Drebbel's living instruments, hartmann's microcosm, and libavius's thelesmos: Epistemic machines before descartes

History of Science

Volumn 48, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 39-74

  Keller, Vera ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 77949731672     PISSN: 00732753     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/007327531004800102     Document Type: Article

References (218)

1. Simon Schaffer, "Godly men and mechanical philosophers: Souls and spirits in Restoration natural philosophy", Science in context, i (1987), 53-85;
2. Daniel Garber, "Descartes, mechanics, and the mechanical philosophy", Perspectives on science, ix (2001), 405-22.
3. William Newman has related Boyle's re-interpretation of Sennert to his mechanical philosophy in Atoms and alchemy: Chymistry and the experimental origins of the scientific revolution (Chicago, 2006).
4. For trading zones, see Peter Galison, Image & logic: A material culture of microphysics (Chicago, 1997).
5. Garber, op. cit. (ref. 1), 418.
6. William Newman, "Technology and alchemical debate in the late Middle Ages", Isis, lxxx (1989), 423-45
7. and Promethean ambitions (Chicago, 2004).
8. Bruce Moran, Chemical pharmacy enters the university: Johannes Hartmann and the didactic care of chymiatria in the early seventeenth century (Madison, 1991);
9. Allen Debus, "Chemistry and the universities in the 17th century", Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academe voor Wetenschappen, Letteren, en schone kunsten van Belgie, xlviii (1986), 13-33;
10. and Owen Hannaway, The chemists and the word: The didactic origins of chemistry (Baltimore, 1975).
11. Cf. J. A. Bennett, "The mechanics 'philosophy and the mechanical philosophy", History of science, xxiv (1986), 1-27.
12. Bennett problematized the relationship between mechanical practitioners and philosophers more in his more recent "The mechanical arts". Early modern science, ed. by Katherine Park and Lorraine Daston (Cambridge, 2006), 673-95.
13. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life (Princeton, 1985)
14. and Michael Mahoney, "Drawing mechanics", in Picturing machines, 1400-1700, ed. by Wolfgang Lefebvre (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 281-306.
15. Tara Nummedal, Alchemy and authority in the Holy Roman empire (Chicago, 2007).
16. Peter Dear, "Intelligibility in science", Configurations, xi (2003), 157-8.
17. Mary Henninger-Voss, "Working machines and noble mechanics: Guidobaldo del Monte and the translation of knowledge", Isis, xci (2000), 233-59;
18. Marcus Popplow, "Why draw pictures of machines? The social contexts of early modern machine drawings", Picturing machines 1400-1700, ed. by Lefèvre (ref. 7), 17-48;
19. Graham Hollister Short, "The formation of knowledge concerning atmospheric pressure and steam power in Europe from Aleotti (1589) to Papin (1690)", History of technology, xxv (2004), 137-50;
20. and Pamela Smith, The body of the artisan: Art and experience in the scientific revolution (Chicago, 2004).
21. Notably in Svetlana Alpers, The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century (Chicago, 1983), 4-5, 12-13, 23. Pamela Smith, who noted the interpretation of On the nature of the elements as a series of alchemical receipts on the title-page of the British Library edition of Drebbel's works (British Library 1033. C.34), offers an important exception.
22. See Smith, op. cit. (ref. 10), 163, where she describes the "First Tincture" of Drebbel's Preface and the "Second Tincture" of Chapter Ten. Drebbel's "sperma" is a "tincture taken out of the body of the earth, which must be fixed with spirit through the circle of the elements" ("Tincturam ex corpore terrae desumptam, quam cum spiritû figi debere per rotam elementis"). These descriptions correspond extremely well with Libavius's interpretation (discussed below), who considered the tenth chapter the most important part ("medulla") of the text.
23. Andreas Libavius, "Apocalypseos hermeticae pars posterior", Syntagma arcanorum chymicorum... tomus secundus (Frankfurt, 1613), 328-453, p. 375.
24. He does not appear, for instance, in Katherine Park and Lorraine Daston (eds), The Cambridge history of science: Early modern science (Cambridge, 2006).
25. Regionaal Archief, Alkmaar, Weeshuis 16, 360-362v. A German 1608 translation is currently the first extant edition.
26. Johann Ernst Burggrav claimed that translation as his own in his preface to his second edition of Drebbel, Ein kurtzer tractat von der natur der elementen (Frankfurt, 1628). Burggrav mentioned that Drebbel had printed a few copies earlier in Dutch to be given to a few friends and philosophers.
