Introduction
Since the nineteenth century, the laboratory has been viewed as the principal space dedicated to the study of the natural world, from carrying out experiments in a controlled environment, to synthesizing new materials and analyzing those unknown. However, the first laboratories dedicated to producing natural knowledge and synthesizing novel substances began to take recognizable shape much earlier, around the year 1600, and were closely tied to the practice of alchemy. Alchemy itself likely dates to the first centuries of the Common Era in Egypt and has involved many pursuits over its long history, but a primary aim has been the synthesis of the so-called “philosophers’ stone,” an object or substance that would allow one to transmute base metals into gold or silver (Principe 2013). Other alchemical pursuits have included the analysis of compound substances into their constituent parts, glassmaking, the synthesis of diverse medicines that were often derived from minerals or...
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Klein, J.A. (2020). Alchemical Laboratories. In: Jalobeanu, D., Wolfe, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_233-1
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