Pub Date : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2180223
{"title":"Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry Award Scheme 2023.","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2180223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2180223","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9363007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2192131
Donna Bilak, George Vrtis
Wherever mercury-gold amalgamation mining unfolds, alchemical processes abound. They are there as catalytic agents forming amalgams at atomic levels. They are there as cultural agents transforming rocks into cell phones and all kinds of consumer goods. And they are there as ideological agents mutually translating human understandings across whole worlds we describe as the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. These processes, we argue, are made more legible - more readily perceived and conceptualised - by peering through the lens of environmental alchemy, a new critical framework in which we apply the historical use of alchemical terms to investigations of environmental change, and to understand the extraordinary complexity that gold and mercury set in motion when mining entangles nature and culture.
{"title":"Environmental Alchemy: Mercury-Gold Amalgamation Mining and the Transformation of the Earth.","authors":"Donna Bilak, George Vrtis","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2192131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2192131","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Wherever mercury-gold amalgamation mining unfolds, alchemical processes abound. They are there as catalytic agents forming amalgams at atomic levels. They are there as cultural agents transforming rocks into cell phones and all kinds of consumer goods. And they are there as ideological agents mutually translating human understandings across whole worlds we describe as the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. These processes, we argue, are made more legible - more readily perceived and conceptualised - by peering through the lens of <i>environmental alchemy</i>, a new critical framework in which we apply the historical use of alchemical terms to investigations of environmental change, and to understand the extraordinary complexity that gold and mercury set in motion when mining entangles nature and culture.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9302349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article argues that the centuries-long history of mercury-gold amalgamation is crucial to contemporary debates surrounding global mercury pollution from artisanal and small-scale gold mining. Drawing on historical findings that examine Spanish colonial and Indigenous metallurgical knowledge as well as ethnographic and scientific research, we resituate the history of mercury amalgamation in Latin America, focusing on the Colombian Andes and the Peruvian Amazon - two regions where mercury pollution from artisanal and small-scale gold mining provokes international concern. We identify the policy pitfalls caused by overlooking the untold histories of the amalgamation process along with the European contribution to global mercury emissions rooted in these histories. By critically examining the curation of presentist narratives in UNESCO's memorialisation of Almadén's mercury mines as a World Heritage Site, narratives that also underpin initiatives by the United Nations to bring about a "mercury-free world," we demonstrate how such ahistorical framings contribute to the criminalisation of artisanal and small-scale gold miners, not only in Perú and Colombia but also worldwide. Our findings present an important first step in highlighting the histories of mercury and gold in the hands of artisanal and small-scale gold miners in Latin America.
{"title":"Amalgamated Histories: Tracing Quicksilver's Legacy Through Environmental and Political Bodies in Andean and Amazonian Gold Mining.","authors":"Sebastián Rubiano-Galvis, Jimena Diaz Leiva, Ruth Goldstein","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2189387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2189387","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article argues that the centuries-long history of mercury-gold amalgamation is crucial to contemporary debates surrounding global mercury pollution from artisanal and small-scale gold mining. Drawing on historical findings that examine Spanish colonial and Indigenous metallurgical knowledge as well as ethnographic and scientific research, we resituate the history of mercury amalgamation in Latin America, focusing on the Colombian Andes and the Peruvian Amazon - two regions where mercury pollution from artisanal and small-scale gold mining provokes international concern. We identify the policy pitfalls caused by overlooking the untold histories of the amalgamation process along with the European contribution to global mercury emissions rooted in these histories. By critically examining the curation of presentist narratives in UNESCO's memorialisation of Almadén's mercury mines as a World Heritage Site, narratives that also underpin initiatives by the United Nations to bring about a \"mercury-free world,\" we demonstrate how such ahistorical framings contribute to the criminalisation of artisanal and small-scale gold miners, not only in Perú and Colombia but also worldwide. Our findings present an important first step in highlighting the histories of mercury and gold in the hands of artisanal and small-scale gold miners in Latin America.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9663877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2173833
Vincenzo Carlotta, Matteo Martelli
Ancient and medieval alchemical works include several comparisons between the generation and development of metals and those of plants, animals, and living beings. These comparisons could refer to adopt physiological models in the explanation of the natural formation of metals and their artificial transformation, to justify the place occupied by alchemy within the broader study of the natural world, and to stand as metaphorical descriptions of specific alchemical procedures. This article analyses these features by focusing on the relationship between mercury and gold, the latter being the "perfect" metal that constituted both an ambitious goal of alchemical practice and one of its key ingredients. The interrelationship between gold and mercury emerges in complex myths about metallic rivers, in the use of gold-mercury amalgams in ancient technology, and in the discussion that alchemists developed around the enigmatic chrysocolla (literally "gold solder"). These three foci are discussed in relation to a variety of ancient sources - from Aristotle and the Stoics to late antique, Byzantine, and Syriac alchemical texts - to explore the different forms of conceptualising metals as living bodies and the interactions of these models with ancient theories on the formation of metals and the alchemical practices aimed at their transformation.
