"In Alexandria two streams of knowledge met and fused together... The ancient Egyptian industrial arts of metallurgy, dyeing and glass-making... and... the philosophical speculations of ancient Greece, now tinged with ancient mysticism, and partly transformed into that curious fruit of the tree of knowledge which we call Gnosticism. ...the result was the "divine" or "sacred" art (...also means sulphur) of making gold of silver. ...during the first four centuries a considerable body of knowledge came into existence. The treatises written in Greek... in Alexandria, are the earliest known books on chemistry. ...The treatises also contain much of an allegorical nature... sometimes described as "obscure mysticism." ...the Neoplatonism which was especially studied in Alexandria... is not so negligible as has sometimes been supposed. ...The study of astrology was connected with that of chemistry in the form of an association of the metals with the planets on a supposed basis of "sympathy". This goes back to early Chaldean sources but was developed by the Neoplatonists."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Historians from EnglandMathematicians from EnglandNon-fiction authors from EnglandChemists from EnglandHistorians of science
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._R._Partington
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
J. R. Partington
James Riddick Partington (30 June 1886 – 9 October 1965) was a British chemist, mathematician, historian of chemistry, scholar, author and teacher. He was a fellow and council member of the Chemical Society of London and the first president of the Society for History of Alchemy and Early Chemistry.
39 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by J. R. Partington →
Related Quotes
"On the one hand, the student has been informed by some writers that the only certain way lies in the use of the entro…"
"If the present volume will help towards the comprehension of the fundamental principles on which the science of therm…"
"The Atomic Theory and the Periodic Law have been given prominence, since their neglect unfailingly leads to obscurity…"
"Gunpowder was known to Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus about 1250, but... I conclude that both obtained a knowledge o…"
"Some recent short publications on Chinese gunpowder and firearms are misleading... I have had valuable assistance fro…"
"The statement of a law of nature involves the formation of a concept, or general idea, in which the likenesses of phe…"
"To a person whose experience has never been brought into relation with the object sulphur, the name signifies nothing…"
"The earliest chemical theory was qualitative in the strictest sense; the so-called Aristotelean doctrine of the four …"
"The quantitative investigations of Black on the burning of lime and magnesia alba, in which the balance (previously c…"
"Wenzel and Richter, the latter... of most pronounced mathematical temperament, laid the foundations of stoichiometry,…"