Chapter 5 Alchemy, potency, imagination

A case in point is Paracelsus’s view of poisons, which have a richness that has not been captured in previous scholarship. Most scholars only touched on the subject of poison and did not fully reflect on the complexity of its meaning. Consequently, I have decided to explore Paracelsus’s ideas and bring together the various connotations he conferred to the term ‘poison’. For the purpose of this chapter, I have chosen a methodology that would take account of the timing of Paracelsus’s writings as well as their relevance to the subject at hand. I have consequently decided to take a treatise-based approach that would not only focus on works that have a particular emphasis on the topic of poison, but also reflect, to the best extent possible, the chronology of these treatises. The chapter is thus focussed on seven writings, although it makes references to other works where appropriate. At the end, I have tried to synthesise the views of these works and consider the question of consistency of ideas on ‘poison’ throughout Paracelsus’s writings

Chapter 5 Alchemy, potency, imagination

A case in point is Paracelsus’s view of poisons, which have a richness that has not been captured in previous scholarship. Most scholars only touched on the subject of poison and did not fully reflect on the complexity of its meaning. Consequently, I have decided to explore Paracelsus’s ideas and bring together the various connotations he conferred to the term ‘poison’. For the purpose of this chapter, I have chosen a methodology that would take account of the timing of Paracelsus’s writings as well as their relevance to the subject at hand. I have consequently decided to take a treatise-based approach that would not only focus on works that have a particular emphasis on the topic of poison, but also reflect, to the best extent possible, the chronology of these treatises. The chapter is thus focussed on seven writings, although it makes references to other works where appropriate. At the end, I have tried to synthesise the views of these works and consider the question of consistency of ideas on ‘poison’ throughout Paracelsus’s writings

Strange Compositions: Chemistry and its Occult History in Victorian Speculative Fiction

This dissertation examines how depictions of chemistry in Victorian literature are influenced by concerns regarding the history of chemistry and its relationship to the occult. Among these depictions, I consider non-fiction writings of the period, such as histories of science and articles from periodicals, but I focus on novels that prominently feature chemistry, including Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s A Strange Story (1862), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), George Griffith’s Olga Romanoff (1894), T. Mullet Ellis’s Zalma (1895), and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897). These texts link chemistry with its origins in alchemy, the occult, and the East in order to question chemistry’s legitimacy as a professional, materialist science and to critique the rapid progress of chemistry by foregrounding the threat that experimental substances posed to society. The frequency of negative depictions of chemistry during the Victorian period indicates how, despite discoveries that revolutionised industry and medicine, the British public regarded the science and its practitioners with suspicion. During a period as fascinated with origins as with progress, these texts expand upon the uncertainties of a society struggling with the tumultuous relationship between chemistry’s past, present, and future. Popular fiction responded to societal concerns about the origins of chemistry with speculative narratives that depict a collision between chemical innovations and elements of chemistry’s occult or Eastern past. In A Strange Story and Jekyll and Hyde, this clash results in nineteenth-century reinterpretations of the traditional alchemical quest for the Elixir of Life and prompts re-evaluations of the nineteenth-century vitalist debates and discourses on the existence of the soul. Meanwhile, Olga Romanoff, Zalma, and The Beetle depict the monstrous return of chemistry’s marginalised histories—namely, of female and Eastern practitioners—to reclaim authority over chemical knowledge and new technologies, including chemical weapons and mind-altering potions. These five novels explore how the “nightmare” of chemistry’s origins—as early science historian Thomas Thomson dubbed them—not only influence contemporaneous chemical practice, but also impact future progress. Ultimately, these texts do not critique chemistry itself, but rather how scientists and governing bodies employed chemistry prior to both the popularisation of science fiction and the first recorded instance of atomic transmutation—when chemistry’s future, not its past, became the new nightmare

