2011/06/01 by Lawrence M. Principe · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #History of Science and Medicine #History of Science and Natural History
paper · doi:10.1086/660139
openalex publication_date 2011/06/01 · openalex created_date 2022/05/11 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Alchemy now holds an important place in the history of science. Its current status contrasts with its former exile as a "pseudoscience" or worse and results from several rehabilitative steps carried out by scholars who made closer, less programmatic, and more innovative studies of the documentary sources. Interestingly, alchemy's outcast status was created in the eighteenth century and perpetuated thereafter in part for strategic and polemical reasons-and not only on account of a lack of historical understanding. Alchemy's return to the fold of the history of science highlights important features about the development of science and our changing understanding of it.