Drebbel's Living Instruments,Hartmann's Microcosm,and Libavius's Thelesmos: Epistemic Machines before Descartes

Schaffer Simon , “Godly men and mechanical philosophers: Souls and spirits in Restoration natural philosophy”, Science in context, i (1987), 53–85; Garber Daniel , “Descartes, mechanics, and the mechanical philosophy”, Perspectives on science, ix (2001), 2001–22. William Newman has related Boyle's re-interpretation of Sennert to his mechanical philosophy in Atoms and alchemy: Chymistry and the experimental origins of the scientific revolution (Chicago, 2006).

For trading zones, see Galison Peter , Image & logic: A material culture of microphysics (Chicago, 1997).

Garber , op. cit. (ref. 1), 418.

Newman William , “Technology and alchemical debate in the late Middle Ages”, Isis, lxxx (1989), 423–45, and Promethean ambitions (Chicago, 2004).

Moran Bruce , Chemical pharmacy enters the university: Johannes Hartmann and the didactic care of chymiatria in the early seventeenth century (Madison, 1991); Debus Allen , “Chemistry and the universities in the 17th century”, Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academe voor Wetenschappen, Letteren, en schone kunsten van Belgie, xlviii (1986), 1986–33; and Hannaway Owen , The chemists and the word: The didactic origins of chemistry (Baltimore, 1975).

Cf. Bennett J. A. , “The mechanics' philosophy and the mechanical philosophy”, History of science, xxiv (1986), 1–27. Bennett problematized the relationship between mechanical practitioners and philosophers more in his more recent “The mechanical arts”, Early modern science, ed. by Park Katherine Daston Lorraine (Cambridge, 2006), 673–95.

Shapin Steven Schaffer Simon , Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life (Princeton, 1985), and Michael Mahoney, “Drawing mechanics”, in Picturing machines, 1400–1700, ed. by Lefebvre Wolfgang (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 281–306.

Nummedal Tara , Alchemy and authority in the Holy Roman empire (Chicago, 2007).

Dear Peter , “Intelligibility in science”, Configurations, xi (2003), 157–8.

Henninger-Voss Mary , “Working machines and noble mechanics: Guidobaldo del Monte and the translation of knowledge”, Isis, xci (2000), 233–59; Popplow Marcus , “Why draw pictures of machines? The social contexts of early modern machine drawings”, Picturing machines 1400–1700, ed. by Lefèvre (ref. 7), 17–48; Short Graham Hollister , “The formation of knowledge concerning atmospheric pressure and steam power in Europe from Aleotti (1589) to Papin (1690)”, History of technology, xxv (2004), 2004–50; and Smith Pamela , The body of the artisan: Art and experience in the scientific revolution (Chicago, 2004).

Notably in Alpers Svetlana , The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century (Chicago, 1983), 4–5, 12–13, 23. Pamela Smith, who noted the interpretation of On the nature of the elements as a series of alchemical receipts on the title-page of the British Library edition of Drebbel's works (British Library 1033.c.34), offers an important exception. See Smith , op. cit. (ref. 10), 163, where she describes the “First Tincture” of Drebbel's Preface and the “Second Tincture” of Chapter Ten. Drebbel's “sperma” is a “tincture taken out of the body of the earth, which must be fixed with spirit through the circle of the elements” (“Tincturam ex corpore terrae desumptam, quam cum spiritû figi debere per rotam elementis”). These descriptions correspond extremely well with Libavius's interpretation (discussed below), who considered the tenth chapter the most important part (“medulla”) of the text. Andreas Libavius, “Apocalypseos hermeticae pars posterior”, Syntagma arcanorum chymicorum … tomus secundus (Frankfurt, 1613), 328–453, p. 375.

He does not appear, for instance, in Park Katherine Daston Lorraine (eds), The Cambridge history of science: Early modern science (Cambridge, 2006).

Archief Regionaal Weeshuis Alkmaar 16, 360–362v. A German 1608 translation is currently the first extant edition. Johann Ernst Burggrav claimed that translation as his own in his preface to his second edition of Drebbel , Ein kurtzer tractat von der natur der elementen (Frankfurt, 1628). Burggrav mentioned that Drebbel had printed a few copies earlier in Dutch to be given to a few friends and philosophers. This must have been the Dutch edition mentioned by Isaac Beeckman in 1619 in his Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 à 1634, ed. by de Waard Cornelis (The Hague, 1939–53), i, 346. A portrait of Drebbel dated 1604, copied in many later editions of the work, is still extant.

