Traditions of Analysis and Synthesis
Description
This open access book provides a fresh perspective on analysis and synthesis across several areas of inquiry. The two operations form a primary basis of modern laboratory science, ranging from the spectrographic analysis used in practically every scientific discipline today, to the naming of entire disciplines, such as synthetic organic chemistry. Despite their acknowledged significance, however, the history of analysis, synthesis, and their relations over the longue durée is poorly understood. Several volumes have been devoted to the history of analysis and synthesis in the sense that premodern mathematicians and philosophers used the terms, but very little work has been done on the tradition of material decomposition and recomposition and its relationship to mathematics and philosophy. The present volume brings together scholars in the history of medicine, mathematics, philosophy, chemistry, and alchemy to explore the ways in which these multiple disciplines understood and used analysis and synthesis as experimental, justificatory, and conceptual tools.
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Persons
William R. Newman is Distinguished Professor and Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Indiana University. Most of Newman's work in the History of Science has been devoted to alchemy and "chymistry," the art-nature debate, and matter theories, particularly atomism. His most recent monograph is Newton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature's "Secret Fire" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). Newman is also General Editor of the Chymistry of Isaac Newton, an online resource combining born-digital editions of Newton's alchemical writings with multimedia replications of Newton's alchemical experiments. Newman is on the editorial boards of Archimedes, Early Science and Medicine, and Ambix.
Jutta Schickore is Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Indiana University. Her research interests include philosophical and scientific debates about scientific methods in past and present, particularly about control experiments, (non)replicability, failure, and negative results; science and the public; and the relation between history and philosophy of science. Her publications include the monographs Controlled Experiments (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2024), About Method. Experimenters, Snake Venom, and the History of Writing Scientifically (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and The Microscope and the Eye: A History of Reflections, 1740-1870 (University of Chicago Press, 2007) She has been a member of the Wissenschaftskolleg (Berlin, Germany 2024-2025), the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ, 2007-2008 and 2017-2018), of the National Humanities Center (Research Triangle Park, NC, 2011).
Content
Chapter 1. Introduction: Traditions of Analysis and Synthesis (William Newman).- Chapter 2. The dark side of sunthesis? Fraud and substitutions in Graeco-Roman pharmacology (Laurence Totelin).- Chapter 3. Spagyria, Scheidung, and Spagürlein: The Meanings of Analysis for Paracelsus (Didier Kahn and William R. Newman).- Chapter 4. Chymistry goes Further: Sensible Principiata and Things Themselves over the Longue Durée (Joel Klein).- Chapter 5. Philosophical Methods of Analysis and Synthesis from Medieval Scholasticism to Descartes and Hobbes (Helen Hattab).- Chapter 6. A Fresh Look at Newton's "Method of Analysis and Synthesis" (Alan Shapiro).- Chapter 7. Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton on analysis and synthesis (Niccolò Guicciardini).- Chapter 8. Knowing Diseases and Medicines Forwards and Backwards: Analysis and Synthesis in Early Modern Academic Medicine (Evan Ragland).- Chapter 9. Cutting Through the Epistemic Circle: Analysis, Synthesis, and Method in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Anatomy (Tawrin Baker).- Chapter 10. Taxis and Texture: Johann Daniel Major (1634-1693) on Spirits, Salts, and the Limits of Analysis (Vera Keller).- Chapter 11. Phenomena and principles: Analysis-synthesis and reduction-deduction in 18th-century experimental physics (Friedrich Steinle).- Chapter 12. Analysis and induction as methods of empirical inquiry (Jutta Schickore).- Chapter 13. From Chemical Analysis to Analytical Chemistry in Germany, 1790-1862 (Peter Ramberg).- Chapter 14. Questioning the symmetry between analysis and synthesis in chemical practices (Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent).- Chapter 15. Contesting the Musical Ear: Hermann von Helmholtz, Gottfried Weber and Carl Stumpf Analyzing Mozart (Julia Kursell).