标签：alchemy

Lectures on the General History of Science 11: Alchemy and the Scientific Revolution [Next Week’s Class Discussion]

Last class, we finished the mechanical revolution all the way up to Newton. The problems in physics provoked by Copernicus’s astronomical revolution were ultimately solved by Newtonian mechanics, but Newtonian mechanics itself implied a certain conceptual transformation amounting to sleight of hand: the distinction between nature and artifice, the distinction between inwardness and outwardness, and the boundary between physics and mechanics were all finally broken through, and the introduction of the concept of “force” ultimately substituted itself for people’s search for “cause.” We said that Newtonian mechanics is accidental in name; of course we could equally have had something like Empedology or Zhang San Dology, and F=ma could be replaced…