The classic biography remains Jaeger F. M. , Cornelis Drebbel en zijne tijdgenooten (Groningen, 1922). For Drebbel as Chief Engineer and his death and burial in 1633, see Tomlinson Edward Murray , A history of the Minories, London (London, 1922), 136, 400.

Beeckman , Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman (ref. 13), i, 346; ii, 201, 202, 363, 372; iii, 203–4, 302–4, 358, 367; Hugyens Constantijn , “Fragment eener autobiographie van Constantijn Huygens”, ed. by Worp J. A. , Bijdragen en mededeelingen van het historisch genootschap, xviii (1897), 1–122; Brown Harcourt , Scientific organizations in seventeenth-century France (Baltimore, 1934), 270; and de Peiresc Nicolas-Claude Fabri , Lettres de Peiresc aux frères Dupuy, ii (Paris, 1890), 68.

Borrelli Arianna , “The weather glass and its observers in the early seventeenth century”, Philosophies of technology: Francis Bacon and his contemporaries, ed. by Zittel Claus (Leiden, 2008), 67–132; on Descartes, p. 125. Ian Maclean, “Introduction”, in Descartes René , A discourse on the method, transl. by MacLean Ian (Oxford, 2006), Note 24.

Ibid., pp. lx–lxi, although Descartes's method of argumentation was no shorter than Drebbel's, as Maclean claimed there. Seventeenth-century comparisons between Drebbel's inventions and Descartes's mechanical models of life are not hard to find. See Digby Kenelm , A discourse concerning infallibility in religion (Paris, 1652), 60–61; Johann Cyprian in Franzius Wolfgang , Historia animalium, ed. by Cyprian Johann (Frankfurt, [1687] 1712), 476; Schammelius J. M. , Dissertatio physica de arte naturae aemula (Leipzig, 1689), thesis XLVI; Sturm Johann Christoph , “Exercitatio octava de artis et naturae sororia cognatione”, Philosophia eclectica (Frankfurt, 1698), 416–17. Hartlib compared the two as inventors able to recreate, and thus teach, natural processes artificially. Hartlib , Ephemerides, 29/3/62A, 1635, The Hartlib papers CD, 2nd edn (Sheffield, 2002): “De Cardes hase a new device to make a Statua or Babie to walke vp and downe to eat to concoct to disgorge itself, which is admirable also for didactiks to shew the manner of concoction…. So Drebbels feate to shew the didactik of thundring and lightning”.

Schmidt Wilhelm , “Zur geschichte des thermoskops”, Zeitschrift für Mathematik und Physik, viii (1898), 161–74, p. 165; Naber H. A. , “Cornelis Jacobsz Drebbel”, Oud Holland, xxii (1904), 1904–237, p. 201; Jaeger , op. cit. (ref. 14), 138; Tierie Gerrit , Cornelis Drebbel (1572–1633) (Amsterdam, 1932), 4, 92; Gibbs F. W. , “The furnaces and thermometers of Cornelis Drebbel”, Annals of science, vi (1948), 1948–43; Boas Marie , “Hero's pneumatica: A study of its transmission and influence”, Isis, xl (1949), 1949–48, p. 45; Middleton W. E. Knowles , A history of the thermometer and its use in meteorology (Baltimore, 1966), 14–23; and Meyer Kirstine Bjerrum , Die Entwickelung des Temperaturbegriffs im Laufe der Zeiten (Braunschweig, 1981), 28. See also the discussion of Jennifer Drake-Brockman, below (ref. 131). For a more recent and sympathetic interpretation of the significance of Drebbel's “weather glass”, see Borrelli , op. cit. (ref. 16). My argument differs from Borrelli's excellent account in emphasizing the relationships, rather than the contrasts, between such disparate endeavours as mechanics and alchemy.

The question is further complicated by the purposeful conflation of the functions of indicating heat and foretelling weather changes, or of what we would call thermoscopes and baroscopes. See, for instance, Bate John , The mysteryes of nature and art (London, 1634), 38–39.

For this approach to the history of invention, see Daston Lorraine (ed.), Biographies of scientific objects (Chicago, 2000).

