Topic III. Inventing the Laboratory

Alchemy… Hieronymus Bosch

Chemical Medicine… Paracelsus

Mineralogy… Agricola

Teaching Chemistry… Libavius

Random Stuff for Vocab:

• The sun was considered a planet

Georgius Agricola:

• Born at Glauchau in Saxony

• 15,14 university of fleipzig

• 1518 Latin school at Zwickau taught Greek and Latin

• 1522 back to Leipzig

• 1527 physician at Joachimstahl, Bohemia, a booming mining town

Laboratory:

• appeared in close association with alchemy and chemistry in the second half of the 16th century

• indicates a new mode of scientific inquiry

• changed the meaning of science (then philosophy)

• identified simple building blocks and tried to make more complex things with those

Tycho Brahe 1546-1601:

• famous astronomer

• people were adding a substance to another and boiling them together not because of the chem properties but because “God gave them these celestial meanings so when they are mixed they do this” They were manipulating celestial signs to get a substance with certain properties

Andreas Libavius (1555-1616), a scholar:

• Lutheran Humanist (well trained to read ancient texts and had a lot of knowledge) at Rothenburg, then Coburg (rector of Gymnasium)

• trying to transform chemistry from a dark magical art into a public science, in order for chemistry to become a science he thinks all of the symbols and mystical things should be converted into a simple language and recipes and be taught

• Designed a laboratory space/building in the city, open to the people, and organized. Was never built.

• Anti-Paracelsian, believed modern chemistry acquired a bad reputation due to Paracelsus. Had a bad opinion of many chemists

Jean Baptiste Van Helmont (1579-1644):

• Latrochemistry

• important because contribution to chemical analysis, shifting from the distillation method to the solution method.

Renaissance Material Culture & SR:

• alchemy (mining, medicine…)

• Natural History Collections

• Water Gardens & Hydraulic Machines