Chemistry | Heterodoxology

Looking through the Occult: Conference on Instrumentation, Esotericism and Epistemology in the 19th Century (Humboldt U, Berlin)

Humboldt University at Unter den Linden 6, Berlin.

I’m excited to participate in a wonderful conference at Berlin’s Humboldt University on November 14-15: “Looking through the Occult: Instrumentation, Esotericism and Epistemology in the 19th Century”. The conference is free and open to the public, so if you are in Berlin and have an above average interest in topics such as spiritualism and mediums, ether physics, spirit photography, early radio technology and x-rays, this should be a good treat. Check out the nice website for more information on the programme, how to get there, and what to read up on in advance.

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on November 3, 2013 at 12:25 pm Comments (1)
Tags: ether physics, instrumentation, Looking through the Occult, mediums, radio, rationalism and empiricism, spirit photography, x-rays

Scientific delusions, or delusions about science? (Part four: on natural laws and resonating habits)

Laws as a bad metaphor: Who’s enforcing what on whom?

It has been a while since my last post on Rupert Sheldrake’s Science Delusion, or, as it is called in the United States version (published by none other than Deepak Chopra Books – no doubt a token of proper peer-reviewed science), Science Set Free. For new readers as well as for old ones who need to refresh their memories, previous installations in the series are found here, here, and here. Without further ado, let me get started on an evaluation of the fourth dogma ascribed to science: “The laws of nature are fixed”. As in previous posts, evaluating this dogma (and whether it is one to begin with) will occasion a few short excursions in the philosophy and history of science. But this time we are also led, finally, to confront Sheldrake’s own key thesis, namely his theory of “morphic resonance”. Read on if you’re still curious.

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The Problem of Disenchantment – invitation to a PhD defence

Last autumn I completed my PhD dissertation, and now it’s time to defend it. The defence is public, and will take place on February 5, 2013, at 12:00 in the Agnietenkapel of the University of Amsterdam. The event is open to anyone (with a max. capacity of 90 people), and I will give a short public lecture on the topic of my research prior to defending it in front of the committee.

While I have given hints about my research in a number of posts here at Heterodoxology, I am now happy to present an official abstract of the final product – the dissertation itself:

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on January 9, 2013 at 12:02 pm Comments (9)
Tags: Agnietenkapel, Aleister Crowley, Anthroposophy, Egil Asprem, Max Weber, natural theology, New Age science, open-ended naturalism, parapsychology, PhD defence, The Problem of Disenchantment, Theosophy

William Newman demonstrates alchemical transmutation – with a few notes on whiggishness

The perpetually mystified Newton

When I press the “publish” button for this post I shall immediately duck and take cover from allegations of whiggishness. The title of the lecture I post below, “Why did Newton believe in alchemy?” is precisely the sort of question-asking that has recently been criticised in the history of science blogging community in a recent upsurge of discussions about whig history and misapplication of categories in narrating or explaining science history. As Rebekah Higgitt wrote on teleskopos back in 2010, the “Newton as alchemist” trope seems to be a perennial surprise, and she suggested (I think convincingly) that the very fact that journalists but also scholars continue to introduce this topic precisely as a surprise – no doubt to attract the attention of their audience – is actually just perpetuating the mystery rather than leaving it behind and moving on. The problem is not only that we should start by acknowledging the state-of-the art established knowledge in the field (which in the case of Newton means at least departing from such works as Robert Westfall’s Never at Rest, and Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs’ The Janus Face of Genius) rather than by perpetuating the research questions of more than half a century ago. The problem is also that by playing the surprise card, we encourage people to ask questions that are poorly formulated and misleading in the first place. Questions such as, “was Newton a scientist or a sorcerer?” As Thony Christie will tell you, that’s a completely silly question, which cannot avoid distorting the material it’s supposed to clarify. To put it in histsci jargon, the question is too far removed from “actor’s categories” to make any sense.

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on October 10, 2012 at 11:21 am Comments (5)
Tags: actor's categories, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, Boyle, chymistry, Isaac Newton, Larry Principe, Rebekah Higgitt, Robert Westfall, Thony Christie, transmutation, Tree of Diana, whiggishness, William Newman

Review: Mark Morrisson’s “Modern Alchemy”

(The following is my review of Mark Morrisson’s Modern Alchemy. The final version was published in Aries 11.1).