Johann Daniel Major uses this term in Genius errans sive de ingeniorum in scientiis abusu (Kiel, 1677), F, for those who observe perpetually moving chemical microcosms. Among these was the famous engineer Drebbel who, said Major, made a simulacrum of the universe moved by a spiritous liquor, through an occult harmony between that spirit and aether.

Gabbey Alan , “The mechanical philosophy and its problems: Mechanical explanations, impenetrability, and perpetual motion”, Change and progress in modern science, ed. by Pitt Joseph C. (Dordrecht, 1985), 9–84.

Gabbey Alan , “Between ars and philosophia naturalis: Reflections on the historiography of early modern mechanics”, Renaissance and revolution: Humanists, scholars, craftsman, and natural philosophers in early modern Europe, ed. by Field J. V. James Frank A. J. L. (New York, 1993), 133–45.

Jaeger , op. cit. (ref. 14), 14–15.

Hartlib , Ephemerides, Mersenne to Theodore Haack, 18/2/21A–22B, 20 March 1640, op. cit. (ref. 17): “I'ay veu le Compendium de Physique de Cornele Drebel, mais cela ne merite pas la reputation, qu'il avoit, estant fort plat”.

On Severinus, see Shackelford Jole , A philosophical path for Paracelsian medicine: The ideas, intellectual context, and influence of Petrus Severinus (1540/2–1602) (Copenhagen, 2004).

Bianchi Massimo , “Occulto e manifesto nella medicina del Rinascimento: Jean Fernel e Pietro Severino”, Atti e memorie dell' Accademia Tuscana de Scienze e Lettere, la Colombaria, xlvii (1982), 185–248.

Matton Sylvain , “Fernel et les alchimistes”, Corpus, xli (2002), 135–98, and Hirai Hiroshi , “Humanisme, néoplatonism et Prisca Theologia dans le concept de semence de Jean Fernel”, Corpus, xli (2002), 2002–70. Alchemical views of native heat are not studied in most treatments of the idea of heat in the history of science, which generally begin with the mechanical philosophy and the idea of the thermometer. See Mendelsohn Everett , Heat and life: The development of the theory of animal heat (Cambridge, 1964), and Chang Hasok , Inventing temperature: Measurement and scientific progress (Oxford, 2004).

Drebbel Cornelis , Ein kurzer Tractat von der Natur der Elementen (Leiden, 1608), preface, unpaginated: “wil ich schreiben von den gemeinen Elementen/wie sie dir best bekant sein/da mit du das ubrige nemlich die Erde erkennen lernest/dan die Erde ist nicht so simpel as Feuwer/Lufft unnd Wasser/sondern ist der unreine rest/dan man findet volkomlich vier Elementische Naturen in der Erden/unnd ihrem gewächs damit wir unser werck volbringen/… wie ich hernach weitlauftiger erzehlen wil/meinen anfang nemendt von der Schöpfung/und die selbige an zu deuten”.

See Johann Jakob Kirstenius's history of element-glasses, Dissertatio physico-chemica de repraesentatione quatuor elementorum in vitro (Altdorf, 1746).

Libavius , op. cit. (ref. 11), 438: “Scire vero debes, lector, Sedinvogii scriptum paenè germanum esse Drebbeliano. Uterque enim naturam universalem & particularem explicat isto mysterio, & vicissim hoc illâ. Uterque in Elementis eorumque conversione & commistione ponit totum, ignis vocabulo & spiritus, coelum quoque comprehendo. Quod in uno desideras, id fors in altero tibi, si attentus eris, occurret.” On Libavius, see Moran Bruce , Andreas Libavius and the transformation of alchemy: Separating chemical cultures with polemical fire (Sagamore Beach, MA, 2007).

Libavius , op. cit. (ref. 11), 441: “Quod attinet ad generationem naturalem mineralium, & vegetabilium, eam similiter explicauit Drebbelius. Uterque quod vidit & iudicauit fieri in vitro hermetico, dum elixyr fermentatur & in aurificum lapidem mutatur, id putavit evenire etiam in caeteris”.

Ibid.: “Fingunt elementa quatuor proiicientia & stillantia in centrum seu viscera terrae suas virtutes. In centro collocant principium calorificum, seu ignem naturae, quod calore externo excitatum perpetuo agitetur, & in materiam humidam circumfusam agat”.