Emblematic Mechanisms and Psychoanalysis

In the paper the parallels between the emblematic “mechanisms” of signification and the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud as well as Carl Gustav Jung have been studied. The Austrian psychiatrist has discovered template schemes that become a visual delineation, the blueprint for developing his scientific vocabulary, methodology, classification of psycho-emotional behavioral types in mythological plots. The Eros and Thanatos images handling, the exploitation of mythical tales about Oedipus and Electra, Prometheus, Narcissus, and many other ones to specify the behavioral complexes denote the presence of “emblematic methodology” in the formation of psychoanalytic conceptions and categories. His interpretations of famous mythological plots are boiled down to emblematic reduction. Carl Gustav Jung frequently selected symbolic notations as his research targets, which were a denotative space for expressing internal mental receptions and historic constellations of cultural axiology. In his writings we see the intention to assemble the concepts of image (iconic) and socio-cultural idea (conventional) into a sole compound that syncretically denote unity of meaning. Such an arrangement of iconic-conventional interdetermination is often significative elbowroom in Jung the decoding of which may allow to discern complex mental reflections. Notwithstanding the fact that he considers a symbol to be the standard unit of cognitive-cultural experience “conservation”, its functional semantics definition is fulfilled in emblematic patterns. This emblematic-cognitive form is not only a method of determining the initial images-ideas of the unconscious, “the mythological figures” of inner conflicts, typical experience of generations, but also the principle of justification and expression of his theory conceptual foundation. To a certain extent, it is an element of the Swiss psychologist’s scientific thinking style and language. &nbsp

The Colour concept generator: a computer tool to propose colour concepts for products.

This thesis documents research undertaken into the design and evaluation of a computer tool (Colour Concept Generator) to produce colour schemes for products from verbal descriptors depicting a required aesthetic image or style. The system was designed to translate between descriptive words and colour combinations and aims to provide a form of ideas stimulus for a product designer at the initial stages of the design process. The computer system uses elements of artificial intelligence (AI) to `learn' colour and descriptor semiotic relations from a product designer based upon a proposed objective criteria or to reflect a designers personal style. Colour concepts for products can then be generated from descriptors based upon these semiotic relations. The philosophy of the research is based upon the idea of computing colour aesthetics at the front end of the design process and the design of an Al software mechanism to facilitate this. The problem was analysed with respect to the available literature on colour and a set of detail requirements for the system were presented. The system was then designed and code based upon the requirements and evaluated in terms of the overall philosophy, system methodology and application of computer media. The research is a contribution to the field of computer aided design regarding colour aesthetics and demonstrates the possibility of using an artificial intelligent machine to inspire and stimulate creative human thought. The Al software mechanism of the Colour Concept Generator is presented as an application of Al to aesthetic design. 1

The Forgetting of Fire: An Archaeology of Technics

This dissertation applies the methods of Bachelard and Foucault to key moments in the development of science. By analyzing the attitudes of four figures from four different centuries, it shows how epistemic attitudes have shifted from a participation in non-human, natural realities to a construction of human-centred technologies. The idea of an epistemic attitude is situated in reference to Foucault’s concept of the episteme and his method of archaeology; an attitude is the institutionally-situated and personally-enacted comportment of an epistemic agent toward an object of knowledge. This line of thought is pursued under the theme of elemental fire, which begins as a substance for early alchemical knowledge and ends up as a quantifiable branch of functions in technics. We call the attitude of Paracelsus, an alchemist of the sixteenth century, “participation,” which sheds light on the intimate goal of his alchemical practice. In the seventeenth century, Robert Boyle inaugurates the evolution of technics with the attitude of instrumentalization. Building off this, Lavoisier participates in the development of technics through his effort to construct the countable, using measuring instruments and chemical techniques. This attitude of accounting, and neither his theory of oxygen nor his basic observations in the laboratory, determines his decisive role in the development of chemistry. Finally, we discuss the attitude of employment as we find it in Sadi Carnot and the engineers of the steam engine, watching as fire for these epistemic agents becomes nothing but an employed instant of combustion