Bøker av William R. Newman

Since the Enlightenment, alchemy has been viewed as a sort of antiscience, disparaged by many historians as a form of lunacy that impeded the development of rational chemistry. This title exposes the speciousness of these views and challenges widely held beliefs about the origins of the Scientific Revolution.

Eirenaeus Philalethes was reputed to have performed miracles-restoring an aged lady's teeth and hair, bringing a withered peach tree to fruit-and was also rumored to possess a philosophers' stone. That he was merely a mythical creation didn't diminish his public reputation a whit. This is the story of the man behind the myth, George Starkey.

Both the quest for natural knowledge and the aspiration to alchemical wisdom played crucial roles in the scientific revolution, as William R. Newman demonstrates in this work on George Starkey (1628-1665), America's first famous scientist.

Using the previously misunderstood interactions between Robert Boyle, widely known as "the father of chemistry," and George Starkey, an alchemist and the most prominent American scientific writer before Benjamin Franklin, as their guide, William R. Newman and Lawrence M.