The Business of Alchemy

«The voice of this book is the life of Johann Joachim Becher, spanning the last half of the seventeenth century (1635-82).» — el libro se organiza como una vida.

«At the heart of this process of change in the early modern period was a crisis of authority.» — la crisis abarca de Lutero y Tomás Moro a la *Battle of the Books* de Swift.

«the relationship between words and things» — el motivo que Smith declara recurrente en la obertura del libro y que estructura el argumento entero.

«Alchemy thus became the vehicle by which Becher spoke to the court about production and material increase.»

«alchemical transmutation-the ennoblement of metals-provided an example of fabulous material increase and the production of surplus» — por qué el lenguaje alquímico servía para hablar de comercio.

«Alchemy was thus a natural, virtuous activity within the compass of human art, and an accepted activity and language at the noble court.»

«Becher regarded alchemy as embodying and epitomizing productive knowledge» — la fórmula con que Smith define su objeto en el prefacio de 2016.

«Making and knowing are an inseparable amalgam.» — el programa que Smith declara haber desarrollado después de este libro.

«Recipes effectively capture in written form—to the extent this is possible—the essential character of making as coping with emergent phenomena.»

«the experimental method, the development of quantitative aspirations, and the use of precision instruments» — lo que la historiografía reciente reconoce como herencia alquímica.

«Alchemy became charlatanry, rather than potentiality; science became visible truth.» — el cierre de la periodización.

«An emblem thus was more real than, say, a microscopic observation, unless of course the microscope observation could be interpreted as an emblem.» — la visión multivalente del XVI y comienzos del XVII.

«Alchemy gave way to public utility, marvels and curiosities to facts, wonder to reason, andfortuna to human agency and state discipline.» — la última frase del capítulo quinto; el OCR pega «and» a «fortuna».

«Money was considered unnatural because it was a means of exchange that did not contain the seeds of its own regeneration.»

«Commerce was considered an unnatural activity, for merchants were viewed as producing nothing.»

«Artisanal culture embodied an understanding of production, creation, and working with the hands.»

«Credit, in both commercial and noble societies, was a measure of status.»

«Money was the source of a prince's authority and thus the source of his ability to keep his central place in the court hierarchy.»

«The old nobility possessed (and regulated access to) social credit.»

«Alchemy could help these outsiders in their pursuit of the emperor's favor and the power it conveyed.» — la alquimia como recurso de los recién llegados a la corte imperial.

«Lapis politicorum» — (a politicians' stone) — el término que Becher acuña, según Smith, para lo que el comercio daría al príncipe.

«believed that his politicians' stone would enoble commerce and make it regenerative» — la grafía «enoble» es la del texto.

«he attempted to transmute the count's interest in curiosities into an understanding of the goods and transactions of commerce as the sources of political power» — el uso del proyecto colonial de Hanau.

«Becher had concluded that the philosophers' stone was easier to make than the politicians' stone» — Smith lo toma de la *Psychosophia* (1705), p. 171.

«Stahl and Zincke situated Becher so thoroughly within their histories that he vanished as an independent figure.» — la tesis de Smith sobre por qué Becher desapareció de la historia de la química.

«terra pinguis» — la segunda de las tres tierras de Becher (junto a «terra lapidea» y «terra fluida»), en la nota donde Smith da también sus nombres alemanes.

«Chymia dealt with all three realms: animal, vegetable, and mineral» — la tripartición de Becher en el *Oedipus Chimicus*.

«unter-Erdisches Laboratorium» — Becher llama a la naturaleza un laboratorio subterráneo, según Smith.

«the universal spirit was more copiously present in the air of the tropics and the New World» — la doctrina que ligaba la alquimia de Becher al proyecto colonial.

«the seed first disintegrated in the nutritive matrix of the earth into its prima materia» — la generación de los metales en la teoría de Becher.

«gold was known only through its accidental qualities» — de ahí la necesidad del mercurio filosófico.

«Hermes, the legendary discoverer of chemistry was considered the inventor and articulator of both the liberal and mechanical arts» — la figura hermética tal como opera en el argumento de Becher.

«the workers in the last three chambers would ideally be unable to read and write» — el laboratorio jerárquico proyectado por Becher, donde el secreto se garantiza por aislamiento.

«Nullius in verba» — el lema de la Royal Society, que Smith pone junto al «Provando e riprovando» de la Academia del Cimento.

«The source of this maxim was Morienus, although Becher» — Smith adjudica a Morienus la máxima que Becher atribuía a Paracelso.

