{"id":6635,"date":"2006-08-01T23:53:33","date_gmt":"2006-08-01T23:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/alchemy-in-philly.html"},"modified":"2006-08-01T23:53:33","modified_gmt":"2006-08-01T23:53:33","slug":"alchemy-in-philly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/alchemy-in-philly.html","title":{"rendered":"Alchemy in Philly"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Wilson of Books and Culture on a recent academic conference:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

So: A better than average conference, clearly a high point for scholars in this field, both old and young, who have seen their work attain academic respectability\u2014but what of the implications? Why should an outsider care?<\/p>\n

There are many reasons, but a good place to start is with our understanding of modernity. As the vogue for "postmodernity" slowly fades, it is becoming increasingly clear that we are still in modernity, whatever that means, and running parallel to this new study of alchemy are similar trends in many different fields, which have in common their discovery that "modernity" was rather different than had been supposed. That Isaac Newton was deeply engaged in alchemy is emblematic of this reassessment. But equally notable is the way in which early chemistry was interwoven with theological disputes, especially with regard to the Eucharist\u2014a recurring theme at the conference.<\/p>\n

Then again, as Newman shows in his brilliant book Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature<\/a>, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2004, the history of alchemy has a bearing on our concern over the "rapidly eroding boundaries between the realms of the artificial and the natural," as considered for example by the President’s Council on Bioethics. If the alchemist is not our contemporary, he is our ancestor, and we need to know about him\u2014for his own sake, yes, but also better to understand ourselves and our times.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’d like to hear more about those chemical conversations and Eucharist…resident scholars?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Wilson of Books and Culture on a recent academic conference: So: A better than average conference, clearly a high point for scholars in this field, both old and young, who have seen their work attain academic respectability\u2014but what of the implications? Why should an outsider care? 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}