Vibrant Matters

Abstract

What may not be expected, Hooke asks in the preface to Micrographia, from human faculties assisted by a new set of ministrations? The mechanical inventions and philosophical discoveries listed in Hooke’s answer include, among others, an instrument to find longitude at sea and a “way of flying in the air.” “‘Tis not unlikely, also,” Hooke adds, “but that chymists, if they followed this method, they might found out their so much sought for Alkahest.” Van Helmont first described this liquor alkhaest as a universal solvent of metallic nature. But generations of chemical adepts never succeeded in finding it. This originated scepticism towards Helmont’s largest ideas on the nature of matter. Hooke’s criticism was not limited to Helmont’s matter theory. “Van Helmont and the rest of the chymists” employed a sterile method of inquiry. An experimental scrutiny of the properties of bodies could lead, according to Hooke, to a different notion of “alkahest.” The “universal menstruum” is a substance “which dissolves all sorts of sulphureous bodies.” The alkahest “has not been before taken as such.” Like Descartes in the Essays, in Micrographia Hooke presents his discovery as a proof of the efficacy of his newly reformed methodology. A coherent narrative of the discovery, along with its numerous epistemological consequences, emerges prima facie from Hooke’s published papers.