«Astrology and alchemy had formed a central part of human investigation of and interaction with the material world since the dawn of humankind.» — Smith abre el prefacio de 2016 situando astrología y alquimia como parte central del trato humano con la materia desde el origen, no como desvío tardío.

«Similarly, alchemy emerged out of a long-enduring human striving to transform the materials of the immediate environment into goods with greater utility or value» — Smith deriva la alquimia de un afán práctico y antiguo de convertir los materiales del entorno en bienes de más valor.

«Alchemical theory and practice are documented in China in a first-century CE text dealing with elixirs of health and longevity» — Smith fecha ahí el testimonio chino documentado, y en la misma frase remonta las ideas de transformación y longevidad al siglo IV a. C. y al pensamiento daoísta.

«While alchemy was regarded as akin to artisanal activity in its ability to produce valuable materials, it also possessed an esoteric spiritual dimension.» — Smith sostiene que las dos dimensiones —la artesanal productiva y la espiritual esotérica— conviven en la alquimia, sin que una desplace a la otra.

«Enlightenment writers and newly minted nineteenth-century scientists took up this banner and derided these fields in the name of the new rationalism and a new method—what we would come to call the method of the natural sciences.» — según Smith, la degradación de alquimia y astrología a pseudociencia es obra de la Ilustración y del siglo XIX, no del XVII.

«My doctoral dissertation, 'Alchemy, Credit, and the Commerce of Words and Things'» — el libro sale de esa tesis, que conserva el alemán original de todos los pasajes aquí traducidos.

«I am especially pleased to make clear the intellectual debt I owe to Owen Hannaway» — la deuda declarada en los agradecimientos.

«of all arts, the best imitator of nature» — así considera Alberto Magno el arte de la alquimia, según Smith, que lo cita por el *Book of Minerals* en la traducción de Dorothy Wyckoff.

«What artisans have learned by experience is also the practice of alchemists who, if they work with nature, transform the specific form of one metal into another.» — Alberto Magno, según Smith.

«The science of alchymy I like very well, and indeed, 'tis the philosophy of the ancients.» — Martín Lutero, según Smith, que lo toma de la *Table Talk* traducida por William Hazlitt.

«A baker is an alchemist when he bakes bread, the vintner when he makes wine, the weaver in that he makes cloth.» — Paracelso, según Smith.

«He who wishes to explore nature must tread her books with his feet.» — Paracelso, según Smith.

«Qui omnia secum portat, non indiget alieno auxilio» — la máxima que Becher citaba como de Paracelso; Smith anota que su fuente era Morienus.

«I, J. J. Becher, Doctor, transmuted this piece of the finest silver from lead by the art of alchemy.» — la inscripción de la medalla, según Smith.

«I seek nothing but truth, Your Imperial Majesty's reputation and profit, and the preservation of the good name of the noble art of alchemy.» — Becher al emperador, según Smith.

«An Lapis Philosophicus sit arte parabilis» — el título del discurso de Becher en la facultad de medicina, según el protocolo que Smith cita.

«If they have found no gold, they have meanwhile discovered good medicaments and other admirable arts, not to mention gunpowder, glassmaking, enamel, dyes, medicines» — la defensa de la alquimia por sus subproductos, en boca de Becher según Smith.

«gold is the nervus rerum» — Becher sobre el oro como nervio de las cosas, según Smith.

«Solve mihi hunc syllogismum» — el laboratorio planteado como problema por resolver, en boca de Becher según Smith.

«ubi videris Recipe, cogita quod significet Decipe» — la regla de Becher ante las recetas ajenas: donde leas *recibe*, piensa *engaña*.

«what one gives to alchemists and whores is the same thing» — Becher sobre el dinero perdido con los sopladores, según Smith.

«blinded by smoke» — el laboratorio como lugar de confusión, en boca de Becher según Smith.

«this laboratory is securer and richer than mines or exchange banks, and it alone will return the costs of the project» — el argumento económico de Becher, según Smith.

«this is sacred, thieves do not touch» — una de las inscripciones del *Scyphus Becheri*, el horno portátil.

«We met in our passing through Maintz a rare artist, called Becher, a young man, who hath found, he saith, ye perpetual motion» — Oldenburg a Hartlib, según Smith.

«a man of the greatest ingenuity, but not a little restless, which has brought down ill-will upon him everywhere» — Leibniz sobre Becher en carta a Jakob Thomasius, 1669, según Smith.

«One man's expenditure is another man's income.» — el «principio de Becher» tal como lo formula Schumpeter, según Smith.

