量化与医学动因:早期近代化学诠释中的因子(英文)

QUANTIFICATION AND MEDICAL MOTIVATION, FACTORS IN THE INTERPRETATION OF EARLY MODERN CHEMISTRY

对1500年以来现代西方科学发展的传统诠释,是以物理科学为依据的——而且几乎只是孤傲地涉及到天文学与运动物理学。据论证,从哥白尼到牛顿这个时期,这两门高度定量的科学,由于其内在的真理取代了古代作者们的谬误,从而推翻了亚里士多德的哲学和盖伦的医学。相反,我们却发现,该时期的论著表明,新科学的发展比这种诠释所描述的要复杂得多,数学之对于自然现象的应用通常是神秘的,与我们所期望的量化型式相去甚远……而且,关于科学方法的论争,其重要程度之对于医生,并不亚子其之对于物理学家。在这两种情况下,化学都起着重要作用。确实,17世纪对于自然的化学诠释吸引了许多自然哲学家,这些自然哲学家们期待的新科学的基础是化学而不是物理学。本文所论证的是,不理解16和17世纪的化学,特别是化学与医学的关系,以及这些作者们的著作中的数学和量化所涉及到的广泛范围,就很难理解近代科学的兴起。

The development of Western Science in the period since 1500 has been interpreted traditionally in terms of the physical sciences...and almost exclusively in relation to astronomy and the physics of motion. It has been argued that these highly quantified sciences overturned the natural philosophy of Aristotle and the medicine of Galen in the period from Copernicus to Newton because of their inherent truth which supplanted the errors of the ancient authors. We find rather that the texts of that period indicatethat the development of the new science was much more complex than this. The application of mathematics to natural phenomena was frequently mystical, quite different from the type of quantification we might expect... and the debate over scientific method was as much a matter of concern to physicians as it was to physicists. In both cases chemistry played a significant role. Indeed, in the seventeenth century the chemical interpretation of nature attracted many natural philosophers who looked for a new science based on chemistry rather than physics.In this paper it is argued that it is difficult to understand the rise of modern science without an understanding of the chemistry of the sixteenth and seventeenth century … especially the relationship of chemistry to medicine and the broad spectrum encompassed by mathematics and quantification in the works of these authors.