April Fools' Day: Did Alchemy Prank the Modern Sciences?

Social conventions, economics, and royal patronage greatly affected alchemy's history and development. But there's no mistake that, no matter the where or the when, it's practice laid the foundation for the modern science of chemistry. And though the contributions of alchemists have been dismissed by scholars for years, centuries, to be accurate it some of the names that we recognize as being influential in the early days of our modern

sciences were also alchemists. Whether it was known that they were practicing alchemists, that is a different story. He put Aristotle's theory of the elements, as well as Paris Elysis's Three Primes or Tria Prima of alchemy to the test with analysis and thorough criticism. He defined chemical elements, compounds,

and mixtures, and coined the term chemical analysis. He was an advocate of corpuscularianism, a theory partly based in alchemical work that stated all matter is composed of minute particles. He believed that he had achieved a form of reverse transmutation by changing gold into silver, and he also believed that the Philosopher's stone existed. So who was this transmutational alchemist? We're talking about the guy who's often known as the

father of modern chemistry, Robert Boyle. That's right. And Robert Boyle was born on January sixty seven in the town of Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland. He was the fourteenth child of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, Lord Treasurer of the Kingdom of Ireland, and his second wife, Katherine Fenton, who was the daughter of the Secretary of State in Ireland.

Through business marriage and landownership, Richard became one of the most powerful landed and industrial magnets in seventeenth century Ireland. And we really have to be clear that the Boyle family was incredibly rich. It's often said it was one of the wealthiest families in the British Isles at the time that Robert lived. As a child in this very aristocratic family, Robert was educated in some of the most prestigious schools and by some of the most amazing minds.

He attended Eton College and he even studied with tutors around Europe for several years. He took a just a general chemistry class in high school. You may remember Robert Boyle as the person who discovered the law of gases. Boil's law states that the volume of a gas decreases

with increasing pressure, and vice versa. He was a resolute proponent of the experimental method, which is a method of research that's conducted using the assignment and the manipulation of variables to test a hypothesis, which is really just a long way of saying that the method is he used to show a cause and effect relationship between two variables.

He's regarded as one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method and he's widely considered to be one of the first modern chemists and founders of the science of chemistry. So why would he bother with something like alchemy. Since its beginnings a few thousand years ago, alchemy was divided among philosophical, religious, mystical, and scientific pursuits. It was a branch of natural philosophy that combined proto scientific work and philosophy,

and it flourished around the world for centuries. But alchemy has a bad reputation among modern scientists, primarily because of the association it developed with astrology, black magic, and the occult. Considered tricksters and frauds for overpromising and under delivering. Many alchemists themselves did not help their own reputation. Sometimes, of course, they ended up executed for it. It's a story we

have seen this season. Remember George Honauer. He was a goldsmith and an alchemist in the late sixteenth century, and he claimed that he could convert iron into gold. But when he could not deliver on that claim due Frederick the first of Wurtemburg had him dressed in a gold tinsel suit and hanged from a gallows covered in gold colored foil. We're gonna take a break for a word from our sponsor, and when we return we'll get into how and why alchemy grew into the respectable science of chemistry.

Welcome back to criminalia. Between alchemy and chemistry, there once was a field of study known as chemistry. That's with two wise Please allow us to explain. Alchemy is based on the idea that every substance is made up of some combination of the four Aristotilian elements earth, fire, air, water. You'll note this is different from chemical elements such as sodium or phosphorus. It was sort of the proto concept of the periodic table of elements, but obviously simplified at

a little misguided. So if you were able to figure out the right proportions of those four elements, you would be able to make gold or the elixir of life, or maybe whatever you want it. Throughout its history, alchemy was sometimes celebrated, sometimes feared. It's secretive nature drew suspicions from the government and from the church, and many who pro just did so in secret, in part because they feared punishment from those establishments. So there's this full circle

going around here. But there were alchemists who did legitimate work, legit chemical experimentation processes and applications that helped bring alchemy into what we know as modern chemistry. It was about the turn of the eighteenth century when alchemy and chemistry started to grow apart. Medieval scientific study was dominated by the ideas of the Greek philosopher Aristotle and physician slash philosopher Paracelsus Boyle. That meant was working in an interesting time.

