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Article: Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution.(Book review)
- Article from:
- Renaissance Quarterly
- Article date:
- September 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 The Renaissance Society of America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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William R. Newman. Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. xiv + 250 pp. + 8 color pls. index. illus. bibl. $75 (cl), $30 (pbk). ISBN: 0-226-57696-5 (cl), 0-226-57697-3 (pbk).
The concept of the Scientific Revolution has, from the start, been about physics and astronomy, about matter and motion, and about the replacement of Aristotelian and scholastic natural philosophy with a quantified and mechanistic understanding of nature. Developments in other spheres of the study of nature were often considered marginal and ancillary at best and, in the case of alchemy ...