Natural Order, Social Discipline:
Alchemy and the Art-Nature Debate
張谷銘
中央研究院歷史語言研究所

This class is an introduction to the disputes in European history on the legitimacy of natural studies and the conjoined discussions on the necessity to repress them. It takes alchemy, characterized by its quest to the artificial production of gold, as an example that shows that deliberations on discipline are often intertwined with presumed cosmological orders that define what is natural and what is not. By analyzing the presumed natural orders in conflict, we can gain historical insight on what was held fundamental in these disputes, and remind ourselves that what our society regards as natural may have significant moral and political consequences.

Outlines:

  1. What is Alchemy? The Natural and the Unnatural.
  2. Art and Nature: The Medieval and Early Modern Discussions
  3. The Particularity of Alchemy in the Art-Nature Discussions
  4. Arguments for and against Alchemy
    a. What is Natural?
    b. The Theological Implications of Presumptuous Art
    c. Art, Witchcraft and Demonology
  5. The Legitimacy of Discipline

Things to ponder:

  1. Think of a phenomenon in our daily life that involves debates on whether it is natural and on whether discipline or punishment on it is justifiable.
  2. Consider the ways in which that phenomenon is criticized, or legitimized today.
  3. What are the differences between what occurred to alchemy in medieval and early modern Europe and what happens to the contemporary phenomenon?

Required Reading:

  1. William R. Newman, "Chapter Two Alchemy and the Art-Nature Debate," Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 34-62.

 
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