Brian Vickers on Alchemy and the Occult: A Response William R. Newman Perspectives on Science, Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2009, pp. 482-506 (Article) Published by The MIT Press For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/posc/summary/v017/17.4.newman.html Access Provided by University of Warwick at 06/07/10 9:37AM GMT Brian Vickers on Alchemy and the Occult: A Response William R. Newman IndianaUniversity Vickers on the “Apologetic” Character of the “New Historiography” of Alchemy Fromthepublicationofhis1984OccultandScientiªcMentalitiesintheRen- aissance if not before, Brian Vickers has vigorously maintained that “the occult sciences,” in which he includes alchemy, astrology, and natural magic along with several other ªelds, were distinct from and at best or- thogonal to the advances in experiment and theory that characterized the birth of modern science in the seventeenth century.1 At worst, in Vickers’ view, the occult sciences were outright hindrances to the Scientiªc Revo- lution.Itisnosurprise,therefore,thatVickerswouldtakeumbrageatthe “New Historiography” of alchemy, which has shown in the last two de- cadesthattheauriªcartwasintegralbothtotheScientiªcRevolutionand to the nascent science of modern chemistry. In his recent essay review, “The ‘New Historiography’ and the Limits of Alchemy” (2008), Vickers devoteswelloverhalfofhisthirty-pagereviewtoahostilecritiqueofmy 2004 book Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature. His review of Promethean Ambitions is marked by an inordinate number of distortions and outright fallacies, and I will provide my response to these in the third part of this essay. One recurring theme in Vickers’ review needs to be met immediately, however, namely his claim that I, along with others in the “New Historiography,” have become apologists for alchemy. The historical treatment of alchemy was long dominated by the En- lightenment rejection of chrysopoeia (transmutation of base metals into 1.Vickersexpresseshimselfsuccinctlyonthispointinhisintroductiontothevolume: “Theerror,asIseeit,liesinarguingthattheoccultsciencesintheRenaissancewerepro- ductiveofideas,theories,andtechniquesinthenewsciences”(seeVickers1984a,p.44). PerspectivesonScience2009,vol.17,no.4 ©2009byTheMassachusettsInstituteofTechnology 482 Perspectives on Science 483 gold).Acontemptuousviewofthesubjectasnothingbuttheprovinceof charlatans and cheats, broadcast by the French academicians Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle and Etienne-François Geoffroy among others in the early eighteenth century, became a foundational element of the his- toriography of science that was still widely parroted by historians of the Scientiªc Revolution up until the 1970’s (Principe and Newman 2001). Hence we ªnd A. Rupert Hall, a widely respected historian of seventeenth-centuryscience,notonlydenyingin1962thatalchemywasa forerunner of chemistry, but even going so far as to describe it as “the greatest obstacle to the development of rational chemistry” (Hall 1962, p. 310). Similarly, E. J. Dijksterhuis would describe alchemy tout court in his1961MechanizationoftheWorldPictureasanexampleof“thepathology of thought,” and would go on to say that Robert Boyle’s chrysopoetic en- deavors were “a mysterious triºing with impure substances, guided by mystical conceptions and hazy analogies” (Dijksterhuis 1961, pp. 160, 440).Theseremarkablycomprehensivedenunciationsignorethefactthat Enlightenment chemistry before Lavoisier still employed the apparatus, materials,theories,andpracticesprovidedtoitbycenturiesofalchemists. Long before the “New Historiography” made its appearance, historians were pointing to the fact that Georg Ernst Stahl’s inºuential phlogiston theory, for example, derived from Johann Joachim Becher’s adaptation of the Paracelsian theory that metals and minerals were composed of mer- cury,sulfur,andsalt(Metzger1930,pp.159–88).ItistruethatStahlbe- cameanoutspokenopponentofGoldmachereiduringthelastquarterofhis life,buttodenytheinºuenceofalchemicaltheoryandpracticeonhimor othereighteenth-centurychemistsistoturnthehistoricalevidenceonits