title: Eloquence in the Marketplace: Erudition and Pragmatic Humanism in the Restoration of Chymia.
abstract: This chapter focuses upon the relation between textual and social practices that influenced the formation of a communal approach to acquiring chemical knowledge in the early seventeenth century. It also describes the utilitarian purpose of a humanist-inspired program of chemical learning that blended practices of textual/linguistic expertise and artisanal know-how. Humanism, made pragmatic, sought to define the principles for "making things well." In the design of Andreas Libavius (ca. 1555-1616), interpretive intuitions resulting from practiced reading of ancient and medieval texts combined with a knowledge of workshop language to build consensus about chymia's tools, procedures, and materials and to define its principia artificialia.
authors.forename: Bruce T
authors.initials: BT
authors.lastname: Moran
mesh_terms: D000422:Alchemy; D002621:Chemistry / Q000193:education / Q000266:history*; D005858:Germany; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D006808:Humanism / Q000266:history*