In 1901 physicist Ernest Rutherford and chemist Frederick Soddy, tucked away in a laboratory at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, were struck with amazement as they watched the element thorium transform into an inert gas. Soddy, exclaiming that they had witnessed nothing less than transmutation, was warned by his more temperate colleague: “For Mike’s sake, Soddy, don’t call it transmutation. They’ll have our heads off as alchemists”.

Alchemy would, however, be invoked frequently during the decades to come; not with reference to obscure occultists in the secret vaults of hermetic societies, but in connection to new discoveries concerning radioactive decay. Indeed, in its the early decades, what would become nuclear physics was commonly labelled “modern alchemy”. The crucible and athanor had been replaced by cloud chambers, spectroscopes, and ionization chambers, but there was a nagging feeling that the ancient and modern alchemists ultimately shared the same goal: the transmutation of elements.

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Aries 11.1

Heterodoxology has aimed to establish the practice of reviewing new publications and releases in the field of esotericism, particularly notifying about current issues of the journal Aries. Aries 11.1 has been out for a couple of months already, so this comes somewhat late.

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on June 3, 2011 at 11:53 am Leave a Comment
Tags: Andrei Scrima, Aries, Ben Kadosh, Claire Fanger, Giovanni Gioviano Pontano, György E. Szőnyi, Johann Valentin Andreae, Leigh Penman, Marco Totti, Marina Warner, Mark Morrisson, Matteo Soranzo, Nadya Q. Chishty-Mujahid, Per Faxneld, perennialism, Roland Edighoffer, Stuart Clark, Traditionalism

Giants’ Shoulders #29: Esoteric Science Special

Athanasius Kircher's museum

Heterodoxology is proud to present the twenty-ninth installment of your favourite History of Science Blog Carnival: The Giant’s Shoulders. This time featuring an Esoteric Science Special, dedicated to all those esoteric pursuits of superior knowledge; a celebration of all strange, alien, and counterintuitive methods that have been attempted to dissect, read, or tame nature’s secrets, from renaissance natural philosophy to present-day Grand Unified Theories – from the cleverly inventive, through the hopelessly megalomaniac, to the simply misguided.

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on November 16, 2010 at 11:46 am Comments (5)
Tags: 2012, Almagestum Novum, Anne-Laurence Caudano, apocalypse, archaeoastronomy, archaeology, Ben Freivogel, Benjamin Franklin, Benoit Mandelbrot, biomedicine, black holes, Byzantium, cameras, Charles Darwin, Coca Cola, computing, Copernicus, Cornelius Agrippa, dinosaurs, ecology, Esoteric Coffeehouse, forensic science, fractals, Francis Bacon, Fred Hoyle, Galileo, geocentricity, heliocentricity, homeopathy, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Joseph D. Coker, Madhava, Manuel I Komnenos, Maxwell's demon, Mayan civilization, Michael Mästlin, nuclear fusion, nuclear weapons, occult properties, Paracelsus, Post-Apocalyptic, Ptolemy, robots, Samuel Hahnemann, Science Fiction, scientific instruments, Technocracy, Tetens, The Giant's Shoulders, Thomas Kuhn, transhumanism, Tycho Brahe, UFOs, Vito Volterra, William Coblentz, William Crookes, William Whewell

Alchemy, and how to write about it: ESSWE thesis workshop

As advertised before on this blog, the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) has been organising a thesis workshop on alchemy. It took place in Amsterdam on June 24; here is a short report.

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on June 27, 2010 at 12:26 pm Comments (6)
Tags: alchemy, Andreas Kilcher, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Boaz Huss, chemistry, chymistry, Clovis Hesteau, ESSWE, George Starkey, György E. Szőnyi, Heinrich Khunrath, Irenaeus Philalethes, Isaac Newton, Jean-Pierre Brach, Jennifer Rampling, Lawrence Principe, marco Pasi, Mark Sedgwick, Peter Forshaw, Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle, Stephen Clucas, William Newman, Wouter Hanegraaff

Lawrence Principe and the Rehabilitation of Alchemy – another lecture in Utrecht

Utrecht has apparently become the place for me to see visiting historians of science. A couple months back Peter Galison gave lectures and a workshop on secrecy and science, and now last week, the alchemy specialist Lawrence Principe gave the third Descartes-Huygens lecture on “Uncovering the Secrets of Alchemy and its Role in the History of Science”. It was quite a ceremonial occasion, as Principe, who is ordinarily based at John Hopkins University, was officially given an honorary fellowship at Utrecht Unversity. As the man himself opened by saying, this was probably the first time since the 17th century that the oration of a new fellow would be devoted to the art of alchemy.