{"title":"Metals as Living Bodies. Founts of Mercury, Amalgams, and Chrysocolla.","authors":"Vincenzo Carlotta, Matteo Martelli","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2173833","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2173833","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Ancient and medieval alchemical works include several comparisons between the generation and development of metals and those of plants, animals, and living beings. These comparisons could refer to adopt physiological models in the explanation of the natural formation of metals and their artificial transformation, to justify the place occupied by alchemy within the broader study of the natural world, and to stand as metaphorical descriptions of specific alchemical procedures. This article analyses these features by focusing on the relationship between mercury and gold, the latter being the \"perfect\" metal that constituted both an ambitious goal of alchemical practice and one of its key ingredients. The interrelationship between gold and mercury emerges in complex myths about metallic rivers, in the use of gold-mercury amalgams in ancient technology, and in the discussion that alchemists developed around the enigmatic <i>chrysocolla</i> (literally \"gold solder\"). These three foci are discussed in relation to a variety of ancient sources - from Aristotle and the Stoics to late antique, Byzantine, and Syriac alchemical texts - to explore the different forms of conceptualising metals as living bodies and the interactions of these models with ancient theories on the formation of metals and the alchemical practices aimed at their transformation.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9363006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-01DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2192125
Peter Oakley
This article considers the presence and absence of mercury, and why in different social arenas where gold features, mercury can become either pervasive or elusive. To substantiate this argument, the article offers two contrasting examples: (1) presentation strategies at Pacific Seaboard gold rush heritage sites, and (2) the background to the Minamata Bay tragedy and the Minamata Convention's subsequent framing of mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining in the Global South. By unpacking these divergent social histories of mercury use and its consequences, the article identifies the current disconnect between different histories of mercury, and the problematic consequences of this disengagement.