Borrelli , op. cit. (ref. 16), 92.

Mayr Otto , The origins of feedback control (Cambridge, 1970), and Silvio Bedini, “Role of the automata in the history of technology”, in his Patrons, artisans and instruments of science, 1600–1750 (Brookfield, 1999).

Kuffler Augustus , A very good collection of approved receipts of chymical operations collected by Augustus Kuffeler and Charles Ferrers phylchimist, Cambridge University Library MS L1.5.8, 169–70.

Drebbel Cornelis , Wonder-vondt van de eeuwighe bewegingh … hier is oock noch de getuyghnis/die Cicero/Claudianus/en Lactantius/gheven van de eeuwige bewegingh/die Archimedes gevonden soude hebben (Alkmaar, 1607), unpaginated: “in summa wat voor een tijdt ghemaeckt can werden, door dalent gewicht, of door springh-veeren, door loopende wateren, door wint, oft door vier, dat can ghemaeckt worden door dese kennis, voor eeuwelijck”.

Bohn Johann , “de Igne”, Dissertationes chymico-physicae (Leipzig, 1685), thesis 29. For Bohn, see Moran Bruce , Distilling knowledge (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 124–6.

Nollius Heinrich , Sanctuarium naturae (Frankfurt, 1619), 113–14.

See Schagen's preface, Wonder-vondt (ref. 37): “Soo dese wetenschap onder de Sterkondigers ghemeen was soo en soudemen niet behoeven soo veel stellingen en rekeningh der Planeten en ander Sterren maer de Ster-konst soude licht zijn en Copernicus soude bloeyen. Want die bewijst (met reden) dat het Aerdtrijck alle 24. uren ront om gaet: Maer desen Alckmaersche Philosooph can 't selfde niet alleen met reden maer oock met levendige Instrumenten bewijsen.” Francis Bacon also, in Of the advancement and proficiencie of learning (London, 1640), 146–7, argued that astronomy currently only saved appearances through mathematical observations and demonstrations rather than showing the true causes of things. It was thus to be placed among the lowly mathematical arts, “not without great diminution of the Dignity thereof; seeing it ought rather (if it would maintaine its own right) be constitute a branch, & the most principall of Naturall Philosophy”. Whoever would observe “the appetencies of matter, and the most universall Passions (which in either Globe are exceeding Potent, and transverberate the universall nature of things)” would discover the true “Living Astronomy”.

A number of these sources were published alongside Drebbel's letter to King James I in his Wonder-vondt (ref. 37).

Drebbel , Wonder-vondt, unpaginated.

Borrichius Olaus , Itinerarium 1660–1665, ii (London, 1983), 166: “Perpetuum mobile Drebbelii se vidisse tradit (forsan ex Mercurio) in vitro cum horologio, ita magneticum ut acus horologii, si propter nebulas sol per duas horas non conspiceretur, adveniente sole momento se transferret acus ex: Gr: Ab horâ XII ad IIdam.” See also Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman (ref. 13), iii, 302.

Drebbel , Wonder-vondt (ref. 37), unpaginated: “soo hangh alsoo/in een besloten glas/de Aerde in't midden van't Water/en het Water in't midden van de Lucht/ende de Lucht in't midden van't Vier/den een den anderen omvangende/en haer selven soo ront makende/als eenigh dingh op die Werelt/sser wonderlijck en ghenuechlijck om sien. Oft ter contrarie/hangh die lucht in't midden van't Water/so ront als een cloot/en het Water in't midden van de Aerde/den een den anderen omvangende ghelijck wy sien doen de Lucht den Aerdtbodem.” For the view of Drebbel's cosmoscope as a chemical microcosm, see Major , op. cit. (ref. 21); Nollius , op. cit. (ref. 39), 152; Kircher Athanasius , Magnes (Rome, 1641), 607; Servius Petrus , Dissertatio de unguento armario (Rome, 1642), 57; Dobrzensky J. J. W. , Nova, et amaenior de admirando fontivm genio … philosophia (Ferrara, 1659), 80; et alia.

Debus Allen , “Motion in the chemical texts of the Renaissance”, Isis, lxiv (1973), 4–17.

