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019 _a(OCoLC)984686952
020 _a9780691173238
_qprint
020 _a9781400883578
_qPDF
024 7 _a10.1515/9781400883578
_2doi
035 _a(DE-B1597)9781400883578
035 _a(DE-B1597)479628
035 _a(OCoLC)959148025
040 _aDE-B1597
_beng
_cDE-B1597
_erda
050 4 _aQ125.2
072 7 _aHIS010000
_2bisacsh
082 0 4 _a306.5
_223
084 _aonline - DeGruyter
100 1 _aSmith, Pamela H.
_eautore
245 1 4 _aThe Business of Alchemy :
_bScience and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire /
_cPamela H. Smith.
264 1 _aPrinceton, NJ :
_bPrinceton University Press,
_c[2016]
264 4 _c©2017
300 _a1 online resource (336 p.) :
_b30 halftones.
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
347 _atext file
_bPDF
_2rda
505 0 0 _tFrontmatter --
_tContents --
_tList of illustrations --
_tPreface to the New Paperback Edition --
_tAcknowledgments --
_tPrologue. Evocation --
_tOne. Provenances --
_tTwo. Oeconomia Rerum et Verborum: Constructing a Political Space in the Holy Roman Empire --
_tThree. The Commerce of Words: An Exchange of Credit at the Court of the Elector in Munich --
_tWest Indian Interlude --
_tFour. The Production of Things: A Transmutation at the Habsburg Court --
_tInterlude in the Laboratory --
_tFive. Between Words and Things: The Commerce of Scholars and the Promise of Ars --
_tEpilogue. Projection --
_tBibliography --
_tIndex
506 0 _arestricted access
_uhttp://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec
_fonline access with authorization
_2star
520 _aIn The Business of Alchemy, Pamela Smith explores the relationships among alchemy, the court, and commerce in order to illuminate the cultural history of the Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In showing how an overriding concern with religious salvation was transformed into a concentration on material increase and economic policies, Smith depicts the rise of modern science and early capitalism. In pursuing this narrative, she focuses on that ideal prey of the cultural historian, an intellectual of the second rank whose career and ideas typify those of a generation. Smith follows the career of Johann Joachim Becher (1635-1682) from university to court, his projects from New World colonies to an old-world Pansophic Panopticon, and his ideas from alchemy to economics. Teasing out the many meanings of alchemy for Becher and his contemporaries, she argues that it provided Becher with not only a direct key to power over nature but also a language by which he could convince his princely patrons that their power too must rest on liquid wealth. Agrarian society regarded merchants with suspicion as the nonproductive exploiters of others' labor; however, territorial princes turned to commerce for revenue as the cost of maintaining the state increased. Placing Becher's career in its social and intellectual context, Smith shows how he attempted to help his patrons assimilate commercial values into noble court culture and to understand the production of surplus capital as natural and legitimate. With emphasis on the practices of natural philosophy and extensive use of archival materials, Smith brings alive the moment of cultural transformation in which science and the modern state emerged.
530 _aIssued also in print.
538 _aMode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
546 _aIn English.
588 0 _aDescription based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Aug 2021)
650 0 _aScience
_xPhilosophy
_xHistory.
650 0 _aScience, Renaissance.
650 7 _aHISTORY / Europe / General.
_2bisacsh
700 1 _aSmith, Pamela H.
_eautore
850 _aIT-RoAPU
856 4 0 _uhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9781400883578?locatt=mode:legacy
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781400883578
856 4 2 _3Cover
_uhttps://www.degruyter.com/cover/covers/9781400883578.jpg
942 _cEB
999 _c209672
_d209672