Jan Baptist van Helmont

Dès son arrivée à Rome, Christine de Suède a visité l’Académie des Humoristes, institution renommée, fondée au début du XVIIe siècle et placée au centre d’un vaste réseau de relations savantes et politiques. Le renouveau de l’atomisme, avec les diverses nuances apportées par Gassendi, Descartes et Boyle, soulevait des débats philosophiques et scientifiques parmi les humoristes. La devise lucrétienne de  l’Académie  Redit  agmine  dulci  (adoptée  autour  de  1611)  semblait  en  effet  indiquer  un  penchant « institutionnel » des humoristes dans cette direction. Une source manuscrite nouvellement mise au jour, les  Dialoghi eruditi rédigés  par  l’humoriste  Giuseppe  Giusto  Guaccimanni  dans  les  années  1698-1705, jette  une  certaine  lumière  sur  l’intérêt  précoce  de  l’académie  pour  la  théorie  séminale  de  la  matière proposée par l’iatrochimiste Van Helmont, tout en  révélant comment Christine de Suède a pris avec assurance la défense de l’atomisme comme une théorie très apte à expliquer les phénomènes naturels, en  accord  avec  les  résultats  de  la  physique  expérimentale  de  son  temps.  En  outre,  à  partir  de  la proximité de cette dernière avec  les  processus  à  l’œuvre  dans  les  laboratoires  alchimiques,  la  reine  y apparaît  soutenant  une  tentative,  audacieuse  et  sans  précédent,  de  conciliation  de  la  philosophie hermétique tant avec l’atomisme de Démocrite qu’avec la religion chrétienne

This is a postprint version of chapter 3 in E. Tobin and C. Ambrosio (eds.), Theory Choice in the History of Chemical Practices, SpringerBriefs in History of Chemistry, 2016. Robert Boyle's famous Sceptical Chymist (1661) is a dialogue on matter theory, between a Peripatetic Aristotelian (Themistius), a Chymist (Philoponus) and a Sceptic (Carneades), and moderated by a supposedly impartial individual (Eleutherius). At first glance, the book seems to offer an ideal case in which to study theory choice. Boyle introduces at least three types of competing theories of matter: the four-element theory of Aristotle, the three-principle theory of Paracelsus and the atomistic theory. In fact, the discussion actually focusses on one system only, the Paracelsian theory of the 'three principles' of Sulphur, Mercury and Salt, also referred to as the tria prima. The promise of theory choice between three competing systems hence thwarted, a more fruitful avenue of research is to analyse the book from the point of view of a mitigated type of theory choice, that between acceptance of the tria prima theory or its rejection and exploration of other theories.

This article analyses four unpublished draft letters from Nicolas Fatio de Duiller to Isaac Newton, dating from June to August 1693, and held in the Special Collections in the Universiteitsbibliotheek in Leiden. Overall, these letters enrich our knowledge of Fatio-Newton’s alchemical correspondence in June 1693, a phase which likely represents the peak of the two natural philosophers’ alchemical collaboration. By scrutinising the content of the letters, and situating them in relation to primary and secondary sources, the article will place Newton and Fatio’s epistolary exchange in relation to the social and historical background of late seventeenth-century London, bringing to light so far undisclosed aspects of the networks, alchemical practices, and expertise of the two natural philosophers.

This PDF contains front matter, table of contents and the preface only (pre-print version).

History of science credits the Flemish physician, alchemist and philosopher Jan Baptist Van Helmont (1579-1644) for his contributions to the development of chemistry and medicine. Yet, as this book makes clear, focussing on Van Helmont's impact on modern science does not do justice to the complexity of his thought or to his influence on successive generations of intellectuals like Robert Boyle or Gottfried Leibniz.

Revealing Van Helmont as an original thinker who sought to produce a post-Scholastic synthesis of religion and natural philosophy, Georgiana Hedesan reconstructs his ambitious quest for universal knowledge as it emerges from the text of the Ortus medicinae (1648). Published after Van Helmont's death by his son, the work can best be understood as a compilation of finished and unfinished treatises, the historical product of a life unsettled by religious persecution and personal misfortune. The present book provides a coherent account of Van Helmont's philosophy by analysing its main tenets.