27. This must have been the Dutch edition mentioned by Isaac Beeckman in 1619 in his Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 à 1634, ed. by Cornells de Waard (The Hague, 1939-53), i, 346. A portrait of Drebbel dated 1604, copied in many later editions of the work, is still extant.
28. The classic biography remains F. M. Jaeger, Cornells Drebbel en zijne tijdgenooten (Groningen, 1922). For Drebbel as Chief Engineer and his death and burial in 1633
29. see Edward Murray Tomlinson, A history of the Minories, London (London, 1922), 136, 400.
30. Beeckman, Joumal tenu par Isaac Beeckman (ref. 13), i, 346; ii, 201, 202, 363, 372; iii, 203-4, 302-4, 358, 367;
31. Constantijn Hugyens, "Fragment eener autobiographic van Constantijn Huygens", ed. by J. A. Worp, Bijdragen en mededeelingen van het historisch genootschap, xviii (1897), 1-122;
32. Harcourt Brown, Scientific organizations in seventeenth-century France (Baltimore, 1934), 270;
33. and Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, Lettres de Peiresc aux frères Dupuy, ii (Paris, 1890), 68.
34. Arianna Borrelli, "The weather glass and its observers in the early seventeenth century", Philosophies of technology: Francis Bacon and his contemporaries, ed. by Claus Zittel et al. (Leiden, 2008), 67-132;
35. on Descartes, p. 125.
36. Ian Maclean, "Introduction", in René Descartes, A discourse on the method, transl. by Ian Maclean (Oxford, 2006), Note 24.
37. Ibid., pp. lx-lxi, although Descartes's method of argumentation was no shorter than Drebbel's, as Maclean claimed there. Seventeenth-century comparisons between Drebbel's inventions and Descartes's mechanical models of life are not hard to find.
38. See Kenelm Digby, A discourse concerning infallibility in religion (Paris, 1652), 60-61;
39. Johann Cyprian in Wolfgang Franzius, Historia animalium, ed. by Johann Cyprian (Frankfurt, [1687] 1712), 476;
40. J. M. Schammelius, Dissertatio physica de arte naturae aemula (Leipzig, 1689), thesis XLVI;
41. Johann Christoph Sturm, "Exercitatio octava de artis et naturae sororia cognatione", Philosophia eclectica (Frankfurt, 1698), 416-17. Hartlib compared the two as inventors able to recreate, and thus teach, natural processes artificially.
42. Hartlib, Ephemerides, 29/3/62A, 1635, The Hartlib papers CD, 2nd edn (Sheffield, 2002) : "De Cardes hase a new device to make a Statua or Babie to walke vp and downe to eat to concoct to disgorge itself, which is admirable also for didactiks to shew the manner of concoction.... So Drebbels feate to shew the didactik of thundring and lightning.
43. Wilhelm Schmidt, "Zur geschichte des thermoskops", Zeitschrift für Mathematik und Physik, viii (1898), 161-74, p. 165;
44. H. A. Naber, "Cornelis Jacobsz Drebbel", Oud Holland, xxii (1904), 195-237, p. 201;
45. Jaeger, op. cit. (ref. 14), 138;
46. Gerrit Tierie, Cornelis Drebbel (1572-1633) (Amsterdam, 1932), 4, 92;
47. F. W. Gibbs, "The furnaces and thermometers of Cornelis Drebbel", Annals of science, vi (1948), 32-43;
48. Marie Boas, "Hero's pneumatica: A study of its transmission and influence", Isis, xl (1949), 38-48, p. 45;
49. W. E. Knowles Middleton, A history of the thermometer and its use in meteorology (Baltimore, 1966), 14-23;
50. and Kirstine Bjerrum Meyer, Die Entwickelung des Temperaturbegriffs im Laufe der Zeiten (Braunschweig, 1981), 28.
51. See also the discussion of Jennifer Drake-Brockman, below (ref. 131). For a more recent and sympathetic interpretation of the significance of Drebbel's "weather glass
52. see Borrelli, op. cit. (ref. 16). My argument differs from Borrelli's excellent account in emphasizing the relationships, rather than the contrasts, between such disparate endeavours as mechanics and alchemy.
53. The question is further complicated by the purposeful conflation of the functions of indicating heat and foretelling weather changes, or of what we would call thermoscopes and baroscopes. See, for instance, John Bate, The mysteryes of nature and art (London, 1634), 38-39.
54. For this approach to the history of invention, see Lorraine Daston (ed.), Biographies of scientific objects (Chicago, 2000).
55. Johann Daniel Major uses this term in Genius errans sive de ingeniorum in scientiis abusu (Kiel, 1677), F, for those who observe perpetually moving chemical microcosms. Among these was the famous engineer Drebbel who, said Major, made a simulacrum of the universe moved by a spiritous liquor, through an occult harmony between that spirit and aether.