Alchemy was still very much alive and practiced during his lifetime. But it's not like alchemy woke up one morning to find out it was now called chemistry. The period from the fifteenth century through the eighteenth century is often referred to as the early modern world. In the first half of that period, from the late fifteenth century through the seventeenth century, is con sidered the dawn of a hybrid

between alchemy and chemistry called chemistry. It sounds like chemistry, but it's spelled as follows c h y m I asked t r y. An alchemist could have been known as an alchemist, sure, but he also might have been known as a chemist that spelled c h y m I s t. Hybrid names for a hybrid science. And it's not just Boyle who straddles this alchemical slash chemist line.

Influential early chemists such as George Ernst Stall and Isaac Newton did too, and there really wasn't a whole lot that was different between a laboratory used by an alchemist versus one that was used by an early chemist. Yes, the father of modern physics and the inventor of calculus, Isaac Newton was a curious and practiced alchemist, and he didn't just dabble or borrow from their works and theories.

Newton believed that in his experiments he had found the recipe for the Philosopher's stone, but you'd never have known. He kept that business a well guarded secret. Those scholars have known for a long time that Newton had a general interest in alchemy. It wasn't until much more recently that science historians discovered the scope of his interest through analysis of his voluminous alchemical works housed in the Newtonian archives, most of which were actually never published. He was prolific,

they've learned. He was quite serious about the study and practice, and spent three decades trying to transmute one chemical element into another. It's actually pretty telling that Newton's interested in alchemy was something he didn't advertise. It already had a bad reputation in his time. Newton's writings also showed that he was strongly influenced in his work by a person

who wrote under the name Eranius Philolities. According to modern historians, that was colonial American Harvard educated alchemist George Starkey, also known as George Stark, hiding behind the pseudonym him. Starkey, who called himself the Philosopher by Fire, was a physician and an alchemist who not only influenced Newton, but also

Boyle and other early modern scientists. It was perfectly reasonable for Isaac Newton to believe in alchemy, says William Newman, a historian at Indiana University, Bloomington, and he continued his quote most of the experimental scientists of the seventeenth century did. In his opinion, alchemy was synonymous with chemistry, and chemistry was much bigger than transmutation. No one, though, successfully transmuted any metal into gold. No one discovered the Philosopher's Stone

or the elixir of life. But that doesn't mean that this was all for nothing, or that it was even all bunk. Alchemists discovered a lot of significant things we've discussed on the show. Before distillation refining of ores, the production of gunpowder, the manufacturing of glass and ceramics, things like leather tanning, the production of inks, dies and paints. There's so much more to add to that list that came out of alchemy using laboratory based analysis and synthesis.

Alchemists were among the first to formulate the principle of mass balance, and their experiments on crystallographic analysis would seem right at home in a modern chemistry lab. They invented many of the instruments and equipment that you will still find used in modern laboratories. And those of you who were with us during our first season where we talked all about lady poisoners, hey, hey, here it is alchemists were the ones to isolate the chemical element arsenic first.

I feel like since that first season, I'm never gonna be more than say, maybe two steps away from arsene my life. It always just seems to pop up in articles or somewhere like arsenic is the Kevin Bacon of modern history. And on that. We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, and when we're back we will explain how a true alchemist never admits it. Welcome back to criminalia. We discovered that Boil penned the list of things he predicted would be invented, including antidepressants.

But first we're gonna talk about patent protection among alchemists. Science historian, chemist, and professor at Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Princeship Hay is also one of the world's foremost experts on alchemy. He deciphers codes and replicates ancient formulas at

time and again. He has shown that the metaphors used to write alchemical recipes really do provide real laboratory instructions, if that is, you can decipher them in He analyzed volumes of Boyle's writings in the Royal Society of London. Those writings, he found our with references to Boyle's own attempts at transmutation, and include the same phrasing, vocabulary, and

symbology known among alchemists. Boyle believed in empiricism and that a scientist's results should be shared with peers so that their experiments could be repeated and their results confirmed. But Print chap A discovered that while Boyle advocated knowledge sharing, he did, like a true alchemist, used code words in his texts. For example, whenever Boyle wrote Ormant in a recipe,

he was really referring to potassium nitrate. For many alchemists, that was a way to keep their study out of what they considered dangerous hands, which is also another way of saying that there was a belief among alchemists that only some people could and should be in the know. But according to Prince Chape, in Boyle's case, it may have been more like a version of patent protection after

rivals had stolen some of his work. Uh So, speaking of stealing work, In sixteen sixty Boyle published his work New Experiments Physico Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air and Its Effects, in which he explored the physical nature of air and discussed his experiments using an air pump

to create a vacuum. This was only seventeen years after Evangelista Toricelli produced the first laboratory vacuum that happened in sixteen forty three, and in the second edition of New Experiments Physical Mechanical, published two years later in sixteen sixty two, Boyle outlined his law of gases, stating that the volume of a gas varies inversely to the pressure of the gas.