Divided into two parts, the study opens with a background to Van Helmont's concept of an alchemical Christian philosophy, demonstrating that his outlook was deeply grounded in the tradition of medical alchemy as reformed by Theophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493-1541). It then reconstitutes Van Helmont's biography, while giving a historical dimension to his intellectual output. The second part reconstructs Van Helmont's Christian philosophy, investigating his views on God, nature and man, as well as his applied philosophy. Hedesan also provides an account of the development of Van Helmont's thought throughout his life. The conclusion sums up Van Helmont's intellectual achievement and highlights avenues of future research.

The 16th and 17th centuries mark a period of transition between the vitalistic ontology that had dominated Renaissance natural philosophy and the Early Modern mechanistic paradigm endorsed by, among others, the Cartesians and Newtonians.  This paper will focus on how the tensions between vitalism and mechanism played themselves out in the context of 16th and 17th century chemistry and chemical philosophy, particularly in the works of Paracelsus, Jan Baptist Van Helmont, Robert Fludd, and Robert Boyle.  Rather than argue that these natural philosophers each embraced either fully vitalistic or fully mechanistic ontologies, I hope to demonstrate that these thinkers adhered to complicated and nuanced ontologies that cannot be described in either purely vitalistic or purely mechanistic terms.  Brief attention will also be paid to the debate between the Leibnizians and the Newtonians over the theory of matter, how these debates influenced the resolution of the tension between vitalism and mechanism in chemical philosophy, and how the ultimate victory of mechanistic philosophy over vitalism culminated in the 18th century Chemical Revolution.
The paper will begin with a brief discussion of the role of vitalism in Renaissance philosophy and of its relationship to hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and the Scholastic notion of occult properties.  Special focus will be placed on the natural philosophies of Tommaso Campanella and Giordano Bruno.  This short discussion will be followed by a more detailed account of how vitalism influenced work in alchemy and early chemistry, particularly that of Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and Fludd.  I will show that despite the vitalistic, hermetic, and quasi-mystical conceptions of reality embraced by each of these natural philosophers, each of them also embraced an empirical method and approach to the study and manipulation of nature that marks them as precursors to modern scientific methodology.
Following this, I will briefly discuss the mechanistic philosophy endorsed by the Cartesians and Newtonians and will then focus on the work of Robert Boyle as it represents a movement towards a mechanistic ontology and, in particular, towards a mechanistic approach to the study of chemistry.  Yet, despite the fact that Boyle authored The Sceptical Chymist as a response to spagyrists and “alchymists”, he was himself a practicing alchemist who believed in the possibility of the transmutation of metals.  Although he conveniently separated conceptually the functions of alchemy and chemistry, in order to account for both practices, he had to embrace an ontology that was not easily demarcated as completely mechanistic.
17th century natural philosophy, and chemical philosophy was no exception, was also marked by the debate between the Leibnizians and the Newtonians over the theory of matter, a debate that is intimately linked to that between vitalism and mechanism.  Leibniz, ultimately, opposed the conception of matter as inert by virtue of the fact that, for him, all monads, including those that make up what we call ‘matter’ contain within them an inner force.  This view clearly favors a vitalistic ontology.  Newton, on the other hand, refuses to define force in vitalistic terms and, instead, defines it mathematically in terms of mass multiplied by acceleration.  Despite differences of details in terms of how matter, force, and gravitation are described by the Cartesians and Newtonians, it is clear that the Newtonians embrace a mechanistic conception of nature and its laws.  The resolution of this debate in favor of an unambiguous materialistic and mechanistic ontology ultimately impacts on the development of chemical philosophy as it culminates in the Chemical Revolution of the 18th century.

