Ambix最新文献

{"title":"Tóxicos Invisibles. La construcción de la ignorancia ambiental","authors":"María José Correa-Gómez","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2076875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2076875","url":null,"abstract":"trained chemicus from the lower educational level of the professional chemist who worked in factories, at the same level as operators in mechanical engineering. De chemist is the published version of Vermande’s PhD thesis. This helps to explain the fact that the book contains many little summaries and repetitions, as well as extensive appendices typical of that genre. Vermande focuses on the occupation of the chemist, without paying much attention to contextualising the primary source material. For instance, he regularly cites references to chemisten in late seventeenth-century pamphlets, but he seems unaware of the context and rhetoric of the pamphlet wars at the time, with their extremely crude language and a predominant concern with secrecy and self-interest in the (Amsterdam) medical sector. A more contextualised analysis of these controversies could have strengthened the arguments of the thesis. Vermande’s book covers a period of 220 years, but the focus of the analysis is on the late seventeenth century and on the period 1760–1820. The first half of the eighteenth century remains underdiscussed. This is a pity, because during this period the Netherlands were known as a hotbed of chemical and medical teaching, which must have had a direct effect on the popularity of the chemist. For a start, more than ever before, anatomy and the making of anatomical preparations – for instance the work of Frederik Ruysch and Bernhard Siegfried Albinus – heavily relied on chemical techniques, whereby chemicals (presumably sold in chemical shops) and their particular properties literally and metaphorically took the place of bodily fluids and physiological processes. Similarly, Vermande does not analyse the rise of the chemist against the backdrop of the popular and influential chemistry teaching of Herman Boerhaave and his disciples. Recent historical work has shown that Boerhaave, even more than his predecessors Franciscus dele Boë Sylvius, Johann Conrad Barchusen, and Jacob LeMort, elevated chemistry to a serious academic discipline, which must have had a positive effect on the popularity and business of the chemist. Who, after all, supplied the chemicals for the students’ experimental activities? In his lectures, Boerhaave also demarcated his “new” method of chemistry from the chemistry of his predecessors, thereby making a clear distinction between true and false (al)chemists. This demarcation was even stronger in the works of his disciples and must have resonated with the need of the chemisten to distinguish themselves as an occupational group. Despite these shortcomings, the great merit of Vermande’s study is his novel focus on the largely forgotten group of the chemisten in the history of chemistry and medicine. I found many interesting details that set me thinking. For example, I was struck by the number of widows of chemisten who took over the shops of their deceased husbands, and the apparent need, in 1813, to formulate specific regulations for thes","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47019138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ethics of Chemistry. From Poison Gas to Climate Engineering","authors":"J. Bertomeu-sánchez","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2071818","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2071818","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46414596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Rainbow Palate: How Chemical Dyes Changed the West’s Relationship With Food","authors":"J. Rees","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2066257","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2066257","url":null,"abstract":"Garraf landfill, where Barcelona’s refuse had accumulated for more than thirty years. Similar cultural actions were used to soften the impact of complex projects such as the Corta Atalaya copper mine in Spain, where certain industries fostered mechanisms of ignorance through the sponsorship of artistic work, as Galech Amillano shows. New opportunities for labour in developing factories were another part of this continued silencing of the environmental and health effects of industrial projects, as exemplified by Pujada in his chapter on the Flix factory in Spain, and also by Rodríguez-Giralt and Tironi in their study on the installation of a copper smelting plant in the Puchuncaví area on the central coast of Chile. The latter also addresses the emergence of local opposition to toxic hazards and demands for policies that acknowledged them. Hamilton’s case study of the Parque de la Albufera in Valencia and the development of the rice industry documents a lack of knowledge of hydrological systems and their implications for contamination. Finally, Barca addresses the new forms of ignorance associated with narratives of the Anthropocene that leave out the toxicity, inequality, and environmental injustice of modern industry. In summary, Tóxicos invisibles investigates the methods by which the processes of scientific and technological change were constructed as well as regulated. It highlights specific participants – scientists, bureaucrats, politicians, journalists, and businessmen. It problematises not only their participation in the development of environmental ignorance, but also their limited capacity to modify the processes of this “invisibility of toxicity,” or to promote a more fruitful dialogue with stakeholders. In addition, the book promotes critical analysis of the production, representation, translation, and appropriation of ignorance, which of course does not only concern environmental issues.","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49648733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"De chemist. De geschiedenis van een verdwenen beroepsgroep, 1600–1800","authors":"Rina Knoeff","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2071815","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2071815","url":null,"abstract":"ground the intersubjectivity of the new science. A few suggestions for further development come to mind. Christian Aristotelians did not think that final causation in non-intelligent things was due to an “indwelling intelligence” (p. 40), but that God directed them to their ends as an archer does an arrow (see Laurence Carlin’s recent work). Similarly, well before Ray, Galen’s De usu partium set out in exhaustive detail how one could make the structures, actions, and uses or functions of body parts into “objects