 1867
Although most of these appointments were legitimate, the trend of pseudo-alchemical fraud continued through the Renaissance. Betrüger would use sleight of hand, or claims of secret knowledge to make money or secure patronage. Legitimate mystical and medical alchemists such as Michael Maier and Heinrich Khunrath wrote about fraudulent transmutations, distinguishing themselves from the con artists.Tara E. Nummedal. Alchemy and authority in the Holy Roman Empire. p.171 False alchemists were sometimes prosecuted for fraud.
The terms "chemia" and "alchemia" were used as synonyms in the early modern period, and the differences between alchemy, chemistry and small-scale assaying and metallurgy were not as neat as in the present day. There were important overlaps between practitioners, and trying to classify them into alchemists, chemists and craftsmen is anachronistic. For example, Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), an alchemist better known for his astronomical and astrological investigations, had a laboratory built at his Uraniborg observatory/research institute. Michael Sendivogius (Michał Sędziwój, 1566–1636), a Polish alchemist, philosopher, medical doctor and pioneer of chemistry wrote mystical works but is also credited with distilling oxygen in a lab sometime around 1600. Sendivogious taught his technique to Cornelius Drebbel who, in 1621, applied this in a submarine. Isaac Newton devoted considerably more of his writing to the study of alchemy (see Isaac Newton's occult studies) than he did to either optics or physics. Other early modern alchemists who were eminent in their other studies include Robert Boyle, and Jan Baptist van Helmont. Their Hermeticism complemented rather than precluded their practical achievements in medicine and science. |
Alchemy | Later modern period | Later modern period
thumb|upright|Robert Boyle
thumb|right|An alchemist, pictured in Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
The decline of European alchemy was brought about by the rise of modern science with its emphasis on rigorous quantitative experimentation and its disdain for "ancient wisdom". Although the seeds of these events were planted as early as the 17th century, alchemy still flourished for some two hundred years, and in fact may have reached its peak in the 18th century. As late as 1781 James Price claimed to have produced a powder that could transmute mercury into silver or gold. Early modern European alchemy continued to exhibit a diversity of theories, practices, and purposes: "Scholastic and anti-Aristotelian, Paracelsian and anti-Paracelsian, Hermetic, Neoplatonic, mechanistic, vitalistic, and more—plus virtually every combination and compromise thereof."
Robert Boyle (1627–1691) pioneered the scientific method in chemical investigations. He assumed nothing in his experiments and compiled every piece of relevant data. Boyle would note the place in which the experiment was carried out, the wind characteristics, the position of the Sun and Moon, and the barometer reading, all just in case they proved to be relevant. This approach eventually led to the founding of modern chemistry in the 18th and 19th centuries, based on revolutionary discoveries and ideas of Lavoisier and John Dalton.
Beginning around 1720, a rigid distinction began to be drawn for the first time between "alchemy" and "chemistry". By the 1740s, "alchemy" was now restricted to the realm of gold making, leading to the popular belief that alchemists were charlatans, and the tradition itself nothing more than a fraud. In order to protect the developing science of modern chemistry from the negative censure to which alchemy was being subjected, academic writers during the 18th-century scientific Enlightenment attempted to divorce and separate the "new" chemistry from the "old" practices of alchemy. This move was mostly successful, and the consequences of this continued into the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
During the occult revival of the early 19th century, alchemy received new attention as an occult science. The esoteric or occultist school that arose during the 19th century held the view that the substances and operations mentioned in alchemical literature are to be interpreted in a spiritual sense, less than as a practical tradition or protoscience. This interpretation claimed that the obscure language of the alchemical texts, which 19th century practitioners were not always able to decipher, were an allegorical guise for spiritual, moral or mystical processes.
Two seminal figures during this period were Mary Anne Atwood and Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who independently published similar works regarding spiritual alchemy. Both rebuffed the growing successes of chemistry, developing a completely esoteric view of alchemy. Atwood wrote: "No modern art or chemistry, notwithstanding all its surreptitious claims, has any thing in common with Alchemy." Atwood's work influenced subsequent authors of the occult revival including Eliphas Levi, Arthur Edward Waite, and Rudolf Steiner. Hitchcock, in his Remarks Upon Alchymists (1855) attempted to make a case for his spiritual interpretation with his claim that the alchemists wrote about a spiritual discipline under a materialistic guise in order to avoid accusations of blasphemy from the church and state. In 1845, Baron Carl Reichenbach, published his studies on Odic force, a concept with some similarities to alchemy, but his research did not enter the mainstream of scientific discussion.Daniel Merkur. Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions. SUNY Press. 1993 p.55
In 1946, Louis Cattiaux published the Message Retrouvé, a work that was at once philosophical, mystical and highly influenced by alchemy. In his lineage, many researchers, including Emmanuel and Charles d'Hooghvorst, are updating alchemical studies in France and Belgium. |
Alchemy | Women | Women
Several women appear in the earliest history of alchemy. Michael Maier names four women who were able to make the philosophers' stone: Mary the Jewess, Cleopatra the Alchemist, Medera, and Taphnutia.Raphael Patai. The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book. p. 78. Zosimos's sister Theosebia (later known as Euthica the Arab) and Isis the Prophetess also played roles in early alchemical texts.