The Tree of Life in the Bible's Genesis account has been a powerful and enduring symbol of radical prolongation of life in Christian culture. The Biblical injunction against attaining the Tree in the aftermath of the Fall did not stop some alchemical philosophers from trying to reproduce it in the laboratory. Thus, in the High Middle Ages, the English friar Roger Bacon argued that a medicine very similar to that of the Tree of Life could be obtained by alchemical means. The association between the Tree of Life and alchemy flourished in the seventeenth century, when several alchemists discussed the possibility of reproducing the radical life-extending qualities of the Tree. This article investigates the writings of six representative alchemists dealing with this subject-matter, including the anonymous author of the

Sacro-sanctae scientiae indepingibilis imago est un traité philosophique du XVIIe siècle demeuré longtemps inédit, dont il est publié ici, dans une édition critique et scientifique, une version française avec le texte latin en regard. Cet écrit, dû au Prince philosophe roumain Démètre Cantemir (1675-1723), conçu comme une réaction aux formes variées de l’aristotélisme de Padoue, se voudrait une philosophie chrétienne orthodoxe, mettant à profit de nombreuses sources de l’apophatisme chrétien oriental, en particulier la théologie du Pseudo-Denys l’Aréopagite. Il contient une théologo-physique qui éclaire les conditions dans lesquelles on peut arriver à la connaissance des principes du monde et qui fournit, en même temps, une cosmogonie sur le modèle des physiques mosaïques et une histoire du péché originel qui décrit la dignité ontologique dans laquelle l’homme fut créé et la science simple qu’il possédait au Paradis. Un livre sur le temps et sur l’éternité complète l’ouvrage, ainsi qu’une méditation sur les vies individuelles et leur participation à la vie universelle, et une dissertation sur le libre arbitre esquissant une éthique chrétienne.

MARINA PAOLA BANCHETTI-ROBINO IL VITALISMO NEOPLATONICO RINASCIMENTALE Il vitalismo neoplatonico che domina la cultura rinascimentale ha una profonda influenza sull"ontologia della filosofia naturale Quattrocentesca e Cinquecentesca. Certi elementi persistenti di quest"ontologia, particolarmente i concetti vitalistici di spirito e di fermento, continuano a risuonare nel Seicento e nel Settecento. Questo saggio discute l"influenza di questo vitalismo neoplatonico sul pensiero del "chimista" Jan Baptista van Helmont (1580-1644), 1 in particolare sulla sua ontologia chimica, sulle sue teorie di semina rerum e di arche, e sull"influenza di queste nozioni nel suo modo di concettualizzare gli spiriti, i fermenti, e la trasmutazione chimica. Voglio iniziare questa discussione affrontando gli elementi chiave dell"alchimia rinascimentale, particolarmente l"alchimia di Paracelso dato che quest"ultima esercita un notevole impatto sul vitalismo neoplatonico di Helmont. Discuterò anche il modo nel quale Helmont riesce ad infondere gli elementi vitalistici della sua ontologica chimica con elementi naturalistici. Il vitalismo afferma l"esistenza ed il potere causale delle "forze vitali" or degli "spiriti vitali" nella natura. Secondo questa teoria, la presenza di spirito vitale distingue la materia organica da quella inorganica. Le spiegazioni vitalistiche dei fenomeni naturali tendono ad essere qualitative ed i processi vitalistici sono concepiti in un modo olistico e te-1 I termini "chimista" e "chimistria" sono impiegati nella storiografia scientifica per indicare la transizione fra l"alchimia del Quattrocento e Cinquecento, una disciplina empirica con evidenti caratteristiche magico-teologiche, e la chimica cosi detta moderna emergente dalla rivoluzione chimica Settecentesca iniziata da Antoine Lavoisier. Questi termini indicano che il lavoro dei chimisti del tardo Cinquecento e del Seicento tende ad unire i concetti magico-teologici dell"alchimia con il naturalismo che domina la chimica moderna.

This volume is the fi rst issue of the Yearbook of the Helsinki Centre for Intellectual History. Written by a team of international scholars, it brings together a varied collection of essays. The seventeen chapters of this book shed new light on the changing shape of moral and political inquiry in early-modern Europe and engage with the contemporary relevance of the study of intellectuals, ideas and intellectual patterns over time.