«Profit is the sole end of all dealing, and the whole World is but one publick Warehouse.» — Boccalini, citado por Smith.

«the tree of Diana» — Newman y Principe muestran, según Smith, que esa estructura metálica arborescente tiene correlato material real, contra la lectura que la tenía por descripción simbólica.

«Magnalia Naturae» — obra de atribución en disputa dentro del propio libro: en un lugar se la da por espuria y en otro como la única de Becher publicada en inglés; ver Notas de carga.

«spurious» — el veredicto de Hassinger sobre la *Magnalia Naturae*, registrado por Smith en la bibliografía.

«the landscape of the history of alchemy and of early modern science resembles a new creation.» — así describe Smith, en el prefacio de 2016, lo cambiado del campo desde la primera edición de 1994.

«The seeds of change had already been planted in the previous two decades by the work of historians of chemistry such as Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, Allen Debus, and Owen Hannaway,2 who, in their turn, had imbibed the work of Walter Pagel, D. P. Walker, Frances Yates, and Paolo Rossi.» — la genealogía historiográfica que Smith se reconoce; el 2 suelto es la llamada de nota, que el troceo arrastra pegada.

«not how did the “sciences” come into being, but, rather, how did “pseudosciences” emerge?» — la pregunta con que Smith reformula el programa de la historia de la ciencia en el prefacio de 2016.

«I think such a history can form the core of a new deep narrative for the history of science» — Smith lo propone en primera persona y como opinión, no como resultado del libro.

«not, famously, Robert Boyle or Isaac Newton, the latter of whom we now know wrote more on alchemy than on natural philosophy» — Smith recuerda que los propios fundadores de la ciencia nueva no separaban los campos como después se separaron.

«Her narrative may have portrayed this influence in an overly conspiratorial manner, but the view that alchemy, astrology, and natural magic impelled the investigation of nature up through the seventeenth century has now become a generally shared consensus among historians of early modern science.» — Smith se distancia del tono conspirativo de Yates y a la vez le concede la tesis de fondo.

«Although Yates was very influential in the Anglophone world, Paolo Rossi’s work on natural magic and the new philosophy of Francis Bacon actually preceded Yates by quite some time, as did D. P. Walker’s quite different Spiritual and Demonic Magic.» — Smith corrige la cronología habitual del campo: Rossi y Walker son anteriores a Yates.

«Allen Debus’s The Chemical Philosophy and his work on European Paracelsianism revealed a philosophy of nature—what he called the “chemical philosophy”—that he argued exerted as great an influence on the early modern worldview and the new science as did the science of astronomy.» — Smith atribuye a Debus el término *chemical philosophy* y la tesis de una influencia comparable a la de la astronomía.

«When I researched and wrote this book on Johann Joachim Becher in the very last years of the Cold War, I did not yet grasp the whole picture of the centrality of alchemy in early modern Europe, nor did I suspect the subsequent burgeoning of scholarship on the history of alchemy and the history of early modern science more generally.» — Smith fecha el libro y declara lo que en 1994 todavía no veía.

«It is clear that alchemy formed one of the strands of this language for craftspeople, but I no longer see it as necessarily central to all craftspeople, excepting perhaps metalworkers.» — Smith retira, en el prefacio de 2016, una parte del alcance que el libro daba a la alquimia entre los artesanos.

«As I noted, I now see the formulation “vernacular science” as anachronistic, but I am still searching for a suitable term to convey artisanal knowledge systems.» — Smith retira el término que el libro usó y declara no tener sustituto.

«And, more recently, William Newman has argued that the content of the new science— Newton’s theory of gravity, the mechanical philosophy, and the theory of atoms and corpuscles—derived as well from alchemy, or “chymistry,” as Newman calls it, to make clear that it was an amalgam of chemistry, alchemy, and the practical chemical industries.» — Smith atribuye a Newman la tesis y el término *chymistry*, acuñado para no separar química, alquimia e industria.

«These scholars demonstrate that practices such as gravimetric analysis, as well as conceptually informed experimentation, can be traced directly to the work of the Flemish chymist Joan Baptista van Helmont in the early seventeenth century, and they thus claim the centrality of Helmontian chemistry» — la tesis de Newman y Principe sobre van Helmont, según Smith.

«Bruce Moran’s textbook Distilling Knowledge begins from the premise that practice and the chemical industries, more than theory, were central to the influence of alchemy on science, while Ursula Klein has examined the central role of the materials employed in the chemical industries, and the hybrid identity of chemical practitioners in the eighteenth century.» — Smith sitúa a Moran y a Klein del lado de la práctica y los materiales.