of empirical knowledge” (p. 36). Galen’s texts also separated the descriptions of structures and actions from discussions of their uses (and Galenic anatomy texts often used mundane analogies for parts). Royal Society writers on anatomy almost certainly followed this genre tradition, and not treatises on navigational instruments, as claimed (pp. 93, 202 n. 48). Finally, Aesthetic Science could have found a productive conversation partner in Marieke Hendriksen’s excellent history of the material culture, epistemology, and aesthetics of Leiden’s eighteenth-century anatomical collections, Elegant Anatomy (2015). In sum, this is a beautiful, concise study that will be of interest to historians of science, aesthetics, and communication. The central argument, that aesthetic sensibilities, or at least theories or discourse about them, shaped some investigative and communicative practices in the Royal Society and addressed the problem of intersubjectivity, is striking in its weaving of different sources and fields into a coherent vision.","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46729057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Turba Philosophorum: Congrès pythagoricien sur l’art d’Hermès","authors":"Georgiana Hedesan","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2066258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2066258","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45672373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Nobel Affair: The Correspondence Between Alfred Nobel and Sofie Hess","authors":"Brigitte Van Tiggelen","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2066253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2066253","url":null,"abstract":"There is noNobel prize inMathematics, the urban legend goes, because a mathematician was the lover of Madame Nobel. But then most people know Alfred Nobel remained a bachelor until his death in 1896. What is less known is that there are envelopes addressed to a Madame Nobel in Alfred Nobel’s own writing. He maintained a long-term affair with a young Austrian woman, Sofie Hess. The affair between the forty-three-year-old wealthy vagabond of Europe and the twenty-six-year-old flower shop girl started in 1876 with all the traditional trimmings – endearing pet names, luxury gifts, meetings on Nobel’s business travels, and different apartments and places for Hess to stay, in Paris and elsewhere. Their epistolary exchanges continued long after their relationship had progressively soured, yielding a significant body of correspondence. The letters were deliberately kept hidden by those in charge of Nobel’s legacy and his first biographers, and when Hess threatened to sell the letters of her deceased lover, despite a significant sum left to her in Nobel’s will and her previous promise to destroy those letters, the lot was swiftly acquired by the Nobel Foundation to make sure this part of his life would remain in the shadows. They were not destroyed, though, and this is fortunate, even if scholars had to wait until 1976 to access this archive. For those curious about the love life of great men, Alfred Nobel’s case is rather disappointing. Apart from his mother, there are only two female figures who stand out: Bertha von Suttner and Sofie Hess. And with these two, it would be difficult to find more contrasting characters: one of noble descent, highly educated, mastering several foreign languages, politically engaged, and aiming to improve society; the other from the lower bourgeoisie, struggling to write in her own mother tongue, oblivious to the issues of her day, and unfocused even in her aim of being a high-maintenance kept woman, requesting large amounts of money, but not seizing opportunities for social or intellectual advancement through her benefactor’s tutelage. Von Suttner inspired Nobel’s idea for the Peace prize, while Hess seems to have passed through his life without leaving much of a trace. Yet Nobel corresponded with both, offering glimpses into hugely different aspects of his personality, and the image of himself he wanted to project. On that point, A Nobel Affair provides more insight into Nobel’s psychological and social difficulties than Edelgard Biedermann’s German edition of his correspondence with von Suttner. Because he plays less of a role on an imaginary stage when he writes to Sofie, Alfred appears more crippled in his anxiety and paranoia about his business and health, uncertain about his big projects and the path to take, often depressed, gradually more misanthropic, and definitely less of a gentleman and benefactor of humankind in his treatment of what he identifies as his lover’s deficiencies both in character and social proven","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42318319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Reign of Saturn Transformed into an Age of Gold","authors":"A. Kraft","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2055902","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2055902","url":null,"abstract":"Aaron Cheak’s Rubedo Press has published a new Latin-English edition of the well-known alchemical treatise Saturnia Regna. After Hermetic Recreations (2017), The Basilian Aphorisms (2018), and The Key to the Hermetic Sanctum (2020), this is the fourth dual-language edition of alchemical texts by this publisher. The Reign of Saturn consists of four parts: the lengthy introduction (pp. 9–81), the LatinEnglish facing-page edition of the 1657 Saturnia Regna (pp. 82–222), the editors’ annotations and commentary (pp. 223–280), and a bibliography (pp. 281–300). The Saturnia Regna itself comprises the preface (Praefatio) of the original book (pp. 85–94), the “Hermetic Propositions” (Positiones Hermeticae, pp. 95–176) and the “Lydian Stone” (Lapislydius, pp. 177–200) which form the main parts of the book, and the final part of the original book, titled “practice” (Praxis). Saturnia Regna was first published in Latin in Paris 1657 as Saturnia Regna in aurea saecula conversa, which gives the English title The Reign of Saturn Transformed into an Age of Gold. Beside the initials S. M. T. F. P., no author is named; the title page only mentions a certain “philochymist” from Paris, Huginus à Barma, at whose expense the book was printed. The text was translated into German as early as 1674, and later also into French (1780) and Italian (1986). It is here available in English for the first time. The book is remarkable because in the two main parts, the “Hermetic Propositions” and the “Lydian Stone,” the text remains extremely philosophical and mystical, with no guidance for practical (al)chemical work. In contrast, the short Praxis at the end of the book provides detailed practical instructions