Alkimia Operativa and Alkimia Speculativa. Some Modern Controversies on the Historiography of Alchemy

The accent on scientific and empirical character of alchemy, especially from the field of the history of science, promotes the idea that one can understand the cryptic and metaphorical language of alchemy mainly through the laboratory chemical practice. As a result, the tendency is to interpret the spiritual and esoteric language of alchemy, as metaphors for laboratory work and the most representative research on historiography of alchemy that point the spiritual character as being contaminated by esoteric sciences and Victorian occultism. This paper is paying attention to this dichotomy by attempting to understand the exclusivist position of the position that alchemy is a proto-chemistry and to see the consequences of such an interpretation. It is reviewed one of the most representative voices that interpret alchemy as spiritual by Carl. G. Jung and Mircea Eliade, and their rejection, as it is illustrated by William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, showing the boundaries of both approaches and the hazarded character of understanding alchemy merely as part of the history of chemistry

Glass Bellies and Artificial Wombs: Gender, Science, and Reproduction in Early Modern Alchemical Performance

In this essay, I use the glass belly or vessel as a framework for examining the intersection of science, performance, and gender in the early modern period. I begin with the example of the glass belly because of how its form and functions intersect these areas of inquiry through early modern alchemy, which I argue can be examined *as* science in performance—in other words, alchemy serves as exemplar of the performativity of science. If early modern scholars have used performance to represent “the deceptive, hollow, and illusory nature of the theatrical, even as it conjures the real into being,” alchemy serves as a particularly pertinent case. Alchemy is often dismissed in our modern day as an illusory science, one that but mimics the more sophisticated techniques of scientific methodology and which is defined by its reputation as fraudulent and deceptive, which was not entirely accurate to its time. But insofar as we might define science as a body of knowledge—scientia—and a set of practices—techne—alchemy was very much constituted by both. Furthermore, precisely because of the gendering that occurred with the glass vessels used in alchemical science (and would continue to be used as laboratory vessels in the growing field of chemistry), I argue that the history of alchemy can provide a useful framework for mapping out the early, gendered relationships between science and performance

Book Review: Rudolf Steiner - Alchemy of the Everyday

'Rudolf Steiner - Alchemy of the Everyday' presents an overview of Steiner’s life work. Steiner was a pioneer of New Age thinking. He had a prodigious appetite for work, and his output was prolific as well as diverse. He presented over 5105 lectures and he authored 354 books. Alchemy encapsulates Steiner’s oeuvre including architecture, furniture, art, painting, sculpture, dance, jewellery, typography, medicine, education, and agriculture. As the Foreword states: “Rudolf Steiner was one of the most influential - yet most controversial - reformers of the 20th century”. In the year before his untimely death, Steiner laid the foundations of biodynamic agriculture. 'Alchemy' is a timely retrospective coinciding with the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Steiner’s birth. The book accompanies a travelling exhibition, of the same name, curated by Germany’s Vitra Design Museum

An Improved Algorithm for Generating Database Transactions from Relational Algebra Specifications

Alloy is a lightweight modeling formalism based on relational algebra. In prior work with Fisler, Giannakopoulos, Krishnamurthi, and Yoo, we have presented a tool, Alchemy, that compiles Alloy specifications into implementations that execute against persistent databases. The foundation of Alchemy is an algorithm for rewriting relational algebra formulas into code for database transactions. In this paper we report on recent progress in improving the robustness and efficiency of this transformation

Computing LPMLN Using ASP and MLN Solvers

LPMLN is a recent addition to probabilistic logic programming languages. Its main idea is to overcome the rigid nature of the stable model semantics by assigning a weight to each rule in a way similar to Markov Logic is defined. We present two implementations of LPMLN, $\text{LPMLN2ASP}$ and $\text{LPMLN2MLN}$. System $\text{LPMLN2ASP}$ translates LPMLN programs into the input language of answer set solver $\text{CLINGO}$, and using weak constraints and stable model enumeration, it can compute most probable stable models as well as exact conditional and marginal probabilities. System $\text{LPMLN2MLN}$ translates LPMLN programs into the input language of Markov Logic solvers, such as $\text{ALCHEMY}$, $\text{TUFFY}$, and $\text{ROCKIT}$, and allows for performing approximate probabilistic inference on LPMLN programs. We also demonstrate the usefulness of the LPMLN systems for computing other languages, such as ProbLog and Pearl's Causal Models, that are shown to be translatable into LPMLN. (Under consideration for acceptance in TPLP)Comment: Paper presented at the 33nd International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2017), Melbourne, Australia, August 28 to September 1, 2017 16 pages, LaTeX, 3 PDF figures (arXiv:YYMM.NNNNN