Here, I shall argue that Van Helmont needs to be added to the list of sources on which Newton drew when formulating his doctrine of absolute time. This by no means implies that Van Helmont is the factual source of Newton's views on absolute time (I have found no clear-cut evidence in support of this claim). It is by no means my aim to debunk the importance of the other sources, but rather to broaden them. Different authors help to explain different aspects of Newton's conception of absolute time. 1 Despite the immense popularity of Newton's scholium on space and time, the historical sources of inspiration for Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) doctrine of absolute space and especially time presently remain unclear. Newton wrote on time in his famous scholium, as follows: Thus far it has seemed best to explain the senses in which less familiar words are to be taken in this treatise. Although time, space, place and motion are very familiar to everyone, it must be noted that these quantities are popularly conceived solely with reference to the objects of sense perception. And this is the source of certain preconceptions; to eliminate them it is useful to distinguish these quantities into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common. 1. Absolute, true, and mathematical time, in and of itself and of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly and by another name is called duration. Relative time, apparent, and common time is any sensible and ex

The Neoplatonic vitalism that informed Renaissance culture dominated much of 14th and 15th century natural philosophy and its ontology. Lingering elements of this ontology, particularly the notions of spirit and ferment conceived in vitalistic terms, continued to resonate in the 16th and 17th centuries. This paper proposes to discuss the manner in which the work of the chemist Jan Baptista van Helmont (1580-1644) helped to transform the notions of spirit and ferment by giving these notions an unambiguously chemical interpretation, thereby influencing the eventual naturalization of these ideas in the work of late 17th century chemists. Helmont’s chemical interpretation of spirit and ferment is central to his hybrid ontology, which combines atomism with vitalism by embracing both the notions of corpuscular minima naturalia and non-corporeal semina rerum, understood as the formative principles from which all bodies originate. For Helmont, although minima are physical units with mechanical properties, they nevertheless also have ‘qualitative’ determinations that are accounted for via the semina. Seminal principles work in tandem with ferments to bring about substantial changes in nature by providing the spiritual force of action that causes chemical alterations. With this nuanced ontology, Helmont purports to explain the origin of all substances and all phenomena in nature. His ideas significantly contributed to the development of modern corpuscularian theory and to the chemical theory of fermentation and were extremely influential for the work of other important chemists, such as George Starkey and Robert Boyle. In particular, Helmont stresses the unambiguously chemical, albeit still vitalistic, interpretation of spirit and ferment. Once the important role of these ideas within early modern chemical philosophy was established, as it was by Helmont, it would not be long these notions to be fully naturalized by later chemist who interpreted them in strictly physicalistic terms.

This essay proposes to discuss the manner in which Jan Baptista van Helmont helped to transform the Neoplatonic notions of vital spirit and of ferment by giving these notions an unambiguously chemical interpretation, thereby influencing the eventual naturalization of these ideas in the work of late seventeenth century chymists. This chemical interpretation of vital spirit and ferment forms part of Helmont’s hybrid ontology, which fuses a corpuscular conception of minima naturalia with a non-corporeal conception of semina rerum. For Helmont, chemical alterations involve the minima as physical units but also depend upon ferments that are contained in the semina, which function as formative spiritual agents. Helmont’s nuanced ontology ultimately contributes to the development of modern corpuscularian theory by explaining many chemical reactions in fundamentally corpuscular terms, as the addition and subtraction of particles.

