Promethean ambitions alchemy and the quest to perfect nature / [electronic resource] :
William R. Newman.
- University of Chicago Press, c2004.
- 1 online resource (xv, 333 p., [8] p. of plates) : ill. (some col.)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; A Note On Terminology; Abbreviations; Introduction: From Alchemical Gold to Synthetic Humans: The Problem of the Artificial and the Natural; Chapter One: Imitating, Challenging, and Perfecting Nature: The Arts and Alchemy in European Antiquity; Chapter Two: Alchemy and the Art-Nature Debate; Chapter Three: The Visual Arts and Alchemy; Chapter Four: Artificial Life and the Homunculus; Chapter Five: The Art-Nature Debate and the Issue of Experiment; Afterword: Further Ramifications of the Art-Nature Debate; References; Index.
In an age when the nature of reality is complicated daily by advances in bioengineering, cloning, and artificial intelligence, it is easy to forget that the ever-evolving boundary between nature and technology has long been a source of ethical and scientific concern: modern anxieties about the possibility of artificial life and the dangers of tinkering with nature more generally were shared by opponents of alchemy long before genetic science delivered us a cloned sheep named Dolly. In Promethean Ambitions, William R. Newman ambitiously uses alchemy to investigate the thinning boundary between.
Science, Renaissance. Alchemy--History. Arts, Renaissance. Alchemy. History, Medieval. History of Medicine. Nature. Chemistry. Science. Sciences de la Renaissance. Alchimie--Histoire. Arts de la Renaissance. SCIENCE--History. Alchemie. Natuurwetenschappen. Naturwissenschaften. Kunst. Alchemie. Chemie. Natur.