56. Alan Gabbey, "The mechanical philosophy and its problems: Mechanical explanations, impenetrability, and perpetual motion", Change and progress in modern science, ed. by Joseph C. Pitt (Dordrecht, 1985), 9-84.
57. Alan Gabbey, "Between ars and philosophia naturalis: Reflections on the historiography of early modern mechanics", Renaissance and revolution: Humanists, scholars, craftsman, and natural philosophers in early modern Europe, ed. by J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James (New York, 1993), 133-45.
58. Jaeger, op. cit. (ref. 14), 14-15.
59. Hartlib, Ephemerides, Mersenne to Theodore Haack, 18/2/21A-22B, 20 March 1640, op. cit. (ref. 17) : "I'ay veu le Compendium de Physique de Cornele Drebel, mais cela ne merite pas la reputation, qu'il avoit, estant fort plat".
60. On Severinus, see Jole Shackelford, A philosophical path for Paracelsian medicine: The ideas, intellectual context, and influence of Petrus Severinus (1540/2-1602) (Copenhagen, 2004).
61. Massimo Bianchi, "Occulto e manifesto nella medicina del Rinascimento: Jean Fennel e Pietro Severino", Atti e memorie dell' Accademia Tuscana de Scienze e Lettere, la Colombaria, xlvii (1982), 185-248.
62. Sylvain Matton, "Fernel et les alchimistes", Corpus, xli (2002), 135-98
63. and Hiroshi Hirai, "Humanisme, néoplatonism et Prisca Theologia dans le concept de sentence de Jean Fernel", Corpus, xli (2002), 43-70. Alchemical views of native heat are not studied in most treatments of the idea of heat in the history of science, which generally begin with the mechanical philosophy and the idea of the thermometer.
64. See Everett Mendelsohn, Heat and life: The development of the theory of animal heat (Cambridge, 1964)
65. and Hasok Chang, Inventing temperature: Measurement and scientific progress (Oxford, 2004).
66. Cornelis Drebbel, Ein kurzer Tractat von der Natur der Elementen (Leiden, 1608), preface, unpaginated: "wil ich schreiben von den gemeinen Elementen/wie sie dir best bekant sein/da mit du das ubrige nemlich die Erde erkennen lernest/dan die Erde ist nicht so simpel as Feuwer/Lufft unnd Wasser/sondern ist der unreine rest/dan man findet volkomlich vier Elementische Naturen in der Erden/unnd ihrem gewächs damit wir unser werck volbringen/... wie ich hernach weitlauftiger erzehlen wil/meinen anfang nemendt von der Schöpfung/und die selbige an zu deuten.
67. See Johann Jakob Kirstenius's history of element-glasses, Dissertatio physico-chemica de repraesentatione quatuor elementorum in vitro (Altdorf, 1746).
68. Libavius, op. cit. (ref. 11), 438: "Scire vero debes, lector, Sedinvogii scriptum paenè germanum esse Drebbeliano. Uterque enim naturam universalem & particularem explicat isto mysterio, & vicissim hoc illâ. Uterque in Elementis eorumque conversione & commistione ponit totum, ignis vocabulo & spiritus, coelum quoque comprehendo. Quod in uno desideras, id fors in altera tibi, si attentus eris, occurret." On Libavius
69. see Bruce Moran, Andreas Libavius and the transformation of alchemy: Separating chemical cultures with polemical fire (Sagamore Beach, MA, 2007).
70. Libavius, op. cit. (ref. 11), 441: "Quod attinet ad generationem naturalem mineralium, & vegetabilium, earn similiter explicauit Drebbelius. Uterque quod vidit & iudicauit fieri in vitro hermetico, dum elixyr fermentatur & in aurificum lapidem mutatur, id putavit evenire etiam in caeteris.
71. Ibid.: "Fingunt elements quatuor proiicientia & stillantia in centrum seu viscera terrae suas virtutes. In centra collocant principium calorificum, seu ignem naturae, quod calore externo excitatum perpetuo agitetur, & in materiam humidam circumfusam agat.
72. Borrelli, op. cit. (ref. 16), 92.
73. Otto Mayr, The origins of feedback control (Cambridge, 1970)
74. and Silvio Bedini, "Role of the automata in the history of technology", in his Patrons, artisans and instruments of science, 1600-1750 (Brookfield, 1999).
75. Augustus Kuffler, A very good collection of approved receipts of chymical operations collected by Augustus Kuffeler and Charles Ferrers phylchimist, Cambridge University Library MS L1.5.8, 169-70.