that a chemist trained in chymistry and chymical language could implement. It is reasonable to assume that these are texts by different authors. During their meticulous research, the editors found a manuscript of Saturnia Regna in the Austrian National Library dated 1649, eight years before the text appeared in print in Paris in 1657. On the title page of this manuscript, the author is abbreviated with the initials P. F. T. M. S., and the title is given as Saturnia Regna sive Magisterium Sapientum, i.e. The Reign of Saturn, or the Magisterium of the Wise. The initials on the title page are in reverse order compared to the printed book and Huginus à Barma is not mentioned. This is no surprise if he paid for printing of the text in Paris only. But another name appears on the title page, that of “Patre Gabriele Gotifredo ordinis St. Francisi de Paula in Moravia.” The editors could not identify this person, but at that time there was a Pauline monastery in the Margraviate of Moravia in Vranov near Brno in modern-day Czech Republic. So it is reasonably assumed that the manuscript originated fromMoravia. But the main difference to the printed text is that the manuscript does not contain the Praefatio or the Praxis, but instead three other pieces of alchemical text. The editors co","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42306795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"White Blood: A History of Human Milk","authors":"R. Verwaal","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2058175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2058175","url":null,"abstract":"(e.g. pp. 216, 335). However, Lennartson wonderfully translates a couple of reactions that Bergman represented symbolically into modern nomenclature, illustrating, aside from the symbols themselves, how nothing has changed (p. 275). While it is fashionable to be critical of modern publishing, I cannot refrain from comment about the poor, possibly non-existent, copy-editing, which is, of course, not the author’s fault. While the author is clearly very fluent in English, almost every page contains an error of some sort – e.g. “dived” for “divided,” “where” for “were” –while the phrase “Swedish biographers only priced her [Bergman’s wife] for taking good care of her husband” is opaque, though I suppose “prized” or possibly “valued” rather than “priced”might have been intended (pp. 14, 58, 191). Cumulatively, these become very distracting, and the publisher should have employed a native English speaker to read through the text to remove them. On the positive side, the publisher did allow a large number of illustrations, all in colour, including portraits, maps (very useful, though a scale would have been helpful), buildings (including floor plans), apparatus, crystals, manuscripts, book pages, etc. Generally they are clear, though the images of Bergman’s blow-pipe box (p. 326) and of the basalt formations at Billingen (p. 85) are both a bit murky. Also, there is no list of illustrations, which would have been helpful. This seems to be one of the first books to be published in a new series entitled Perspectives on the History of Chemistry, edited by Seth Rasmussen, which “aims to provide volumes that advance the historical knowledge of chemistry and its practice, while also remaining accessible to both scientists and formal historians of science. Volumes should thus be of broad interest to the greater chemical community, while still retaining a high level of historical scholarship” (front matter, n.p.). Though I am not quite sure what “formal” means here, this Plutarchian biography generally meets these criteria and one cannot really ask for more.","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49060355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Wilhelm Ostwald's Pedagogy: An Analysis of the Nobel Prize Nomination Letters","authors":"Letícia Dos Santos Pereira, Olival Freire Júnior, Gisela Boeck","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2052529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2052529","url":null,"abstract":"The Baltic-German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932) was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in chemistry between 1904 and 1909. Many of these nominations were based on his pedagogical works. The appreciation of Ostwald's pedagogical activity can shed light on how science pedagogy was seen in the early twentieth century and how Ostwald was considered by his contemporaries. Based on sources from the Nobel Prize archives and other documents, in this paper we discuss the views of the Nobel Prize nominators on Ostwald's pedagogical works as presented in the nomination letters and the evaluation of The Nobel Committee for Chemistry on the merits of pedagogy.","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43464813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Medical Performance and the Alchemy of Plants in the Ventures of Leonhard Thurneisser zum Thurn","authors":"B. T. Moran","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2042058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2042058","url":null,"abstract":"Among the cross currents of social and intellectual life in the early modern era, wonder, utility, and playfulness combined to inspire curiosity and to give value to novel alchemical procedures and chemical remedies. One of the most skilful alchemical and medical performers, who brought theatrical techniques to bear upon an economy of alchemical secrets and magic, was the self-trained Paracelsian physician, mining expert, and alchemical adept, Leonhard Thurneisser zum Thurn (1531–1596). In creatively designed and illustrated books produced for a luxury market, he constructed, in words and images, theatres of procedure, instrumentation, and chemical curiosity based in traditions of Renaissance magic and Paracelsian natural philosophy. Thurneisser's books combined strategies of spectacle and performance within the context of chemical analysis, and in one text especially brought the dramatic technique of “making strange” to bear upon promoting alchemical procedures for purposes of exposing the hidden powers within plants. In staging analytical spectacles involving measurement, instrumentation, and distillation as part of the analysis of minerals, waters, and plants, Thurneisser brought together laboratory-based procedures and theoretically grounded performances within the alchemical marketplace and engaged the agency of readers in establishing the credibility of the philosophy of nature that underscored the products he produced and sold.","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44030963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}