Re: VMs: phd dissertation about Marus Marci

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > [Jim Reeds:] This recent dissertation might be of interest. 
    > I have not seen it.

Here is the abstract:

    Alchemical diplomacy: Optics and alchemy in the philosophical writings
    of Marcus Marci in post-Rudolfine Prague, 1612--1670 (Czech Republic,
    Johann Marcus Marci von Kronland)

    Garber, Margaret D.
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

    The dissertation explores the intellectual and diplomatic life of
    an Imperial physician, Johannes Marcus Marci (1595--1670),
    and places his works within the broader cultural, intellectual,
    and socio-political context of Prague. Using Latin texts,
    dissertations, and letters of correspondence, I argue that
    alchemical philosophy constituted a prominent portion of
    seventeenth-century science. Marci's alchemical philosophy helped
    shape local debates about corpuscular matter theory, the physical
    nature of light, and theories of generation and decomposition,
    which were central to the development of early modern Bohemian
    natural philosophy.

    Part I sets forth Marci's biographical background and describes
    the role of imperial physicians in the Habsburg lands. In the
    second chapter, I investigate the environmental context of mining,
    which provided material incentives and court support for the study
    of alchemical procedures and theories about these material
    outcomes.

    Part II, examines how shifting political contexts complicated
    court patronage of alchemy. Marci was an imperial physician and
    Dean of Medicine in post-Rudolfine Prague, a period in which
    political circumstances, occasioned by the Thirty Years war,
    forced the merger of Prague's two university institutions, the <i>
    Carolinum</i> and the <i>Clementinum</i>. These institutional
    transformations compelled physicians to engage with new faculty
    and to re-evaluate interconnections between alchemical and
    scholastic philosophy. In Chapter II, I explore Marci's
    controversial matter theory in which he redefined ontological
    interactions between matter and "substantial form"; by supplanting
    neoaristotelian substantial forms with his theory of <i>seminal
    forces </i>.

    In Part III, I look at the relations between mathematical sciences
    and alchemy through Marci's <i>Thaumantias</i>, in which
    alchemical philosophy informed his optics; and his <i>Philosophia
    Vetus Restituta </i>, where his study of light informed his
    alchemical philosophy. Chapter III discusses Marci's use of
    Kepler's concept of the <i>vis motrix</i> as the model for his
    seminal agents that directed generation in plants, animals, and
    humans. Chapter IV explores how Marci's alchemical philosophy
    informed his optical thesis that light is composed of differently
    colored rays that can be separated with a prism.

    The final chapter investigates an alchemical debate in which
    imperial physicians resolved a scientific puzzle and served a
    diplomatic role by quelling a potentially destabilizing social
    disturbance.
    
If you are at an academic institution, you can access a 24-page sample
of the thesis (scanned from paper, in TIFF format).

(Hmm... six marix morix... vis motrix... naahhh... but...)

All the best,

--stolfi
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