head. To read Vickers’ essay review is to ªnd oneself suddenly back in the world of Rupert Hall and E. J. Dijksterhuis in the 1960’s. Unlike Hall, who later modiªed his views, Vickers is still able to say of the colonial American alchemist George Starkey that “the early modern alchemist’s life,likehisday-to-dayoperations,aretobeseennotasaforerunnerofin- dustrialorpharmaceuticalchemistry(althoughStarkeydidproducemedi- cine and cosmetics) but as a narrative of quests for revelation” (Vickers 2008,p.136).Itisamusingtolearnthatspendingone’slifedoingchem- istry(orasIprefer,“chymistry”)andeventeachingRobertBoylethefoun- dations of the discipline as Starkey did, does not make one a chemist or evenaforerunnerofchemistry.UponwhatevidencedoesVickersbasethis claim? His proof lies in the fact that Starkey occasionally prayed to God forsuccessandacknowledgedthegiftsthathadbeengrantedtohimfrom on high. Did any seventeenth-century believer in the Providence of God do otherwise? Yet to Vickers, Starkey’s prayers (interspersed with his own 484 BrianVickersonAlchemyandtheOccult candid descriptions of his erotic dreams and drunkenness) are evidence of theessential“spiritualdimension”ofalchemy. Given Vickers’ predilections, it is hardly surprising that he would see anybookaboutalchemythatrecognizesitscontributionstotheScientiªc Revolutionasprovidinganapologyforthediscipline.Butthefactisthat as a historical subject, alchemy, having been considered too despicable to beworthyofseriousscholarlystudybygenerationsofhistorians,contains unexamined riches. In what other ªeld could one have unearthed a ªgure likeGeorgeStarkey,borninBermudain1628andeducatedintheprovin- cialoutpostofHarvardCollege,whowouldthengoontobecomeBoyle’s scientiªc tutor and Isaac Newton’s favorite alchemical writer? If Starkey had been an astronomer or mathematician, his inºuence would have been exposed and announced to the scholarly community a century ago. As it happens,hisstoryhadtowaituntil1994toberevealedinitsfullness,and even after that new details have continued to emerge. Or, to consider an- other example, how is it that historians until the 1990’s failed to notice the major debt that Robert Boyle, long reputed to be “the father of mod- ern chemistry,” owed to techniques of analysis and synthesis pioneered by medieval alchemists and transmitted to him by the Wittenberg iatro- chemist and apologist for chrysopoeia Daniel Sennert? Not only was this debt ignored, but the major historian of Boyle in the immediate postwar period,MarieBoas,announcedthatSennertwas“neitheroriginal,success- ful, nor, ultimately, inºuential” (Boas [Hall] 1962, p. 263n*). Never mind that Sennert employed analysis and synthesis to prove the existence ofatoms,justasBoyledidwhenhemadeunacknowledgeduseofSennert’s work(seeNewman2006). Therealityofthematteristhatalchemyuntilrecentlylayinsuchdis- reputeamongmosthistorians—particularlyamongthosewhoworkinthe seventeenthcenturylikeVickers—thattheydidnotbothertolookforthe obvious traces of its inºuence on more “mainstream” scientiªc endeavors. Rather, like Boas, they were all too willing to dismiss the discipline as a “mystic science,” and to rule out any possible inºuence on the Scientiªc Revolution ab initio.2 Now that the tables are turned and a generation of historians has turned its sights on alchemy, is there any room for wonder thataªeldsolongignoredbyscholarswillbegintorevealnewandsome- times startling material? Perhaps not, but as Vickers shows, there is cer- tainly room for denial, especially if one comes at the “New Historiogra- phy” with ideological blinders intact. The ideology to which I refer consists of an analytical framework that Vickers has developed for the studyofthe“occultsciences”or“theocculttradition”anduponwhichhe 2.Fortheterm“mysticscience,”seeBoas[Hall]1962,p.167. Perspectives on Science 485 has been publishing since at least the 1980’s. At various points through- out his essay review Vickers supports himself with references to his pre- vious writings on alchemy and “the occult” (Vickers 2008, pp. 132, 133n17, 146, and 154n50). At no point