Original air date: 1 December 2013 | Alchemy has traditionally been understood as a pseudoscience or protoscience that eventually gave way to modern chemistry. Less often have the writings of alchemists been studied on their own terms. Yet, given the endurance and prolific nature of the alchemical traditions and the involvement of important figures of "modern science" such as Isaac Newton in the field of alchemy, a teleological understanding of the transition from alchemy to chemistry seems inadequate for discussing how science was practiced in the past. This may be particularly true for the Ottoman context, where a longstanding tradition of alchemy becomes subsumed under a larger narrative of the triumph of Western science during the nineteenth century. In this podcast, Tuna Artun explores the world of alchemy and discusses its transformation during the Ottoman period.

Tuna Artun is Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Corbin, Henri. Alchimie comme art hieratique. Paris: L'Herne, 1986.

Hill, Donald R. "The literature of Arabic alchemy" in Religion, Learning and Science in the 'Abbasid Period, ed. M.J.L. Young, J.D. Latham, and R.B. Serjeant (Cambridge: Camridge University Press, 1990), pp. 328-43.

Lory, Pierre. Alchimie et mystique en terre d’Islam. Paris: Verdier, 1989.

Nummedal, Tara. Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire. Chicago: Chicago UP, 2007.

Nomanul Haq. Syed, Names, Natures and Things: The Alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan and his Kitab al-Ahjar. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994.