76. Cornelis Drebbel, Wonder-vondt van de eeuwighe bewegingh... hier is oock noch de getuyghnis/die Cicero/Claudianus/en Lactantius/gheven van de eeuwige bewegingh/die Archimedes gevonden soude hebben (Alkmaar, 1607), unpaginated: "in summa wat voor een tijdt ghemaeckt can werden, door dalent gewicht, of door springh-veeren, door loopende wateren, door wint, oft door vier, dat can ghemaeckt worden door dese kennis, voor eeuwelijck.
77. Johann Bonn, "de Igne", Dissertationes chymico-physicae (Leipzig, 1685), thesis 29. For Bohn
78. see Bruce Moran, Distilling knowledge (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 124-6.
79. Heinrich Nollius, Sanctuarium naturae (Frankfurt, 1619), 113-14.
80. See Schagen's preface, Wonder-vondt (ref. 37) : "Soo dese wetenschap onder de Sterkondigers ghemeen was soo en soudemen niet behoeven soo veel stellingen en rekeningh der Planeten en ander Sterren maer de Ster-konst soude licht zijn en Copernicus soude bloeyen. Want die bewijst (met reden) dat het Aerdtrijck alle 24. uren ront om gaet: Maer desen Alckmaersche Philosooph can't selfde niet alleen met reden maer oock met levendige Instrumenten bewijsen.
81. Francis Bacon also, in Of the advancement and proficiencie of learning (London, 1640), 146-7, argued that astronomy currently only saved appearances through mathematical observations and demonstrations rather than showing the true causes of things. It was thus to be placed among the lowly mathematical arts, "not without great diminution of the Dignity thereof; seeing it ought rather (if it would maintaine its own right) be constitute a branch, & the most principall of Naturall Philosophy". Whoever would observe "the appetencies of matter, and the most universall Passions (which in either Globe are exceeding Potent, and trans verberate the universall nature of things)" would discover the true "Living Astronomy".
82. A number of these sources were published alongside Drebbel's letter to King James I in his Wondervondt (ref. 37).
83. Drebbel, Wonder-vondt, unpaginated.
84. Olaus Borrichius, Itinerarium 1660-1665, ii (London, 1983), 166: "Perpetuum mobile Drebbelii se vidisse tradit (forsan ex Mercurio) in vitro cum horologio, ita magneticum ut acus horologii, si propter nebulas sol per duas horas non conspiceretur, adveniente sole momento se transferret acus ex: gr: ab horâ XII ad IIdam.
85. See also Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman (ref. 13), iii, 302.
86. Drebbel, Wonder-vondt (ref. 37), unpaginated: "soo hangh alsoo/in een besloten glas/de Aerde in't midden van't Water/en het Water in't midden van de Lucht/ende de Lucht in't midden van't Vier/den een den anderen omvangende/en haer selven soo ront makende/als eenigh dingh op die Werelt/sser wonderlijck en ghenuechlijck om sien. Oft ter contrarie/hangh die lucht in't midden van't Water/so ront als een cloot/en het Water in't midden van de Aerde/den een den anderen omvangende ghelijck wy sien doen de Lucht den Aerdtbodem." For the view of Drebbel's cosmoscope as a chemical microcosm
87. see Major, op. cit. (ref. 21);
88. Nollius, op. cit. (ref. 39), 152;
89. Athanasius Kircher, Magnes (Rome, 1641), 607;
90. Petrus Servius, Dissertatio de unguento armario (Rome, 1642), 57;
91. J. J. W. Dobrzensky, Nova, et amaenior de admirando fontivm genio... philosophia (Ferrara, 1659), 80; et alia.
92. Allen Debus, "Motion in the chemical texts of the Renaissance", Isis, lxiv (1973), 4-17.
93. Rosalie Colie, "Cornells Drebbel and Salomon de Caus: Two Jacobean models for Salomon's house", Huntington Library quarterly, xviii (1954), 245-69
94. and Francis Bacon, Instauratio magna, Part 3, ed. by Graham Rees and Maria Wakely (New York, 2007).
95. Ibid., 304.
96. Robert Fludd, Mosaicall philosophy (London, 1659), 3.
97. See Fludd, Utriusque cosmi historia (Frankfurt, 1617-21), Book 1, 30-32;
98. Book 7, 204, and also Tractatus secundus, Part Seven, Book Three, 469.
99. Bate, op. cit. (ref. 19), unpaginated preface.
100. William Eamon, Science and the secrets of nature: Books of secrets in medieval and early modern culture (Princeton, 1994), 308.