does Vickers reveal a need to modify his previously expressed views, despite the fact that they extend backatleasttwenty-ªveyears,andthereforereºectaperiodwhenscholar- ship on “the occult tradition” in the Renaissance was still dominated by the work of Frances Yates and her critics.3 It is therefore ªtting, and in- deed long overdue, that the analytical framework undergirding Vickers’ approach receive some of the scrutiny that it deserves. The result, I be- lieve, will provide a much needed ªrst step at a reassessment of the rela- tionship obtaining among premodern alchemy, astrology, and natural magic. An Examination of Vickers’ Work on the Essential Unity of the Occult Sciences That the subject of the occult sciences needs reappraisal appears from the veryambiguityoftheword“occult.”ToVickers,thetermisaconvenient place-marker for a particular mindset representing a “closed system” of thought characteristic of traditional cultures. In other words, the mental world of the occult sciences was incapable of accepting novelty, like the so-called“primitivementality”or“savagemind”proposedbyanthropolo- gistsintheirlesspoliticallysensitivedays.4IrejectVickers’useof“occult” forreasonsthatwillshortlybecomeclear.ButtheLatinoccultus(“hidden” or “secret”) did have currency in the Middle Ages and Renaissance when applied to certain types of knowledge, in at least two senses. First, the Latin occultus served as a term for powers or qualities that escaped sensory perception and were therefore mysterious, such as the imperceptible causesofmagneticphenomenaandtheremarkablypowerfuleffectsofcer- tain allergens and fast-acting poisons. It was widely held that such mar- velous phenomena could not be explained in terms of the manifest “pri- mary” or “tactile” qualities of scholastic Aristotelianism, hot, cold, wet, and dry.5 Instead, they were attributed to the operation of “occult quali- ties”whoseactionswereoftenthoughttoºowdirectlyfromagivenbody’s substantial form. This sense of “occult,” while it may have applied to at least some of the phenomena of natural magic, is problematic when one 3.Vickers’ownforayintotheoccultsciencesseemsinfacttohavebeenstimulatedby hisvisceralresponsetoYates.Seehisearlyessayreview,“FrancesYatesandtheWritingof History” (1979). His “Introduction” is also largely framed as a response to Yates (see Vickers1984a,pp.4–7). 4.Vickers1984a,pp.39–44.Seep.33forVickers’on“theprimitivementality.” 5.Onoccultqualities,seeBrianCopenhaver1984,1988,1998. 486 BrianVickersonAlchemyandtheOccult comes to astrology and alchemy, for these disciplines were often thought toworkbymeansoftheAristotelianprimaryqualities.6 A second sense of occultus occurred in cases when medievals and early moderns applied the term to branches of knowledge that they viewed as needingtobekepthiddenorsecret.Thismeaningisalreadyemployedby the thirteenth-century scholastic Roger Bacon, who not only includes the usualsuspectsamongtheoccultsciencesbutadds“occult”medicinesand remedies which, because of their power to prolong human life, must be keptfromthemasses(Bridges1897,vol.2,pp.207–10).7“Secretknowl- edge”istheprimarysenseofRenaissanceoccultaphilosophiaaswell.Butar- guments could be made, of course, for keeping virtually any sort of sensi- tive knowledge secret. Agrippa von Nettesheim, who did as much as anyone to popularize the term occulta philosophia in the Renaissance, even included knowledge of sophisticated engines for building and warfare within the latitudinarian category of his “occult philosophy” (Agrippa 1992,250–51).8Ontheotherhand,itdoesnotfollowthattheªeldsusu- allyclassiªedas“occult”bymoderns(suchasalchemy,astrology,andnat- uralmagic)werenecessarilytreatedassecretknowledgeintheirownday. A good example is the astrology of Ptolemy’s second-century Tetrabiblos, which neither engages in pseudonymy nor employs cover names or other obfuscatory language. Hence if one can accept “the occult sciences” as a termmeaningbranchesofknowledgethatwereviewedbytheirpossessors (or would-be possessors) as requiring secrecy, certain qualiªcations must be added. First one must recognize that secrecy