Colie Rosalie , “Cornelis Drebbel and Salomon de Caus: Two Jacobean models for Salomon's house”, Huntington Library quarterly, xviii (1954), 245–69, and Bacon Francis , Instauratio magna, Part 3, ed. by Rees Graham Wakely Maria (New York, 2007).

Ibid., 304.

Fludd Robert , Mosaicall philosophy (London, 1659), 3. See Fludd , Utriusque cosmi historia (Frankfurt, 1617–21), Book 1, 30–32; Book 7, 204, and also Tractatus secundus, Part Seven, Book Three, 469.

Bate , op. cit. (ref. 19), unpaginated preface. Eamon William , Science and the secrets of nature: Books of secrets in medieval and early modern culture (Princeton, 1994), 308.

Kircher , op. cit. (ref. 44), 607–12.

Ibid., 587.

Ibid., 588.

Cabeus S.J. Nicholas , Philosophia magnetica (Cologne, 1629), 36.

See for example, Schuler Heinrich , Methodus und principia aller wasserkünste (Geraw an der Slier, 1622), 21. See also Staricius Johann , Heldenschatz (Frankfurt, 1615), 9–14. No perpetual motion fitting this description appears in the Prague 1607–11 inventory of the Kunstkammer. R. Bauer and H. Haupt, “Das kunstkammerinventar Kaiser Rudolfs II, 1607–1611”, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, lxxii (1976), entire volume. However, Phillip Hainhofer and Martin Zeiller described a “perpetuum mobile, welches in ainem gläserinen Ring ascendiert vnd descendiert” held in the Dresden Kunstkammer. See Doering Oscar , Des Augsburger Patriciers Philip Hainhofer reisen nach Innsbruck und Dresden (Vienna, 1901), 167, and Zeiller Martin , Handbuch von allerley nützlichen Erinneringen (Ulm, 1655), 490. Wilhelm Lang identified it as Drebbel's perpetual motion in a 1654 letter to Olaus Worm: Olai Wormii et ad eum doctorum virorum epistolae tomus II (Copenhagen, 1751), 1085–6.

Cabeus , op. cit. (ref. 53), 36.

Reeves Eileen , “Occult sympathies and antipathies: The case of early modern magnetism”, Wissensideale und Wissenskulturen in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. by Detel Wolfgang Zittel Claus (Berlin, 2002), 97–114.

Khunrath Heinrich , Magnesia catholica philosophorum (Magdeburg, 1599); Dobbs Betty Jo Teeter , The foundations of Newton's alchemy (Cambridge, 1975), 160; and the discussion of Sendivogius below.

Hartmann Johann , Disputationes chymico-medicae (Marburg, 1611), reprinted in 1614 and in Hartmann's Opera omnia medico-chymica (Frankfurt, 1684, 1690, 1694). For the importance of this collection, see Debus , op. cit. (ref. 5).

Moran Bruce , The alchemical world of the German court: Occult philosophy and chemical medicine in the circle of Moritz of Hessen (1572–1632) (Stuttgart, 1991), 55–56.

Hartmann , “Disputatio hermetica”, Disputationes chymico-medicae (Marburg, 1611), 23–35, p. 24.

Hartmann , op. cit. (ref. 60), 27.

Ibid.

See Deer L. A. , “Academic theories of generation: The contemporaries and successors of Jean Fernel (1497–1558)”, Ph.D. thesis, Warburg Institute, University of London, 1980, 393–4.

Hartmann Johann , “Contradictiones apparentes quatuor, in quibus praecipuae utriusque medicinae dogmaticae nempe, & hermeticae hypotheis, & rationes breviter recensentur, excutiuntur, & conciliantur”, Disputationes chymico-medicae (Marburg, 1611), 108–66. Numbers below refer to thesis numbers.

Ibid., 24.

Ibid., 25–26.

Ibid., 27.

Like lists of quaestiones accompanying other dissertations, the epithemata appear to be points to be taken into account during the dissertation, and were possibly pre-circulated before the dissertation. My special thanks to Kevin Chang for help in understanding the structure of this dissertation.

Hartmann , op. cit. (ref. 64), 165–6: “Perpetuum mobile Cornelii Drebbel Batavi, quod in Anglia visitur, sempiternos siderum motus, temporumque vicissitudines, & Oceani reciprocationes ad momenta & puncta in aevum repraesentans: Ut & organum ejusdem Musicum coelo sereno suavissimam harmoniam nullo digitulo tactum edens, nubilo silens, ab Anima mundi, seu spiritu universi, astrali insensibili in sphaeram & instrumentum illud artificio Chymico magnetica vi attracto, infuso, & concluso moveri uri, rotari, & coninuari vero consentaneum est”.