101. Kircher, op. cit. (ref. 44), 607-12.
102. Ibid., 587.
103. Ibid., 588.
104. Nicholas Cabeus, S. J., Philosophia magnetica (Cologne, 1629), 36.
105. See for example, Heinrich Schuler, Methodus und principia aller wasserkünste (Geraw an der Slier, 1622), 21.
106. See also Johann Staricius, Heldenschatz (Frankfurt, 1615), 9-14. No perpetual motion fitting this description appears in the Prague 1607-11 inventory of the Kunstkammer.
107. R. Bauer and H. Haupt, "Das kunstkammerinventar Kaiser Rudolfs II, 1607-1611", Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, lxxii (1976), entire volume. However, Phillip Hainhofer and Martin Zeiller described a "perpetuum mobile, welches in ainem gläserinen Ring ascendiert vnd descendiert" held in the Dresden Kunstkammer.
108. See Oscar Doering, Des Augsburger Patriciers Philip Hainhofer reisen nach Innsbruck und Dresden (Vienna, 1901), 167
109. and Martin Zeiller, Handbuch von allerley nützlichen Erinneringen (Ulm, 1655), 490.
110. Wilhelm Lang identified it as Drebbel's perpetual motion in a 1654 letter to Olaus Worm: Olai Wormii et ad eum doctorum virvrum epistolae tomus II (Copenhagen, 1751), 1085-6.
111. Cabeus, op. cit. (ref. 53), 36.
112. Eileen Reeves, "Occult sympathies and antipathies: The case of early modern magnetism", Wissensideale und Wissenskulturen in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Wolfgang Detel and Claus Zittel (Berlin, 2002), 97-114.
113. Heinrich Khunrath, Magnesia catholica philosophorum (Magdeburg, 1599);
114. Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The foundations of Newton's alchemy (Cambridge, 1975), 160; and the discussion of Sendivogius below.
115. Johann Hartmann, Disputationes chymico-medicae (Marburg, 1611)
116. reprinted in 1614 and in Hartmann's Opera omnia medico-chymica (Frankfurt, 1684, 1690, 1694). For the importance of this collection
117. see Debus, op. cit. (ref. 5).
118. Bruce Moran, The alchemical world of the German court: Occult philosophy and chemical medicine in the circle of Moritz of Hessen (1572-1632) (Stuttgart, 1991), 55-56.
119. Hartmann, "Disputatio hermetica", Disputationes chymico-medicae (Marburg, 1611), 23-35, p. 24.
120. Hartmann, op. cit. (ref. 60), 27.
121. Hartmann, op. cit. (ref. 60), 27.
122. See L. A. Deer, "Academic theories of generation: The contemporaries and successors of Jean Fernel (1497-1558)", Ph. D. thesis, Warburg Institute, University of London, 1980, 393-4.
123. Johann Hartmann, "Contradictiones apparentes quatuor, in quibus praecipuae utriusque medicinae dogmaticae nempe, & hermeticae hypotheis, & rationes breviter recensentur, excutiuntur, & conciliantur", Disputationes chymico-medicae (Marburg, 1611), 108-66. Numbers below refer to thesis numbers.
124. Johann Hartmann, "Contradictiones apparentes quatuor, in quibus praecipuae utriusque medicinae dogmaticae nempe, & hermeticae hypotheis, & rationes breviter recensentur, excutiuntur, & conciliantur", Disputationes chymico-medicae (Marburg, 1611), 24. Numbers below refer to thesis numbers.
125. Johann Hartmann, "Contradictiones apparentes quatuor, in quibus praecipuae utriusque medicinae dogmaticae nempe, & hermeticae hypotheis, & rationes breviter recensentur, excutiuntur, & conciliantur", Disputationes chymico-medicae (Marburg, 1611), 25-26. Numbers below refer to thesis numbers.
126. Johann Hartmann, "Contradictiones apparentes quatuor, in quibus praecipuae utriusque medicinae dogmaticae nempe, & hermeticae hypotheis, & rationes breviter recensentur, excutiuntur, & conciliantur", Disputationes chymico-medicae (Marburg, 1611), 27. Numbers below refer to thesis numbers.
127. Like lists of quaestiones accompanying other dissertations, the epithemata appear to be points to be taken into account during the dissertation, and were possibly pre-circulated before the dissertation. My special thanks to Kevin Chang for help in understanding the structure of this dissertation.