In sixteen sixty one, he wrote A Skeptical Chemist. The Skeptical Chemistry is where Boyle argued for the scientific method of inquiry and the development of proof, and today it's considered a foundational work. It's also considered the point when the mystical traditions of alchemy transitioned into the science of chemistry. Boil re spected alchemical work, elevated the practice into a science, and established his reputation as a founder of modern chemistry.

There's a quote from William Newman, who we referenced earlier, that says that Boyle quote basically pillaged the work of the German physician and alchemist Daniel Center, who published a few decades before him in the early seventeenth century, and he borrowed heavily and without any kind of acknowledgement from Center in his essay on Corpuscularianism titled of the Atomical Philosophy, and again in his work The Skeptical Chemist, where he

used Centered's experiments of gold and silver, again without acknowledgement. Newman has also pointed out that some of Centered's corpusculary and ideas oh much to the corpusculary and alchemical theory of the Suma perfectionists of the pseudo javert, a collection of alchemical writings that dates back to the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century. Incidentally, the javert re for instant. The name is not Abu and Masa Jaber, even highan who was an influential part of the Islamic Golden Age

of alchemy. We spoke about this in a recent episode. Hyan was known by the name Jabbart throughout Europe, and much of his work had been translated into Latin during the eleventh through the centuries. There is another Jabbart known as the pseudo Jabbart. Scholars believe it may have been a thirteenth century alchemist, possibly a man named Paul of Taranto, who borrowed the name. Or perhaps they say it might have been a few alchemists who published under the pseudonym.

No one is exactly sure, but people who were not that man used that man's name. So what's the quote from the Dalai Lama? Share your knowledge? It's a way to achieve immortality. In sixteen sixty, with eleven other poly maths, Boil formed the Royal Society in London, which was created to discuss scientific topics and share knowledge as els to

witness experiments. Peer review wouldn't be introduced as we know it until seventeen thirty one, when the work Medical Essays and Observations was published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. A devout and pious Anglican, Boyle was elected President of the Society in sixteen eighty, but refused the position because he felt that the oath required of him violated his religious principles. The Royal Society's motto nullius in verba can

be roughly translated to take nobody's word for it. One of my goals, Prince of Hay, is quoted as saying, is to demonstrate the importance of alchemy to the history of science, and to show that alchemy cannot be dismissed out of hand as a worthless and past endeavor, simply because the alchemist had a worldview very different from our own. In sixteen sixty eight, Boyle moved permanently to London to live with his sister, who was also his best friend,

Katherine Jones, Viscountess Randolam. Catherine was also a scientist and a political and religious philosopher, and the two of them spent much of their later years together, sharing scientific ideas and editing each other's manuscripts. Robert died from paralysis on December thirty one, that was just a week after Catherine had died. After his death, found among his private papers was a kind of wish list if things Boil hoped

would be achieved through science in the coming centuries. And his list includes things that have come to be like airplanes, oregan transplants, submarines, commercial agriculture, psychotropic drugs. But it does seem we're still waiting for the prolonged life and recovery of youth, though, I mean, I think that's debatable. Maybe we're on our where it depends how you look at it. So let's do us to alchemy. Yeah, let's have an I'll come a toast. This one got me thinking a

lot about the idea of hiding things. So I took it as an opportunity to take a cocktail I don't like and make it into something I do like by hiding the flavors I don't enjoy. Okay, that's like a fantastic little drink project right there, and I'm calling it Newton's Secret. So the cocktail that I do not enjoy is a negrony. Okay, do you like those? I don't really. I wouldn't go up and order one, but if you put it in front of me, accept it. It's not

your go to at all. So for those of you that don't know, and negroni is super easy to make. It's one of those things that, like, every bartender should know how to make it because it's super basic in terms of how it's made. But it's also been around long enough there are lots of people that like it, and it's an interesting drink. It's just the flavors are not for me. I'm not a big pari fan. Campari is tricky, it is. It very much is. We'll talk about why in a moment exactly. So, the negroni is

very easy to make. It's one part Jim, one part campari, and one part sweet vermouth. You're combining three things I don't love. Jim has grown on me, but I still it has to be a you know, particular and very delicious gin. And campari is technically a bitter. It's a liqueur and it is it will slap you. It's not your friend. And sweet vermouth that name is a misnomer. It doesn't taste like candy. It's like when you're a kid you see scotch and you think it might taste

