Search results for ""Author Bruce T. Moran""

Throughout his controversial life the alchemist, physician and social radical known as Paracelsus combined traditions that were magical and empirical, scholarly and folk, learned and artisanal. He read ancient texts and then burned some of them. He endorsed both Catholic and Reformation beliefs, but believed devoutly in a female deity. He travelled constantly, learning and teaching a new form of medicine based on the experience of miners, bathers, alchemists, midwives, barber-surgeons and executioners. He argued for changes in the way the body was understood, how disease was defined and how treatments were created, but he was also moved by mystical speculations, an alchemical view of nature and an intriguing concept of creation. Bruce T. Moran tells the story of how alchemy refashioned medical practice, and brings to light the ideas, workings and major texts of an important Renaissance figure, showing how his tenacity and endurance changed the medical world for the better, and brought new perspectives to the study of nature.

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Alchemy can't be science--common sense tells us as much. But perhaps common sense is not the best measure of what science is, or was. In this book, Bruce Moran looks past contemporary assumptions and prejudices to determine what alchemists were actually doing in the context of early modern science. Examining the ways alchemy and chemistry were studied and practiced between 1400 and 1700, he shows how these approaches influenced their respective practitioners' ideas about nature and shaped their inquiries into the workings of the natural world. His work sets up a dialogue between what historians have usually presented as separate spheres; here we see how alchemists and early chemists exchanged ideas and methods and in fact shared a territory between their two disciplines. Distilling Knowledge suggests that scientific revolution may wear a different appearance in different cultural contexts. The metaphor of the Scientific Revolution, Moran argues, can be expanded to make sense of alchemy and other so-called pseudo-sciences--by including a new framework in which "process can count as an object, in which making leads to learning, and in which the messiness of conflict leads to discernment." Seen on its own terms, alchemy can stand within the bounds of demonstrative science.

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** A Cultural History of Chemistry: Volumes 1-6 is a 2023 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title ** A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Early Modern Age covers the period from 1500 to 1700, tracing chemical debates and practices within their cultural, social, and political contexts. This era in the history of chemistry was notable for natural philosophy, scientific discovery, and experimental method, and also as the high point of European alchemy - exemplified by the immensely popular writings of Paracelsus. Developments in the chemistry of metallurgy, medicine, distillation, and the applied arts encouraged attention to materials and techniques, linking theoretical speculation with practical know-how. Chemistry emerged as an academic discipline - supported by educational texts and based in classroom and laboratory instruction – and claimed a public place. The six-volume set of the Cultural History of Chemistry presents the first comprehensive history from the Bronze Age to today, covering all forms and aspects of chemistry and its ever-changing social context. The themes covered in each volume are theory and concepts; practice and experiment; laboratories and technology; culture and science; society and environment; trade and industry; learning and institutions; art and representation. Bruce T. Moran is Professor of History and University Foundation Professor (emeritus) at the University of Nevada, Reno, USA. A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Early Modern Age is the third volume in the six-volume set, A Cultural History of Chemistry, also available online as part of Bloomsbury Cultural History, a fully-searchable digital library (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com). General Editors: Peter J. T. Morris, University College London, UK, and Alan Rocke, Case Western Reserve University, USA.

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