Chinese Alchemy

Chinese Alchemy
Author: Nathan Sivin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 365
Release: 1968-01-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9780783717241

Chinese Alchemy

Chinese Alchemy
Author: Fabrizio Pregadio
Publisher: Golden Elixir Press
Total Pages: 58
Release: 2009
Genre: Alchemy
ISBN:

Chinese Alchemy

Chinese Alchemy
Author: Jean Cooper
Publisher: Weiser Books
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2016-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1609259823

Here in one slender volume is a basic introduction to Chinese alchemy—a tradition that dates back 5,000 years. Chinese alchemy, largely associated with Taoism, has a recorded history of more than 2,000 years, but traditionally it goes back even further to nearly 3000 BC and the time of the Yellow Emperor. While Western alchemy was concerned with the search for spiritual and material gold, classic Taoist alchemy was a mystical quest for immortality with its aim being union with the Absolute. Jean Cooper describes the history and development of Taoist alchemy, compares it to similar traditions in India and Turkistan, and gives it context by contrasting it with the rationale of the Western hermetic tradition. As she writes in her concluding chapter: The whole work of alchemy is summed up in the phrase "To make of the body a spirit and of the spirit a body". . . . The goal of the Taoist alchemist-mystic was transformation, or perhaps more correctly, transfiguration, of the whole body until it ceases to "be" and is absorbed into and becomes the Tao. This is an essential guide for anyone interested in Chinese legend and lore, Chinese magic and medicine, and Taoism.

Alchemy Revisited

Alchemy Revisited
Author: Martels
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2023-12-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004625704

The contributors to these Proceedings give an unusually comprehensive survey of Indian, Greek, Arabic and European alchemy which will serve as an authoritative scholarly introduction to the subject. An extensive bibliography greatly enhances the value of this rich collection of material.

Empiricisms

Empiricisms
Author: Barry Allen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2020-11-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197508944

In this sweeping volume of comparative philosophy and intellectual history, Barry Allen reassesses the values of experience and experiment in European and world traditions. His work traces the history of empirical philosophy from its birth in Greek medicine to its emergence as a philosophy of modern science. He surveys medical empiricism, Aristotlean and Epicurean empiricism, the empiricism of Gassendi and Locke, logical empiricism, radical empiricism, transcendental empiricism, and varieties of anti-empiricism from Parmenides to Wilfrid Sellars. Throughout this extensive intellectual history, Allen builds an argument in three parts. A richly detailed account of history's empiricisms in Part One establishes a context in Part Two for reconsidering the work of the radical empiricists--William James, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, and Gilles Deleuze, each treated in a dedicated chapter. What is "radical" about them is their effort to return empiricism from epistemology to the ontology and natural philosophy where it began. In Part Three, Allen sets empirical philosophy in conversation with Chinese tradition, considering technological, scientific, medical, and alchemical sources, as well as selected Confucian, Daoist, and Mohist classics. The work shows how philosophical reflection on experience and a profound experimental practice coexist in traditional China with no interaction or even awareness of each other, slipping over each other instead of intertwining as they did in European history, a difference Allen attributes to a different understanding of the value of knowledge. Allen's book recovers empiricism's neglected, multi-textured contexts, and elucidates the enduring value of experience, to arrive at an idea of what is living and dead in philosophical empiricism.

My Unwritten Books

My Unwritten Books
Author: George Steiner
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780811217033

One of the worlds foremost literary critics meditates upon seven books he long had in mind to write but never did. Massively erudite, the essays are also brave, unflinching, and wholly personal.

The Secrets of Alchemy

The Secrets of Alchemy
Author: Lawrence M. Principe
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2012-12-10
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0226923789

"This ele­gant, readable book…covers the history of alchemy from its shadowy origins in Hellenistic Egypt to its scholarly recovery in the 20th century” (Anthony Grafton, Science). In The Secrets of Alchemy, science historian and practicing chemist Lawrence M. Principe dispels commonly held misconceptions about alchemy and sheds light on what it was, how it began, and how it influenced a range of other ideas and pursuits. Principe demonstrates the importance of alchemy during its heyday in early modern Europe, and explores its enduring place in literature, fine art, theater, and religion as well as its recent acceptance as a serious subject of study for historians of science. Principe also introduces readers to some of the most fascinating alchemists, such as Zosimos and Basil Valentine, whose lives dot alchemy’s long reign from the third century and to the present day. Through his discussion of alchemists and their times, Principe pieces together clues from obscure texts to reveal alchemy’s secrets, and uses them to recreate many of the most famous recipes in his lab, including those for the “glass of antimony” and “philosophers’ tree.”

Explorations in Daoism

Explorations in Daoism
Author: Ho Peng Yoke
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2007-03-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134137451

The Daoist canon is the definitive fifteenth century compilation of texts, however many of these texts are undated and anonymous. This book brings together an extraordinary compendium of data on alchemical knowledge in China, describing the methods used for dating important alchemical texts in the Daoist canon.