like butter scotch, but its exactly exactly right. Sweet vermouth is called that because sugar is used. It's a fortified wine and sugar is used in that process. But the flavor is really quite spicy. And so those three things they make a very interesting flavor. You' don't shake in a groaning. You stir it with ice because you want to chill it all together. It's still a little slap in the face for me. It's not my favorite thing. And I thought, what can I do to make this

more yummy? And I do know a lot of people that will sub in one of these ingredients with Saint Germain, which I love. I didn't do a subout though. I just added and I kept everything equal parts because that was my other challenge to myself. So I added one

part Saint Germain. This is where you get a little choose your own adventure options because I thought, if I just added juice to this, because that elder elderberry liqueur does some cool things on its own where it softens up that bitter edge, and it has its own not cloying sweetness, but it does sweeten it up a little. And I thought, if we add a juice to this, you know, one part juice surely will have cracked it. And I added just a one part cranberry juice, and

I actually found that to be very yummy. And of course I said, my beloved, come here drink, because I know you also dislike the base material, and we'll see if this is better to you. But today is the day I discovered that my husband also doesn't like cranberry cheese, so there's really nothing about this drink that is redeeming for him. Then I was thinking, surely there's gotta be a way that we can make this work. And I did a second one in which I put pineapple juice.

Completely changes the profile, and to me that was not as yummy as the cranberry juice one, but to him it was much nicer. Okay, well, it's get information. I think the one part juice is a choose your own adventure portion. I bet if you like grapefruit juice, that might do something beautiful here. Interesting. I have mixed feelings about grape fruit juice. Anyway, So I would give it a try. How it works in here a bit, but I'm like about the whole bottle to do that right.

I liked the cranberry juice just fine. You could do a grape juice, said, I bet you'd get one. There's a lot of the alcohol taste goes away, that is Newton's secret, and you just want to stir those together again with ice. Normally you would serve and a grony with a large cube. Since you're messing with it already, you don't have to beat. It's particularly adherent to those kinds of cocktail rules. But this is an interesting one to do a mocktail um because with a mocktail there's

you don't have to hide anything. The mock tail is quite different, but it also has some of the same notes that play together. So I think what you want to do is select a floral tea for yourself. I would go with like a chrysanthemum here, and you're going to brew the tea, but then you're gonna boil it down and reduce it a little bit, and then add an equal part sugar and make like a chrysanthemum syrup.

And I would add that to the juice of your choice, and then I would zest the peel of an orange on top, so you still get some of that bite and sharpness. And that is what I would do over ice for Newton's secret in mocktail version. Newton's secret is that it's a negrony in a cloak like the alchemy gear robes and a hat. That's the part that you hide so over that you would put a very fancy frock coat and pose. That's how that would go. So I have a question about about the drink and the juice.

So yes, I am a huge granberry fan. Should I do one that has juice but like a little sweeter you do want the sweeter cranberry juice here? And I would say if it's one of those things where if you have unsweetened cranberry juice on hand, don't go out and buy more. You could just add a little simple syrup in there to sweeten yourself a little touch of sweetness. It's a little little scoche. Since I don't bring it to the table myself, I'll just have to bring a

little table stewing over with me. But that's it's an interesting thing, and it's a. It was a fun experiment. I have been thinking a lot about it. Came up recently while I was traveling and I was at a bar that I love and normally always get amazing drinks, and I got a drink that I get all the time, which is a vodka Collins, but the bartender there didn't seem to have the hang of it, and so I was like, Okay, what else can I order that will

make this into a yummy drink? So in that case, I went the Lazy Root and was just like, hey, can I also get a ginger ale? And I just kind of combined them and that was fine, but it did make me think a lot about fixing drinks and like when you can and cannot rescue a cocktail that might not be to your taste. Again, I always encourage people to experiment and try that you can encode your Negroni in a more delicious juice. That is Newton's secret,

and if you make it, I hope it's fun. If you try different juice, let us know, because I want to know what works for everybody, because everybody's palate is a little different. I even thought about what if I put coconut water this is what would that do? Did you try? I didn't. I didn't try. You know, you gotta limit the number of experiments you do. Robert Boyle would tell you, you can't have that many variables. Newton would tell you he worked for three decades trying right.

We thank you for hanging out, curing our cocktail recipes and our stories, and we will be right back here next week. I'm Criminalia with some more alchemy and witchcraft. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,