was imposed or discussed at the discretion of individual authors and not as a necessary consequence ofthematerialitself.Second,andperhapsevenmoreimportant,onemust acknowledge that the secrecy at hand may either have been a genuine withholding of knowledge or a mere marketing technique aimed at titil- latingtheinterestofreaders.Ineithercase,the“occultness”ofsuchlitera- ture has no more necessary connection with Vickers’ “occult mentality” than does the conªdentiality employed for military secrets at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the trade secrecy applied to pharmaceutical research attheEliLillyCorporation,orthepurelyvenaltrumpetingof“secrets”for dieting and a healthy sex life that line the checkout counters of modern supermarkets. Although writers on the occult sciences could be as mud- 6.Foradiscussionofthisissueinalchemy,seeNewman1996. 7.SeealsoA.G.LittleandE.Withington,eds.1928,pp.15–16. 8.Ironically,thisreferencetoconstructionmachineshasrecentlybeenshowntohave stemmedfromLeonBattistaAlberti’sL’architettura—surelynotaworkknownprimarily foritsoccultleanings.SeeAnthonyGrafton2007,pp.185–210;andPamelaLong2001. Perspectives on Science 487 dle-headed as anyone else, they were not required by their subject to be so.9 Vickers,tothecontrary,seesanessentialunityamongthevariousdisci- plinesthatheviewsasmakinguptheoccultsciencesor“theocculttradi- tion.”Ashesaysinoneofhisvariouspublicationsonthesubject: Therearesufªcientinternalresemblancesamongastrology,al- chemy,numerology,iatromathematics[i.e.astrologicalmedicine], andnaturalmagicforonetobeabletodescribetheoccultsciences asformingauniªedsystem.Theyallinvokeadistinctionbetween thevisibleandinvisibleworlds;theyalldependonthedesignation ofsymbolsrelatingtothisdichotomy;theyallmakegreatuseof analogies,correspondences,andrelationsbetweenapparentlydis- creteelementsinmanandtheuniverse.Asasystemtheoccultsci- enceswereimportedintoGreecefromvariousorientalcultures,and weresystematicallycodiªedintheHellenisticperiod,followingthe deathofAlexanderin323b.c.Oncecodiªedtheyretainedtheires- sentialassumptionsandmethodologythroughtheMiddleAges, intotheRenaissance,andbeyond,indeed,oneofthemostremark- ablefeaturesoftheocculttraditionisitsstaticnature,itsresistance tochange.(Vickers1988,p.265) This remarkable credo reºects Vickers’ transchronological view of the oc- cult sciences as a sort of universal analytical category opposed, in quite dualisticfashion,torightreason.10Fromthisandmanysimilarpassagesin Vickers’ work, we should ªrst expect the occult sciences to share a focus overtheirentirehistoryona“distinctionbetweenthevisibleandinvisible worlds,” which I take to mean the relation of the physical world to the spiritual or formal in a way best exempliªed by the Neoplatonists.11 Sec- 9.Forthefutilityoftryingtodeªne“occult”orsecretknowledgeaccordingtotightly delimited “mentalities” such as those identiªed by Vickers, see the marvelously detailed workofWilliamEamon,ScienceandtheSecretsofNature,1994.Everythingfromeyewashto oredressingwasviewedas“secret”bythosewhowishedtoproªtfromit. 10.Iamnottheonlyscholartohavenoticedtheahistoricalanddualisticcharacterof Vickers’thoughtonthesubjectoftheoccult.SeeJohnM.ForresterandJohnHenry2005, p.64n191.SeealsotheremarkaboutVickersonp.33ofHenry’srecentandimportantar- ticle,“TheFragmentationofRenaissanceOccultismandtheDeclineofMagic,”2008. 11.OnecouldobviouslybeuncharitableandinterpretVickers’claimheretoapplyto the distinction between heaven and earth in the Abrahamic religions in general, which wouldtherebybecome“occult”toutcourt.Iprefertogivehimthebeneªtofthedoubt,and tointerprethisdistinctionbetweenthe“visibleandinvisibleworlds”notjustasarefer- ence to heaven versus earth, but as containing a more speciªc allusion to the formal or 488 BrianVickersonAlchemyandtheOccult ond,weshouldanticipateaparticularªxationuponandwayofusingsym- bol,analogyandcorrespondence,andthird,weshouldªndtheoccultsci- encestodisplayastatic,unchangingnature.Moreover,Vickersclaimsthat allthreecharacteristicsarepresentasessentialfeaturesineachoftheoccult sciences, again taken over the entire span of their