Gold During the Transition to Modern Scientific Views

Abstract

The interval between the publication of Agricola’s De re metallica (1556) and the great controversy in earth sciences, instigated by Werner and Hutton and lasting into the early years of the nineteenth century, marks a time span of nearly three centuries, during which many changes took place in politics, social structure, economics, and science in Europe and the newly discovered (i.e., by Europeans) lands of the New World (Americas), Africa, the Far East, Siberia, and Australasia. The period witnessed in turn the great events of the aftermath of the Reformation (1517–1560), the exploration and exploitation of the newly found lands (Americas, Siberia, Africa, Australia, etc.), the continued expansion of capitalism and mercantilism, the rise and later decline of monarchial absolutism in Europe, the emergence of parliamentary monarchy in England, the Seven Years War (which removed French dominion from America 1759), the American Revolution (1775–1783), the French Revolution (1789–1795), and the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte (1815).

For I know by good and long experience and by many accurate trialls that Quick-silver the most friendly mineral to the royall mettalls, can by no means or Artifice whatsoever be fixed and coagulated into either of the Royal Mettalls. Gabriel Plattes, 1639