Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Chair: Sergei Zotov (Warburg Institute, London)
Oana Matei (Vasile Goldis Western University of Arad)
Can Life Rise from Ashes? Discussions on the Possibility of Palingenesis of Plants in the Seventeenth Century
Palingenesis may, at first glance, appear reducible to a quasi-miraculous aspiration: the resurrection of a body from its own ashes. Yet, such a characterization risks obscuring its philosophical and experimental significance within early modern natural philosophy. Rather than dismissing palingenesis as a residue of alchemical fantasy, I argue that it functioned as a theoretically charged experimental program through which natural philosophers interrogated the generative principles of matter and life.
This presentation advances the claim that seventeenth-century palingenesis worked simultaneously on practical and explanatory registers. On the one hand, its experimental trials—particularly attempts to regenerate plants from their calcined remains—were embedded in concrete concerns, including the preservation, transportation, and transplantation of exotic species. On the other hand, these same trials sought to elucidate the internal composition of matter and the mechanisms underlying the apparent regeneration of life.
I will first present a series of palingenesis experiments, arguing that seventeenth-century naturalists did not regard them as mere curiosities but as evidential probes into the structure of nature. Central to these investigations was the post-Paracelsian elevation of salts as formative principles. Within this framework, salts were not understood as inert residues but as active bearers of essential form—incorruptible substrates that preserved the organism’s organizing principle even through destruction by fire. Palingenesis thus implicitly challenged strictly mechanistic reductions of matter by positing a chemically embodied persistence of form.
Finally, by turning to the cases of Henry Power and Nehemiah Grew, I argue that their engagement with palingenesis trials demonstrates that the effort to “resurrect” plants from ashes was not a marginal curiosity but a philosophically charged inquiry into life’s organizing principles.
Xinyi Wen (The Warburg Institute, London)
Cosmos or Coitus? A Copy Census of Oswald Croll’s Basilica Chymica, 1609-1690
German chymist Oswald Croll’s Basilica Chymica, republished and translated many times throughout the seventeenth century, was one of the most influential chymical textbooks in early modern Europe. It was widely discussed both for the chymical philosophies, instructions and recipes it introduced, and for the ‘doctrine of signatures’ it proposed as a separate treatise within the book — an idea that natural things resembling human body parts could cure their corresponding body parts. This project examines how early modern readers engaged with this book. Amidst an ongoing census of Basilica Chymica’s various editions and translations, this talk will focus on several annotated, extra-illustrated, and interleaved copies. Croll’s book has been read alongside various relevant and, at times, competing titles by chymists, pedagogists, and physicians. Different readers associated this book with different practices and belief systems, ranging from palmistry to botany. While historians have traditionally placed great importance on Croll’s chymical philosophy and cosmological framework, surviving early modern annotations suggest that many readers used Croll’s textbook as a repository of practical information. The treatise on the doctrine of signatures was particularly a site of productive engagements for such purposes. In the end, instead of cosmos, readers of Croll’s book were arguably more concerned about coitus.
Convenors: Ellen Hausner (Oxford), Sergei Zotov (Warburg), and Jo Hedesan (Oxford)