Burggrav termed himself a “domesticus” of Hartmann in the preface to Clodius , Officina medica (Frankfurt, 1620). There he praised his patrons for appointing Johann Hartmann to teach chymistry at Marburg. He also referred to his travels in England, France, Central Europe, and the Netherlands. Burggrav's treatise on the distillation of oils was printed in Hartmann's Practice of chymistry in 1634, while the 1623 Introduction to the vital philosophy has been variously ascribed to Burggrav and to Hartmann.

See Burggrav's preface to Drebbel , op. cit. (ref. 13), A2v. Burggrav issued both a German and an independent Latin translation of Drebbel's works in 1628, and also claimed the anonymously-edited first extant edition (printed in German in 1608) as his.

For instance, Vranckheim defended Jacob Metius as the inventor of the telescope against Galileo. See Vranckheim , “Epistola”, Burggrav Johann Ernst , Biolychnium (Franeker, 1611), 49–80, pp. 53–54. Interestingly, Vranckheim's letter is dated December 1609, although he refers to Galileo's Sidereus nuncius (not published until 1610). Vranckheim wrote his letter a few month's after earning his degree, signing it Dec. 1609 at Padua. Burggrav referred to the perpetual motion and the letter from his friend also in his work on “electrical weapons”, Achilles panoplos redivivus; seu panoplia physico-vulcania (Amsterdam, [1612]), 55.

See, for instance, Webster John , The displaying of supposed witchcraft (London, 1677), 269.

Vranckheim began his career as Constantijn L'empereur's private tutor until 1608. He then went abroad to study at the expense of his patron, and defended theses in 1609 at Basel and Marburg. Vranckheim returned to Zutphen where he was appointed rector of the Latin school. See Van Rooden's Peter T. Theology, biblical scholarship and rabbinical studies in the seventeenth century (Leiden, 1989), 21, and Nettesheim's Friedrich Geschichte der Schulen im alten herzogthum Geldern (Düsseldorf, 1881), 331. Johannes Roberti published his 1616 letter to Arnold van Boecop, S.J., renouncing his faith and his magical views. See Roberti , “Goclenius heautontimorumenos”, Theatrum sympatheticum (Nürnberg, 1662), 369–73.

Vranckheim , op. cit. (ref. 72), 55: “scintillula Animae Mundi, quod ajunt, Magnetica, seu Astrali rerum omnium Spiritu insensibili, Harmonica superiorum et inferiorum, id est, Majoris, Minorisque, Mundi conspiratione: Qua & aquas illas Globo vitreo Sphaeram illam inclusam ambiente, ut scribis, inditas, Aeviterno Motu, Motore Vero Inferno, An Externo, an Utroque? certis statisque temporibus credo suis agi incrementis progressionibus, regressionibus, Harmonica cum Oceani aestu Sympathia continenti ad momenta & puncta etiam accessu, recessu.” Cf. ref. 59.

Ibid., 56.

Ibid., 56–57.

Introductio in vitalem philosophiam (Frankfurt, [1623] 1645), 4.

Sennert Daniel , Chymicorum cum aristotelicis et galenicis consensu ac dissensu liber (Wittenberg, 1619), 148–9.

Ibid., 149. Hartmann Compare , op. cit. (ref. 60), 26–27.

Libavius Andreas , “De extract. essent. & elixyr. lib IIX”, Syntagma arcanorum chymicorum (Frankfurt, 1611), 363–480, p. 392.

Ibid.

Libavius , op. cit. (ref. 81), 469.

Maier Michael , Verum inventum (Frankfurt, 1619), 95–97. Drebbel , Wonder-vondt (ref. 37), unpaginated: “wir sehen wan der Saltpeter gebrochen wirdt durch das Feuwer unnd also verandert in die natur des Lüffts.” On Drebbel and saltpetre, see Szydlo Zbigniew , Water which does not wet hands: The alchemy of Michael Sendivogius (Warsaw, 1994).

