{"title":"Thinking about Chemistry in Byzantium and the Islamic World","authors":"Alexandre M. Roberts","doi":"10.1353/jhi.2023.a909532","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article investigates several discussions of “chemistry,” understood as an analysts’ category referring to theories and practices dealing with the structure and transformation of matter. By reading these texts (a treatise defending kīmiyāʾ by al-Fārābī, the famous passage from Ibn Sīnā’s Shifāʾ on transmutation, Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwā against kīmiyāʾ , Michael Psellos’s treatise On Making Gold , and the same author’s Accusation against a sitting Patriarch of Constantinople), the article aims to lay the groundwork for integrating the historiography of Byzantine and Arabic alchemy into a wider western Eurasian intellectual history.","PeriodicalId":47274,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","volume":"145 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2023.a909532","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract: This article investigates several discussions of “chemistry,” understood as an analysts’ category referring to theories and practices dealing with the structure and transformation of matter. By reading these texts (a treatise defending kīmiyāʾ by al-Fārābī, the famous passage from Ibn Sīnā’s Shifāʾ on transmutation, Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwā against kīmiyāʾ , Michael Psellos’s treatise On Making Gold , and the same author’s Accusation against a sitting Patriarch of Constantinople), the article aims to lay the groundwork for integrating the historiography of Byzantine and Arabic alchemy into a wider western Eurasian intellectual history.
期刊介绍:
Since its inception in 1940, the Journal of the History of Ideas has served as a medium for the publication of research in intellectual history that is of common interest to scholars and students in a wide range of fields. It is committed to encouraging diversity in regional coverage, chronological range, and methodological approaches. JHI defines intellectual history expansively and ecumenically, including the histories of philosophy, of literature and the arts, of the natural and social sciences, of religion, and of political thought. It also encourages scholarship at the intersections of cultural and intellectual history — for example, the history of the book and of visual culture.