Ambix最新文献

{"title":"A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Early Modern Age (vol. 3)","authors":"A. Roos","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2186581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2186581","url":null,"abstract":"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.\u0000 The 6 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.","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41451136","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 Cultural History of Chemistry in the Middle Ages (vol. 2)","authors":"W. Newman","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2186580","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2186580","url":null,"abstract":"A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Middle Ages covers the period from 600 to 1500 in European and Islamic cultures. Arabic theories and terminology for the science of matter were introduced into the West and became known as ‘alchemy’. Based in experiment and innovation – and bound up in networks of mining, manufacturing, trade and commerce – alchemical practice largely focused on the production of new substances through various processes. At the same time, alchemy was deeply theoretical, exploring the development of mineralogy, the perfection of corruptible matter, the prolongation of life, and the cure of diseases.\u0000The 6 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.","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44521167","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":"Essay Review","authors":"Tillmann Taape","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2186576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2186576","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49394830","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 Cultural History of Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century (vol. 4)","authors":"Georgette Taylor","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2186583","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2186583","url":null,"abstract":"as well as in Dutch genre painting, showing, for instance, how “alchemy’s impact on family life offered painters an outlet for humour as well as pathos” (p. 215). A painting by Hendrick Heerschop (ca. 1660–1680), The Alchemist’s Experiment Takes Fire, depicts an experiment gone badly wrong: a flask exploding, the alchemist in tattered clothing reacting with terror. His wife in the background, however, is engaged in more prosaic but necessary activities, wiping a child’s soiled bottom. Whilst the scatology in this painting was certainly part of a larger message about the futility of alchemy and Dutch moral topoi, as Drago indicates, it may have also been a satiric comment about the use of faeces in alchemical preparations. As Agnieszka Rec noted, there was a lot of dung in the early modern laboratory; dried horse manure was used for heating; dung was mixed with clay for luting; the philosopher Morienus even described dung as the starting material for the Philosopher’s Stone. “Faeces” could describe distillation dregs. We may well ask, as the artist intended, where the true “gold” was in this alchemist’s life and practice. Needless to say, alchemy in the visual arts is a very fertile area of research (sorry), and any facetiousness aside, Drago’s chapter excels at demonstrating the art-alchemy connections, unearthing true intellectual gold in her erudite assessment of visual culture. This latest production in the Bloomsbury series is similarly golden. It is a nicely produced hardcover book, with attractive illustrations and very fine analyses. It provides an enjoyable introduction to early modern chymistry, whilst also offering something to specialists. I highly commend the volume authors and editors, as well as the series editors for creating a reference source of lasting value to the field.","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44629579","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":"March of the Pigments: Color History, Science and Impact","authors":"J. Kirby","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2175959","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2175959","url":null,"abstract":"tant practical knowledge was to rulers and statecraft as part of a princely collection or Kunstkammer. In the fourth and final part, the book moves most explicitly beyond The Body of the Artisan as it reflects Smith’s experience of collaborative research in laboratory reconstruction of instructions fromMs. Fr. 640, a Frenchmanuscript of art and craft practices that forms the core of Smith’s Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University. Here she distills the core insight that the anonymous author-practitioner of this sixteenth-century collection was primarily interested in the categorisation of materials by manipulating, hypothesising, and testing them – a working method that goes well beyond the trial and error typically identified as the artisanalmodus operandi. This may also be the part of the book that speaks most to the interests of the readers of this journal, as it reveals an epistemically productive fascination with material transformation that was the core business of alchemy in the early modern period. This part concludes with a search for alternative formulations to Kunst to describe this cognitive activity, culminating in the final sentence of the book where it is called “material imaginary,” “fundamental structuring categories,” “artisanal epistemology,” and a “mode of work,” among other things. Confronted with the same limitations of language that vexed early modern artisans, Smith is on a similar quest for creative descriptions and translations. Indeed, at its most basic level, the book tries to grasp and make explicit in words what practical knowledge is; and herein lies the most significant difference with Smith’s previous monograph. As the subtitle of The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution suggests, it situated artisanal epistemology in relation to science. Traces of this approach remain, but From Lived Experience to the Written Word primarily defines practical knowledge on its own terms. Characteristically, the book ends with an epilogue on “Global Routes of Practical Knowledge” in which Smith starts to undo the Eurocentric assumptions of the concept of the Scientific Revolution. There are books which close the discussion by offering the final word, and others which open fields by drastically altering the terms of discussion. From Lived Experience to the Written Word is a perfectly crafted book belonging to the latter category.","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49501470","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":"Living