IDIHCS   22126
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES EN HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS SOCIALES
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Reassessing experience and theory in the quantification of metals. Late Renaissance and early modern discussions on the weight of lead
Autor/es:
SILVIA MANZO
Lugar:
Berlín
Reunión:
Workshop; The Experimental and Interdisciplinary Reconfiguration of Dense and Rare in the Long Sixteenth-Century; 2017
Institución organizadora:
Technische Universität Berlin
Resumen:
The characteristics of the growth of weight have attracted the attention of many late Renaissance and early modern natural philosophers, physicians, and chemists. The large group includes Giovan Battista Della Porta, Girolamo Cardano, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Jean Bodin, Francis Bacon, Georg Pictorius von Villingen, Gabriele Fallopio, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Girolamo Mercuriale, Peter Monau, Giovan Battista Cortesi, Johann Gerhard, and Jean Rey, among others. That lead was the ?only? metal which had the power of increasing in weight by being exposed to turbid air had being taken for granted for centuries once it was established by Galen, who offered experiential evidences for this assertion. The speculative assumptions behind the acceptance of such a view were mostly grounded in the traditional conceptual framework of the four elementary qualities. The experiences provided by Galen to prove this alleged peculiarity of lead made their way into the enquiries of late Renaissance and early modern physicians searching for the pharmaceutical properties of minerals. Parallelly, the same experiences were interpreted and discussed by natural philosophers and chemists concerned with specific gravities, mineralogy, metallurgy, and their various practical dimensions. Placed in different historical contexts, the issue of the increase of lead in weight was reassessed from a variety of matter theories and theoretical perspectives on the nature and properties of metals, and from additional experiential evidences, including experimental inquiries. The reassessment crossed over disciplinary boundaries and led occasionally to open debates (eg. between Cardano and Scaliger; or Mercuriale and Monau). Sometimes, the main lines of the Galenic setting were kept; others, they were altered, or altogether refused. In addition, some authors questioned the very factual ?evidences? transmitted from antiquity and looked for further credited and well-established evidences. This paper will offer an historical reconstruction of this interdisciplinary reassessment of the issue of the augmentation of lead in weight as developed by some natural philosophical, medical, and chemical representatives of the late Renaissance and the early modern period. By taking the weight of lead as a case study, it will explore how the role of experience and theory, the experimental practices, the aims, and the significance of quantifying matter evolved and/or were slowly transformed --often in subtle ways-- across this period. I will show that throughout the discussions on the weight of lead across the centuries one can distinguished three disciplinary intersecting lines: the medical, the natural philosophical and the chemical line. Although they barely shared some factual basis and doctrinal assumptions, they differed in concerns and emphases.