128. Hartmann, op. cit. (ref. 64), 165-6: "Perpetuum mobile Cornelii Drebbel Batavi, quod in Anglia visitur, sempiternos siderum motus, temporumque vicissitudines, & Oceani reciprocationes ad momenta & puncta in aevum repraesentans: ut & organum ejusdem Musicum coelo sereno suavissimam harmoniam nullo digitulo tactum edens, nubilo silens, ab Anima mundi, seu spiritu universi, astrali insensibili in sphaeram & instrumentum illud artificio Chymico magnetica vi attracto, infuso, & concluso moveri uri, rotari, & coninuari vero consentaneum est.
129. Burggrav termed himself a "domesticus" of Hartmann in the preface to Clodius, Officina medica (Frankfurt, 1620). There he praised his patrons for appointing Johann Hartmann to teach chymistry at Marburg. He also referred to his travels in England, France, Central Europe, and the Netherlands. Burggrav's treatise on the distillation of oils was printed in Hartmann's Practice of chymistry in 1634, while the 1623 Introduction to the vital philosophy has been variously ascribed to Burggrav and to Hartmann.
130. See Burggrav's preface to Drebbel, op. cit. (ref. 13), A2v. Burggrav issued both a German and an independent Latin translation of Drebbel's works in 1628, and also claimed the anonymouslyedited first extant edition (printed in German in 1608) as his.
131. For instance, Vranckheim defended Jacob Metius as the inventor of the telescope against Galileo. See Vranckheim, "Epistola", Johann Ernst Burggrav, Biolychnium (Franeker, 1611), 49-80, pp. 53-54. Interestingly, Vranckheim's letter is dated December 1609, although he refers to Galileo's Sidereus nuncius (not published until 1610). Vranckheim wrote his letter a few month's after earning his degree, signing it Dec. 1609 at Padua.
132. Burggrav referred to the perpetual motion and the letter from his friend also in his work on "electrical weapons", Achilles panoplos redivlvus; seu panoplia physico-vulcania (Amsterdam, [1612]), 55.
133. See, for instance, John Webster, The displaying of supposed witchcraft (London, 1677), 269.
134. Vranckheim began his career as Constantijn L'empereur's private tutor until 1608. He then went abroad to study at the expense of his patron, and defended theses in 1609 at Basel and Marburg. Vranckheim returned to Zutphen where he was appointed rector of the Latin school.
135. See Peter T. Van Rooden's Theology, biblical scholarship and rabbinical studies in the seventeenth century (Leiden, 1989), 21
136. and Friedrich Nettesheim's Geschichte der Schulen im alien herzogthum Geldern (Düsseldorf, 1881), 331. Johannes Roberti published his 1616 letter to Arnold van Boecop, S. J., renouncing his faith and his magical views.
137. See Roberti, "Goclenius heautontimorumenos", Theatrum sympatheticum (Nürnberg, 1662), 369-73.
138. Vranckheim, op. cit. (ref. 72), 55: "scintillula Animae Mundi, quod ajunt, Magnetica, seu Astrali rerum omnium Spiritu insensibili, Harmonica superiorum et inferiorum, id est, Majoris, Minorisque, Mundi conspiratione: qua & aquas illas Globo vitreo Sphaeram illam inclusam ambiente, ut scribis, inditas, Aeviterno Motu, Motore Vero Inferno, An Externo, an Utroque? certis statisque temporibus credo suis agi incrementis progressionibus, regressionibus, Harmonica cum Oceani aestu Sympathia continenti ad momenta & puncta etiam accessu, recessu.
139. Cf. ref. 59.
140. Ibid., 56.
141. Ibid., 56-57.
142. Introductio in vitalem philosophiam (Frankfurt, [1623] 1645), 4.
143. Daniel Sennert, Chymicorum cum aristotelicis et galenicis consensu ac dissensu liber (Wittenberg, 1619), 148-9.
144. Ibid., 149.
145. Compare Hartmann, op. cit. (ref. 60), 26-27.
146. Andreas Libavius, "De extract, essent. & elixyr. lib IIX", Syntagma arcanorum chymicorum (Frankfurt, 1611), 363-480, p. 392.
147. Andreas Libavius, "De extract, essent. & elixyr. lib IIX", Syntagma arcanorum chymicorum (Frankfurt, 1611), 363-480, p. 392.
148. Libavius, op. cit. (ref. 81), 469.
149. Michael Maier, Verum inventum (Frankfurt, 1619), 95-97.
150. Drebbel, Wonder-vondt (ref. 37), unpaginated: "wir sehen wan der Saltpeter gebrochen wirdt durch das Feuwer unnd also verandert in die natur des Lüffts." On Drebbel and saltpetre
151. see Zbigniew Szydlo, Water which does not wet hands: The alchemy of Michael Sendivogius (Warsaw, 1994).
