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+--- Thread: Principe: Dibner Library Lecture (/showthread.php?tid=848)
Principe: Dibner Library Lecture - Paul Ferguson - 10-25-2023
"Alchemy.” To most people, the word stirs up a vision of medieval conjurors experimenting with ways of turning base metals into gold. Nothing could be further from the truth,
says Lawrence M. Principe, the 21st annual lecturer in the series hosted by the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology of the Smithsonian Libraries. In this highly
readable essay expanded from his lecture, Dr. Principe traces the fascination of practitioners, theorists, and scientists with the idea of transmutation of base metals from earliest
times, invigorated again in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He highlights “the successive making-up and breaking-up of alchemy and chemistry,” since both were stimulated
by “the desire to understand and to control matter and its transformations."
https://library.si.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/general_pages/principefinal.pdf
See the lecture here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gc2YYPow6c