Since the mid-18th century, Jan Baptist van Helmont and Georg Ernst Stahl have been presented as the clearest and most prominent Early Modern proponents of an extreme and untenable position in the life sciences: animism. On such a theory, the soul is directly or indirectly involved in producing and governing some natural phenomena. In this paper, I show that van Helmont and Stahl develop a similar strategy in arguing for this seemingly anti-naturalist view. I argue that they both attempted to show that their “animist” perspective was required by a commitment to naturalism. Both authors offered a sustained analysis of Aristotle’s definition of nature and his distinction between kinds of causes. While these analyses are arguably ineffective as criticisms of Aristotle, they do form an attempt to reconsider the place of teleology and finality in nature. In van Helmont’s case, the analyses serve to support the thesis that conceiving of finality as originating in an external, intentional agent reduces natural phenomena to supernatural or artificial ones. As a result, van Helmont insists that natural explanations in medicine require the assumption of internal teleological agency in natural entities. Stahl is led to a similar conclusion by his own transformation of the Hippocratic concept of nature as actively involved in sustaining and restoring the integrity of the body. He suggests that the soul is nature, and defends this by developing an account on which the immateriality of the soul does not imply that it is unnatural or supernatural. On this account, life itself consists in movement, and since movement is itself immaterial, the soul’s immateriality does not imply that it is fundamentally removed from the movements governing the material and mechanical systems of which the body is composed. In his debate with Leibniz, it becomes evident that Stahl developed his concept of the soul in opposition to both the more mechanicist accounts of some of his contemporaries, and to earlier animist and vitalist theories. I argue that Stahl’s objections to such rival theories of the soul and of its role in natural philosophy, reflect disagreements on the division between phenomena that can be regarded as natural, and those that are to be regarded as un- or supernatural. Hence, my analysis suggests that debates on animism and vitalism were often as much about the nature of “nature” and of naturalist explanation as about the need for non-natural explanations in the life sciences.

"The crisis as a regularity in a pre-modern society: Interpreting a 17th century Interpretation on the plague", in the 6th European Congress of Modern Greek Studies of the European Society of Modern Greek Studies (EENS), "The Greek World in Periods of Crisis and Recovery, 1204-2018", Lund 04­‐07.10.2018.

Since the mid-18th century, Jan Baptist van Helmont has been described as one of the very few serious scholars who embraced animism since the beginning of the Early Modern period. This is usually meant as an outright dismissal of his views, since animism – the position that explains many lower-level natural phenomena in terms of the purposive agency of the soul – is anathema to any outlook that is mechanist and/or naturalist in inspiration. The goal of this paper is to show that van Helmont cannot be described as an animist in the strict sense, since his primary explanatory principle, the archeus, cannot be identified with the soul, and is not an intentional agent. I will argue that van Helmont sought to explain most physiological phenomena in terms of the natures of things, which he, like many before him, thought of as specific, active, and teleological. His conception of the archeus is led, or so I argue, by considerations of what would count as a natural explanation, i.e. as an explanation in terms of the nature of a thing. It is also the result of his specific disagreement with, for instance, renaissance scholasticism, on the status of said natures and of the forms of natural things. The upshot of my interpretation is that “animism” is a misnomer when describing van Helmont’s views. This conclusion is important because I believe this miscategorization to be the result of a fateful conceptual shift that took place only gradually in the course of the Early Modern period, and was prepared by earlier developments. This conceptual shift was the gradual decline of a classical conception of a “nature” as the intrinsic essence of a thing that is active, specific, and teleological. This concept formed the backbone of many causal claims in medicine, and for this reason it continued to inform medical authors’ views on causation and natural explanation. In other domains of natural philosophy, however, the dividing lines between nature and soul were being redrawn in such a way that activity, specificity and teleology came to be understood as exclusive marks of the mental. The difficulty with categorizing van Helmont, I will argue, is that he does not accept this partition, and that he therefore insists on the indispensability of active, specific and teleological principles of nature without inferring that these principles are mind-like. Instead, his commitment to a specific version of naturalism, namely the idea that we should explain natural phenomena in terms of the natures of things, led to his fascinating though decidedly heterodox views on natural causation.

