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Darrera modificació: 2013-05-09
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Pereira, Michela, "Il primo errore: problematiche epistemologiche dell'alchimia", dins: Gadebusch Bondio, Mariacarla - Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino (eds.), Errors and Mistakes: A Cultural History of Fallibility, Florència, SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo (Micrologus' Library, 49), 2012, pp. 97-128.
- Resum
- The notion of 'mistake' in alchemy os approached from a double stand-point. In the first section, we consider some 19th and 20th century scholars, who focussed on the alchemical attempt to think the relationship between mind and nature, stressing its difference from Western philosophical and scientific thought. In the second section, we examine how error is viewed in two outstanding texts of the alchemical tradition: the pseudo-Geber Summa perfectionis magisterii and the pseudo-Lullian Testamentum, respectively written in the last decades of the 13th century and in the first third of the 14th. Discovering and defeating errors in alchemical theory and practice was part and parcel of both authors' ambitious attempt to develop philosophical reasons, in order to explain the relationship between opus artificiale and cursus naturae, and to follow the 'right way' (semita recta) in alchemy. In some final remarks, we suggest that the change of epistemological strategies in alchemical texts, replacing philosophical approach with revelation, was a means of escaping the dilemma true/false and withstanding philosophical as well as social criticism on alchemy.
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Pseudo-Ramon Llull
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