The first alchemist whose name we know was Mary the Jewess (). Early sources claim that Mary (or Maria) devised a number of improvements to alchemical equipment and tools as well as novel techniques in chemistry. Her best known advances were in heating and distillation processes. The laboratory water-bath, known eponymously (especially in France) as the bain-marie, is said to have been invented or at least improved by her. Essentially a double-boiler, it was (and is) used in chemistry for processes that required gentle heating. The tribikos (a modified distillation apparatus) and the kerotakis (a more intricate apparatus used especially for sublimations) are two other advancements in the process of distillation that are credited to her. Although we have no writing from Mary herself, she is known from the early-fourth-century writings of Zosimos of Panopolis. After the Greco-Roman period, women's names appear less frequently in alchemical literature.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of the Renaissance, due to the emergence of print, women were able to access the alchemical knowledge from texts of the preceding centuries. Caterina Sforza, the Countess of Forlì and Lady of Imola, is one of the few confirmed female alchemists after Mary the Jewess. As she owned an apothecary, she would practice science and conduct experiments in her botanic gardens and laboratories. Being knowledgeable in alchemy and pharmacology, she recorded all of her alchemical ventures in a manuscript named ('Experiments'). The manuscript contained more than four hundred recipes covering alchemy as well as cosmetics and medicine. One of these recipes was for the water of talc. Talc, which makes up talcum powder, is a mineral which, when combined with water and distilled, was said to produce a solution which yielded many benefits. These supposed benefits included turning silver to gold and rejuvenation. When combined with white wine, its powder form could be ingested to counteract poison. Furthermore, if that powder was mixed and drunk with white wine, it was said to be a source of protection from any poison, sickness, or plague. Other recipes were for making hair dyes, lotions, lip colours. There was also information on how to treat a variety of ailments from fevers and coughs to epilepsy and cancer. In addition, there were instructions on producing the quintessence (or aether), an elixir which was believed to be able to heal all sicknesses, defend against diseases, and perpetuate youthfulness. She also wrote about creating the illustrious philosophers' stone.
Some women known for their interest in alchemy were Catherine de' Medici, the Queen of France, and Marie de' Medici, the following Queen of France, who carried out experiments in her personal laboratory. Also, Isabella d'Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, made perfumes herself to serve as gifts. Due to the proliferation in alchemical literature of pseudepigrapha and anonymous works, however, it is difficult to know which of the alchemists were actually women. This contributed to a broader pattern in which male authors credited prominent noblewomen for beauty products with the purpose of appealing to a female audience. For example, in ("Gallant Recipe-Book"), the distillation of lemons and roses was attributed to Elisabetta Gonzaga, the duchess of Urbino. In the same book, Isabella d'Aragona, the daughter of Alfonso II of Naples, is accredited for recipes involving alum and mercury. Ippolita Maria Sforza is even referred to in an anonymous manuscript about a hand lotion created with rose powder and crushed bones.
As the sixteenth century went on, scientific culture flourished and people began collecting "secrets". During this period "secrets" referred to experiments, and the most coveted ones were not those which were bizarre, but the ones which had been proven to yield the desired outcome. In this period, the only book of secrets ascribed to a woman was ('The Secrets of Signora Isabella Cortese'). This book contained information on how to turn base metals into gold, medicine, and cosmetics. However, it is rumoured that a man, Girolamo Ruscelli, was the real author and only used a female voice to attract female readers.
In the nineteenth-century, Mary Anne Atwood's A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery (1850) marked the return of women during the occult revival. |
Alchemy | Modern historical research | Modern historical research
The history of alchemy has become a recognized subject of academic study.Lawrence Principe. The Secrets of Alchemy. University of Chicago Press, 2015. As the language of the alchemists is analysed, historians are becoming more aware of the connections between that discipline and other facets of Western cultural history, such as the evolution of science and philosophy, the sociology and psychology of the intellectual communities, kabbalism, spiritualism, Rosicrucianism, and other mystic movements. Institutions involved in this research include The Chymistry of Isaac Newton project at Indiana University, the University of Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO), the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), and the University of Amsterdam's Sub-department for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents. A large collection of books on alchemy is kept in the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam.