Il testo
La Sacro-sanctae scientiae indepingibilis imago è un trattato filosofico settecentesco rimasto a lungo sconosciuto e di cui si pubblica qui, in traduzione italiana con testo critico a fronte, l'edizione più completa al mondo. Questo scritto, opera del padre della letteratura rumena Dimitrie Cantemir (1675-1723), si costituisce, in reazione alle varie forme dell'aristotelismo padovano, come una filosofia cristiana ortodossa in cui confluiscono numerose fonti dell'apofatismo greco, in particolare la teologia dello Pseudo-Dionigi l'Areopagita. Si presenta come una teologo-fisica che chiarisce le condizioni in cui si può arrivare alla conoscenza dei principi del mondo e che si configura, al tempo stesso, come una cosmogonia sul modello delle fisiche mosaiche ed una storia del peccato originale che descrive la dignità ontologica in cui l'uomo fu creato e la scienza semplice che egli possedeva in Paradiso. Completano l'opera un libro sul tempo e sull'eternità, uno sulle vite individuali e sulla loro partecipazione alla vita universale e un ultimo che tratta del libero arbitrio e delinea un'etica cristiana.

L'autore
Dimitrie Cantemir (1675-1723), matematico, musicista, compositore, architetto, storico, cartografo, filosofo e romanziere, si formò a Iasi, presso la corte di suo padre, Costantino Cantemir. Dimitrie passò più di vent'anni a Costantinopoli, dove rimase fino al 1710, perfezionando i suoi studi nel solco della tradizione greco-ortodossa. Dal 1710 al 1711, regnò sul Principato di Moldavia, cercando di rompere l'egemonia turca mediante un'alleanza con Pietro il Grande. A seguito della disfatta di Stanilesti, Cantemir fuggì in Russia, dove fu elevato da Pietro il Grande alla dignità di principe dell'impero russo e fu tra i fondatori dell'Accademia delle arti e delle scienze di San Pietroburgo. Letterato di fama, entrò nel 1714 nell'Accademia di Berlino, che gli commissionò la Descriptio Moldaviae (redatta in latino nel 1714). Fra le altre sue opere, Il Divano ovvero la querela del Saggio col mondo (Iasi, 1698), il Sistema della Religione Maomettana (San Pietroburgo, 1722), oltre a quella che è, probabilmente, ancora oggi, la principale fonte storiografica per la storia dell'impero turco, ovvero la Storia della crescita e della decadenza dell'Impero Ottomano, Londra, 1735.

L'indice
Introduzione, di Vlad Alexandrescu; Nota sulla costituzione del testo; Bibliografia; Symbola et abbreviationes; Sacro-Sanctae Scientiae Indepingibilis Imago / L'immagine irraffigurabile della Scienza Sacro-Santa; Index rerum notabilium / Indice delle cose notevoli; Glossario.

ABSTRACT From a philosophical point of view, one of the more significant changes in chemical ontology from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century is the shift from a vitalistic conception of fundamental corpuscles, to a mechanistic atomism, to an operational notion of chemical elements. This essay proposes to discuss some of the key figures in this ontological shift, focusing on the ideas of van Helmont, Sennert, Gassendi, Boyle, and Lavoisier. The essay examines the relationship between the work of late sixteenth century chymists and that of the mechanistic atomists to illustrate the fact that the atomistic framework of the late seventeenth century was intimately dependent upon the earlier work of vitalistic corpuscularian alchemists and chymists. In addition to tracing the influences of vitalistic corpuscularianism on the shift to a mechanistic atomistic ontology, this essay also establishes historical antecedents, in the work of Sennert and Boyle, for Lavoisier’s operational and analytical definition of chemical elements.

From a philosophical point of view, one of the more significant changes in chemical ontology from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century is the shift from a vitalistic conception of fundamental corpuscles, to a mechanistic atomism, to an operational notion of chemical elements. This essay proposes to discuss some of the key figures in this ontological shift, focusing on the ideas of van Helmont, Sennert, Gassendi, Boyle, and Lavoisier. The essay examines the relationship between the work of late sixteenth century chymists and that of the mechanistic atomists to illustrate the fact that the atomistic framework of the late seventeenth century was intimately dependent upon the earlier work of vitalistic corpuscularian alchemists and chymists. In addition to tracing the influences of vitalistic corpuscularianism on the shift to a mechanistic atomistic ontology, this essay also establishes historical antecedents, in the work of Sennert and Boyle, for Lavoisier’s operational and analytical definition of chemical elements.