Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2025

Spagyria, Scheidung, and Spagürlein: The Meanings of Analysis for Paracelsus

Didier Kahn
William R Newman
  • Fonction : Auteur
  • PersonId : 1485144

Résumé

Paracelsus is often lauded for having created a new disciplinary identity for alchemy by basing it on the twin operations of analysis and synthesis. Indeed, his neologism for the field, Spagyria, is often said to express this pairing by embodying the Greek terms for decompounding and compounding (σπάν and ἀγείρειν). The present article disputes both this etymological claim and the underlying belief that Paracelsus had an interest in synthesis that paralleled his very strong promotion of analysis ( Scheidung ). As the authors argue, there is good reason to think that Paracelsus actually modeled the word Spagyria on the early modern Swiss coin that went by the name Spagürlein, Spagürli, or Spagürle. This derivation was appropriate for a discipline based on Scheidung , since the coin was the product of numerous metallurgical processes involving separation. The claim that Spagyria was a fusion of σπάν and ἀγείρειν was actually a product of Paracelsus’s followers, not of the Swiss chymist himself.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
978-3-031-76398-4_3.pdf (480.86 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origine Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte

Dates et versions

hal-04855380 , version 1 (07-01-2025)

Licence

Identifiants

Citer

Didier Kahn, William R Newman. Spagyria, Scheidung, and Spagürlein: The Meanings of Analysis for Paracelsus. Traditions of Analysis and Synthesis, 73, Springer Nature Switzerland, pp.41-57, 2025, Archimedes, ⟨10.1007/978-3-031-76398-4_3⟩. ⟨hal-04855380⟩
1 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

More