1. See, in particular, Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman, ‘Some Poblems with the Historiography of Achemy,’ inSecrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, ed. William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), 385–434. See also Marcos Martinón-Torres, ‘Some Recent Developments in the Historiography of Alchemy,’Ambix58 (2011): 215–37.
2. See, for example: William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe,Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry(Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2002); William R. Newman,Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature(Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2004); William R. Newman,Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution(Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Bruce Moran,Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005); Pamela H. Smith,The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution(Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2006); and Marcos Martinón-Torres, ‘The Tools of the Chymist: Archaeological and Scientific Analyses of Early Modern Laboratories,’ inChymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry, ed. Lawrence M. Principe (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2007), 149–63.
3. On the archaeology of alchemy and chemistry, see the following, and references therein: Sigrid von Osten,Das Alchemistenlaboratorium von Oberstockstall. Ein Fundkomplex des 16. Jahrhunderts aus Niederösterreich(Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 1998); Rudolf W. Soukup and Helmut Mayer,Alchemistisches Gold. Paracelsistische Pharmaka.Laboratoriumstechnik im 16. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997); Robert G. W. Anderson, ‘The Archaeology of Chemistry,’ inInstruments and Experimentation in the History of Chemistry, ed. Frederic L. Holmes and Trevor H. Levere (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 5–34; Marcos Martinón-Torres and Thilo Rehren, ‘Alchemy, Chemistry and Metallurgy in Renaissance Europe: A Wider Context for Fire-assay Remains,’Historical Metallurgy39 (2005): 14–31; Marcos Martinón-Torres, ‘Los orígenes alquímicos de la química moderna: una perspectiva arqueológica,’Anales de Química104 (2008): 310–17; and Martinón-Torres, ‘The Tools of the Chymist.’
4. I am adopting the term chymistry to avoid the anachronistic connotations of present-day ‘alchemy’ and ‘chemistry.’ See William R. Newman and Lawrence R. Principe, ‘Alchemy vs. Chemistry: the Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake,’Early Science and Medicine3 (1998): 32–65.
5. TheNew Atlantisappeared unfinished as an appendix to Bacon’sSylua Syluarum: or A Naturall Historie in Ten Centuries(London, 1627), published by William Rawley after the author’s death.