152. Frances Willmoth, "Mathematical sciences and military technology: The Ordnance Office in the reign of Charles II", Renaissance and revolution, ed. by J. V. Field (Cambridge, 1993), 117-32.
153. Kenelm Digby, Two treatises in the one of which the nature of bodies, in the other, the nature of mans soule is looked into in way of discovery of the immortality of reasonable soules (Paris, 1644), 220. Some of Heydon's alchemical correspondence is preserved in the U. K. National Archives. See State Papers 167373/37, 16/374/38 and 55, 16/397/48r-v.
154. Moran, op. cit. (ref. 31), 200-1.
155. Andreas Libavius, "De igne naturae", Syntagma arcanorum chymicorum... tomus secundus (Frankfurt, 1613), 1-120, p. 102.
156. Andreas Libavius, "De igne naturae", Syntagma arcanorum chymicorum... tomus secundus (Frankfurt, 1613), 1-120, p. 102.
157. Libavius, op. cit. (ref. 11), 365.
158. Ibid., 370.
159. Ibid., 443 and 450.
160. Ibid., 440-1.
161. On Libavius and the spirit of the world, see Moran, op. cit. (ref. 31), 286.
162. Libavius, op. cit. (ref. 89), 362.
163. Andreas Libavius, Probabilis imestigatio caussarum physicarum, aliarumque globi Archimedaei novi & instrumenti musici per se absque evidente motore mobilium (Coburg, 1612), thesis 21. Numbers below refer to theses or questions. "Modus dicitur insensibilis & astralis: artificium modi, chymicum: Forma & actus, attractio magnetica, infusio, conclusio, motus, rotatio, continuatio, quod cum vero pronuncietur consentaneum.
164. Cf. ref. 59.
165. Ibid., theses 24-25.
166. Ibid., thesis 30.
167. Ibid., thesis 37.
168. Ibid., questions 5-6.
169. Reprinted in Johann Hartmann, Disputationes chymico-medicae (Marburg, 1614). See Moran, op. cit. (ref. 31), 235-6.
170. Andreas Libavius, "De philosophia vivente", Examen philosophiae novae (Frankfurt, 1615), 88.
171. Ibid., 89.
172. Ibid., 126.
173. Andreas Libavius, "Exercitatio paracelsica nova de notandis excerpto fraternitatis de rosea cruce", Examen philosophiae novae (Frankfurt, 1615), 262-306, p. 264.
174. Johann Hartmann, Famafraternitates (Kassell, 1614), 107.
175. Libavius, op. cit. (ref. 104), 271.
176. Ibid., 277.
177. Ibid., 271.
178. Ibid., 278.
179. Itod., 285.
180. For Libavius as a moderate Semi-Ramist, see Moran, op. cit. (ref. 31), 20-21.
181. Hartmann, op. cit. (ref. 100), Sylvain Matton, "L'alchimie chez les ramistes et semi-ramistes". Argumentation, v (1991), 408-13, and Moran, op. cit. (ref. 31).
182. Howard Hotson, Commonplace learning: Ramism and its German ramifications, 1543-1630 (New York, 2007), 121.
183. Johann Heinrich Alsted, Compendium philosophicum (Herborn, 1626), 22.
184. Johann Sibertus Küffler, Disputatio physica de corporis naturalis generalibus principiis et affectionibus (Herborn, 1615). I am grateful to Howard Hotson for the reference to Küffler's dissertation.
185. Johann Heinrich Alsted, Cursus philosophici encyclopaedia libris XXVII (Herborn, 1620), 982.
186. Alsted op. cit. (ref. 114), 288."... admoneo, ne vel cogitatione sejungatis mobile perpetuam mechanicum à mobili perpetuo physico." For Alsted's definition of soul and entelechy, see Compendium philosophicum, 191.
187. D. J. B., "Spiritu mundi positiones aliquot", reprinted from the Ephemerides of the Holy Roman Imperial Academy in Manget's Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, ii (Geneva, 1702), 875-7, p. 877.
188. Hotson, op. cit. (ref. 113), 33.
189. On Nollius, see Moran, op. cit. (ref. 59), 122-9
190. and Carlos Gilly, "Das bekenntnis zur gnosis von Paracelsus bis auf die schüler Jacob Böhmes", From Poimandres to Jacob Bohme: Gnosis, hermetism and the Christian tradition, ed. by R. van den Broek and Cis van Heertum (Amsterdam, 2000), 385-426. Nollius defended a thesis in Marburg under the aegis of Harmann's son-in-law, Heinrich Petraeus.