existence. There is a deeply ahistorical character to Vickers’ way of thinking, and this alone wouldbeenoughtodisqualifyhismethodologyintheeyesofmanyhisto- rians.Insteadofdismissinghisapproachoutofhand,however,Iwillcon- sider the details of his claim on their own terms and by comparing them to the beliefs of central ªgures in the history of astrology, magic, and al- chemy. In this fashion it will be possible to demonstrate the failure of Vickers’ approach as a tool of historical analysis rather than rejecting it merely as a matter of taste. First I will contest Vickers’ general claim for an essential unity among the occult sciences and then address their three supposedcharacteristicsintheorderjustdescribed. In the introduction to Secrets of Nature, Anthony Grafton and I argue against the thesis that alchemy and astrology, two of Vickers’ occult sci- ences, were uniªed in any fundamental sense over the longue durée (New- man and Grafton 2001, pp. 14–27). Vickers, to the contrary, sees the occult sciences as a permanently “closed system” characteristic of “tradi- tional thought” and goes so far as to argue that “in the occult tradition, likewise, if a belief in numerology were abandoned, it would destroy the basisforalchemyandastrology;ifabeliefinastrologywereabandoned,it would destroy alchemy, botanical medicine, and much else” (Vickers 1984a,p.35).Giventhiscategoricalclaimofessentialunity,anyrejection ofone“occult”ªeldbyanotherprovidespowerfulcountervailingevidence against Vickers. Yet his notion that the occult sciences formed a dia- chronicallyuniªedsystemwhosepartsrequiredinterdependencyfortheir verysurvivalisimmediatelyvitiatedbylookingatthecaseofmedievalas- trology and astral magic. Readers of encyclopedic or synthetic early mod- ern writers such as Agrippa, Giambattista della Porta, and John Dee may ªnd this disunity surprising, but the fact is that the occult sciences were not always integrated, and were frequently even at odds with one another (Newman and Grafton 2001, pp. 18–27). Consider the foundational ninth-century ªgure Ya(qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi, whose De radiis stellarum servedasakeytextintheformulationandspreadoftalismanicmagic,and supercelestialversusthesublunary.Vickers’worksarepepperedwithreferencestothedif- ferent levels of reality described by Neoplatonic (not to mention Neopythagorean and Christian) authors. See for example, Vickers, “Analogy versus Identity: The rejection of OccultSymbolism,1580–1680,”1984b,especiallypp.117–21;andVickers1988,espe- ciallyp.268. Perspectives on Science 489 whose writings on the “great conjunctions” that occur among the outer- most planets set the stage for astrological explanations of the birth and longevity of religions (al-Kindi 1974, pp. 139–269).12 Al-Kindi in turn wentontoinspirethehugelypopularwriterAbuMa’shar,whoseIntroduc- toriumwassurelyoneofthemostinºuentialastrologicalbooksinthehis- tory of the discipline.13 Yet despite his adherence to the most extreme forms of astrology and astral magic, al-Kindi’s successors report that he was an unequivocal opponent of alchemy, adopting the principle that human beings cannot successfully carry out actions that belong to the province of nature. His views were sufªciently strong that other Islamic alchemists,suchastheninth–tenth-centuryPersianwriterAbuBakrMu- hammad ibn Zakariya’ al-Razi, felt the need to refute them (Ullmann 1972, p. 250). In another vein, Avicenna, among the most famous of Is- lamicscientiªcwritersandimmenselyinºuentialinthemedievalWestas well, opposed both astrology and alchemy (Mehren 1904, pp. 238–239; seealsoUllmann1972,p.252).Atthesametime,however,Avicennaup- held a widely discussed position that “matter obeys the soul,” and that magical action can therefore be willed directly by those whose souls are endowed with sufªcient power. Avicenna developed his ideas on magic within the context of an elaborate faculty psychology whose inspiration lay largely in the dry and abstract ambience of Aristotle’s De anima and Metaphysics(Zambelli1985).14Theinterlockingnetworkoftheoccultsci- ences described by