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abstract: BRUCE T. MORAN Axioms,
essences and mostly clean hands: Teaching Chemistry with Libavius and
Aristotle
The paper focuses upon the letters of Andreas Libavius, published in three parts in 1595 and 1599. The letters demonstrate Libavius's pedagogic concern to identitfy the principles of chymia as a first step in organizing the subject for purposes of academic instruction. Libavius's view of chemistry as both an art and a science is based in Aristotle's Posterior analytics, especially in Aristotle's distinction between questions of fact, reason or cause, existence, and essence. As pertains to the question of essence, Libavius claims that the individual parts of any didactic science must be homogeneous. Nothing was to be received into chymia, therefore, which was not of chymia (nihil in chymiam recipietur, quod non sit chymicum). Particularly in letters addressed to Zacharius Brendel, professor of Medicine at Jena, and Joachim Camerarius, physician at Nuremberg, Libavius contrasts his definition of chemistry and his style of teaching by means of principles or axioms against those who would argue that the art could be defined solely in terms of “creating and making” and be learned empirically by simply copying the procedures of artisans. Galen's discussion of medical sects was obviously of much influence. In several letters, Libavius gives special attention to defining the concept of chemical essence. He then uses the same defintion metaphorically to define the art of chemistry. The good chemist, he claims, must combine sense with reason so as to produce true experience. He must know logic in the manner of Peter Ramus, and must be instructed in the diligent observation of nature. Finally, the chemist must be able to act upon nature. For chymia is not one of the abstract arts, but, says Libavius, one that is “born in material things and by means of action, so that something useful may result.” This does not mean, however, that the teacher of chemistry, or even the chemist himself, must work with his own hands. In this regard, it is important to understand the relationship between manual and didactic tasks as they relate to chemistry in the early modern period. Many have described Libavius as one of the best examples of an early modern laboratory practitioner. However, his own self identity was that of a humanist scholar and teacher of the liberal arts. Most often he admits to having transcribed the “experimenta” of others and to having decoded, my means of skillful linguistic techniques, texts that seem confusing or allegorical to others. In regard to the instructions he provides in his famous Alchemia (1597), he writes plainly: “it is enough if the explanation and manner of teaching comes from me.” “From many authors and on the basis of teaching experience in the arts,” he proclaims, he has brought “the methods of philosophical instruction to alchemical studies.” Thus he notes with some indignation after critics noted the lack of a laboratory at his residence in Coburg, “I will prescribe for you the method of proceeding. It is for you to carry out these instructions; not to interrogate me about how I am unable to reproduce the result.” 
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