Journals which publish regularly on the topic of Alchemy include Ambix, published by the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, and Isis, published by the History of Science Society. |
Alchemy | Core concepts | Core concepts
thumb|Mandala illustrating common alchemical concepts, symbols, and processes. From Spiegel der Kunst und Natur.
Western alchemical theory corresponds to the worldview of late antiquity in which it was born. Concepts were imported from Neoplatonism and earlier Greek cosmology. As such, the classical elements appear in alchemical writings, as do the seven classical planets and the corresponding seven metals of antiquity. Similarly, the gods of the Roman pantheon who are associated with these luminaries are discussed in alchemical literature. The concepts of prima materia and anima mundi are central to the theory of the philosopher's stone. |
Alchemy | Magnum opus | Magnum opus
The Great Work of Alchemy is often described as a series of four stages represented by colours.
nigredo, a blackening or melanosis
albedo, a whitening or leucosis
citrinitas, a yellowing or xanthosis
rubedo, a reddening, purpling, or iosisJoseph Needham. Science & Civilisation in China: Chemistry and chemical technology. Spagyrical discovery and invention: magisteries of gold and immortality. Cambridge. 1974. p.23 |
Alchemy | Modernity | Modernity
Due to the complexity and obscurity of alchemical literature, and the 18th-century diffusion of remaining alchemical practitioners into the area of chemistry, the general understanding of alchemy in the 19th and 20th centuries was influenced by several distinct and radically different interpretations. Those focusing on the exoteric, such as historians of science Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman, have interpreted the 'Decknamen' (or code words) of alchemy as physical substances. These scholars have reconstructed physicochemical experiments that they say are described in medieval and early modern texts.Richard Conniff. "Alchemy May Not Have Been the Pseudoscience We All Thought It Was." Smithsonian Magazine. February 2014. At the opposite end of the spectrum, focusing on the esoteric, scholars, such as Florin George Călian and Anna Marie Roos, who question the reading of Principe and Newman, interpret these same Decknamen as spiritual, religious, or psychological concepts.
New interpretations of alchemy are still perpetuated, sometimes merging in concepts from New Age or radical environmentalism movements. Groups like the Rosicrucians and Freemasons have a continued interest in alchemy and its symbolism. Since the Victorian revival of alchemy, "occultists reinterpreted alchemy as a spiritual practice, involving the self-transformation of the practitioner and only incidentally or not at all the transformation of laboratory substances", which has contributed to a merger of magic and alchemy in popular thought. |
Alchemy | Esoteric interpretations of historical texts | Esoteric interpretations of historical texts
In the eyes of a variety of modern esoteric and Neo-Hermetic practitioners, alchemy is primarily spiritual. In this interpretation, transmutation of lead into gold is presented as an analogy for personal transmutation, purification, and perfection.Antoine Faivre, Wouter J. Hanegraaff. Western esotericism and the science of religion. 1995. p. 96
According to this view, early alchemists such as Zosimos of Panopolis () highlighted the spiritual nature of the alchemical quest, symbolic of a religious regeneration of the human soul.Allen G. Debus. Alchemy and early modern chemistry. The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry. p.34. This approach is held to have continued in the Middle Ages, as metaphysical aspects, substances, physical states, and material processes are supposed to have been used as metaphors for spiritual entities, spiritual states, and, ultimately, transformation. In this sense, the literal meanings of 'Alchemical Formulas' hid a spiritual philosophy. In the Neo-Hermeticist interpretation, both the transmutation of common metals into gold and the universal panacea are held to symbolize evolution from an imperfect, diseased, corruptible, and ephemeral state toward a perfect, healthy, incorruptible, and everlasting state, so the philosopher's stone then represented a mystic key that would make this evolution possible. Applied to the alchemist, the twin goal symbolized their evolution from ignorance to enlightenment, and the stone represented a hidden spiritual truth or power that would lead to that goal. In texts that are believed to have been written according to this view, the cryptic alchemical symbols, diagrams, and textual imagery of late alchemical works are supposed to contain multiple layers of meanings, allegories, and references to other equally cryptic works; which must be laboriously decoded to discover their true meaning.
