Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature

In Promethean Ambitions, William R. Newman uses alchemy as a means to discuss the thinning boundary between the natural and the artificial. Focusing.
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Newman ambitiously uses alchemy to investigate the thinning boundary between the natural and the artificial. Focusing primarily on the period between and , Newman examines the labors of pioneering alchemists and the impassioned—and often negative—responses to their efforts.

By the thirteenth century, Newman argues, alchemy had become a benchmark for determining the abilities of both men and demons, representing the epitome of creative power in the natural world. Newman frames the art-nature debate by contrasting the supposed transmutational power of alchemy with the merely representational abilities of the pictorial and plastic arts—a dispute which found artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Bernard Palissy attacking alchemy as an irreligious fraud.

The later assertion by the Paracelsian school that one could make an artificial human being—the homunculus—led to further disparagement of alchemy, but as Newman shows, the immense power over nature promised by the field contributed directly to the technological apologetics of Francis Bacon and his followers.

By the mid-seventeenth century, the famous "father of modern chemistry," Robert Boyle, was employing the arguments of medieval alchemists to support the identity of naturally occurring substances with those manufactured by "chymical" means. In using history to highlight the art-nature debate, Newman here shows that alchemy was not an unformed and capricious precursor to chemistry; it was an art founded on coherent philosophical and empirical principles, with vocal supporters and even louder critics, that attracted individuals of first-rate intellect.

The historical relationship that Newman charts between human creation and nature has innumerable implications today, and he ably links contemporary issues to alchemical debates on the natural versus the artificial. From Alchemical Gold to Synthetic Humans: The Problem of the Artificial and the Natural 1. Imitating, Challenging, and Perfecting Nature: The Arts and Alchemy in European Antiquity 2.

Alchemy and the Art-Nature Debate 3. The Visual Arts and Alchemy 4.

Artificial Life and the Homunculus 5. Newman, a clear and graceful writer, keeps his goal in view. He is an initiate--tapping, testing and transmuting--until something different, still called alchemy, gradually takes shape. Ed Rothstein New York Times. Newman argues that most current debates about boundaries between nature and artifice, or boundaries between proper and improper scientific exploration, echo debates that run through the history of alchemy.

Critics of alchemy argued that the natural world could not be replicated or improved and that such goals should not be pursued. Advocates found porous boundaries between nature that could be explored and tested. Eric Wargo Washington Times. Newman shows that debating the ethical limits of human meddling in nature--even over creating artificial life in the laboratory--has a remarkably long history, going back well before the scientific revolution.

Russell Seitz Wall Street Journal. Newman reminds us in Promethean Ambitions , his fascinating history of alchemy, the failure to distinguish good science from bad has been a recipe for policy disaster for centuries. If one is approaching this book as a layman as I did I strongly recommend reading this book on a Kindle or other e-reader despite the fact that the Kindle version is horrible. Further, I recommend that the book be read on a device that has a touch interface.

The reasons for this is that all but the most erudite readers will have their vocabularies and knowledge of Latin challenged. Virtually every page has words that will be unfamiliar or phrases that will need translating. The Kindle's dictionaries frequently met their match and offered Wikipedia and Google as alternatives. The print version of this book could have been a real chore to slog through; with the above resources available at a touch, a pleasant education.

The Kindle version is, as sated above, simply horrible with all the artifacts and shortcomings of a machine translation of a print copy with no human proofreading.

There are words run together "ofa", "withthe" , hyphens in mid line, no chapter markings on the progress bar, unlinked illustrations, useless index, and the color plates buried in the middle of the book with no way to easily access them except to bookmark them. They are at Location All the above do not make the book unreadable, fortunately. The notes are linked, which is a big help. The book can be highly recommended but the layman cannot expect any spoon feeding.

This is not a book that can be read during the commercial breaks. One person found this helpful 2 people found this helpful.

I greatly enjoyed this excellent book, even though it was quite an undertaking to really absorb. It's a book you'll read a bit, then think about, then come back to, working though it and letting each bit you take in trickle through your consciousness before you move on. As a practicing Alchemist myself, I especially enjoyed the clear explanation of our Western philosophical lineage and the Hermetic tradition that stretches back to the Greeks and before. Whether we realize it or not, here in the US at least, we are educated in this tradition, and think a certain way because of it; the tendency to look to the East for all things spiritual is unfortunate when we have so, so much native to our own culture.

This book brings that line right down through the ages, and made me see that I have many more "ancestors" than I thought! The main theme of the book, Alchemy as the language and arena for the discussion of Art and Nature, is also brought to more modern relevance than might be expected, and examining our scientific heritage through that lens is very useful philosophically. After reading this book, when I hear debates about genetic modification, artificial intelligence, and the like, I realize that these discussions have been taking place for centuries, and the ancients' explorations of these questions have much to teach us now.

William Newman is one of the most knowledgeable experts and a key pioneer in alchemical studies, and this is his most readable, engaging, and socially relevant book.

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Those who wish to learn about the history of alchemy should start here, and will find references to the next logical steps in the study, but this book is also important for those who wish to understand more about the way our culture understands life using science. Many urgent issues in the philosophy of biology and medical ethics have long been the province of alchemists, which Newman demonstrates with clarity and grace, and anybody interested in these topics will find much of deep interest here.

Buy it as a present for any educated person who doesn't understand why people should study Alchemy. Encourage your library to carry a copy. Well worth the price of admission. See all 3 reviews. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature.

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