READING IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE

Back when everyone accepted that the Scientific Revolution was something that had actually happened, one of its defining features was always said to be a turning away from the world of ‘words’ towards that of ‘things’. The existence and importance of the shift seemed incontrovertible. It was everywhere visible and prominent. All the new philosophies of the seventeenth century, however erudite, obscure or occult they may have seemed to modern eyes, loudly claimed to be abandoning slavish and idle adherence to ancient authority in favour of active and powerful engagement with the powers of nature themselves. The general trend was exemplified by an anecdote that Johann Joachim Becher, an enterprising mid-seventeenth-century chymist, economic innovator and natural philosopher, was fond of telling to anyone who would listen. The anecdote described an alchemical adept who, on hearing a scholastic professor lecture on the impossibility of transmutation, got up in front of the class and turned lead into gold there and then.