Alchemy A Rose by Any Other Name

MIT Student Professor David Jones & Professor David Kaiser STS.003 The Rise of Modern Science Paper 1 Alchemy & Chemistry; A Rose by Any Other Name. Most people today consider alchemy to be some sort of archaic black art; sorcerers working in secret chambers to transmute lead into gold. Chemistry, on the other hand, is regarded as one of the most important branches of experimental science. Is this discrepancy historically accurate or has the classic portrayal given us a distorted view of the past? Evidence from primary sources seems to paint a slightly different picture. Alchemy and chemistry are two terms currently used to describe the nearly identical activities of various experimenters in the 16 and 17 centuries who were later separated into two groups based on assessments of their alleged motives. When one begins to examine the similarities and differences between the excerpts from George Starkey’s Alchemical Laboratory Notebooks and Correspondence, and Robert Boyle’s New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall it becomes immediately apparent that the comparison will be (in some respects) fundamentally flawed. Starkey’s writings were taken mostly from a notebook he used in the laboratory for recording the results of his daily experiments; Boyle’s New Experiments was a document he prepared intentionally for publication and circulation.