Assessment of presentist Historiography of Science by Hassan Ibn Zāhid`s Alchemy

Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی

Authors

1 Assistant professor of The Iranian Institute of Philosophy (IRIP)

2 Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies

Abstract

In this paper, first, Presentist historiography of science is introduced. The present scientific theories constitute the criteria of the original point and also the final point of this historiography method. In our opinion, the comparative study of the traditional and modern sciences can be used as a suitable criterion to estimate the validity of this method. So, we consider alchemy as a natural science in the past periods, and analyze briefly an alchemical work of Hassan Ibn Zāhid Kermāni. We extract some fundamental principles of alchemy and compare them with some essential bases of modern science, as well as with some presuppositions of presentist historiography. As the result, alchemy shows great and fundamental differences with modern science, and hence, with the bases of mentioned historiography; one can't, therefore, consider alchemy as the "prehistory" of chemistry. We believe that in the procedure of reconstructing history of science, especially the case of alchemy, its theoretical topics, practical aspects and different processes, as well as its hermetic, symbolic and esoteric language, all should be seen from a holistic point of view

Keywords

Methodology of Social Sciences and Humanities
Volume 24, Issue 94
June 2018
Pages 65-79

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