Willmoth Frances , “Mathematical sciences and military technology: The Ordnance Office in the reign of Charles II”, Renaissance and revolution, ed. by Field J. V. (Cambridge, 1993), 117–32. Digby Kenelm , Two treatises in the one of which the nature of bodies, in the other, the nature of mans soule is looked into in way of discovery of the immortality of reasonable soules (Paris, 1644), 220. Some of Heydon's alchemical correspondence is preserved in the U.K. National Archives. See State Papers 16/373/37, 16/374/38 and 55, 16/397/48r—v.

Moran , op. cit. (ref. 31), 200–1.

Libavius Andreas , “De igne naturae”, Syntagma arcanorum chymicorum … tomus secundus (Frankfurt, 1613), 1–120, p. 102.

Ibid.

Libavius , op. cit. (ref. 11), 365.

Ibid., 370.

Ibid., 443 and 450.

Ibid., 440–1.

On Libavius and the spirit of the world, see Moran , op. cit. (ref. 31), 286.

Libavius , op. cit. (ref. 89), 362.

Libavius Andreas , Probabilis investigatio caussarum physicarum, aliarumque globi Archimedaei novi & instrumenti musici per se absque evidente motore mobilium (Coburg, 1612), thesis 21. Numbers below refer to theses or questions. “Modus dicitur insensibilis & astralis: Artificium modi, chymicum: Forma & actus, attractio magnetica, infusio, conclusio, motus, rotatio, continuatio, quod cum vero pronuncietur consentaneum.” Cf. ref. 59.

Ibid., theses 24–25.

Ibid., thesis 30.

Ibid., thesis 37.

Ibid., questions 5–6.

Reprinted in Hartmann Johann , Disputationes chymico-medicae (Marburg, 1614). See Moran , op. cit. (ref. 31), 235–6.

Libavius Andreas , “De philosophia vivente”, Examen philosophiae novae (Frankfurt, 1615), 88.

Ibid., 89.

Ibid., 126.

Libavius Andreas , “Exercitatio paracelsica nova de notandis excerpto fraternitatis de rosea cruce”, Examen philosophiae novae (Frankfurt, 1615), 262–306, p. 264.

Hartmann Johann , Fama fraternitates (Kassell, 1614), 107.

Libavius , op. cit. (ref. 104), 271.

Ibid., 277.

Ibid., 271.

Ibid., 278.

Ibid., 285.

For Libavius as a moderate Semi-Ramist, see Moran , op. cit. (ref. 31), 20–21.

Hartmann , op. cit. (ref. 100), Matton Sylvain , “L'alchimie chez les ramistes et semi-ramistes”, Argumentation, v (1991), 408–13, and Moran , op. cit. (ref. 31).

Hotson Howard , Commonplace learning: Ramism and its German ramifications, 1543–1630 (New York, 2007), 121.

Alsted Johann Heinrich , Compendium philosophicum (Herborn, 1626), 22. Küffler Johann Sibertus , Disputatio physica de corporis naturalis generalibus principiis et affectionibus (Herborn, 1615). I am grateful to Howard Hotson for the reference to Küffler's dissertation.

Alsted Johann Heinrich , Cursus philosophici encyclopœdia libris XXVII (Herborn, 1620), 982.

Alsted op. cit. (ref. 114), 288. “… admoneo, ne vel cogitatione sejungatis mobile perpetuam mechanicum à mobili perpetuo physico.” For Alsted's definition of soul and entelechy, see Compendium philosophicum, 191.

D. J. B., “Spiritu mundi positiones aliquot”, reprinted from the Ephemerides of the Holy Roman Imperial Academy in Manget's Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, ii (Geneva, 1702), 875–7, p. 877.

Hotson , op. cit. (ref. 113), 33.

On Nollius, see Moran , op. cit. (ref. 59), 122–9, and Gilly Carlos , “Das bekenntnis zur gnosis von Paracelsus bis auf die schüler Jacob Böhmes”, From Poimandres to Jacob Böhme: Gnosis, hermetism and the Christian tradition, ed. by van den Broek R. van Heertum Cis (Amsterdam, 2000), 385–426. Nollius defended a thesis in Marburg under the aegis of Harmann's son-in-law, Heinrich Petraeus. See Nollius Heinrich , “De Methodo medendi Hermetica”, Agonismata medica Marpurgensia (Marburg, 1619), 346–353. Alsted , op. cit. (ref. 115), 116, 451.