{"title":"Making Mercury's Histories: Mercury in Gold Mining's Past and Present.","authors":"Peter Oakley","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2192125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2192125","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article considers the presence and absence of mercury, and why in different social arenas where gold features, mercury can become either pervasive or elusive. To substantiate this argument, the article offers two contrasting examples: (1) presentation strategies at Pacific Seaboard gold rush heritage sites, and (2) the background to the Minamata Bay tragedy and the Minamata Convention's subsequent framing of mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining in the Global South. By unpacking these divergent social histories of mercury use and its consequences, the article identifies the current disconnect between different histories of mercury, and the problematic consequences of this disengagement.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9302347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-27DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2170541
S. Dupré
{"title":"From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World","authors":"S. Dupré","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2170541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2170541","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47130835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-13DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2022.2157097
Silvia Pérez-Criado
{"title":"How to Sell a Poison","authors":"Silvia Pérez-Criado","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2157097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2157097","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43948869","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01Epub Date: 2024-02-22DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2023.2222505
Gabriele Ferrario
{"title":"<i>The Book on Alums and Salts</i> of Pseudo-Rāzī.","authors":"Gabriele Ferrario","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2023.2222505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2023.2222505","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139934046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-16DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2022.2156109
Pablo Corral-Broto
Jarrige and Le Roux’s book appeared in French in 2017; three years later MIT Press published a translation of this excellent work on the history of pollution. The book makes an important contribution to the fields of environmental history, social and economic history, the history of law and the state, histories of science and technology, and political ecology or ecological economics, among other eco-disciplines. It analyses pollution from the point of view of production and consumption, regulation, industrial lobbying, labour pressure, and devotion to economic growth all over the planet. Thus it presents a global history of pollution, divided chronologically into three parts from 1700 to the present day. The first part traces the emergence of industrial pollution between 1700 and 1830, from agrarian states and rural pollution to industrialisation and urban pollution. During this time there was a mandatory distance of more than twenty kilometres of gunpowder factories from cities, enforced by a public health police. But coal cities carried out what they called “the regulatory revolution” (p. 63). These changes in the protection, estimation, and compensation of industrial damage have been widely studied by historians. Jarrige and Le Roux, both experts on France, have managed to extend this story to all the industrial countries of the nineteenth century. The second part, “Naturalizing Pollutions in the Age of Progress (1830–1914),” shows that the pattern was global: instead of shutting down polluting factories, notions of progress required protecting them with new experts and new interpretations of the law. Chemistry became a “new frontier” (p. 106), organised and prepared to pollute without limits for the sake of progress. Thus were born the great chemical multinational corporations at the end of the nineteenth century, as well as new solvents, fertilisers, insecticides, and synthetic products. Legal and regulatory change up to the GreatWar was also global and always aimed at protecting the industry. This explains why public and neighbourhood protests were ubiquitous but unresolved, and not even the hygienists questioned the benefits of chemistry
{"title":"The Contamination of the Earth. A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age","authors":"Pablo Corral-Broto","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2156109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2156109","url":null,"abstract":"Jarrige and Le Roux’s book appeared in French in 2017; three years later MIT Press published a translation of this excellent work on the history of pollution. The book makes an important contribution to the fields of environmental history, social and economic history, the history of law and the state, histories of science and technology, and political ecology or ecological economics, among other eco-disciplines. It analyses pollution from the point of view of production and consumption, regulation, industrial lobbying, labour pressure, and devotion to economic growth all over the planet. Thus it presents a global history of pollution, divided chronologically into three parts from 1700 to the present day. The first part traces the emergence of industrial pollution between 1700 and 1830, from agrarian states and rural pollution to industrialisation and urban pollution. During this time there was a mandatory distance of more than twenty kilometres of gunpowder factories from cities, enforced by a public health police. But coal cities carried out what they called “the regulatory revolution” (p. 63). These changes in the protection, estimation, and compensation of industrial damage have been widely studied by historians. Jarrige and Le Roux, both experts on France, have managed to extend this story to all the industrial countries of the nineteenth century. The second part, “Naturalizing Pollutions in the Age of Progress (1830–1914),” shows that the pattern was global: instead of shutting down polluting factories, notions of progress required protecting them with new experts and new interpretations of the law. Chemistry became a “new frontier” (p. 106), organised and prepared to pollute without limits for the sake of progress. Thus were born the great chemical multinational corporations at the end of the nineteenth century, as well as new solvents, fertilisers, insecticides, and synthetic products. Legal and regulatory change up to the GreatWar was also global and always aimed at protecting the industry. This explains why public and neighbourhood protests were ubiquitous but unresolved, and not even the hygienists questioned the benefits of chemistry","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46832250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-16DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2022.2140979
Judit Gil-Farrero
{"title":"Tóxicos: pasado y presente. Pensar históricamente un mundo tóxico","authors":"Judit Gil-Farrero","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2022.2140979","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2022.2140979","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43375616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}