Vickers, and his associated belief that the rejection of onewouldresultautomaticallyinthedeathoftheothers,isbeliedbythe caseofAvicenna,justassurelyasitisvitiatedbytheexampleofal-Kindi. Vickers’ uniªcation thesis is also called into question by the fact (amongothers)thathighlyinºuentialLatinalchemistssuchasthepseud- onymous medieval author Geber explicitly declared their freedom from astrology. Geber, whose Summa perfectionis is sometimes called the “Bible” ofthemedievalalchemists,makesanimportantdistinctionbetweenwhat we would call astrology and celestial causation.15 This point reveals a ma- jorweaknessintheªrstofthethreecharacteristicsthatVickerspostulates asessentialtotheoccultsciences,namelyhisclaimthatlinkingtheceles- tial world and its invisible, planetary spirits or intelligences to the 12.Foral-Kindi’sideasonmagic,seeNicolasWeill-Parot,Les“imagesastrologiques”au MoyenÂgeetàlaRenaissance,2002,pp.155–174andpassim. 13.ManfredUllmann,DieNatur-undGeheimwissenschaftenimIslam,1972,pp.313–14, 316–24.Onconjunctionism,seeJohnNorth1989a,especiallyp.63. 14. For Avicenna’s famous claim that “matter obeys the soul,” see Simone van Riet 1968,parts4–5,pp.64–66.SeealsoBéatriceDelaurenti2007,pp.134–40. 15. The foundational character of the Summa perfectionis was already recognized by GeorgeSarton,inhisIntroductiontotheHistoryofScience,1931,vol.2,p.1043. 490 BrianVickersonAlchemyandtheOccult sublunary, visible world made a particular discipline “occult.” Geber dis- tances himself from astrology by noting that even though the stars and planetsmayactascauses,itisunnecessarytoemployastrologicalprognos- tication or to plan one’s experiments around the special propitious times known as “elections” (Newman and Grafton 2001, pp. 21–22). After all, as Geber states, “there is no species of generables and corruptibles” that fails to undergo generation and corruption every day, for the inºuences of the heavenly bodies collect in the atmosphere and are absorbed by mate- rialthingsadlibitum.Hencethealchemistshouldonlypreparehisexperi- ments in accordance with the requirements of his materials, and nature willtakecareoftherestwithoutanyneedtoobservespecialtimes.Geber seesnomoreconnectionbetweenhisalchemyandthedisciplineofastrol- ogy than al-Kindi did between his astrology and the alchemy that he re- jected or Avicenna between his magic and either of the foregoing “occult sciences.” Geber’s declaration of freedom from astrological elections in his al- chemy depends on a fundamental distinction between celestial inºuence, whichalmostallpremodernlearnedEuropeansaccepted,andtheputative ability of the astrologer to predict the exact framework of that inºuence and to plan one’s actions accordingly. One did not have to subscribe to Plato’s Timaeus in order to accept that nature was under the rule of the heavens. The same idea is implied by Aristotle’s famous dictum at Physics II2194b13that“thesunandmanmakeaman,”andinhisDegeneratione animalium at 736b39–737a1, the Stagirite famously describes the heat in animalsas“analogoustotheelementofthestars”(Aristotle1986).These and many other passages both in Aristotle and in pseudo-Aristotelian works of a Neoplatonic stamp such as the Liber de causis and Secretum secretorum led the medieval scholastics of the Islamic and Latin worlds to developacomprehensivetheoryofcelestialinºuencethatdidnotinitself countenance astrological predictions or associated magical operations, de- spiteitsdependenceontheheavens.Accordingtoalongseriesofscholas- tic thinkers extending from Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas up to the early modern world of learning, terrestrial matter acquired its inºu- ences,motions,andsometimessubstantialformitselffromtheheavens,as mediatedbytheplanets,“planetaryintelligences,”orangels.16Theformal realm was linked to the terrestrial by means of the planets. To many this 16.SeeforexampleThomasAquinas1976,vol.43,pp.184–85,lines156–181,230– 245.Foracomprehensivetreatmentofthissubject,seeEdwardGrant1994,pp.569–617. Grant(p.571)referstothemedievalbeliefin“celestialdominanceoverterrestrialmatter” as“ubiquitousandpervasive.”