Nollius , op. cit. (ref. 39), 11, 61, 112, 126, 148, 152, 236, 279, 752. Szydlo , op. cit. (ref. 84), discussed Nollius's citations of Sendivogius and mentioned his citations of Drebbel.

Ibid., 152.

Ibid., 61.

Ibid., 684. Drebbel , op. cit. (ref. 29), chap. 10, unpaginated.

On Mögling, see Moran , op. cit. (ref. 59), 172, and Neumann Ulrich , “‘Olim, da die Rosen Creutzerey noch florirt, Theophilus Schweighart genant’: Wilhelm Schickards Freund und Briefpartner Daniel Mögling (1596–1635)”, Zum 400. geburtstag von Wilhelm Schickard, ed. by Seck Friedrich (Sigmaringen, 1995), 93–116.

Valerius Saledinus [Daniel Mögling], Perpetuum mobile (Frankfurt, 1625), 26.

Ibid., 40: “unser Invention mehr auss naturlichen Magischen … als Mechanicis Staticisque Fundamentis ursprunglichen herreichet.” 48: “Das Principalwerck aber/und erste Bewegung muss (wie gemeldet) ex Magia Naturali hergenommen werden.” 52–55.

Theophilus Schweighart [Daniel Mögling], Prodromus rhodo-stauroticus (Prague, [1620]), unpaginated: “müssen wir heirvon die jenige Philosophos ersuchen/welche solches perpetuum mobile selbsten zugerichtet/und in dessen Zurichtung nicht allein die Erschaffung der Welt/sondern in dem allbereit zugerichteten/den Lauff der Gestirn/der Elementen unnd aller Ding Natur und Eygenschafft compendiose, augenscheinlich vorzeigen können”.

Libavius , op. cit. (ref. 95), Quaestione 2.

Meli Domenico Bertoloni , Thinking with objects: The transformation of mechanics in the seventeenth century (Baltimore, 2006).

Gabbey , op. cit. (ref. 22), reviewed some of the contradictions inherent in this re-interpretation. See also Des Chene Dennis , Spirits and clocks: Machine and organism in Descartes (Ithaca, 2001), 14, and Garber , op. cit. (ref. 1), 414. For the importance of Fernel to Descartes, see Aucante Vincent , “Descartes's experimental method and the generation of animals”, The problem of animal generation in early modern philosophy, ed. by Smith Justin E. H. (Cambridge, 2006), 65–79, p. 70.

Drake-Brockman Jennifer , “The perpetuum mobile of Cornelis Drebbel”, Learning, language, and invention: Essays presented to Francis Maddison, ed. by Hackmann Willem Dirk Turner Anthony John (Brookfield, VT, 1994), 124–47, p. 147.

Cf. Chang , op. cit. (ref. 28), 8.

de Monconys Balthasar , Iovrnal des voyages de Monsievr de Monconys, ii (Lyons, 1666), 54, and Hoff Hebbel E. Geddes L. A. , “The beginnings of graphic recording”, Isis, liii (1962), 1962–324.

Daston Lorraine , “On scientific observation”, Isis, xcix (2008), 97–110, p. 102.

Boyle Robert , Works of Boyle, xiii, ed. by Hunter Michael (London, 2000), 480–2.

Ibid., 298.

Newman , op. cit. (ref. 1), 175–89, has related Boyle's use of the term ‘mechanical’ to machines that are no more than the sum of their parts, and whose parts could be made of any substance. Others, by contrast, saw Drebbel's machine as more than the sum of its parts, and/or as a physical and chemical motion relying on specific natures rather than the arrangement of parts. Becher J. J. , De nova temporis dimetiendi ratione et accurata horologiorum constructione, theoria & experientia (London, 1680) 4, 15–16, and G. W. Leibniz, Landesbibliothek Hannover LH035, 15, 06, 46r–47r, and published online by the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, http://www.leibniz-edition.de/, cited July 29, 2008. Cf. Bennett , op. cit. (ref. 6, 2006), 680–1, for whom the use of the pendulum clock in the search for longitude supported the idea that its motion was natural.

Leibniz G. W. , “Mémoire pour des personnes esclairées et de bonne intention”, Politische schriften, iv, ed. by Beiderbec Friedrich (Berlin, 2001), 619.