'History of Science, Medicine, and Technology' Seminar
‘Baconian Alchemy: Making Gold in the Novum organum and in the Sylva’
Daniel Garber (Princeton University)
Joint session with the NOTCOM ERC Project
Book II of the Novum organum begins as follows: “The work and aim of human power is to generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures on a given body.” (NO II.1) The transformation of bodies is thus central for Baconian science, as it is for the alchemist. In the Novum organum, Bacon suggests that there are two strategies for the transformation of bodies. The one regards bodies as collections of simple natures, and goes by discovering the form of each of the simple natures and imposing it on a body. The other goes by observing how bodies are transformed in nature (the latent process) and imitating it in the laboratory. (NO II.5) The much-discussed illustration of the method in the Novum organum is exclusively of the first kind. (NO II.10-21). This is what most commentators mean when they talk about Baconian method. But in the Sylva Sylvarum, Bacon illustrates the second strategy. Using the example of transforming a body into gold, I will discuss Bacon’s second method, and contrast it with the first. I will suggest that its employment in the Sylva may represent a change in his views on what the method of inquiry should be.
Daniel Garber is the A Watson Armour III University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. Garber's principal interests are the relations between philosophy, science, religion and society in the period of the Scientific Revolution. Garber is the author of Descartes' Metaphysical Physics (1992), Descartes Embodied (2001), and Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad (2009) and is co-editor with Michael Ayers of the Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (1998), the editor of a number of collections, and author of numerous articles.
Convened by Alex Aylward (University of Oxford), Erica Charters (Wolfson College), Hohee Cho (Wolfson College), Mark Harrison (Green Templeton College), Rob Iliffe (Linacre College), Catherine Jackson Harris Manchester College), and Sloan Mahone (University of Oxford)
The event is funded by the European Research Council (NOTCOM, ERC AdG no. 101052433, 2023-2027). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the participants only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the ERC. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
