The Invention of Printing and the Diffusion of Alchemical and Chemical Knowledge

Abstract

THE steadily rising demand for texts in the late Middle Ages set the stage for the invention of printing. Once the new art had been firmly established in Europe, roughly around the year 1470, it produced a slowly evolving and yet distinct effect on literacy, on methods of reading, on education and on the entire intellectual life of the period. As part of this impact we find a marked acceleration in the spread of knowledge?as well as of pseudo-knowl edge?in the pure and applied sciences. Classical and mediaeval manu script texts, which had been available primarily in monasteries or private libraries, were sought out; many were reproduced, thus for the first time becoming available to all the literate able to afford the pur chase price. Contemporary authors found a considerably wider audi ence. Technological knowledge as applied to the crafts, until then pre dominantly a matter of oral tradition, became recorded in print. Books in the applied sciences were read avidly throughout large parts of Europe as is evident from the condition of surviving copies and from the frequency of reprintings. effect of early printing on the transmission of knowledge has not received sufficient attention. Klebs,1 Sarton2 and a few others have shown the value of such studies. Following this line of inquiry, a more limited and less erudite study is attempted here for the field of alchemy and chemistry. As has frequently been stated, printers and publishers, even during the earliest period, produced what promised a fair sale. As pioneers in a new art they had to be guided by economic considerations in order to succeed; even so, many failed. If we judge them in terms of their own times, we cannot agree with Sarton: The incunabula do not give a correct idea of the growing science of their own time. general