191. See Heinrich Nollius, "De Methodo medendi Hermetica", Agonismata medica Marpurgensia (Marburg, 1619), 346-353.
192. Alsted, op. cit. (ref. 115), 116, 451.
193. Nollius, op. cit. (ref. 39), 11, 61, 112, 126, 148, 152, 236, 279, 752. Szydlo, op. cit. (ref. 84), discussed Nollius's citations of Sendivogius and mentioned his citations of Drebbel.
194. Ibid., 152.
195. lbid., 61.
196. Ibid., 684. Drebbel, op. cit. (ref. 29), chap. 10, unpaginated.
197. On Mögling, see Moran, op. cit. (ref. 59), 172
198. and Ulrich Neumann, '"Olim, da die Rosen Creutzerey noch florirt, Theophilus Schweighart genant': Wilhelm Schickards Freund und Briefpartner Daniel Mögling (1596-1635)", Zum 400. geburtstag von Wilhelm Schickard, ed. by Friedrich Seek (Sigmaringen, 1995), 93-116.
199. Valerius Saledinus [Daniel Mögling], Perpetuum mobile (Frankfurt, 1625), 26.
200. Ibid., 40:
201. "unser Invention mehr auss naturlichen Magischen... als Mechanicis Staticisque Fundamentis ursprunglichen herreichet." 48: "Das Principalwerck aber/und erste Bewegung muss (wie gemeldet) ex Magia Naturali hergenommen werden." 52-55.
202. Theophilus Schweighart [Daniel Mögling], Prodromus rhodo-stauroticus (Prague, [1620]), unpaginated: "müssen wir heirvon die jenige Philosophos ersuchen/welche solches perpetuum mobile selbsten zugerichtet/und in dessen Zurichtung nicht allein die Erschaffung der Welt/sondern in dem allbereit zugerichteten/den Lauff der Gestirn/der Elementen unnd alter Ding Natur und Eygenschafft compendiose, augenscheinlich vorzeigen können.
203. Libavius, op. cit. (ref. 95), Quaestione 2.
204. Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Thinking with objects: The transformation of mechanics in the seventeenth century (Baltimore, 2006).
205. Gabbey, op. cit. (ref. 22), reviewed some of the contradictions inherent in this re-interpretation. See also Dennis Des Chene, Spirits and clocks: Machine and organism in Descartes (Ithaca, 2001), 14
206. and Oarber, op. cit. (ref. 1), 414. For the importance of Fernel to Descartes, see Vincent Aucante, "Descartes's experimental method and the generation of animals", The problem of animal generation in early modern philosophy, ed. by Justin E. H. Smith (Cambridge, 2006), 65-79, p. 70.
207. Jennifer Drake-Brockman, "The perpetuum mobile of Cornelis Drebbel", Learning, language, and invention: Essays presented to Francis Maddison, ed. by Willem Dirk Hackmann and Anthony John Turner (Brookfield, VT, 1994), 124-47, p. 147.
208. Cf. Chang, op. cit. (ref. 28), 8.
209. Balthasar de Monconys, Iovrnal des voyages de Monsievrde Monconys, ii (Lyons, 1666), 54
210. and Hebbel E. Hoff and L. A. Geddes, "The beginnings of graphic recording", Isis, liii (1962), 287-324.
211. Lorraine Daston, "On scientific observation", Isis, xcix (2008), 97-110, p. 102.
212. Robert Boyle, Works of Boyle, xiii, ed. by Michael Hunter (London, 2000), 480-2.
213. Robert Boyle, Works of Boyle, xiii, ed. by Michael Hunter (London, 2000), 298.
214. Newman, op. cit. (ref. 1), 175-89, has related Boyle's use of the term 'mechanical' to machines that are no more than the sum of their parts, and whose parts could be made of any substance. Others, by contrast, saw Drebbel's machine as more than the sum of its parts, and/or as a physical and chemical motion relying on specific natures rather than the arrangement of parts.
215. J. J. Becher, De nova temporis dimetiendi ratione et accurata horologiorum constructione, theoria & experientia (London, 1680) 4, 15-16
216. and G. W. Leibniz, Landesbibliothek Hannover LH035, 15, 06, 46r-47r, and published online by the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, http://www.leibniz-edition. de/, cited July 29, 2008.
217. Cf. Bennett, op. cit. (ref. 6, 2006), 680-1, for whom the use of the pendulum clock in the search for longitude supported the idea that its motion was natural.
218. G. W. Leibniz, "Mémoire pour des personnes esclairées et de bonne intention", Politische schriften, iv, ed. by Friedrich Beiderbec et al. (Berlin, 2001), 619.