AmbixPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-07-25DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2371260
Justin Begley
{"title":"Distilling the Art of Distillation in an Unstudied Manuscript of \"Chymicall Notions\".","authors":"Justin Begley","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2371260","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2371260","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article focuses on a curious manuscript treatise in the British Library, Harley MS 6940, which the learned physician Samuel Bispham composed for the English patron and horseman William Cavendish (1593-1676), most likely in the mid-1640s. Sitting somewhere between a practical medical recipe book and theoretical chymical treatise, while being peppered with traditional causal explanations and Galenic precautions, Harley MS 6940 testifies to the erosion of the entrenched dichotomy between chymical and Galenic medicine in the mid-seventeenth century. Harley MS 6940 also lays bare how a learned physician used (and taught the use of) practice to confirm and sometimes challenge his learning, offering a counterpoint to recent scholarship that underscores the learning that apothecaries used to shore up their practice. Produced at the behest of a leading Royalist who sought both to acquire techniques for distilling and fermenting herbs and to advance his knowledge of chymical conceptions of spirits, seeds, and salts, the manuscript allows us to appreciate that the chymical art animated a broader set of individuals than the historiography often implies.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141762405","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}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-07-10DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2372195
{"title":"Morris Award 2024.","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2372195","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2372195","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141565078","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}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-07-26DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2379961
Charles Wolfe
{"title":"Diderot's Vital Materialism.","authors":"Charles Wolfe","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2379961","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2379961","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In what follows I examine Diderot's chemically influenced vital materialism. Once condemned as \"mechanistic,\" materialism has had something of a renaissance in recent decades as scholars have rediscovered a tradition of \"vital materialism\" which they have opposed to older, cruder forms of the idea, e.g. materialisms full of life, affect, chimiatry, and transformation. Sometimes these rediscoveries have attached themselves to a figure of the past, like Margaret Cavendish's metaphysics of active matter, or to a construct of the still-emerging future, like Karen Barad's quantum physics-nourished \"agential realism\" present in all of matter. Another question concerns the extent to which these revivals of \"vital\" or \"active-matter\" materialism should be traced back to older Renaissance naturalisms. In what follows, I return to Diderot and the question of his \"vital materialism.\" Diderot draws both on older traditions, approvingly citing Van Helmont and gesturing towards a new chemistry of living matter and also speaks the language of scientific revolution, writing that \"We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences.\" In earlier work I sought to connect this language of revolution in the sciences to the emergence of biology as a science. Here I focus on his chemically charged materialism.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141762404","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}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-07-10DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2368942
Frank Veraart
{"title":"Ketens van Fossiele Grondstoffen: Procestechnologie en de transitie naar duurzaamheid","authors":"Frank Veraart","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2368942","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2368942","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Ambix (Ahead of Print, 2024)","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141584713","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}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-04-25DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2343517
Gabriele Ferrario
{"title":"Fragments of Alchemy from a Cairene Synagogue: Context, Codicology, and Contents of the Alchemical Corpus of the Cairo Genizah.","authors":"Gabriele Ferrario","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2343517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2343517","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents the results of a survey and a first assessment of the corpus of alchemical manuscripts retrieved from the Cairo Genizah, a storage room mainly intended for sacred writings that is attached to the Ben Ezra synagogue of Old Cairo. The alchemical manuscripts are described in their codicological and palaeographic features; their content is analysed in the context of the medieval production of alchemical texts in the surrounding Islamic world. The alchemical corpus of the Genizah represents a unique and widely unstudied source for our understanding of the relationship between Jews and alchemy in the medieval Mediterranean World.","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140653323","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}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-04-16DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2339658
Maria Fiammetta Iovine
{"title":"A Very “Distilled” Emblem in Baroque Rome: Natural Philosophy, Alchemy, and Atomism in the Academy of the Umoristi","authors":"Maria Fiammetta Iovine","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2339658","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2339658","url":null,"abstract":"Created and published in a printed volume in 1611, the emblem chosen by the literary Academy of the Umoristi is intriguing at multiple levels. At a time when the water cycle was still unknown, the ...","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140595169","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}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-04-15DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2338632
Stefano Mulas
{"title":"Translating Forbidden Authors: New Evidence on the Alchemical Library of Don Antonio de’ Medici","authors":"Stefano Mulas","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2338632","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2338632","url":null,"abstract":"Research into the history of alchemy and Paracelsianism in Italy has highlighted the role of Italian courts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as centres of elaboration and diffusion of alc...","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140595049","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}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-04-05DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2324618
Marco Beretta
{"title":"Lavoisier and the History of Chemistry","authors":"Marco Beretta","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2324618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2324618","url":null,"abstract":"During the eighteenth century, authors of chemical treatises and courses on chemistry often introduced their work with a chapter devoted to the history of chemistry. While there may have been diffe...","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140595171","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}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-03-15DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2325218
Cleo Nisse
{"title":"The Varnish and the Glaze: Painting Splendor with Oil, 1100–1500","authors":"Cleo Nisse","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2325218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2325218","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Ambix (Ahead of Print, 2024)","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140152087","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}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-03-15DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2325323
Andrés Vélez-Posada
{"title":"The Three Deaths of Cerro de San Pedro: Four Centuries of Extractivism in a Small Mexican Mining Town","authors":"Andrés Vélez-Posada","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2325323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2325323","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Ambix (Ahead of Print, 2024)","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140156668","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}