 | Bridging Traditions : Alchemy, Chemistry, and Paracelsian Practices in the Early Modern Era Bridging Traditions explores the connections between apparently different zones of comprehension and experience--magic and experiment, alchemy and mechanics, practical mathematics and geometrical mysticism, things earthy and heavenly, and especially science and medicine--by focusing on points of intersection among alchemy, chemistry, and Paracelsian medical philosophy. In exploring the varieties of natural knowledge in the early modern era, the authors pay tribute to the work of Allen Debus, whose own endeavors cleared the way for scholars to examine subjects that were once snubbed as suitable only to the refuse heap of the history of science. Karen Hunger Parshall is professor of history and mathematics at the University of Virginia. She is the author of James Joseph Sylvester: Jewish Mathematician in a Victorian World (2006), Taming the Unknown: A History of Algebra from Antiquity to the Early Twentieth Century (with Victor J. Katz, 2014), and Experiencing Nature: Proceedings of a Conference in Honor of Allen G. Debus (coedited with Paul H. Theerman, 1997). Michael T. Walton was the author of Genesis and the Chemical Philosophy: True Christian Science in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (2011); and Anthonius Margaritha and the Jewish Faith: Jewish Life and Conversion in Sixteenth Century Germany (2012). Bruce T. Moran is professor of history at the University of Nevada, Reno. Among many articles and books are Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution (2005) and Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with Polemical Fire (2007). |
