Talk:Chemistry: A Volatile History

NPOV

(Copied from Jim Al-Khalili)

Al-Khalili's presentation of the History of Chemistry in BBC 4's Chemistry - a Volatile History is sadly disappointing. At root is his repetition of the Victorian xenophobic tradition of excluding all foreign study. For example, he attributes the discovery of CO2 to Joseph Priestley, whereas it was discovered by Jan van Helmont over a hundred years before. Similarly, he attributes the experiment of weighing metals in oxydation to Priestley and Lavoisier, whereas it was a technique described in scientific detail by van Helmont as early as 1618. The knowledge was passed on through van Helmont's son who was Leibnitz' mentor: it was open knowledge in Europe.

As someone of Iraqi origins, it would have been interesting to have a detailed explanation of the work done in Baghdad under the Caliphate, which were the first steps in opening the review of the old Greek texts which would start chymistry on the route to chemistry in the fifteenth century, with the translation of arabic texts in Toledo. This is particularly incomprehensible as he has a forthcoming study of the subject due to be published in the near future.

Simply mentioning Paracelsus and Henning Brandt just doesn't do the early subject justice. Van Helmont, for example, was one of the first to discard Paracelsianism in favour of scientific practice. Equally, al Khalili dismisses alchemy as being purely concerned with transmutation and the elixir of life, but fails to consider the notable contribution it made to agriculture and weaponry - for example, the introduction and refinement of gunpowder, and crop rotation, promoted heavily in the alchemical aspects of the many Books of Hours prepared in the fourteenth and fifteenth century as a primer not only in religion but also in estate management. Equally, in the field of metallurgy, the use of blast furnaces by the Cistercians from the same period demonstrated some very practical chemical awareness. Nor was this restricted to the Continent, it was also used in the UK Black Country, north and west of Birmingham, from about the same period.

And yet none of this was mentioned. I accused the Victorians of xenophobia at the start of this note - but the problem is deeper than that. Just as the Church was jealous of others' discoveries, so the Enlightenment has attempted to adopt Masonic beliefs in an attempt to expunge all previous discoveries from the record. That is why Al-Khalili made the habitual knuckle-salute to Paracelsus, not because he made any great breakthroughs, but because the early freemasons made it an article of their belief. Paracelsus' work descended from della Mirandola and Ficino, whose own learning came from Cusanus and d'Ailly, who started extracting serious work from the hybrid of Greek knowledge and Christian creed imposed in the period when all western knowledge was enshrined in the monasteries. For example, d'Ailly framed some of his work in the framework used by Ruusbroek, which was not entirely theological: it was based in the doctrines of the Victorine School established by Guillaume de Champeaux, the defeated mentor of Peter Abelard, who rather than support Abelard's Universals which became an element of the Enlightenment chose to constrain study within the boundaries of pragmaticism. For example, Ruusbroec's Sparkling Stone must be simultaneously read as an early alchemical text as much as a spiritual one: he worked to a rigid structure which required simultaneous consideration of the metaphysical (eschatological), pragmatic, moral and creed aspects of his texts. Yet all of this was dimissed in favour of the orthodox doctrines of the Enlightenment, because these people were almost all churchmen: my point is not that they were wonderful chemists capable of designing and operating a petrochemical plant, but that they were part of a path of ever-improving understanding emerging from the chaos of the seventh century, which should have been mentioned rather than summarily dismissed as part of the merlinesque image of alchemy.

Indeed, Newman & Principe's Alchemy Tried in the Fire (ISBN0-226-57702-3) demonstrates that Boyle's work was dependant on George Starkey's studies of van Helmont, whose very work stemmed from a rejection of Paracelsianism. Starkey followed van Helmont in adding a qualification of divine intervention to the work, which casts the origins further back into the 1560s Brussels experiments, undertaken thefore the very orthodox Catholic court of Phillip II of Spain - see the annexes to René Taylor's Arquitechtura y Magia (ISBN 978-8478441341 ) - which harked back even further to the work of Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly's circle in the first half of the fifteenth century. This was unacceptable to the Enlightenment, so they had to find the best alternatives they could.

Al-Khalili is a prominent member of the Royal Society and similar institutions, which makes the bias comprehensible: however, it does not make his work neutral, and the above evidence shows the concerns raised on the main page to have some basis in hard fact. Consequently, BBC's reference (dead link) of readers looking for more details to this site seriously infringes the question of NPOV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.244.210.193 (talk) 22:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Note that Al-Akhalili was only the presenter of that series. He is not credited as the writer or a consultant on the material and that his career is as a theoretical physicist - not a specialist in science history. He might have just be handed a script or an outline and been instructed to restrict himself to that.--66.240.163.101 (talk) 14:08, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Note that Jim Al-Khalili also presented Science and Islam. If you have a review from a reliable source mentioning this criticism on the documentary is can certainly be included, though. —Ruud 22:15, 13 January 2011 (UTC)