Then and Now with Gold and Mercury.","authors":"Donna Bilak","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2192590","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2192590","url":null,"abstract":"250 Water Street in New York City marks the location of a former 48,000-squarefoot parking lot in Lower Manhattan currently under construction by the Howard Hughes Corporation, a Texas real estate development agency. Since its purchase in 2018, however, the Howard Hughes Corporation’s massive redevelopment scheme for this lot has experienced continuous setbacks. One problem stems from the construction zone itself. It encompasses the site of the thermometer factory that Giuseppe Tagliabue (1812–1878), an Italian-born, London-trained scientific instrument maker established in 1834. Tagliabue’s first place of business was 240 Water Street. By 1848, he had relocated to nearby 298 Pearl Street where he continued to manufacture thermometers, barometers, and hydrometers on a large scale, and in 1868 Tagliabue purchased and “fitted up” a five-story building at 302 Pearl Street. These addresses lie within a quarter mile of each other. Not only is the ground beneath the Howard Hughes Corporation’s construction site contaminated with mercury, but mercury pollutes the ground beneath and the air above the surrounding neighbourhood as well.","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9319871","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":"Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry Award Scheme 2023.","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2180223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2180223","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9363007","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":"Environmental Alchemy: Mercury-Gold Amalgamation Mining and the Transformation of the Earth.","authors":"Donna Bilak,&nbsp;George Vrtis","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2192131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2192131","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Wherever mercury-gold amalgamation mining unfolds, alchemical processes abound. They are there as catalytic agents forming amalgams at atomic levels. They are there as cultural agents transforming rocks into cell phones and all kinds of consumer goods. And they are there as ideological agents mutually translating human understandings across whole worlds we describe as the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. These processes, we argue, are made more legible - more readily perceived and conceptualised - by peering through the lens of <i>environmental alchemy</i>, a new critical framework in which we apply the historical use of alchemical terms to investigations of environmental change, and to understand the extraordinary complexity that gold and mercury set in motion when mining entangles nature and culture.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9302349","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":"Amalgamated Histories: Tracing Quicksilver's Legacy Through Environmental and Political Bodies in Andean and Amazonian Gold Mining.","authors":"Sebastián Rubiano-Galvis,&nbsp;Jimena Diaz Leiva,&nbsp;Ruth Goldstein","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2189387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2189387","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article argues that the centuries-long history of mercury-gold amalgamation is crucial to contemporary debates surrounding global mercury pollution from artisanal and small-scale gold mining. Drawing on historical findings that examine Spanish colonial and Indigenous metallurgical knowledge as well as ethnographic and scientific research, we resituate the history of mercury amalgamation in Latin America, focusing on the Colombian Andes and the Peruvian Amazon - two regions where mercury pollution from artisanal and small-scale gold mining provokes international concern. We identify the policy pitfalls caused by overlooking the untold histories of the amalgamation process along with the European contribution to global mercury emissions rooted in these histories. By critically examining the curation of presentist narratives in UNESCO's memorialisation of Almadén's mercury mines as a World Heritage Site, narratives that also underpin initiatives by the United Nations to bring about a \"mercury-free world,\" we demonstrate how such ahistorical framings contribute to the criminalisation of artisanal and small-scale gold miners, not only in Perú and Colombia but also worldwide. Our findings present an important first step in highlighting the histories of mercury and gold in the hands of artisanal and small-scale gold miners in Latin America.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9663877","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":"Metals as Living Bodies. Founts of Mercury, Amalgams, and Chrysocolla.","authors":"Vincenzo Carlotta,&nbsp;Matteo Martelli","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2173833","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2173833","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Ancient and medieval alchemical works include several comparisons between the generation and development of metals and those of plants, animals, and living beings. These comparisons could refer to adopt physiological models in the explanation of the natural formation of metals and their artificial transformation, to justify the place occupied by alchemy within the broader study of the natural world, and to stand as metaphorical descriptions of specific alchemical procedures. This article analyses these features by focusing on the relationship between mercury and gold, the latter being the \"perfect\" metal that constituted both an ambitious goal of alchemical practice and one of its key ingredients. The interrelationship between gold and mercury emerges in complex myths about metallic rivers, in the use of gold-mercury amalgams in ancient technology, and in the discussion that alchemists developed around the enigmatic <i>chrysocolla</i> (literally \"gold solder\"). These three foci are discussed in relation to a variety of ancient sources - from Aristotle and the Stoics to late antique, Byzantine, and Syriac alchemical texts - to explore the different forms of conceptualising metals as living bodies and the interactions of these models with ancient theories on the formation of metals and the alchemical practices aimed at their transformation.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9363006","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}