Hermetic Atomism: Christian Adolph Balduin (1632–1682), Aurum Aurae, and the 1674 Phosphor

Abstract

The synthesis of phosphors, or light-bearing matter, figured largely among the activities of early scientific societies and within the first scientific journals. They were prestige objects during the formative institutionalisation of experimental natural philosophy. Nevertheless, early phosphors have often appeared within the historiography of chemistry as a throwback to an earlier era. They have been represented as a fundamental epistemic and theoretical divide between a mystical alchemy (exemplified by Christian Adolph Balduin) and modern chemistry (prefigured by progressives such as Robert Boyle). The parallel phosphoric researches of Boyle and Balduin belie this divide. Recovering the theoretical context of Balduin's phosphor can both resituate it in relation to phosphoric research of the 1670s and 1680s, as well as further illuminate the intellectual sources and development of chymical atomism.