In his 1766 Alchemical Catechism, Théodore Henri de Tschudi suggested that the usage of the metals was symbolic: |
Alchemy | Psychology | Psychology
Alchemical symbolism has been important in analytical psychology and was revived and popularized from near extinction by the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. Jung was initially confounded and at odds with alchemy and its images but after being given a copy of The Secret of the Golden Flower, a Chinese alchemical text translated by his friend Richard Wilhelm, he discovered a direct correlation or parallel between the symbolic images in the alchemical drawings and the inner, symbolic images coming up in his patients' dreams, visions, or fantasies. He observed these alchemical images occurring during the psychic process of transformation, a process that Jung called "individuation". Specifically, he regarded the conjuring up of images of gold or Lapis as symbolic expressions of the origin and goal of this "process of individuation".Jung, C. G. (1944). Psychology and Alchemy (2nd ed. 1968 Collected Works Vol. 12 ). London: Routledge. E.g. § 41, § 116, § 427, § 431, § 448. Together with his alchemical mystica soror (mystical sister) Jungian Swiss analyst Marie-Louise von Franz, Jung began collecting old alchemical texts, compiled a lexicon of key phrases with cross-references,Anthony Stevens: On Jung. (A new and authoritiative introduction to Jung's life and thought), Penguin Books, London 1990, , p. 193. and pored over them. The volumes of work he wrote shed new light onto understanding the art of transubstantiation and renewed alchemy's popularity as a symbolic process of coming into wholeness as a human being where opposites are brought into contact and inner and outer, spirit and matter are reunited in the hieros gamos, or divine marriage. His writings are influential in general psychology, but especially to those who have an interest in understanding the importance of dreams, symbols, and the unconscious archetypal forces (archetypes) that comprise all psychic life.Polly Young-Eisendrath, Terence Dawson. The Cambridge companion to Jung. Cambridge University Press. 1997. p.33C.G. Jung Preface to Richard Wilhelm's translation of the I Ching.C.-G. Jung Preface to the translation of The Secret of The Golden Flower.
Both von Franz and Jung have contributed significantly to the subject and work of alchemy and its continued presence in psychology as well as contemporary culture. Among the volumes Jung wrote on alchemy, his magnum opus is Volume 14 of his Collected Works, Mysterium Coniunctionis. |
Alchemy | Literature | Literature
Alchemy has had a long-standing relationship with art, seen both in alchemical texts and in mainstream entertainment. Literary alchemy appears throughout the history of English literature from Shakespeare to J. K. Rowling, and also the popular Japanese manga Fullmetal Alchemist. Here, characters or plot structure follow an alchemical magnum opus. In the 14th century, Chaucer began a trend of alchemical satire that can still be seen in recent fantasy works like those of the late Sir Terry Pratchett. Another literary work taking inspiration from the alchemical tradition is the 1988 novel The Alchemist by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho.
Visual artists have had a similar relationship with alchemy. While some used it as a source of satire, others worked with the alchemists themselves or integrated alchemical thought or symbols in their work. Music was also present in the works of alchemists and continues to influence popular performers. In the last hundred years, alchemists have been portrayed in a magical and spagyric role in fantasy fiction, film, television, novels, comics and video games. |
Alchemy | Science | Science
One goal of alchemy, the transmutation of base substances into gold, is now known to be impossible by means of traditional chemistry, but possible by other physical means. Although not financially worthwhile, gold was synthesized in particle accelerators as early as 1941. |
Alchemy | See also | See also
Alchemical symbol
Chemistry
Corentin Louis Kervran § Biological transmutation
Cupellation
Historicism
History of chemistry
List of alchemical substances
List of alchemists
List of obsolete occupations
Nuclear transmutation
Outline of alchemy
Porta Alchemica
Renaissance magic
Spagyric
Superseded theories in science
Synthesis of precious metals
Thaumaturgy
Western esotericism |
Alchemy | Notes | Notes |
Alchemy | References | References |
Alchemy | Citations | Citations |
Alchemy | Sources used | Sources used
|
Alchemy | Bibliography | Bibliography |
Alchemy | Introductions and textbooks | Introductions and textbooks
(focus on technical aspects)
(focus on technical aspects)
(general overview)
(Greek and Byzantine alchemy)
(focus on technical aspects)
(Greek and Byzantine alchemy)
(the second part of volume 1 was never published; the other volumes deal with the modern period and are not relevant for alchemy)
(general overview, focus on esoteric aspects)
(general overview, written in a highly accessible style)
|
Alchemy | Greco-Egyptian alchemy | Greco-Egyptian alchemy |
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